The soil of familiarity, contempt and sacrilege which we have just

described, was most fertile ground for the growth of that rank and

killing skepticism which was destroying the vitals of the Roman faith at

the time of Christ. This unbelief, it is true, was not universal. At the

time of the birth of the Savior, the Roman masses still believed in the

gods and goddesses of the Greek and Roman mythologies. Superstition was

especially prevalent in the country districts of both Greece and Italy.

Pausanias, who lived about the middle of the second century of the

Christian era, tells as that in his time the olden legends of god and

hero were still firmly believed by the common people. As he traveled

through Greece, the cypresses of Alcmæon, the stance of Amphion, and the

ashes of the funeral piles of Niobe's children were pointed out to him.

In Phocis, he found the belief still existing that larks laid no eggs

there because of the sin of Tereus.[148] Plutarch, who lived about the

middle of the first century of our era, tells us that the people were

still modeling the gods in wax and clay, as well as carving them in

marble and were worshiping them in contempt and defiance of philosophers

and statesmen.[149] But this credulity was limited to the ignorant and

unthinking masses. The intellectual leaders of both the Greek and Roman

races had long been in revolt against the absurdity and vulgarity of the

myths which formed the foundation of their popular faiths. The purity

and majesty of the soul felt keenly the insult and outrage of enforced

obedience to the obscene divinities that Homer and Hesiod had handed

down to them. Five hundred years before Christ, Pindar, the greatest

lyric poet of Greece, had denounced the vulgar tales told of the

deities, and had branded as blasphemous the story of the cannibal feast

spread for the gods by the father of Pelops. Xenophanes, also, in the

sixth century before Christ, had ridiculed the mythical tales of the

Homeric poems, and had called attention to the purely human character of

popular religions. He had pointed out that the Ethiopians painted the

images of their deities black, and gave them flat noses, in the likeness

of themselves; that the Thracians, on the other hand, created their gods

blue-eyed and red; and that, in general, every race had reflected its

own physical peculiarities in the creation of its gods. He declared it

to be his opinion that if the beasts of the field should attempt to

produce a likeness of the gods, the horses would produce a resemblance

of themselves, and that oxen and lions would ascribe to their own

divinities their own images and peculiarities.

The whole structure of the Roman religion, built upon myths and adorned

with fables, was ill fitted to stand the tests of analysis and

criticism. It was destined to weaken and crumble the moment it was

subjected to serious rational inquiry. Such inquiry was inevitable in

the progress of that soul-growth which the centuries were sure to bring.

Natural philosophy and historical study began to dissolve the sacred

legends and to demand demonstration and proof where faith had before

sufficed. Skeptical criticism began to dissect the formulæ of prayer and

to analyze the elements of augury and sacrifice. Reason began to revolt

against the proposition that Jupiter was justified in rejecting a

petition because a syllable had been omitted or a word mispronounced.

Men began to ask: "What explanation could be given of the strange

changes of mind in the gods, often threatening evil on the first

inspection of the victim, and at the second promising good? How did it

happen that a sacrifice to Apollo gave favorable, and one to Diana

unfavorable signs? Why did the Etruscan, the Elan, the Egyptian, and the

Punic inspectors of sacrifice interpret the entrails in an entirely

different manner? Again, what connection in nature was there between a

fissure in the liver of a lamb, and a trifling advantage to a man, an

inheritance to be expected, or the like? And on a man's intending to

sacrifice, did a change, corresponding to his circumstances, take place

in the entrails of the beast; so that, supposing another person had

selected the same victim, he would have found the liver in a quite

different condition?"

The gods themselves became subjects of inspection and analysis. Their

origin and nature were studied historically, and were also reviewed in

the light of natural and ethical products. Three hundred years before

Christ, Evhemere of Messina boldly declared that the gods were simply

ancient kings deified by fear and superstition after death. Anaxagoras

sought to identify the several deities with the forces and phenomena of

nature, thus converting the pantheon into an observatory, or into a

physical and chemical laboratory. Metrodorus contended that the gods

were deifications of mere abstract ethical precepts.

Instances are recorded in history, from time to time, where the

philosophers attempted to explain to the people the natural meaning of

those things which they believed were pregnant with supernatural import.

On a certain occasion, a ram with one horn was found on the farm of

Pericles, and, from this circumstance, an Athenian diviner, named

Lampon, predicted that the party of the orator would triumph over the

opposite faction and gain control of the government. Whereupon

Anaxagoras dissected the skull, and demonstrated to the people the

natural cause of the phenomenon in the peculiar shape of the animal's

brain. But this reformer finally suffered the fate of other innovators,

was prosecuted for impiety, and was only saved by the influence of

Pericles.

At the beginning of the Christian era, the religion of Rome was

privately ridiculed and repudiated by nearly all statesmen and

philosophers of the empire, although they publicly professed it on

grounds of public policy. Seneca, a contemporary of Jesus, advised

observance of rites appointed by law, on patriotic grounds. "All which

things," he says, "a wise man will observe as being commanded by the

laws, but not as being pleasing to the gods." Again he says: "All that

ignoble rabble of gods which the superstition of ages has heaped up, we

shall adore in such a way as to remember that their worship belongs

rather to custom than to reality." Ridiculing the popular notions of

the matrimonial relations of the deities, the same eminent philosopher

says: "And what of this, that we unite the gods in marriage, and that

not even naturally, for we join brothers and sisters? We marry Bellona

to Mars, Venus to Vulcan, Salacia to Neptune. Some of them we leave

unmarried, as though there were no match for them, which is surely

needless, especially when there are certain unmarried goddesses, as

Populonia, or Fulgora, or the goddess Rumina, for whom I am not

astonished that suitors have been wanting."

The prevailing skepticism of the times is well illustrated in a dialogue

which Cicero introduces into his first Tusculan Disputation between M,

which may be interpreted Marcus, and A, which may be translated Auditor:

MARCUS: Tell me, are you not afraid of the three-headed Cerberus in

the infernal regions, and the roaring of Cocytus, and the passage

over Acheron, and Tantalus, dying with thirst, while water laves

his chin, and Sisyphus,

"Who sweats with arduous toil in vain

The steepy summit of the mount to gain?"

Perhaps you are also afraid of the inexorable judges, Minos and

Rhadamanthus, because before them neither L. Crassus nor M.

Antonius can defend you, and because appearing before Grecian

judges, you will not be permitted to employ Demosthenes, but must

plead for yourself before a very great crowd. All these things,

perhaps, you fear, and therefore regard death as an eternal evil.

AUDITOR: Do you think I'm such a fool as to give credence to such

things?

MARCUS: What! You don't believe in them?

AUDITOR: Truly, not in the least.

MARCUS: I am deeply pained to hear that.

AUDITOR: Why?

MARCUS: Because, if occasion had offered, I could very eloquently

have denounced them, myself.[150]

The contemptuous scorn of the cultivated Romans of his time is

frequently revealed in the writings of Cicero. He refers more than once

to the famous remark of Cato, who said that he could not explain why the

haruspices did not laugh in each other's faces when they began to

sacrifice.

At this point, it is worthy of observation that the prevalent unbelief

was not limited to a simple denial of the existence of mythical

divinities and of the efficacy of the worship rendered them. Roman

skepticism sought to destroy the very foundation of all religious belief

by denying not only the existence of the gods, but also the immortality

of the soul. Cicero is said to have been the only great Roman of his

time who believed that death was not the end. Students of Sallust are

familiar with his account of the conspiracy of Cataline in which it is

related that Julius Cæsar, in a speech before the Roman senate, opposed

putting the traitor to death because that form of punishment was too

mild, since beyond the grave there was neither joy nor sorrow.[151]

Antagonism to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul reached a

melancholy refinement in the strange contention that life after death

was a cruel thought. Pliny expresses this sentiment admirably when he

says:

What folly it is to renew life after death. Where shall created

beings find rest if you suppose that shades in hell and souls in

heaven continue to have any feeling? You rob us of man's greatest

good--death. Let us rather find in the tranquillity which preceded

our existence the pledge of the repose which is to follow it.

When skepticism had destroyed their faith in the gods, and had robbed

them of the consolations of religion, educated Romans sought refuge and

solace in Greek philosophy. Stoicism and Epicureanism were the dominant

spiritual and intellectual forces of the Roman empire at the time of

Christ. Epicureanism was founded by Epicurus, who was born of an

Athenian family in the Island of Samos about 342 B.C. Stoicism

originated with Zeno, a native of Cittium in Cyprus, born about the year

340 B.C.

The original design of the system of Epicurus was to found a

commonwealth of happiness and goodness in opposition to the purely

intellectual aristocracy of Plato and Aristotle. Men were beginning to

tire of speculation and dialectics, and to long for a philosophy built

upon human feeling and sensibility. As a touchstone of truth, it was

proposed to substitute sensation for intellect. Whatever was pleasing to

the natural and healthful senses was to be taken to be true. The pursuit

of happiness was to be the chief aim of the devotees of this system. The

avoidance of mental pain and physical suffering, as well as the

cultivation of all pleasurable emotions, were to be the leading features

of every Epicurean programme. In the beginning, Epicureanism inculcated

principles of virtue as a means of happiness. The mode of life of the

first followers of Epicurus was simple and abstemious. Barley-bread and

water are said to have been their ordinary food and drink. But in time

this form of philosophy became identified with the coarsest sensuality

and the most wicked lust. This was especially true after it was

transplanted from Greece to Italy. The doctrines of this school met with

a ready response from the pleasure-seeking, luxury-loving Roman people

who were now enriched by the spoils and treasures of a conquered world.

"This philosophy therefore became at Rome a mere school of

self-indulgence, and lost the refinement which, in Greece, had led it to

recognize in virtue that which gave zest to pleasure and in temperance

that which prolonged it. It called simply for a continuous round of

physical delights; it taught the grossest sensuality; it proclaimed the

inanity of goodness and the lawfulness of lust. It was the road--sure,

steep and swift, to awful demoralization."

Stoicism, on the other hand, furnished spiritual and intellectual food

to that nobler class of Romans who were at once the support and ornament

of a magnificent but decadent civilization. This form of philosophy was

peculiarly consonant with early Roman instincts and habits. In its

teachings were perfectly reflected that vigor, austerity, and manly

self-reliance which had made the Roman race undisputed masters of the

world. Many of its precepts were not only moral and ennobling, but

deeply religious and sustaining. A striking kinship between them and

certain Christian precepts has been frequently pointed out. Justice,

fortitude, prudence, and temperance were the four cardinal virtues of

Stoicism. Freedom from all passions and complete simplicity of life,

resulting in perfect purity of manners, was its chief aim. But the

fundamental principles of both Epicureanism and Stoicism were

destructive of those spiritual elements which furnish complete and

permanent nourishment to the soul. Stoicism was pantheism, and

Epicureanism was materialism. The Stoic believed that the human soul was

corporeal, but that it was animated and illuminated by the universal

soul. The Epicurean taught that the soul was composed of material atoms,

which would perish when its component parts separated or dissolved.

Epicureanism was materialistic in its tendency, and its inevitable

result, in perverted form, was sensualism. Stoicism was pervaded

throughout by a melancholy and desolating fatalism. It was peculiarly

the philosophy of suicide; or, as a great French writer once described

it, "an apprenticeship for death."[152] To take one's life was not only

allowable but commendable in certain cases. Zeno, the founder of the

sect, taught that incurable disease was a sufficient excuse for suicide.

Marcus Aurelius considered it an obligation of nature and of reason to

make an end of life when it became an intolerable burden. "Kill thyself

and die erect in the consciousness of thy own strength," would have been

a suitable inscription over the doorway of every Stoic temple. Seneca

furnished to his countrymen this Stoic panacea for all the ills of life:

Seest thou yon steep height, that is the descent to freedom. Seest

thou yon sea, yon river, yon well; freedom sits there in the

depths. Seest thou yon low withered tree; there freedom hangs.

Seest thou thy neck, thy throat, thy heart; they are the ways of

escape from bondage.

And the Roman philosopher was not only conscientious but consistent in

his teachings. He was heroic enough to take the medicine himself which

he had prescribed for others. Indeed, he took a double dose; for he not

only swallowed poison, but also opened his veins, and thus committed

suicide, as other Stoics--such as Zeno, Cleanthes and Cato--had done

before him.

It was not a problem of the Stoic philosophy,

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them?[153]

A familiar illustration of the advocates of suicide among the Roman

writers was that a human body afflicted with incurable disease, or a

human mind weighed down with intolerable grief, was like a house filled

with smoke. As it was the duty of the occupant of the house to escape

from the smoke by flight, so it was the duty of the soul to leave the

body by suicide.

But neither Epicureanism nor Stoicism could satisfy the natural longing

of the soul for that which is above the earth and beyond the grave. It

was impossible that philosophy should completely displace religion. The

spiritual nature of the Roman people was still intact and vigorous after

belief in myths was dead. As a substitute for their ancient faith and as

a supplement to philosophy, they began to deify their illustrious men

and women. The apotheosis of the emperors was the natural result of the

progressive degradation of the Roman religion. The deification of Julius

Cæsar was the beginning of this servile form of worship; and the

apotheosis of Diocletian was the fifty-third of these solemn

canonizations. Of this number, fifteen were those of princesses

belonging to the imperial family.

