THE TRAINING OF THE ROMAN CHARACTER
I have mentioned some outward circumstances which gave Rome an early
training in war and diplomacy, and in particular her geographical
position, exposing her to constant attack, and yet giving her good
chance of striking back and advancing. But to accomplish all that was
told of her in the last chapter, more than this was surely needed. There
must have been a quality in this people, individually and as a whole,
fitting them to withstand so much storm and stress, and to emerge from
disaster with renewed strength to take in hand the work of conquest and
government. We need not, indeed, assume that the people of this one city
were naturally of stronger character than others, than their kinsfolk of
the Latin cities or other Italians of the same great race. All these
immigrating stocks, which spread themselves, long before history begins,
over a primitive population of which we know little or nothing, were
probably much the same in physical and mental build; a fact which will
help us to understand how they all came eventually to be able to unite
together as the centre of a great empire. But the quality or character,
which I am to try and explain in this chapter, was more strongly stamped
upon the citizens of Rome than on those of other cities, owing to the
more continual call for them in her case; for all our qualities and
habits can be made more sure and lasting by constant exercise.
Discipline and duty are the two words which best explain, if they do not
exactly express, the quality here meant; the habit of obedience to
authority, which is the necessary condition of the power of governing,
and that sense of duty which lies at the root of the habit and the
power. This aptitude for discipline and this sense of duty can be traced
both in the private and the public life of early Rome, in the life of
the family and in the life of the State. Let us be clear at once that
the individual as such was not as yet an important item of society;
society was based on a system of groups, and the individual played no
part in it in these early times except as the member of a group, either
a group of kin (_gens_), or a local and administrative group (_pagus_,
_curia_). But the only group with which we are concerned in this little
book, the smallest of all, was the _familia_, another of those immortal
words which we have inherited from the Latin language. This shall be
explained first, in order to find the discipline and duty of that family
life: then we will take the State, and follow out the same habits
reproducing themselves in a more complicated social and political union.
This word _familia_ did not mean exactly what we mean by family;
household would perhaps come nearer to it, if we understand by household
a group of individuals supporting itself on the land. It meant not only
father, mother, and children, but also their dependents, whether bond or
free. These, if bond, were slaves (_servi_), prisoners of war and the
children of such prisoners, or persons who had forfeited their liberty
by debt: if free, they were clients, who for some reason had become
attached to the _familia_ in an inferior position, and looked to it for
subsistence and protection. And our picture is not complete unless we
take into account also the divine members of the group, dwelling in the
house or on the land, to whom the human members looked for protection
and prosperity in all the walks of life. Chief among these were the
spirit of the hearth-fire, Vesta; Penates, the spirits of the
store-closet and its contents: the Lar, the guardian spirit of the
cultivated land, or, as some think, of a departed ancestor; and the
Genius of the head of the family, which enabled him to beget children
and so continue the collective life of the group. Though these
spirits—they are hardly yet deities—naturally seem to us mere fancies of
the primitive Roman mind, they were to that mind itself as real and
active as any human member of the group, and we must try to think of
them as such, for they played a very important part in the development
of the quality we wish to realise.
Now this group, or rather the human part of it, lived under a very
simple and effective form of government. It was under the absolute
control of a head, the father and husband; or, if more than one family
lived together, the oldest living father and husband. Over wife and
children he had a father’s power (_patria potestas_), and they were said
to be in his _hand_; over the slaves he had a master’s power
(_dominium_): to his clients he was _patronus_, or quasi-father. His
power over wife and children was absolute, but it was kept from being
arbitrary by a wholesome custom, of immense importance in all its
results throughout Roman history, of seeking the advice of a council of
relations before taking any extreme step in the way of punishment for
serious offences. This was an obligation, a duty, on his part, enforced
by no law, but by what may be well called an even more powerful
sovereign than law—the custom of the ancestors (_mos majorum_). His
power over his client, or his freed slave if he had any such, was
restrained by customs of mutual obligation, which eventually found their
way into law. His power over his slaves was, however, not only absolute
but arbitrary, and so continued down to the latest period of Roman
history; yet the slave, we must not forget, was really a member of the
_familia_, and as such was probably treated as a human being, necessary
to the life of the group, and even partaking to some extent in its
religious worship.
Let us see how this system of government would work out in the practical
life of a _familia_ settled on the land, as all such groups were during
at least a great part of the period we have been tracing: for the city
itself was mainly used as a fortress, into which the farming families
would come in time of peril, and in which they would in course of time
possess a town dwelling as well as a farm, like the leading families of
our English shires in the Middle Ages. The paterfamilias directed all
the operations of the farm, no one disputing his authority: and he
decided all quarrels among his subjects and punished all offences. The
necessary work of the house, the cooking, and the spinning of wool for
the garments of the members (which were then entirely woollen), he left
to his wife and daughters: and thus the wife came to exercise a kind of
authority of her own, which raised her far above the position of a
“squaw,” and gave her in course of time a great influence, though an
indirect one, in social life. And not only had all the members their
work to do, under this strict control, in keeping themselves alive and
clothed, but they all had their duties to the divine members, on whom
they believed themselves dependent for their health and wealth. There
were simple acts of worship every day and at every meal, in which the
children joined; we may almost think of the Head as a priest and of the
children as his acolytes. And at certain days, fixed in ancient times by
a council of Heads, and later in the city by a calendar, the families of
a district (_pagus_) would join together in religious festivities, after
harvest, for example, or after the autumn sowing, to honour and
propitiate the spirit of the harvested grain or of the sown seed. These
were often accompanied by games and races, and so the life was saved
from becoming too sombre and monotonous. But though discipline was not
allowed to destroy freedom and enjoyment, the life was on the whole a
routine of command and obedience, of discipline and duty.