Divine honors began to be paid to Cæsar before he was dead. The

anniversary of his birth became a national holiday; his bust was placed

in the temple, and a month of the year was named for him. After his

assassination, he was worshiped as a god under the name of Divus Julius;

and sacrifices were offered upon his altar. After Julius Cæsar, followed

the deification of Augustus Cæsar. Even before his death, Octavian had

consented to be worshiped in the provinces, especially in Nicomedia and

Pergamus. After his death, his worship was introduced into Rome and

Italy.

The act of canonizing a dead emperor was accomplished by a vote of the

senate, followed by a solemn ceremony, in which an eagle was released at

the funeral pile, and soaring upward, became a symbol of the ascent of

the deceased to the skies. A Roman senator, Numerius Atticus, swore that

he had seen Augustus ascending to heaven at the time of his

consecration; and received from Livia a valuable gift of money as a

token of her appreciation of his kindness.

Not only were grand and gifted men like Julius and Augustus Cæsar, but

despicable and contemptible tyrants like Nero and Commodus, raised to

the rank of immortals. And, not content with making gods of emperors,

the Romans made goddesses of their royal women. Caligula had lived in

incestuous intercourse with his sister Drusilla; nevertheless, he had

her immortalized and worshiped as a divine being. This same Caligula who

was a monster of depravity, insisted on being worshiped as a god in the

flesh throughout the Roman empire, although the custom had been not to

deify emperors until after they were dead. The cowardly and obsequious

Roman senate decreed him a temple in Rome. The royal rascal erected

another to himself, and appointed his own private priests and

priestesses, among whom were his uncle Claudius, and the Cæsonia who

afterwards became his wife. This temple and its ministry were maintained

at an enormous expense. Only the rarest and most costly birds like

peacocks and pheasants, were allowed to be sacrificed to him. Such was

the impious conceit of Caligula that he requested the Asiatics of

Miletus to convert a temple of Apollo into a shrine sacred to himself.

Some of the noblest statuary of antiquity was mutilated in displacing

the heads of gods to make places for the head of this wicked monster. A

mighty descent this, indeed, from the Olympian Zeus of Phidias to a bust

of Caligula!

Domitian, after his deification, had himself styled "Lord and God," in

all documents, and required all his subjects to so address him. Pliny

tells us that the roads leading into Rome were constantly filled with

flocks and herds being driven to the Capital to be sacrificed upon his

altar.[154]

The natural and inevitable result of the decay of the Roman religion was

the corruption and demoralization of Roman social life. All experience

teaches that an assault upon a people's religious system is an assault

upon the entire social and moral organization. Every student of history

knows that a nation will be prosperous and happy to the extent that it

is religiously intelligent, and in proportion to its loyalty to the laws

of social virtue, to the laws of good government, and the laws of God;

and that an abandonment of its gods means the wreck and dissolution of

its entire social structure. The annals of Rome furnish a striking

confirmation of this fact.

The closing pages of this chapter will be devoted to a short topical

review of Roman society at the time of Christ. Only a few phases of the

subject can be presented in a work of this character.

II.--GRÆCO-ROMAN SOCIAL LIFE

_Marriage and Divorce._--The family is the unit of the social system;

and at the hearthstone all civilization begins. The loosening of the

domestic ties is the beginning of the dissolution of the state; and

whatever weakens the nuptial bonds, tends to destroy the moral fiber of

society. The degradation of women and the destruction of domestic purity

were the first signs of decay in Roman life. In the early ages of the

republic, marriage was regarded not only as a contract, but as a

sacrament as well. Connubial fidelity was sacredly maintained. Matrons

of the type of Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, were objects of

national pride and affection. The spirit of desperation which caused the

father of Virginia to plunge a butcher's knife into the chaste and

innocent heart of his child to save her from the lust of Appius

Claudius, was a tragic illustration of the almost universal Roman

respect for virtue in the age of the Tarquins. To such an extent were

the marital relations venerated by the early Romans that we are assured

by Dionysius that five hundred and twenty years had passed before a

single divorce was granted. Carvilius Ruga, the name of the first Roman

to procure a divorce, has been handed down to us.[155]

If we are to believe Döllinger, the abandonment of the policy of

lifelong devotion to the marriage relation and the inauguration of the

system of divorce were due not to the faults of the men but to the

dangerous and licentious qualities of the Roman women. In connection

with the divorce of Carvilius Ruga, he discusses a widespread conspiracy

of Roman wives to poison their husbands. Several of these husbands fell

victims to this plot; and, as punishment for the crime, twenty married

women were forced to take the poison which they had themselves prepared,

and were thus put to death. And, about a half century after this

divorce, several wives of distinguished Romans were discovered to be

participants in the bacchanalian orgies. From all these things,

Döllinger infers that the Roman men began to tire of their wives and to

seek legal separation from them.[156]

But, whatever the cause, the marriage tie was so easily severed during

the latter years of the republic, that divorce was granted on the

slightest pretext. Q. Antistius Vetus divorced his wife because she was

talking familiarly and confidentially to one of his freedmen. The wife

of C. Sulpicius imprudently entered the street without a veil, and her

husband secured a divorce on that ground. P. Sempronius Sophus put away

his wife for going to the theater without his knowledge.

Cicero divorced his first wife that he might marry a younger and

wealthier woman; and because this second one did not exhibit sufficient

sorrow at the death of his daughter, Tullia, he repudiated her.

Cato, the stern Stoic moralist, was several times divorced. To

accommodate his friend Hortensius he gave him his second wife Marcia,

with her father's consent; and, after the death of the orator, he

remarried her.

After being several times previously divorced, Pompey put away Mucia in

order that he might wed Julia, Cæsar's daughter, who was young enough to

be the child of Pompey.

Cæsar himself was five times married. He divorced his wife, Pompeia,

because of her relationship to Clodius, a dashing and dissolute young

Roman, who entered Cæsar's house on the occasion of the celebration of

the feast of the Bona Dea in a woman's dress, in order that he might pay

clandestine suit to the object of his lust. Cæsar professed to believe

that the charges against Pompeia were not true, but he divorced her

nevertheless, with the remark that "Cæsar's wife must be above

suspicion." We are reminded by this that, in ancient as in modern times,

society placed greater restrictions upon women than upon men; for Cæsar,

who uttered this virtuous and heroic sentiment, was a most notorious

rake and profligate. Suetonius tells us that he debauched many Roman

ladies of the first rank; among them "Lollia, the wife of Aulus

Gabinius; Tertulla, the wife of Marcus Crassus; and Mucia, the wife of

Cneius Pompey." It was frequently made a reproach to Pompey, "that to

gratify his ambition, he married the daughter of a man upon whose

account he had divorced his wife, after having had three children by

her; and whom he used, with a deep sigh, to call Ægisthus." But the

favorite mistress of Cæsar was Servilia, the mother of Marcus Brutus.

To consummate an intrigue with her, he gave Servilia a pearl which cost

him six millions of sesterces. And at the time of the civil war he had

deeded to her for a trifling consideration, several valuable farms. When

people expressed surprise at the lowness of the price, Cicero humorously

remarked: "To let you know the real value of the purchase, between

ourselves, Tertia was deducted." It was generally suspected at Rome that

Servilia had prostituted her daughter Tertia to Cæsar; and the witticism

of the orator was a _double entendre_, Tertia signifying the third (of

the value of the farm), as well as being the name of the girl, whose

virtue had paid the price of the deduction. Cæsar's lewdness was so

flagrant and notorious that his soldiers marching behind his chariot, on

the occasion of his Gallic triumph, shouted in ribald jest, to the

multitude along the way:

Watch well your wives, ye cits, we bring a blade,

A bald-pate master of the wenching trade.[157]

If this was the private life of the greatest Roman of the world, who, at

the time of his death, was Pontifex Maximus, the supreme head of the

Roman religion, what must have been the social life of the average

citizen who delighted to style Cæsar the demigod while living and to

worship him as divine, when dead?

A thorough knowledge of the details of the most corrupt and abandoned

state of society recorded in history may be had by a perusal of the

Annals of Tacitus and the Satires of Juvenal. The Sixth Satire is a

withering arraignment of Roman profligacy and wickedness. "To see the

world in its worst estate," says Professor Jowett, "we turn to the age

of the satirists and of Tacitus, when all the different streams of evil,

coming from east, west, north, south, the vices of barbarism and the

vices of civilization, remnants of ancient cults, and the latest

refinements of luxury and impurity, met and mingled on the banks of the

Tiber." Rome was the heart of the empire that pumped its filthy blood

from the center to the extremities, and received from the provinces a

return current of immorality and corruption. Juvenal complains that

Long since the stream that wanton Syria laves,

Has disembogued its filth in Tiber's waves.

Grecian literature and manners were the main cause of Roman

dissoluteness.

The grandfather of Cicero is said to have made this declaration: "A

Roman's wickedness increases in proportion to his acquaintance with

Greek authors." It is undeniably true that the domestic immorality of

the Greeks exercised a most baneful influence upon the social life of

the Romans. Both at Athens and in Sparta marriage was regarded as the

means to an end, the procreation of children as worshipers of the gods

and citizens of the state. In this fundamental purpose were involved,

the Greeks believed, the mission and the destiny of woman. Marriage was

not so much a sacred institution, as it was a convenient arrangement

whereby property rights were regulated and soldiers were provided for

the army and the navy. This view was entertained by both the Athenians

and the Spartans. The code of Lycurgus regulated the family relations to

the end that healthy, vigorous children might be born to a military

commonwealth. The Spartan maidens were required to exercise in the

palestra, almost naked, in the presence of men and strangers. And so

loose and extravagant were the ideas of conjugal fidelity among the

Spartans that it was not regarded as an improper thing to borrow another

man's wife for the purpose of procreating children, if there had already

been born to the legitimate husband all the children that he desired.

This we learn from Xenophon[158] and from Polybius,[159] who assure us

that it often happened that as many as four Spartans had one woman, in

common, for a wife. "Already in the time of Socrates, the wives of

Sparta had reached the height of disrepute for their wantonness

throughout the whole of Greece; Aristotle says that they lived in

unbridled licentiousness; and, indeed, it is a distinctive feature in

the female character there, that publicly and shamelessly they would

speed a well-known seducer of a woman of rank by wishing him success,

and charging him to think only of endowing Sparta with brave boys."[160]

[Illustration: AVE CÆSAR! IO SATURNALIA (ALMA-TADEMA)]

At Athens the principle was the same, even if the gratification of lust

was surrounded with a halo of poetry and sentiment which the Spartan

imagination was incapable of creating. The Athenians were guilty of a

strange perversion of the social instincts by placing a higher

appreciation upon the charms of a certain class of lewd women that they

did upon the virtuous merits of their own wives and mothers. These

latter were kept in retirement and denied the highest educational

advantages; while the former, the Hetairai, beautiful and brilliant

courtesans, destined for the pleasure and entertainment of illustrious

men, were accorded the utmost freedom, as well as all the advantages of

culture in the arts and sciences. Demosthenes has classified the women

of ancient Athens in this sentence: "We have Hetairai for our pleasure,

concubines for the ordinary requirements of the body, and wives for the

procreation of lawful issue and as confidential domestic guardians." The

most renowned of the Hetairai was Aspasia, the mistress of Pericles. She

was exceedingly beautiful and brilliantly accomplished. At her house in

Athens, poets, philosophers, statesmen, and sculptors frequently

gathered to do her honor. Pericles is said to have wept only three times

in life; and one of these was when he defended Aspasia before the

dicastery of Athens against the charge of impiety.

Another of the Hetairai scarcely less famous than Aspasia was the

celebrated Athenian courtesan, Phryne. Praxiteles, the sculptor, was one

of her adorers. She, too, was tried for impiety before the dicastery.

Hiperides, the Attic orator, defended her. To create a favorable

impression upon the court, he bade her reveal her bosom to the judges.

She did so, and was acquitted. So great was the veneration in which

Phryne was held that it was considered no profanation to place her image

in the sacred temple at Delphi. And so overwhelming was her beauty, that

her statues were identified with the Aphrodite of Apelles and the

Cnidian goddess of Praxiteles. At Eleusis, on the occasion of a national

festival, she impersonated Venus by entering naked into the waves, in

the presence of spectators from all the cities of Greece. She is said to

have amassed such a fortune that she felt justified in offering to build

the walls of Thebes.

Such was the esteem in which these elegant harlots were held, that we

find recorded among their patrons on the pages of Greek history the

names of Pericles, Demades, Lysias, Demosthenes, Isocrates, Aristotle,

Aristippus, and Epicurus. So little odium attached to the occupation of

this class of women that we read that Socrates frequently paid visits to

one of them named Theodota and advised her as to the best method of

gaining "friends" and keeping them.[161]

As the sculptors did not hesitate to carve the images of the Hetairai in

marble and give them the names of the goddesses of Olympus, so the

poets, orators, and historians did not fail to immortalize them in their

poems, orations, and annals. Greek statuary and literature were then

transported to Italy to corrupt Roman manners. It was not long before

adultery and seduction had completely poisoned and polluted every

fountain of Roman private life. "Liaisons in the first houses," says

Mommsen, "had become so frequent, that only a scandal altogether

exceptional could make them the subject of special talk; a judicial

interference seems now almost ridiculous."

Roman women of patrician rank, not content with noblemen as lovers,

sought out "lewd fellows of the baser sort" among slaves and gladiators,

as companions of corrupt intrigues. Juvenal, in his Sixth Satire, paints

a horrible picture of social depravity when he describes the lewdness of

Messalina, the wife of Claudius I. This woman, the wife of an emperor,

and the mother of the princely Britannicus, descends from the imperial

bed, in the company of a single female slave, at the dead of night, to a

common Roman brothel, assumes the name Lycisca, and submits to the

embraces of the coarsest Roman debauchees.

The degradation of women was not peculiar to the Capital of the empire,

but extended to every province. Social impurity was rankest in the East,

but it was present everywhere. Virtue seemed to have left the earth, and

Vice had taken her place as the supreme mistress of the world.

_Luxury and Extravagance._--At the birth of Christ, the frontiers of the

Roman empire comprised all the territory of the then civilized world. In

extending her conquests, Rome laid heavy tribute upon conquered nations.

All the wealth of the earth flowed into her coffers. The result was

unexampled luxury and extravagance. A single illustration will serve to

show the mode of life of the wealthy Roman citizen of the time of which

we write. Lucullus, the lieutenant of Sulla, and the friend of Cicero

and Pompey, had amassed enormous wealth in the Mithradatic wars. This

fortune he employed to inaugurate and maintain a style of social life

whose splendor and extravagance were the astonishment and scandal of his

age and race. The meals served upon his table, even when no guests were

present, were marked by all the taste, elegance, and completeness of a

banquet. On one occasion, when he happened to dine alone, the table was

not arranged with the ordinary fullness and splendor; whereupon he made

complaint to the servants, who replied that they did not think it

necessary to prepare so completely when he was alone. "What! did you not

know that Lucullus would dine with Lucullus?" was his answer. At another

time, Cicero and Pompey met him in the Forum and requested that he take

them with him to dine, as they desired to learn how his table was spread

when no visitors were expected. Lucullus was embarrassed for a moment;

but soon regained his composure, and replied that he would be delighted

to have such distinguished Romans dine with him, but that he would like

to have a day for preparation. They refused this request, however; nor

would they consent that he send directions to his servants, as they

desired to see how meals were served in his home when no guests were

there. Lucullus then requested Cicero and Pompey to permit him to tell

his servants, in their presence, in what room the repast should be

served. They consented to this; and Lucullus then directed that the Hall

of Apollo should be arranged for the dinner. Now the dining rooms in the

home of Lucullus were graded in price; and it was only necessary to

designate the room in order to notify the servants of the style and

costliness of the entertainment desired. The Hall of Apollo called for

an expenditure, at each meal, of fifty thousand drachmas, the equivalent

of $10,000 in our money. And when Cicero and Pompey sat down at the

table of Lucullus a few hours later, the decorations of the room and the

feast spread before them, offered a spectacle of indescribable beauty

and luxury. The epicure had outwitted the orator and the general.

Other anecdotes related by Plutarch also illustrate the luxurious life

of Lucullus. Once when Pompey was sick, his physician prescribed a

thrush for his meal; whereupon Pompey's servants notified him that a

thrush could not be secured in Italy during the summer time, except in

the fattening coops of Lucullus.

Cato despised the luxurious habits of Lucullus; and, on one occasion,

when a young man was extolling the beauties of frugality and temperance

in a speech before the senate, the Stoic interrupted him by asking: "How

long do you mean to go on making money like Crassus, living like

Lucullus and talking like Cato?"[162]

Lucullus was not the only Roman of his day who spent fabulous sums of

money in luxurious living and in building palatial residences. M.

Lepidus, who was elected Consul in 87 B.C., erected the most magnificent

private edifice ever seen in Rome.

But the culmination of magnificence in Roman architecture was the Golden

House of Nero. Its walls were covered with gold and studded with

precious stones. The banquet rooms were decorated with gorgeous

ceilings, and were so constructed that from them flowers and perfumes

could be showered from above on the guests below.

Concerning the luxurious life of the later days of the republic, Mommsen

says: "Extravagant prices, as much as one hundred thousand sesterces

(£1,000) were paid for an exquisite cook. Houses were constructed with

special reference to this subject.... A dinner was already described as

poor at which the fowls were served up to the guests entire, and not

merely the choice portions.... At banquets, above all, the Romans

displayed their hosts of slaves ministering to luxury, their bands of

musicians, their dancing-girls, their elegant furniture, their carpets

glittering with gold, or pictorially embroidered, their rich silver

plate."[163]

But the luxury and extravagance of the Romans were nowhere so manifest

as in their public bathing establishments. "The magnificence of many of

the thermæ and their luxurious arrangements were such that some writers,

as Seneca, are quite lost in their descriptions of them. The piscinæ

were often of immense size--that of Diocletian being 200 feet long--and

were adorned with beautiful marbles. The halls were crowded with

magnificent columns, and were ornamented with the finest pieces of

statuary. The walls, it has been said, were covered with exquisite

mosaics that imitated the art of the painter in their elegance of

design and variety of color. The Egyptian syenite was encrusted with the

precious green marbles of Numidia. The rooms contained the works of

Phidias and Praxiteles. A perpetual stream of water was poured into

capacious basins through the wide mouths of lions of bright and polished

silver. 'To such a pitch of luxury have we reached,' says Seneca, 'that

we are dissatisfied if we do not tread on gems in our baths.'"[164]

The circuses were scarcely inferior to the baths in magnificence.

Caligula is said to have strewn them with gold dust.

The result of Roman luxury in the matter of food and drink was a coarse

and loathsome gluttony which finds no parallel in modern life.

Epicureanism had degenerated from barley-bread and water to the

costliest diet ever known. Wealthy Romans of the age of Augustus did not

hesitate to pay two hundred and fifty dollars for a single fish--the

mullet. And that they might indulge their appetite to the fullest

extent, and prolong the pleasures of eating beyond the requirements and

even the capacity of nature, they were in the habit of taking an emetic

at meal times. We learn from the letters of Cicero that Julius Cæsar did

this on one occasion when he went to visit the orator at his country

villa. And the degeneracy of Roman life is nowhere more clearly

indicated than in the Fourth Satire of Juvenal where he describes the

gathering of the great men of the state, at the call of Domitian, to

determine how a turbot should be cooked.

But the reader must not infer that all Romans were rich and that luxury

was indulged in every home. In the Roman capital the extremes of wealth

and poverty met. The city was filled with idlers, vagabonds and paupers

from all quarters of the globe. In the early days of the Republic,

sturdy farmers had tilled the soil of Italy and had filled the legions

with brave and hardy warriors. The beginning of the empire witnessed a

radical change. Hundreds of thousands of these farmers had been driven

from their lands to furnish homes to the disbanded soldiers of

conquerors like Sulla, Marius, and Cæsar. Homeless and poverty-stricken,

they wandered away to Rome to swell the ranks of mendicants and

adventurers that crowded the streets of the imperial city. The soldiers

themselves, finding agriculture distasteful and unprofitable, sold their

lands to Roman speculators, and returned to the scene of the triumphs of

their military masters. The inevitable consequence of this influx of

strangers and foreigners, without wealth and without employment, was the

degradation and demoralization of Roman social and industrial life.

Augustus was compelled to make annual donations of money and provisions

to 200,000 persons who wandered helpless about the streets. This state

of things--fabulous wealth in the hands of a few, and abject poverty as

the lot of millions--was the harbinger sure and swift of the destruction

of the state.

_Slavery._--At the beginning of the Christian era, slavery existed in

every province of the Roman empire. Nearly everywhere the number of

slaves was much greater than that of the free citizens. In Attica,

according to the census of Demetrius Phalereus, about the beginning of

the fourth century B.C., there were 400,000 slaves, 10,000 foreign

settlers, and 20,000 free citizens. Zumpt estimates that there were two

slaves to every freeman in Rome in the year 5 B.C. It frequently

happened that a wealthy Roman possessed as many as 20,000 slaves. Slaves

who gained their freedom might themselves become masters and own slaves.

During the reign of Augustus, a freedman died, leaving 4,116 slaves.

Crassus possessed so many that his company of architects and carpenters

alone exceeded 500 in number.

The principal slave markets of Greece were those at Athens, Ephesus,

Cyprus, and Samos. In the market place of each of these cities, slaves

were exposed for sale upon wooden scaffolds. From the neck of each was

hung a tablet or placard containing a description of his or her

meritorious qualities, such as parentage, educational advantages, health

and freedom from physical defects. They were required to strip

themselves at the request of purchasers. In this way, the qualifications

of slaves for certain purposes could be accurately judged. The vigorous,

large-limbed Cappadocians, for instance, like our modern draft horses,

were selected for their strength and their ability to lift heavy loads

and endure long-continued work.

The property of the master in the slave was absolute. The owner might

kill or torture his slave at will. Neither the government nor any

individual could bring him to account for it. Roman law compelled

female slaves to surrender themselves, against their will, to their

master's lust. All the coarseness and brutality of the haughty,

arrogant, and merciless Roman disposition were manifested in the

treatment of their slaves. Nowhere do we find any mercy or humanity

shown them. On the farms they worked with chains about their limbs during

the day; and at night they were lodged in the _ergastula_--subterranean

apartments, badly lighted and poorly ventilated. The most cruel

punishment awaited the slave who attempted to escape. The

_fugitavarii_--professional slave chasers--ran him down, branded him on

the forehead, and brought him back to his master. If the master was very

rich, or cared little for the life of the slave, he usually commanded

him to be thrown, as a punishment for his attempt to flee, to the wild

beasts in the amphitheater. This cruel treatment was not exceptional,

but was ordinary. Cato, the paragon among the Stoics, was so merciless

in his dealings with his slaves that one of them committed suicide

rather than await the hour of punishment for some transgression of which

he was guilty.[165] It frequently happened that the slaves had knowledge

of crimes committed by their masters. In such cases they were fortunate

if they escaped death, as the probability of their becoming witnesses

against their masters offered every inducement to put them out of the

way. In his defense of Cluentius, Cicero speaks of a slave who had his

tongue cut out to prevent his betraying his mistress.[166] If a slave

murdered his master, all his fellow-slaves under the same roof were held

responsible for the deed. Thus four hundred slaves were put to death

for the act of one who assassinated Pedanius Secundus, during the reign

of Nero.[167] Augustus had his steward, Eros, crucified on the mast of

his ship because the slave had roasted and eaten a quail that had been

trained for the royal quail-pit. Once a slave was flung to the fishes

because he had broken a crystal goblet.[168] On another occasion, a

slave was compelled to march around a banquet table, in the presence of

the guests, with his hands, which had been cut off, hanging from his

neck, because he had stolen some trifling article of silverware. Cicero,

in his prosecution of Verres, recites an instance of mean and cowardly

cruelty toward a slave. "At the time," he says, "in which L. Domitius

was prætor in Sicily, a slave killed a wild boar of extraordinary size.

The prætor, struck by the dexterity and courage of the man, desired to

see him. The poor wretch, highly gratified with the distinction, came to

present himself before the prætor, in hopes, no doubt, of praise and

reward; but Domitius, on learning that he had only a javelin to attack

and kill the boar, ordered him to be instantly crucified, under the

barbarous pretext that the law prohibited the use of this weapon, as of

all others, to slaves."

The natural consequence of this cruel treatment was unbounded hatred of

the master by the slave. "We have as many enemies," says Seneca, "as we

have slaves." And what rendered the situation perilous was the

numerical superiority of the slave over the free population. "They

multiply at an immense rate," says Tacitus, "whilst freemen diminish in

equal proportion." Pliny the Younger gave expression to the universal

apprehension when he wrote: "By what dangers we are beset! No one is

safe; not even the most indulgent, gentlest master." Precautionary

measures were adopted from time to time both by individuals and by the

government to prevent concerted action among the slaves and to conceal

from them all evidences of their own strength. To keep down mutiny among

his slaves, Cato is said to have constantly excited dissension and

enmity among them. "It was once proposed," says Gibbon, "to discriminate

the slaves by a peculiar habit; but it was justly apprehended that there

might be some danger in acquainting them with their own numbers."[169]

If the Roman masters maltreated and destroyed the bodies of their

slaves, the slaves retaliated by corrupting and destroying the morals of

their masters. The institution of slavery was one of the most potent

agencies in the demoralization of ancient Roman manners. The education

of children was generally confided to the slaves, who did not fail to

poison their minds and hearts in many ways. In debauching their female

slaves, the Roman masters polluted their own morals and corrupted their

own manhood. The result teaches us that the law of physics is the law of

morals: that action and reaction are equal, but in opposite directions.

_Destruction of New-Born Infants._--The destruction of new-born children

was the deepest stain upon the civilization of the ancient Greeks and

Romans. In obedience to a provision of the code of Lycurgus, every

Spartan child was exhibited immediately after birth to public view; and,

if it was found to be deformed and weakly, so that it was unfit to grow

into a strong and healthy citizen of the Spartan military commonwealth,

it was exposed to perish on Mount Taygetus. The practice of exposing

infants was even more arbitrary and cruel in Rome than in Greece. The

Roman father was bound by no limitations; but could cast his offspring

away to die, through pure caprice. Paulus, the celebrated jurist of the

imperial period, admitted that this was a paternal privilege. Suetonius

tells us that the day of the death of Germanicus, which took place A.D.

19, was signalized by the exposition of children who were born on that

day.[170] This was done as a manifestation of general sorrow. The

emperor Augustus banished his granddaughter Julia on account of her

lewdness and licentiousness, as he had done in the case of his daughter,

Julia. In exile, she gave birth to a child which Augustus caused to be

exposed. It often happened that new-born babes that had been cast away

to die of cold and hunger or to be devoured by dogs or wild beasts were

rescued by miscreants who brought them up to devote them to evil

purposes. The male children were destined to become gladiators, and the

females were sold to houses of prostitution. Often such children were

picked up by those who disfigured and deformed them for the purpose of

associating them with themselves as beggars.

The custom of exposing infants was born of the spirit of fierceness and

barbarity that characterized many ancient races. Its direct tendency was

to make savages of men by destroying those tender and humane feelings

for the weak and helpless which have been the most marked attributes of

modern civilizations. Occasionally in our day one hears or reads of a

proposition by some pseudo-philanthropist that the good of the race

demands the destruction of certain persons--deformed infants, imbecile

adults and the like. But the humanity of the age invariably frowns upon

such proposals. The benign and merciful features of our Christian creed

would be outraged by such a practice.

_Gladiatorial Games._--The combats of gladiators were the culmination of

Roman barbarity and brutality. All the devotees of vice and crime met

and mingled at the arena, and derived strength and inspiration from its

bloody scenes. The gatherings in the amphitheater were miniatures of

Roman life. There, political matters were discussed and questions of

state determined, as was once the case in the public assemblies of the

people. Now that the gates of Janus were closed for the third time in

Roman history, the combats of the arena took the place, on a diminutive

scale, of those battles by which Romans had conquered the world. The

processions of the gladiators reminded the enthusiastic populace of the

triumphal entries of their conquerors into the Roman capital. Nothing so

glutted the appetite and quenched the thirst of a cruel and licentious

race as the gorgeous ceremonials and bloody butchery of the gladiatorial

shows.

These contests, strange to say, first took place at funerals, and were

intended to honor the dead. In 264 B.C., at the burial of D. Junius

Brutus, we are told, three pairs of gladiators fought in the cattle

market. Again, in 216 B.C., at the obsequies of M. Æmilius Lepidus,

twenty-two pairs engaged in combat in the Forum. And, in 174 B.C., on

the death of his father, Titus Flaminius caused seventy-four pairs to

fight for three days.[171] It will thus be seen that the death of one

Roman generally called for that of several others.

In time, the fondness of these contests had grown so great that generals

and statesmen arranged them on a gigantic scale as a means of winning

the favor and support of the multitude. The Roman proletariat demanded

not only bread to satisfy their hunger, but games to amuse them in their

hours of idleness. Augustus not only gave money and rations to 200,000

idlers, but inaugurated gladiatorial shows in which 10,000 combatants

fought. Not only men but wild beasts were brought into the arena. Pompey

arranged a fight of 500 lions, 18 elephants and 410 other ferocious

animals, brought from Africa. In a chase arranged by Augustus, A.D. 5,

36 crocodiles were killed in the Flaminian circus, which was flooded for

the purpose. Caligula brought 400 bears into the arena to fight with an

equal number of African wild animals. But all previous shows were

surpassed in the magnificent games instituted by Trajan, A.D. 106, to

celebrate his victories on the Danube. These games lasted four months;

and, in them, 10,000 gladiators fought, and 11,000 beasts were slain.

Such was the thirst for blood, and to such a pitch had the fury of the

passions reached at the beginning of the empire that Romans were no

longer satisfied with small fights by single pairs. They began to demand

regular battles and a larger flow of blood. And to please the populace,

Julius Cæsar celebrated his triumph by a real battle in the circus. On

each side were arrayed 500 foot soldiers, 300 cavalrymen, and 20

elephants bearing soldiers in towers upon their backs. This was no mimic

fray, but an actual battle in which blood was shed and men were killed.

To vary the entertainment, Cæsar also arranged a sea fight. He caused a

lake to be dug out on Mars Field, and placed battleships upon it which

represented Tyrian and Egyptian fleets. These he caused to be manned by

a thousand soldiers and 2,000 oarsmen. A bloody fight then ensued

between men who had no other motive in killing each other than to

furnish a Roman holiday. Augustus also arranged a sea fight upon an

artificial lake where 3,000 men were engaged. But both these battles

were eclipsed by the great sea fight which the emperor Claudius caused

to be fought on Lake Fucinus, in the presence of a great multitude that

lined the shore. Nineteen thousand men engaged in the bloody struggle.

On an eminence overlooking the lake, the Empress Agrippina, in gorgeous

costume, sat by the side of the emperor and watched the battle.

Announcement of gladiatorial fights in the amphitheater was made by

posters on the walls of the city. In these advertisements, the number

and names of the fighters were announced. On the day of the performance

a solemn procession of gladiators, walking in couples, passed through

the streets to the arena. The arrangements of the building and the

manner of the fights were so ordered as to arouse to the highest pitch

of excitement the passions and expectations of the spectators. The

citizens were required to wear the white toga. The lower rows of seats

were occupied by senators, in whose midst were the boxes occupied by the

imperial family. The equestrian order occupied places immediately above

the senators. The citizens were seated next after the equestrians, and

in the top-most rows, on benches, were gathered the Roman rabble. An

immense party-colored awning, stretched above the multitude, reflected

into the arena its variegated hues. Strains of music filled the air

while preparations for the combat were being made. The atmosphere of the

amphitheater was kept cool and fragrant by frequent sprays of perfume.

The regular combat was preceded by a mock fight with blunt weapons. Then

followed arrangements for the life-and-death struggle. The manager of

the games finally gave the command, and the fight was on. When one of

the gladiators was wounded, the words "hoc habet" were shouted. The

wounded man fell to the earth, dropped his weapon, and, holding up his

forefinger, begged his life from the people. If mercy was refused him,

he was compelled to renew the combat or to submit to the death stroke

of his antagonist. Attendants were at hand with hot irons to apply to

the victim to see that death was not simulated. If life was not extinct,

the fallen gladiator was dragged out to the dead room, and there

dispatched. Servants then ran into the arena and scattered sand over the

blood-drenched ground. Other fighters standing in readiness, immediately

rushed in to renew the contest. Thus the fight went on until the Roman

populace was glutted with butchery and blood.

Gladiators were chosen from the strongest and most athletic among slaves

and condemned criminals. Thracians, Gauls, and Germans were captured and

enslaved for the purpose of being sacrificed in the arena. They were

trained with the greatest care in gladiatorial schools. The most famous

of these institutions was at Capua in Italy. It was here that Spartacus,

a young Thracian, of noble ancestry, excited an insurrection that soon

spread throughout all Italy and threatened the destruction of Rome.

Addressing himself to seventy of his fellow-gladiators, Spartacus is

said to have made a bitter and impassioned speech in which he proposed

that, if they must die, they should die fighting their enemies and not

themselves; that, if they were to engage in bloody battles, these

battles should be fought under the open sky in behalf of life and

liberty, and not in the amphitheater to furnish pastime and

entertainment to their masters and oppressors. The speech had its

effect. The band of fighters broke out of Capua, and took refuge in the

crater of Mount Vesuvius (73 B.C.). Spartacus became the leader, with

Crixus and Oenomaus, two Celtic gladiators, as lieutenants. Their

ranks soon swelled to the proportions of an army, through accessions of

slaves and desperadoes from the neighborhood of the volcano. During two

years, they terrorized all Italy, defeated two consuls, and burned many

cities. Crixus was defeated and killed at Mount Gargarus in Apulia by

the prætor Arrius. Spartacus compelled three hundred Roman prisoners,

whom he had captured, to fight as gladiators, following Roman custom, at

the grave of his fallen comrade and lieutenant. Finally, he himself was

slain, sword in hand, having killed two centurions before he fell. With

the death of their leaders, the insurgents either surrendered or fled.

Those who were captured were crucified. It is said that the entire way

from Capua to Rome was marked by crosses on which their bodies were

suspended, to the number of ten thousand.[172]

Throughout Italy were amphitheaters for gladiatorial games. But the

largest and most celebrated of all was the Coliseum at Rome. Its ruins

are still standing. It was originally called the Flavian Amphitheater.

This vast building was begun A.D. 72, upon the site of the reservoir of

Nero, by the emperor Vespasian, who built as far as the third row of

arches, the last two rows being finished by Titus after his return from

the conquest of Jerusalem. It is said that twelve thousand captive Jews

were employed in this work, as the Hebrews were employed in building the

Pyramids of Egypt, and that the external walls alone cost nearly four

millions of dollars. It consists of four stories: the first, Doric; the

second, Ionic; the third and fourth, Corinthian. Its circumference is

nearly two thousand feet; its length, six hundred and twenty feet; and

its width, five hundred and thirteen. The entrance for the emperor was

between two arches facing the Esquiline, where there was no cornice. The

arena was surrounded by a wall sufficiently high to protect the

spectators from the wild beasts, which were introduced by subterranean

passages, closed by huge gates from the side. The Amphitheater is said

to have been capable of seating eighty-seven thousand people, and was

inaugurated by gladiatorial games that lasted one hundred days, and in

which five thousand beasts were slain. The emperor Commodus himself

fought in the Coliseum, and killed both gladiators and wild beasts. He

insisted on calling himself Hercules, was dressed in a lion's skin, and

had his hair sprinkled with gold dust.

[Illustration: THE DYING GLADIATOR (ANTIQUE SCULPTURE)]

An oriental monk, Talemachus, was so horrified at the sight of the

gladiatorial games, that he rushed into the midst of the arena, and

besought the spectators to have them stopped. Instead of listening to

him, they put him to death.

The first martyrdom in the Coliseum was that of St. Ignatius, said to

have been the child especially blessed by our Savior, the disciple of

John, and the companion of Polycarp, who was sent to Rome from Antioch

when he was bishop. When brought into the arena, St. Ignatius knelt down

and exclaimed: "Romans who are here present, know that I have not been

brought into this place for any crime, but in order that by this means

I may merit the fruition of the glory of God, for love of whom I have

been made a prisoner. I am as the grain of the field and must be ground

by the teeth of the lions that I may become bread fit for His table."

The lions were then let loose, and devoured him, except the larger bones

which the Christians collected during the night.

The spot where the Christian martyrs suffered was for a long time marked

by a tall cross devoutly kissed by the faithful. The Pulpit of the

Coliseum was used for the stormy sermons of Gavazzi, who called the

people to arms from thence in the Revolution of March, 1848.

_Græco-Roman Social Depravity, Born of Religion and Traceable to the

Gods._--The modern mind identifies true religion with perfect purity of

heart and with boundless love. "Do unto others as you would have others

do unto you" is the leading aphorism of both the Hebrew and Christian

faiths. The Sermon on the Mount is the chart of the soul on the sea of

life; and its beatitudes are the glorifications of the virtues of

meekness, mercy, and peace. To the mind imbued with the divine precepts

of the Savior, it seems incredible that religion should have ever been

the direct source of crime and sin. It is, nevertheless, a

well-established fact that the Roman and Greek mythologies were the

potent causes of political corruption and social impurity in both Italy

and Greece. Nothing better illustrates this truth than the abominable

practice that found its inspiration and excuse in the myth of the rape

of Ganymede. The guilty passion of Zeus for the beautiful boy whom he,

himself, in the form of an eagle, had snatched up from earth and carried

away to Olympus to devote to shameful and unnatural uses, was the

foundation, in Greece, of the most loathsome habit that ever disgraced

the conduct of men. Passionate fondness for beautiful boys, called

paiderastia in Greek, termed sodomy in modern criminal law, was the

curse and infamy of both Roman and Grecian life. This unnatural vice was

not confined to the vulgar and degenerate. Men of letters, poets,

statesmen and philosophers, debased themselves with this form of

pollution. It was even legalized by the laws of Crete and Sparta.

Polybius tells us that many Romans paid as much as a talent ($1,000) for

a beautifully formed youth. This strange perversion of the sexual

instincts was marked by all the tenderness and sweetness of a modern

courtship or a honeymoon. The victim of this degrading and disgusting

passion treated the beautiful boy with all the delicacy and feeling

generally paid a newly wedded wife. Kisses and caresses were at times

showered upon him. At other times, he became an object of insane

jealousy.

An obscene couplet in Suetonius attributes this filthy habit to Julius

Cæsar in the matter of an abominable relationship with the King of

Bithynia.[173] "So strong was the influence of the prevalent epidemic on

Plato, that he had lost all sense of the love of women, and in his

descriptions of Eros, divine as well as human, his thoughts were

centered only in his boy passion. The result in Greece confessedly was

that the inclination for a woman was looked upon as low and

dishonorable, while that for a youth was the only one worthy of a man of

education."[174]

A moment's reflection will convince the most skeptical of the progress

of morality and the advance of civilization. That which philosophers and

emperors not only approved but practiced in the palmiest days of the

commonwealths of Greece and Rome, is to-day penalized; and the person

guilty of the offense is socially ostracized and branded with infamy and

contempt.

The above is only one of many illustrations of the demoralizing

influence of the myths. The Greeks looked to the gods as models of

behavior, and could see nothing wrong in paiderastia, since both Zeus

and Apollo had practiced it. Nearly every crime committed by the Greeks

and Romans was sought to be excused on the ground that the gods had done

the same thing. Euthyphro justified mistreatment of his own father on

the ground that Zeus had chased Cronos, his father, from the skies.

Homer was not only the Bible, but the schoolbook of Grecian boys and

girls throughout the world; and their minds were saturated at an early

age with the escapades of the gods and goddesses as told by the immortal

bard. Plato, in the "Republic," deprecates the influence of the Homeric

myths upon the youth of Greece, when he says: "They are likely to have a

bad effect on those who hear them; for everybody will begin to excuse

his own vices when he is convinced that similar wickednesses are always

being perpetrated by the kindred of the gods." And Seneca thus condemns

the moral effect of the myth of Zeus and Alcmene: "What else is this

appeal to the precedent of the gods for, but to inflame our lusts, and

to furnish a free license and excuse for the corrupt act under shelter

of its divine prototype?" "This," says the same author in another

treatise, "has led to no other result than to deprive sin of its shame

in man's eyes, when he saw that the gods were no better than himself."

We have seen that, in the matter of the multiplicity of the gods, there

were deities of the baser as well as of the better passions, and of

criminal as well as virtuous propensities. Pausanias tells us that in

his day, on the road to Pellene, there were statues of Hermes Dolios

(the cheat), and that the worshipers of this god believed that he was

always ready to help them in their intrigues and adventures. The same

writer also tells us that young maidens of Troezene dedicated their

girdles to Athene Apaturia, the deceiver, for having cunningly betrayed

Æthra into the hands of Neptune. The festivals of Bacchus were far-famed

in ancient times for the drunken debauches and degrading ceremonies that

accompanied them. The Attic feasts of Pan were celebrated with every

circumstance of low buffoonery. The solemnities of the Aphrodisia were

akin to the bacchanalian orgies in all the features of inebriety and

lust. The name of the goddess of love and beauty was blazoned across the

portal of more than one Greek and Roman brothel. The Aphrodite-Lamia at

Athens and the Aphrodite-Stratonikis at Smyrna were the favorite

resorts of the most famous courtesans of antiquity. Venus was the

recognized goddess of the harlots. A thousand of them guarded her temple

at Corinth; and, when an altar was erected to her at the Colline gate in

Rome, in the year 183 A.U.C., they celebrated a great feast in her

honor, and dedicated chaplets of myrtle and roses, as a means of

obtaining her favor as the guardian divinity of their calling.

What more could be expected, then, of the morality of the Greeks and

Romans, when we consider the nature of their religion and the character

of their gods? Jupiter and Apollo were notorious rakes and libertines;

Venus and Flora were brazen-faced courtesans; Harmonia was a Phrygian

dancer, who had been seduced by Cadmus; Hercules was a gladiator; Pan

was a buffoon; Bacchus was a drunkard, and Mercury was a highway robber.

And not only in the poems of Homer and Hesiod did the Greek and Roman

youth learn these things, but from the plays of the theaters and from

plastic art as well. If we except the gladiatorial fights in the

amphitheaters, nothing was more cruel and unchaste than Greek and Roman

tragedy and comedy. At the time of Christ, the tastes and appetites of

the multitude had grown so fierce and depraved that ordinary spectacles

were regarded as commonplace and insipid. Lifelike realities were

demanded from the actors on the stage; and accordingly, the hero who

played the rôle of the robber chief, Laureolus, was actually crucified

before the spectators, and was then torn to pieces by a hungry bear.

The burning of Hercules on Mount Oeta and the emasculation of Atys

were sought to be realized on the stage by the actual burning and

emasculation of condemned criminals. Lustful as well as cruel appetites

were inflamed and fed by theatrical representations of the intrigues and

adventures of the gods and goddesses. Pantomimes and mimic dances, with

flute accompaniment, were employed to reproduce the amours and

passionate devotions of the inhabitants of Olympus. The guilty loves of

Aphrodite with Mars and Adonis, the adventures of Jupiter and Apollo

with the wives and daughters of mortals, were the plays most frequently

presented and most wildly applauded. And the ignorant rabble were not

the only witnesses of these spectacles. "The sacerdotal colleges and

authorities," says Arnobius, "flamens, and augurs, and chaste vestals,

all have seats at these public amusements. There are seated the

collective people and senate, consuls and consulars, while Venus, the

mother of the Roman race, is danced to the life, and in shameless

mimicry is represented as reveling through all the phases of

meretricious lust. The great mother, too, is danced; the Dindymene of

Pessinus, in spite of her age, surrendering herself to disgusting

passion in the embraces of a cowherd. The supreme ruler of the world is

himself brought in, without respect to his name or majesty, to play the

part of an adulterer, masking himself in order to deceive chaste wives,

and take the place of their husbands in the nuptial bed."[175]

Not only gladiatorial games and theatrical shows, but painting and

sculpture as well, served to corrupt and demoralize Roman and Greek

manners. Nor is there any prudery in this statement. The masterpieces of

the Greek artists have been the astonishment and despair of all

succeeding ages; and the triumphs of modern art have been but poor

imitations of the models of the first masters. But it is, nevertheless,

true that the embodiment in marble of certain obscene myths was

destructive of ancient morals. The paintings in the temples and houses

of the cities of Greece and Italy were a constant menace to the mental

purity of those who gazed upon them. The statue of Ganymede at the side

of Zeus was a perpetual reminder to the youth of Athens of the

originator of the loathsome custom of paiderastia. The paintings of Leda

and the swan, of the courtship of Dionysus and Ariadne, of the naked

Aphrodite ensnared and caught in the net with Ares that adorned the

walls and ceilings of Greek and Roman homes, were not too well

calculated to inspire pure and virtuous thoughts in the minds and hearts

of tender youths and modest maidens who looked upon and contemplated

them. At Athens, especially, was the corrupting influence of painting

and plastic art most deeply felt. "At every step," says Döllinger,

"which a Greek or Roman took, he was surrounded by images of his gods

and memorials of their mythic history. Not the temples only, but streets

and public squares, house walls, domestic implements and drinking

vessels, were all covered and incrusted with ornaments of the kind. His

eye could rest nowhere, not a piece of money could he take into his hand

without confronting a god. And in this way, through the magical

omnipresence of plastic art, the memory of his gods had sunk into his

soul indelibly, grown up with every operation of his intellect, and

inseparably blended with every picture of his imagination."[176]

It can thus be easily imagined how close the connection between the

social depravity and the religion of the Greeks and Romans. What was

right in the conduct of the gods, men could not deem sinful in their own

behavior. Indeed, lewd and lascivious acts were frequently proclaimed

not only right, but sacred, because they had been both sanctioned and

committed by the gods themselves. "As impurity," says Döllinger, "formed

a part of religion, people had no scruples in using the temple and its

adjoining buildings for the satisfaction of their lust. The construction

of many of the temples and the prevalent gloom favored this. 'It is a

matter of general notoriety,' Tertullian says, 'that the temples are the

very places where adulteries were arranged, and procuresses pursue their

victims between the altars.' In the chambers of the priests and

ministers of the temple, impurity was committed amid clouds of incense;

and this, Minucius adds, more frequently than in the privileged haunts

of this sin. The sanctuaries and priests of Isis at Rome were specially

notorious in this respect. 'As this Isis was the concubine of Jove

herself, she also makes prostitutes of others,' Ovid said. Still more

shameful sin was practiced in the temples of the Pessinuntine mother of

the gods, where men prostituted themselves and made a boast of their

shame afterwards."[177]

_The Bacchanalian Orgies._--The most interesting passage of ancient

literature dealing with social life in its relation to religious

observances, is an extract from Livy, the most elegant of Roman

historians. This passage describes the bacchanalian orgies, and gives

exquisite touches to certain phases of ancient Roman social life. Its

insertion here entire is excused on the ground of its direct bearing

upon the subject matter of this chapter:

A Greek of mean condition came, first, into Etruria; not with one

of the many trades which his nation, of all others the most skilful

in the cultivation of the mind and body, has introduced among us,

but a low operator in sacrifices, and a soothsayer; nor was he one

who, by open religious rites, and by publicly professing his

calling and teaching, imbued the minds of his followers with

terror, but a priest of secret and nocturnal rites. These

mysterious rites were, at first, imparted to a few, but afterwards

communicated to great numbers, both men and women. To their

religious performances were added the pleasures of wine and

feasting, to allure a greater number of proselytes. When wine,

lascivious discourse, night, and the intercourse of the sexes had

extinguished every sentiment of modesty, then debaucheries of every

kind began to be practiced, as every person found at hand that sort

of enjoyment to which he was disposed by the passion predominant in

his nature. Nor were they confined to one species of vice--the

promiscuous intercourse of free-born men and women, but from this

store-house of villany proceeded false witnesses, counterfeit

seals, false evidences, and pretended discoveries. From the same

place, too, proceeded poison and secret murders, so that in some

cases, even the bodies could not be found for burial. Many of their

audacious deeds were brought about by treachery, but most of

them by force; it served to conceal the violence, that on account

of the loud shouting, and the noise of drums and cymbals, none of

the cries uttered by the persons suffering violation or murder

could be heard abroad.

[Illustration: READING FROM HOMER (ALMA-TADEMA)]

The infection of this mischief, like that from the contagion of

disease, spread from Etruria to Rome; where, the size of the city

affording greater room for such evils, and more means of

concealment, cloaked it at first; but information of it was at

length brought to the consul, Postumius, principally in the

following manner. Publius Æbutius, whose father had held equestrian

rank in the army, was left an orphan, and his guardians dying, he

was educated under the eye of his mother Duronia, and his

stepfather Titus Sempronius Rutilus. Duronia was entirely devoted

to her husband; and Sempronius, having managed the guardianship in

such a manner that he could not give an account of the property,

wished that his ward should be either made away with, or bound to

compliance with his will by some strong tie. The Bacchanalian rites

were the only way to effect the ruin of the youth. His mother told

him, that, "During his sickness, she had made a vow for him, that

if he should recover, she would initiate him among the

Bacchanalians; that being, through the kindness of the gods, bound

by this vow, she wished now to fulfil it; that it was necessary he

should preserve chastity for ten days, and on the tenth, after he

should have supped and washed himself, she would conduct him into

the place of worship." There was a freedwoman called Hispala

Fecenia, a noted courtesan, but deserving of a better lot than the

mode of life to which she had been accustomed when very young, and

a slave, and by which she had maintained herself since her

manumission. As they lived in the same neighborhood, an intimacy

subsisted between her and Æbutius, which was far from being

injurious either to the young man's character or property; for he

had been loved and wooed by her unsolicited; and as his friends

supplied his wants illiberally, he was supported by the generosity

of this woman; nay, to such a length did she go under the influence

of her affection, that, on the death of her patron, because she

was under the protection of no one, having petitioned the tribunes

and prætors for a guardian, when she was making her will, she

constituted Æbutius her sole heir.

As such pledges of mutual love subsisted, and as neither kept

anything secret from the other, the young man jokingly bid her not

be surprised if he separated himself from her for a few nights, as,

"on account of a religious duty, to discharge a vow made for his

health, he intended to be initiated among the Bacchanalians." On

hearing this, the woman, greatly alarmed, cried out, "May the gods

will more favorably!" affirming that "It would be better, both for

him and her, to lose their lives than that he should do such a

thing:" she then imprecated curses, vengeance, and destruction on

the head of those who advised him to such a step. The young man,

surprised both at her expressions and at the violence of her alarm,

bid her refrain from curses, for "it was his mother who ordered him

to do so, with the approbation of his stepfather." "Then," said

she, "your stepfather (for perhaps it is not allowable to censure

your mother), is in haste to destroy, by that act, your chastity,

your character, your hopes and your life." To him, now surprised by

such language, and inquiring what was the matter, she said, (after

imploring the favor and pardon of the gods and goddesses, if,

compelled by her regard for him, she disclosed what ought not to be

revealed), that "when in service, she had gone into that place of

worship, as an attendant on her mistress, but that, since she had

obtained her liberty, she had never once gone near it: that she

knew it to be the receptacle of all kinds of debaucheries; that it

was well known that, for two years past, no one older than twenty

had been initiated there. When any person was introduced he was

delivered as a victim to the priests, who led him away to a place

resounding with shouts, the sound of music, and the beating of

cymbals and drums, lest his cries while suffering violation, should

be heard abroad." She then entreated and besought him to put an end

to that matter in some way or other, and not to plunge himself into

a situation, where he must first suffer, and afterwards commit,

everything that was abominable. Nor did she quit him until the

young man gave her his promise to keep himself clear of those

rites.

When he came home, and his mother made mention of such things

pertaining to the ceremony as were to be performed on that day, and

on the several following days, he told her that he would not

perform any of them, nor did he intend to be initiated. His

stepfather was present at this discourse. Immediately the woman

observed that "he could not deprive himself of the company of

Hispala for ten nights; that he was so fascinated by the caresses

and baneful influence of that serpent, that he retained no respect

for his mother or stepfather, or even the gods themselves." His

mother on one side and his stepfather on the other loading him with

reproaches, drove him out of the house, assisted by four slaves.

The youth on this repaired to his aunt Æbutia, told her the reason

of his being turned out by his mother, and the next day, by her

advice, gave information of the affair to the consul Postumius,

without any witnesses of the interview. The consul dismissed him,

with an order to come again on the third day following. In the

meantime, he inquired of his mother-in-law, Sulpicia, a woman of

respectable character, "whether she knew an old matron called

Æbutia, who lived on the Aventine hill?" When she had answered that

"she knew her well, and that Æbutia was a woman of virtue, and of

the ancient purity of morals;" he said that he required a

conference with her, and that a messenger should be sent for her to

come. Æbutia, on receiving the message, came to Sulpicia's house,

and the consul, soon after, coming in, as if by accident,

introduced a conversation about Æbutius, her brother's son. The

tears of the woman burst forth, and she began to lament the unhappy

lot of the youth: who after being robbed of his property by persons

whom it least of all became, was then residing with her, being

driven out of doors by his mother, because, being a good youth (may

the gods be propitious to him), he refused to be initiated in

ceremonies devoted to lewdness, as report goes.

The consul thinking that he had made sufficient inquiries

concerning Æbutius, and that his testimony was unquestionable,

having dismissed Æbutia, requested his mother-in-law to send again

to the Aventine, and bring from that quarter Hispala, a freedwoman,

not unknown in that neighborhood; for there were some queries which

he wished to make of her. Hispala being alarmed because she was

being sent for by a woman of such high rank and respectable

character, and being ignorant of the cause, after she saw the

lictors in the porch, the multitude attending to the consul and the

consul himself, was very near fainting. The consul led her into the

retired part of the house, and, in the presence of his

mother-in-law, told her, that she need not be uneasy, if she could

resolve to speak the truth. She might receive a promise of

protection either from Sulpicia, a matron of such dignified

character, or from himself. That she ought to tell him, what was

accustomed to be done at the Bacchanalia, in the nocturnal orgies

in the grove of Stimula. When the woman heard this, such terror and

trembling of all her limbs seized her, that for a long time she was

unable to speak; but recovering at length she said, that "when she

was very young, and a slave, she had been initiated, together with

her mistress; but for several years past, since she had obtained

her liberty, she knew nothing of what was done there." The consul

commended her so far, as not having denied that she was initiated,

but charged her to explain all the rest with the same sincerity;

and told her, affirming that she knew nothing further, that "there

would not be the same tenderness or pardon extended to her, if she

should be convicted by another person, and one who had made a

voluntary confession; that there was such a person, who had heard

the whole from her, and had given him a full account of it."

The woman, now thinking without a doubt that it must certainly be

Æbutius who had discovered the secret, threw herself at Sulpicia's

feet, and at first began to beseech her, "not to let the private

conversation of a freedwoman with her lover be turned not only into

a serious business, but even capital charge;" declaring that "she

had spoken of such things merely to frighten him, and not because

she knew anything of the kind." On this Postumius, growing angry,

said "she seemed to imagine that then too she was wrangling with

her gallant Æbutius, and not that she was speaking in the house of

a most respectable matron, and to a consul." Sulpicia raised her,

terrified, from the ground, and while she encouraged her to speak

out, at the same time pacified her son-in-law's anger. At length

she took courage, and, having censured severely the perfidy of

Æbutius, because he had made such a return for the extraordinary

kindness shown to him in that very instance, she declared that "she

stood in great dread of the gods, whose secret mysteries she was to

divulge; and in much greater dread of the men implicated, who would

tear her asunder with their hands if she became an informer.

Therefore she entreated this favor of Sulpicia, and likewise of the

consul, that they would send her away some place out of Italy,

where she might pass the remainder of her life in safety." The

consul desired her to be of good spirits, and said that it should

be his care that she might live securely in Rome.

Hispala then gave a full account of the origin of the mysteries.

"At first," she said, "those rites were performed by women. No man

used to be admitted. They had three stated days in the year on

which such persons were initiated among the Bacchanalians, in the

daytime. The matrons used to be appointed priestesses, in rotation.

Paculla Minia, a Campanian, when priestess, made an alteration in

every particular as if by the direction of the gods. For she first

introduced men, who were her own sons, Minucius and Herrenius, both

surnamed Cerrinius; changed the time of celebration, from day to

night; and, instead of three days in the year, appointed five days

of initiation in each month. From the time that the rites were thus

made common, and men were intermixed with women, and the licentious

freedom of the night was added, there was nothing wicked, nothing

flagitious, that had not been practiced among them. There were more

frequent pollution of men, with each other, than with women. If any

were less patient in submitting to dishonor, or more averse to the

commission of vice, they were sacrificed as victims. To think

nothing unlawful, was the grand maxim of their religion. The men,

as if bereft of reason, uttered predictions, with frantic

contortions of their bodies; the women, in the habit of

Bacchantes, with their hair dishevelled, and carrying blazing

torches, ran down to the Tiber; where, dipping their torches in the

water, they drew them up again with the flame unextinguished, being

composed of native sulphur and charcoal. They said that those men

were carried off by the gods, whom the machines laid hold of and

dragged from their view into secret caves. These were such as

refused to take the oath of the society or to associate in their

crimes, or to submit to defilement. Their number was exceedingly

great now, almost a second state in themselves and among them were

many men and women of noble families. During the last two years it

had been a rule, that no person above the age of twenty should be

initiated, for they sought for people of such age as made them more

liable to suffer deception and personal abuse." When she had

completed her information, she again fell at the consul's knees,

and repeated the same entreaties, that he might send her out of the

country. The consul requested his mother-in-law to clear some part

of the house, into which Hispala might remove; accordingly an

apartment was assigned her in the upper part of it, of which the

stairs, opening into the street, were stopped up, and the entrance

made from the inner court. Thither all Fecenia's effects were

immediately removed, and her domestics sent for. Æbutius, also, was

ordered to remove to the house of one of the consul's clients.

When both the informers were by these means in his power, Postumius

represented the affair to the senate, laying before them the whole

circumstance, in due order; the information given to him at first,

and the discoveries gained by his inquiries afterwards. Great

consternation seized on the senators; not only on the public

account, lest such conspiracies and nightly meetings might be

productive of secret treachery and mischief, but, likewise, on

account of their own particular families, lest some of their

relations might be involved in this infamous affair. The senate

voted, however, that thanks should be given to the consul because

he had investigated the matter with singular diligence, and without

exciting any alarm. They then commit to the consuls the holding an

inquiry, out of the common course, concerning the Bacchanals and

their nocturnal orgies. They ordered them to take care that the

informers, Æbutius and Fecenia, might suffer no injury on that

account; and to invite other informers in the matter, by offering

rewards. They ordered that the officials in those rites, whether

men or women, should be sought for, not only at Rome, but also

throughout all the market towns and places of assembly, and be

delivered over to the power of the consuls; and also that

proclamation should be made in the city of Rome, and published

through all Italy, that "no persons initiated in the Bacchanalian

rites should presume to come together or assemble on account of

those rites, or to perform any such kind of worship;" and above

all, that search should be made for those who had assembled or

conspired for personal abuse, or for any other flagitious

practices. The senate passed these decrees. The consuls directed

the curule ædiles to make strict inquiry after all the priests of

those mysteries, and to keep such as they could apprehend in

custody until their trial; they at the same time charged the

plebeian ædiles to take care that no religious ceremonies should be

performed in private. To the capital triumvirs the task was

assigned to post watches in proper places in the city, and to use

vigilance in preventing any meetings by night. In order likewise to

guard against fires, five assistants were joined to the triumvirs,

so that each might have the charge of the buildings in his own

separate district, on this side the Tiber.

After despatching these officers to their several employments, the

consuls mounted the rostrum; and, having summoned an assembly of

the people, one of the consuls, when he had finished the solemn

form of prayer which the magistrates are accustomed to pronounce

before they address the people, proceeded thus: "Romans, to no

former assembly was this solemn supplication to the gods more

suitable or even more necessary: as it serves to remind you, that

these are the deities whom your forefathers pointed out as the

objects of your worship, veneration and prayers: and not those

which infatuated men's minds with corrupt and foreign modes of

religion, and drove them, as if goaded by the furies, to every lust

and every vice. I am at a loss to know what I should conceal, or

how far I ought to speak out; for I dread lest, if I leave you

ignorant of any particular, I should give room for carelessness, or

if I disclose the whole, that I should too much awaken your fears.

Whatever I shall say, be assured that it is less than the magnitude

and atrociousness of the affair would justify: exertions will be

used by us that it may be sufficient to set us properly on our

guard. That the Bacchanalian rites have subsisted for some time

past in every country in Italy, and are at present performed in

many parts of this city also, I am sure you must have been

informed, not only by report, but by the nightly noises and the

horrid yells that resound through the whole city; but still you are

ignorant of the nature of that business. Part of you think it is

some kind of worship of the gods; others, some excusable sport and

amusement, and that whatever it may be, it concerns but a few. As

regards the number if I tell you that there are many thousands,

that you would be immediately terrified to excess is a necessary

consequence; unless I further acquaint you who and what sort of

persons they are. First, then, a great part of them are women, and

this was the source of the evil; the rest are males, but nearly

resembling women; actors and pathics in the vilest lewdness; night

revellers, driven frantic by wine, noise of instruments, and

clamors. The conspiracy, as yet, has no strength; but it has

abundant means of acquiring strength, for they are becoming more

numerous every day. Your ancestors would not allow that you should

ever assemble casually without some good reason; that is, either

when the standard was erected on the Janiculum, and the army led

out on occasion of elections; or when the tribunes proclaimed a

meeting of the commons, or some of the magistrates summoned you to

it. And they judged it necessary, that wherever a multitude was,

there should be a lawful governor of that multitude present. Of

what kind do you suppose are the meetings of these people? In the

first place, held in the night, and in the next, composed

promiscuously of men and women. If you knew at what ages the males

are initiated, you would feel not only pity, but also shame for

them. Romans, can you think youths initiated, under such oaths as

theirs, are fit to be made soldiers? That arms should be intrusted

with wretches brought out of that temple of obscenity? Shall these,

contaminated with their own foul debaucheries and those of others,

be champions for the chastity of your wives and children?

"But the mischief were less, if they were only effeminated by their

practices; or that the disgrace would chiefly affect themselves; if

they refrained their hands from outrage, and their thoughts from

fraud. But never was there in the state an evil of so great

magnitude, or one that extended to so many persons or so many acts

of wickedness. Whatever deeds of villany have, during late years

been committed through lust; whatever through fraud; whatever

through violence; they have all, be assured, proceeded from that

association alone. They have not yet perpetrated all the crimes for

which they combine. The impious assembly at present confines itself

to outrages on private citizens; because it has not yet acquired

force sufficient to crush the commonwealth: but the evil increases

and spreads daily; it is already too great for the private ranks of

life to contain it, and aims its views at the body of the state.

Unless you take timely precautions, Romans, their nightly assembly

may become as large as this, held in open day and legally summoned

by a consul. Now they one by one dread you collected together in

the assembly; presently, when you shall have separated and retired

to your several dwellings, in town and country, they will again

come together, and will hold a consultation on the means of their

own safety, and, at the same time, of your destruction. Thus

united, they will cause terror to every one of you. Each of you

therefore, ought to pray that his kindred may have behaved with

wisdom and prudence; and if lust, if madness, has dragged any of

them into that abyss, to consider such a person as the relation of

those with whom he has conspired for every disgraceful and reckless

act, and not as one of your own. I am not secure, lest some even of

yourselves may have erred through mistake; for nothing is more

deceptive in appearance than false religion. When the authority of

the gods is held out as a pretext to cover vice, fear enters our

minds, lest in punishing the crimes of men, we may violate some

divine right connected therewith. Numberless decisions of the

pontiffs, decrees of the senate, and even answers of the aruspices,

free you from religious scruples of this character. How often in

the ages of our fathers was it given in charge to the magistrates,

to prohibit the performances of any foreign religious rites; to

banish strolling sacrificers and soothsayers from the Forum, the

circus and the city; to search for and burn books of divination;

and to abolish every mode of sacrificing that was not conformable

to the Roman practice! For they, completely versed in every divine

and human law, maintained that nothing tended so strongly to the

subversion of religion as sacrifice, when we offered it not after

the institutions of our forefathers, but after foreign customs.

Thus much I thought necessary to mention to you beforehand, that no

vain scruple might disturb your minds when you should see us

demolishing the places resorted to by the Bacchanalians, and

dispersing their impious assemblies. We shall do all these things

with the favor and approbation of the gods; who, because they were

indignant that their divinity was dishonored by those people's lust

and crimes, have drawn forth their proceedings from hidden darkness

into the open light; and who have directed them to be exposed, not

that they may escape with impunity, but in order that they may be

punished and suppressed. The senate have committed to me and my

colleague, an inquisition extraordinary concerning that affair.

What is requisite to be done by ourselves, in person, we will do

with energy. The charge of posting watches through the city, during

the night, we have committed to the inferior magistrates; and, for

your parts, it is incumbent on you to execute vigorously whatever

duties are assigned you, and in the several places where each will

be placed, to perform whatever orders you shall receive, and to use

your best endeavors that no danger or tumult may arise from the

treachery of the party involved in the guilt."

They then ordered the decrees of the senate to be read, and

published a reward for any discoverer who should bring any of the

guilty before them, or give information against any of the absent,

adding, that "if any person accused should fly, they would limit a

certain day upon which, if he did not answer when summoned, he

would be condemned in his absence; and if anyone should be charged

who was out of Italy, they would not allow him any longer time, if

he should wish to come and make his defence." They then issued an

edict, that "no person whatever should presume to buy or sell

anything for the purpose of leaving the country; or to receive or

conceal, or by any means aid the fugitives." On the assembly being

dismissed, great terror spread throughout the city; nor was it

confined merely within the walls, or to the Roman territory, for

everywhere throughout the whole of Italy alarm began to be

felt--when the letters from the guest-friends were

received--concerning the decree of the senate, and what passed in

the assembly and the edict of the consuls. During the night, which

succeeded the day in which the affair was made public, great

numbers attempting to fly, were seized and bought back by the

triumvirs, who had posted guards at all the gates; and informations

were lodged against many, some of whom, both men and women, put

themselves to death. Above seven thousand men and women are said to

have taken the oath of the association. But it appeared that the

heads of the conspiracy were the two Catinii, Marcus and Caius,

Roman plebeians; Lucius Opiturnius, a Faliscian; and Minius

Cerrinius, a Campanian: that from these proceeded all their

criminal practices, and that these were the chief priests and

founders of the sect. Care was taken that they should be

apprehended as soon as possible. They were brought before the

consuls, and confessing their guilt, caused no delay to the ends of

justice.

But so great were the numbers that fled from the city, that because

the lawsuits and property of many persons were going to ruin, the

prætors, Titius Mænius and Marcus Licinius were obliged, under the

direction of the senate, to adjourn their courts for thirty days

until the inquiries should be finished by the consuls. The same

deserted state of the law courts, since the persons against whom

charges were brought did not appear to answer, nor could be found

in Rome, necessitated the consuls to make a circuit of the country

towns, and there to make their inquisitions and hold the trials.

Those who, as it appeared, had been only initiated, and had made

after the priest, and in the most solemn form, the prescribed

imprecations, in which the accursed conspiracy for the perpetration

of every crime and lust was contained, but who had not themselves

committed, or compelled others to commit, any of those acts to

which they were bound by the oath--all such they left in prison.

But those who had forcibly committed personal defilements or

murders, or were stained with the guilt of false evidence,

counterfeit seals, forged wills, or other frauds, all these they

punished with death. A greater number were executed than thrown

into prison; indeed the multitude of men and women who suffered in

both ways, was very considerable. The consuls delivered the women

who were condemned to their relations, or to those under whose

guardianship they were, that they might inflict the punishment in

private; but if there did not appear any proper person of the kind

to execute the sentence, the punishment was inflicted in public. A

charge was then given to demolish all the places where the

Bacchanalians had held their meetings; first, in Rome, and then

throughout all Italy; excepting those wherein should be found some

ancient altar, or consecrated statue. With regard to the future,

the senate passed a decree, "that no Bacchanalian rites should be

celebrated in Rome or in Italy:" and ordering that, "in case any

person should believe some such kind of worship incumbent upon him,

and necessary; and that he could not, without offence to religion,

and incurring guilt, omit it, he should represent this to the city

prætor, and the prætor should lay the business before the senate.

If permission were granted by the senate, when not less than one

hundred members were present, then he might perform those rites,

provided that no more than five persons should be present at the

sacrifice, and that they should have no common stock of money, nor

any president of the ceremonies, nor priest."

Another decree connected with this was then made, on a motion of

the consul, Quintus Marcius, that "the business respecting the

persons who had served the consuls as informers should be proposed

to the senate in its original form, when Spurius Postumius should

have finished his inquiries, and returned to Rome." They voted

that Minus Cerrinius, the Campanian, should be sent to Ardea, to be

kept in custody there; and that a caution should be given to the

magistrates of that city, to guard him with more than ordinary

care, so as to prevent not only his escaping, but his having an

opportunity of committing suicide.

Spurius Postumius some time after came to Rome and on his proposing

the question, concerning the reward to be given to Publius Æbutius

and Hispala Fecenia, because the Bacchanalian ceremonies were

discovered by their exertions, the senate passed a vote, that "the

city quæstors should give to each of them, out of the public

treasury, one hundred thousand asses; and that the consuls should

desire the plebeian tribunes to propose to the commons as soon as

convenient, that the campaigns of Publius Æbutius should be

considered as served, that he should not become a soldier against

his wishes, nor should any censor assign him a horse at the public

charge." They voted also, that "Hispala Fecenia should enjoy the

privileges of alienating her property by gift or deed; of marrying

out of her rank, and of choosing a guardian, as if a husband had

conferred them by will; that she should be at liberty to wed a man

of honorable birth, and that there should be no disgrace or

ignominy to him who should marry her; and that the consuls and

prætors then in office, and their successors, should take care that

no injury should be offered to that woman, and that she might live

in safety. That the senate wishes, and thought proper, that all

these things should be so ordered."--All these particulars were

proposed to the commons, and executed, according to the vote of the

senate; and full permission was given to the consuls to determine

respecting the impunity and rewards of the other informers.[178]

The bacchanalian orgies were first suppressed nearly two hundred years

before Christ. The above extract from Livy reminds us that at that time

the Romans were still strong and virtuous, and that a proposal of their

Consul to eradicate a vicious evil that threatened the existence of both

domestic life and the State, met with warm approval and hearty support

from both the Senate and the people. But the insidious infection was

never completely eradicated; and the work of the "Greek from Etruria"

bore bitter fruit in the centuries that followed. And when we consider

that not only bacchanalian orgies, but Greek literature, painting,

sculpture, tragedy and comedy, were the chief causes of the pollution of

Roman morals and the destruction of the Roman State, should we be

surprised that Juvenal, in an outburst of patriotic wrath, should have

declaimed against "a Grecian capital in Italy";[179] and that he should

have hurled withering scorn at

The flattering, cringing, treacherous, artful race,

Of fluent tongue and never-blushing face,

A Protean tribe, one knows not what to call,

That shifts to every form, and shines in all.

And, when we consider the state of the Roman world at the time of

Christ, should we be surprised that St. Paul should have described

Romans as "Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication,

wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate,

deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful,

proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,

without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affection,

implacable, unmerciful"?[180]

Suffice it to say, in closing the chapter on Græco-Roman paganism,

that, at the beginning of the Christian era, the Roman empire had

reached the limit of physical expansion. Roman military glory had

culminated in the sublime achievements of Pompey and of Cæsar.

Mountains, seas, and deserts, beyond which all was barbarous and

desolate, were the natural barriers of Roman dominion. Roman arms could

go no farther; and Roman ambition could be no longer gratified by

conquest. The Roman religion had fallen into decay and contempt; and the

Roman conscience was paralyzed and benumbed. Disgusted with this world,

the average Roman did not believe in any other, and was utterly without

hope of future happiness. A gloomy despondency filled the hearts of men

and drove them into black despair. When approaching death, they wore no

look of triumph, expressed no belief in immortality, but simply

requested of those whom they were leaving behind, to scatter flowers on

their graves, or to bewail their early end. An epigram of the Anthology

is this: "Let us drink and be merry; for we shall have no more of

kissing and dancing in the kingdom of Proserpine: soon shall we fall

asleep to wake no more." The same sentiments are expressed in epitaphs

on Roman sepulchral monuments of the period. One of them reads thus:

"What I have eaten and drunk, that I take with me; what I have left

behind me, that have I forfeited." This is the language of another:

"Reader, enjoy thy life; for after death there is neither laughter nor

play, nor any kind of enjoyment." Still another: "Friend, I advise, mix

thee a goblet of wine, and drink, crowning thy head with flowers. Earth

and fire consume all that remains after death." And, finally, one of

them assures us that Greek mythology is false: "Pilgrim, stay thee,

listen and learn. In Hades there is no ferryboat, nor ferryman Charon;

no Æacus or Cerberus;--once dead, and we are all alike."[181]

Matthew Arnold has very graphically described the disgusting, sickening,

overwhelming despair of the Roman people at the birth of Christ.

Ah! carry back thy ken,

What, some two thousand years! Survey

The world as it was then.

Like ours it looked, in outward air,

Its head was clear and true;

Sumptuous its clothing, rich its fare;

No pause its action knew.

Stout was its arm, each thew and bone

Seem'd puissant and alive--

But ah! its heart, its heart was stone

And so it could not thrive.

On that hard pagan world disgust

And secret loathing fell;

Deep weariness and sated lust

Made human life a hell.

In his goodly hall with haggard eyes,

The Roman noble lay;

He drove abroad in furious guise

Along the Appian Way.

He made a feast, drank fierce and fast,

And crowned his hair with flowers;

No easier, nor no quicker passed

The impracticable hours.[182]

But the "darkest hour is just before the dawn," and "the fulness of the

time was come." Already the first faint glimmers of the breaking of a

grander and better day were perceptible to the senses of the noblest and

finest of Roman intellects. Already Cicero had pictured a glorious

millennium that would follow if perfect virtue should ever enter into

the flesh and come to dwell among men.[183] Already Virgil, deriving

inspiration from the Erythræan Sibylline prophecies, had sung of the

advent of a heaven-born child, whose coming would restore the Golden

Age, and establish enduring peace and happiness on the earth.[184]

Already a debauched, degraded and degenerate world was crying in the

anguish of its soul: "I know that my Redeemer liveth!" And, even before

the Baptist began to preach in the wilderness, the ways had been made

straight for the coming of the Nazarene.

_APPENDICES_

APPENDIX I

CHARACTERS OF THE SANHEDRISTS WHO TRIED JESUS

The following short biographical sketches of about forty of the members

of the Sanhedrin who tried Jesus are from a work entitled "Valeur de

l'assemblée qui prononça la peine de mort contre Jésus Christ"--Lémann.

The English translation, under the title "Jesus Before the Sanhedrin,"

is by Julius Magath, Oxford, Georgia.

Professor Magath's translation is used in this work by special

permission.--THE AUTHOR.

THE MORAL CHARACTERS OF THE PERSONAGES WHO SAT AT THE TRIAL OF CHRIST

The members of the Sanhedrin that judged Christ were seventy-one in

number, and were divided into three chambers; but we must know the

names, acts, and moral characters of these judges. That such a knowledge

would throw a great light on this celebrated trial can be easily

understood. The characters of Caiaphas, Ananos, and Pilate are already

well known to us. These stand out as the three leading figures in the

drama of the Passion. But others have appeared in it; would it not be

possible to produce them also before history? This task, we believe, has

never yet been undertaken. It was thought that documents were wanting.

But this is an error; such documents exist. We have consulted them; and

in this century of historical study and research we shall draw forth

from the places where they have been hidden for centuries, the majority

of the judges of Christ.

Three kinds of documents have, in a particular manner, enabled us to

discover the characters of these men: the books of the Evangelists, the

valuable writings of Josephus the historian, and the hitherto unexplored

pages of the Talmud. We shall bring to light forty of the judges, so

that more than half of the Sanhedrin will appear before us; and this

large majority will be sufficient to enable us to form an opinion of the

moral tone of the whole assembly.

To proceed with due order, we will begin with the most important

chamber--viz., the chamber of the priests.

I. THE CHAMBER OF THE PRIESTS

We use the expression "chamber of the _priests_." In the Gospel

narrative, however, this division of the Sanhedrin bears a more imposing

title. Matthew, Mark, and the other Evangelists, designate it by the

following names: the council _of the high priests_, and the council _of

the princes of the priests_.[185]

But we may ask, Why is this pompous name given to this chamber by the

Evangelists? Is this not an error on their part? An assembly of priests

seems natural, but how can there be an assembly of high priests, since

according to the Mosaic institution there could be only one high priest,

whose office was tenable for life. There is, however, neither an error

nor an undue amplification on the part of the Gospel narrators; and we

may also add here that both Talmuds positively speak of an assembly of

high priests.[186] But how, then, can we account for the presence of

several high priests at the same time in the Sanhedrin? Here is the

explanation, to the shame of the Jewish assembly:

For nearly a century a detestable abuse prevailed, which consisted in

the arbitrary nomination and deposition of the high priest. The high

priesthood, which for fifteen centuries had been preserved in the same

family, being hereditary according to the divine command,[187] had at

the time of Christ's advent become an object of commercial speculation.

Herod commenced these arbitrary changes,[188] and after Judea became one

of the Roman conquests the election of the high priest took place almost

every year at Jerusalem, the procurators appointing and deposing them in

the same manner as the prætorians later on made and unmade

emperors.[189] The Talmud speaks sorrowfully of this venality and the

yearly changes of the high priest.

This sacred office was given to the one that offered the most money for

it, and mothers were particularly anxious that their sons should be

nominated to this dignity.[190]

The expression, "_the council of the high priests_," used by the

Evangelists to designate this section of the Sanhedrin, is therefore

rigorously correct; for at the time of the trial of Christ there were

about twelve ex-high priests, who still retained the honorable title of

their charge, and were, by the right of that title, members of the high

tribunal. Several ordinary priests were also included in this chamber,

but they were in most cases related to the high priests; for in the

midst of the intrigues by which the sovereign pontificate was surrounded

in those days, it was customary for the more influential of the chief

priests to bring in their sons and allies as members of their chamber.

The spirit of caste was very powerful, and as M. Dérembourg, a modern

Jewish savant, has remarked: "_A few priestly, aristocratic, powerful,

and vain families, who cared for neither the dignity nor the interests

of the altar, quarreled with each other respecting appointments,

influence, and wealth_."[191]

To sum up, we have, then, in this first chamber a double element--high

priests and ordinary priests. We shall now make them known by their

names and characters, and indicate the sources whence the information

has been obtained.

CAIAPHAS, high priest then in office. He was the son-in-law of Ananos,

and exercised his office for eleven years--during the whole term of

Pilate's administration (25-36 A.D.). It is he who presided over the

Sanhedrin during this trial, and the history of the Passion as given by

the Evangelists is sufficient to make him known to us. (See Matt. xxvi.

3; Luke iii. 2, etc.; Jos., "Ant.," B. XVIII. C. II. 2.)

ANANOS held the office of high priest for seven years under Coponius,

Ambivus, and Rufus (7-11 A.D.). This personage was the father-in-law of

Caiaphas, and although out of office was nevertheless consulted on

matters of importance. It may be said, indeed, that in the midst of the

instability of the sacerdotal office he alone preserved in reality its

authority. For fifty years this high office remained without

interruption in his family. Five of his sons successively assumed its

dignity. This family was even known as the "sacerdotal family," as if

this office had become hereditary in it. Ananos had charge also of the

more important duties of the Temple, and Josephus says that he was

considered the most fortunate man of his time. He adds, however, that

the spirit of this family was haughty, audacious, and cruel. (Luke iii.

2; John xviii. 13, 24; Acts iv. 6; Jos., "Ant.," B. XV. C. III 1; XX.

IX. 1, 3; "Jewish Wars," B. IV. V. 2, 6, 7.)

ELEAZAR was high priest during one year, under Valerius Grattus (23-24

A.D.). He was the eldest son of Ananos. (Jos., "Ant.," B. XVIII. II. 2.)

JONATHAN, son of Ananos, simple priest at that time, but afterwards made

high priest for one year in the place of Caiaphas when the latter was

deposed, after the disgrace of Pilate, by Vitellius, Governor-general of

Syria (37 A.D.). (Jos., "Ant.," B. XVIII. IV. 3.)

THEOPHILUS, son of Ananos, simple priest at that time, but afterwards

made high priest in the place of his brother Jonathan, who was deposed

by Vitellius. Theophilus was in office five years (38-42 A.D.). (Jos.,

"Ant.," B. XIX. VI. 2; Munk, "Hist. de la Palestine," p. 568.)

MATTHIAS, son of Ananos. Simple priest; afterwards high priest for two

years (42-44 A.D.). He succeeded Simon Cantharus, who was deposed by

King Herod Agrippa. (Jos., "Ant.," XIX. VI. 4.)

ANANUS, son of Ananos. Simple priest at the time; afterwards made high

priest by Herod Agrippa after the death of the Roman governor, Portius

Festus (63 A.D.). Being a Sadducee of extravagant zeal, he was deposed

at the end of three months by Albanus, successor of Portius Festus, for

having illegally condemned the apostle James to be stoned. (Acts xxiii.

2, xxiv. 1; Jos., "Ant.," B. XX. IX. 1.)

JOAZAR, high priest for six years during the latter days of Herod the

Great and the first years of Archelaus (4 B.C.-2 A.D.). He was the son

of Simon Boethus, who owed his dignity and fortune to the following

dishonorable circumstance, as related by Josephus the historian: "There

was one Simon, a citizen of Jerusalem, the son of Boethus, a citizen of

Alexandria and a priest of great note there. This man had a daughter,

who was esteemed the most beautiful woman of that time. And when the

people of Jerusalem began to speak much in her commendation, it

happened that Herod was much affected by what was said of her; and when

he saw the damsel he was smitten with her beauty. Yet did he entirely

reject the thought of using his authority to abuse her ... so he thought

it best to take the damsel to wife. And while Simon was of a dignity too

inferior to be allied to him, but still too considerable to be despised,

he governed his inclinations after the most prudent manner by augmenting

the dignity of the family and making them more honorable. Accordingly he

forthwith deprived Jesus, the son of Phabet, of the high priesthood, and

conferred that dignity on Simon." Such, according to Josephus, is the

origin--not at all of a supernatural nature--of the call to the high

priesthood of Simon Boethus and his whole family. Simon, at the time of

this trial, was already dead; but Joazar figured in it with two of his

brothers, one of whom was, like himself, an ex-high priest. (Jos.,

"Ant.," B. XV. IX. 3; XVII. VI. 4; XVIII. I. 1; XIX. VI. 2.)

ELEAZAR, second son of Simon Boethus. He succeeded his brother Joazar

when the latter was deprived of that function by King Archelaus (2

A.D.). Eleazar was high priest for a short time only, the same king

deposing him three months after his installation. (Jos., "Ant.," B.

XVII. XIII. 1; XIX. VI. 2.)

SIMON CANTHARUS, third son of Simon Boethus. Simple priest at the time;

was afterwards made high priest by King Herod Agrippa (42 A.D.), who,

however, deposed him after a few months. (Jos., "Ant.," B. XIX. VI. 2,

4.)

JESUS _ben_ SIE succeeded Eleazar to the high priesthood, and held the

office for five or six years (1-6 A.D.) under the reign of Archelaus.

(Jos., "Ant.," XVII. XIII. 1.)

ISMAEL _ben_ PHABI. High priest for nine years under procurator Valerius

Grattus, predecessor of Pontius Pilate. He was considered, according to

the rabbins, the handsomest man of his time. The effeminate love of

luxury of this chief priest was carried to such an extent that his

mother, having made him a tunic of great price, he deigned to wear it

once, and then consigned it to the public wardrobe, as a grand lady

might dispose of a robe which no longer pleased her caprices. ("Talmud,"

"Pesachim," or "of the Passover," fol. 57, verso; "Yoma," or "the Day of

Atonement," fol. 9, verso; 35, recto; Jos., "Ant.," XVIII. II. 2; XX.

VIII. 11; Bartolocci, "Grand Bibliothèque Rabbinique," T. III. p. 297;

Munk, "Palestine," pp. 563, 575.)

SIMON _ben_ CAMITHUS, high priest during one year under procurator

Valerius Grattus (24-25 A.D.). This personage was celebrated for the

enormous size of his hand, and the Talmud relates of him the following

incident: On the eve of the day of atonement it happened, in the course

of a conversation which he had with Arathus, King of Arabia--whose

daughter Herod Antipas had just married--that some saliva, coming out of

the mouth of the king, fell on the robe of Simon. As soon as the king

left him, he hastened to divest himself of it, considering it desecrated

by the circumstance, and hence unworthy to be worn during the services

of the following day. What a remarkable instance of Pharisaical purity

and charity! ("Talmud," "Yoma," or "the Day of Atonement," fol. 47,

verso; Jos., "Ant.," XVIII. II. 2; Dérembourg, "Essai sur l'histoire,"

p. 197, n. 2.)

JOHN, simple priest. He is made known to us through the Acts of the

Apostles. "And Annas the high priest, and Caiaphas, and John, and

Alexander, and as many as were of the kindred of the high priest, were

gathered together in Jerusalem." (Acts iv. 6.)

ALEXANDER, simple priest; also mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles in

the passage above quoted. Josephus also makes mention of him, and says

that he afterwards became an _Alabarch_--that is to say, first

magistrate of the Jews in Alexandria. That he was very rich is to be

learned from the fact that King Herod Agrippa asked and obtained from

him the loan of two hundred thousand pieces of silver. (Acts iv. 6;

Jos., "Ant.," XVIII. VI. 3; XX. V. 2; Petri Wesselingii, "Diatribe de

Judæorum Archontibus," Trajecti ad Rhenum, pp. 69-71.)

ANANIAS _ben_ NEBEDEUS, simple priest at that time; was elected to the

high priesthood under procurators Ventideus, Cumanus, and Felix (48-54

A.D.). He is mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles and by Josephus. It

was this high priest who delivered the apostle Paul to procurator Felix.

"Ananias the high priest descended with the elders, and with a certain

orator named Tertullus, who informed the governor against Paul." (Acts

xxiv. 1.) According to Jewish tradition, this high priest is chiefly

known for his excessive gluttony. What the Talmud says of his voracity

is quite phenomenal. It mentions three hundred calves, as many casks of

wine, and forty pairs of young pigeons as having been brought together

for his repast. ("Talmud," Bab., "Pesachim," or "of the Passover," fol.

57, verso; "Kerihoth," or "Sins which Close the Entrance to Eternal

Life," fol. 28, verso; Jos., "Ant.," XX. V. 2; Dérembourg, work quoted

above, pp. 230, 234; Munk, "Palestine," p. 573, n. 1.)

HELCIAS, simple priest, and keeper of the treasury of the Temple. It is

probably from him that Judas Iscariot received the thirty pieces of

silver, the price of his treason. (Jos., "Ant.," XX. VIII. 11.)

SCEVA, one of the principal priests. He is spoken of in the Acts apropos

of his seven sons, who gave themselves up to witchcraft. (Acts xix. 13,

14.)

Such are the chief priests that constituted the first chamber of the

Sanhedrin at the time of the trial of Christ.

From the documents which we have consulted and the résumé which we have

just given, we gather:

1. That several of the high priests were personally dishonorable.

2. That all these high priests, who succeeded each other annually in the

Aaronic office in utter disregard of the order established by God, were

but miserable intruders. We trust that these expressions will not offend

our dear Israelitish readers, for they are based on the statements of

eminent and zealous Jewish writers.

To begin with Josephus the historian. Although endeavoring to conceal

as much as possible the shameful acts committed by the priests composing

this council, yet he was unable, in a moment of disgust, to refrain from

stigmatizing them. "About this time," he says, "there arose a sedition

between the high priests and the principal men of the multitude of

Jerusalem, each of which assembled a company of the boldest sort of men,

and of those that loved innovations, and became leaders to them. And

when they struggled together they did it by casting reproachful words

against one another, and by throwing stones also. And there was nobody

to reprove them; but these disorders were done after a licentious manner

in the city, as if it had no government over it. And such was the

impudence and boldness that had seized on the high priests that they had

the hardness to send their servants into the threshing-floors, to take

away those tithes that were due the [simple] priests. Insomuch that the

poorest priests died of want."[192] Such are the acts, the spirit of

equity and kindness, that characterized the chief judges of Christ! But

the Talmud goes farther still. This book, which ordinarily is not

sparing of eulogies on the people of our nation, yet, considering

separately and by name, as we have done, the high priests of that time,

it exclaims: "What a plague is the family of Simon Boethus; cursed be

their lances! What a plague is the family of Ananos; cursed be their

hissing of vipers! What a plague is the family of Cantharus; cursed be

their pens! What a plague is the family of Ismael ben Phabi; cursed be

their fists! They are high priests themselves, their sons are

treasurers, their sons-in-law are commanders, and their servants strike

the people with staves."[193] The Talmud continues: "The porch of the

sanctuary cried out four times. The first time, Depart from here,

descendants of Eli;[194] ye pollute the Temple of the Eternal! The

second time, Let Issachar ben Keifar Barchi depart from here, who

polluteth himself and profaneth the victims consecrated to God![195] The

third time, Widen yourselves, ye gates of the sanctuary, and let Israel

ben Phabi the willful enter, that he may discharge the functions of the

priesthood! Yet another cry was heard, Widen yourselves, ye gates, and

let Ananias ben Nebedeus the gourmand enter, that he may glut himself on

the victims!" In the face of such low morality, avowed by the least to

be suspected of our own nation, is it possible to restrain one's

indignation against those who sat at the trial of Christ as members of

the chamber of priests? This indignation becomes yet more intense when

one remembers that an ambitious hypocrisy, having for its aim the

domineering over the people, had perverted the law of Moses in these

men. The majority of the priests belonged, in fact, to the Pharisaic

order, the members of which sect made religion subservient to their

personal ambition; and in order to rule over the people with more ease,

they used religion as a tool to effect this purpose, encumbering the

law of Moses with exaggerated precepts and insupportable burdens which

they strenuously imposed upon others, but failed to observe themselves.

Can we, then, be astonished at the murderous hatred which these false

and ambitious men conceived for Christ? When his words, sharper than a

sword, exposed their hypocrisy and displayed the corrupt interior of

these whitened sepulchers wearing the semblance of justice, the hatred

they already cherished for him grew to a frenzied intensity. They never

forgave him for having publicly unmasked them. Hypocrisy never forgives

that.