What of the education which should perpetuate these habits? Unluckily we
have no contemporary record of it for these early times, and must guess
at it chiefly from what we know of the bringing up of his son by the
elder Cato, a strenuous believer in the old methods, in the second
century B.C. As we might expect, it seems to have been an education in
the active practical life of the farm, and in reverence, obedience, and
modesty of demeanour. Cato taught his boy not only to work, to ride, to
box, and to swim, but to shun all indecency; and was himself “as careful
not to utter an indecent word before his son, as he would have been in
the presence of the Vestal virgins.” He wrote histories for his son in
large letters, so that he might learn something of the illustrious deeds
of the ancient Romans, and of their customs. In his time an education of
the mind was beginning to come into vogue, as well as one of the will;
but in the period we have been surveying this must have been of the most
meagre kind. Yet it is possible that the idea of active duty to the
State and its deities, as well as to the family and its presiding
spirits, was all the more vividly kept up in the absence of intellectual
interests. As life in the city became more usual, the boys of good
families had more opportunity of learning what was meant by duty to the
State; they accompanied their fathers to hear funeral orations on
eminent citizens, and were even admitted to meetings of the Senate. In
this way they must have developed a shrewdness and practical sagacity
invaluable to them in after life.
There is a story of a Roman boy, preserved by Cato, which so well
illustrates this and other features of that early Roman life, that I
shall insert it here, whether or no it be strictly true. A boy who had
been with his father to the Senate was asked by an inquisitive mother
what the Fathers of the Senate had been discussing. The boy answered
that he was strictly forbidden to tell, which only excited his mother’s
curiosity the more, and made her press him hard. At last he invented
what Cato calls a shrewd and witty falsehood: he said that the Senate
had been discussing whether it were better for the State that one man
should have two wives, or one wife two husbands. Much alarmed, she went
and told other matrons, and next day they crowded weeping to the Senate
House, to petition that one wife might have two husbands rather than one
husband two wives. The astonishment of the senators was dispelled by the
boy, who stood out in the midst and told his tale; and from that time no
boy was allowed to be present at debate save this one, who was thus
rewarded for his honesty and shrewdness.
This good old Roman story may aptly bring us to the second part of my
subject in this chapter, the training of the citizen in the service of
the State. But let us pause here for a moment to consider what was the
Roman idea of the State and its function.
In Italy, as in Greece, the State took the form of a city, with more or
less of territory on which to subsist; in the heart of the city was the
life of the State. And it is true of Italy as of Greece that the process
of rising to the city from the life of farm or village was one of
immense importance for humanity, enabling man to advance from the idea
of a bare material subsistence to that of moral and intellectual
progress. This is the advance to what Aristotle called “good life” as
distinguished from life simply. He meant that in the lower stage man has
not time or stimulus to develop art, literature, law, philosophy: all
his strength is spent in struggle and endeavour—struggle partly with
Nature, partly with human enemies whom he is ill able to resist. The
city-state supplied him not only with opportunity for a higher life, but
with nutriment to maintain it.
But the Italians never drew from this new form of social life the same
amount, the same quality of nutriment, as did the Greeks. Rome did
indeed draw enough to fertilise the germs of much that was most valuable
in her own character, and to educate herself for the practical work she
was to do in the world. But the last chapter will have shown that,
unlike most Greek city-states, she was forced by circumstances to
continue for centuries a life of struggle and endeavour. She had
constant difficulty in keeping herself alive and free, and as we shall
see, she was hardly ever without internal as well as external perils. In
Greece many States found leisure to rest and enjoy the exercise of their
higher instincts—enjoyment which led to the production of works of art
and literature: leisure, too, to reflect and inquire about Nature in man
and outside him, and so to develop philosophy and science for the
eternal benefit of mankind. But all the strength of Rome was used in the
struggle for existence, which gradually led her on to conquest and
dominion. As we left her at the end of the last chapter, the leading
city of Italy, she might indeed have passed from struggle to leisure,
and so to thought and inquiry, turning to account the gifts of the
various peoples of Italy, Etruscans, Gauls, Greeks, as well as her own
kin. But the long and terrible struggle with Carthage, to be told in the
next chapter, effectually destroyed this chance. Her strength was spent
when it was over, and when her chance came to sit down (so to speak),
and think, she could not do it. Still, her long training in practical
endeavour had its due result; and the ideas of duty and discipline, of
law and order, which had carried her through so many perils, never
wholly vanished from the Roman mind. Let us turn to trace the progress
of those ideas in the life of the city-state of Rome.
When we first begin to see clearly into the working of the Roman State,
what chiefly strikes us is the unlimited power of the magistrate in all
the departments of government. Just as the head of the family had an
absolute power over its members, so had the king (_rex_) an unlimited
power over the citizens. In the family the word for this power was
_potestas_, but in the State it was called _imperium_—one of the
greatest words ever coined, surviving to the present day in many
familiar forms. For the Roman it expressed more strikingly than any
other the idea of discipline in the State: it stamped on his mind the
inherited conviction that lawful authority must be implicitly obeyed.
Not unlawful authority, ill gotten by fraud or violence; for such power
the word _imperium_ could never be used: but authority entrusted to an
individual by the human members of the State, and sanctioned by the
consent of its divine members. For the _imperium_ must be conferred upon
its holder by an act of the people, and the gods must give their consent
by favourable omens; both processes, the passing of the law, and the
obtaining of the _auspicia_, must be gone through according to certain
traditional methods, and the slightest flaw in these would make the
choice of the magistrate invalid. But once legally in his hands, the
_imperium_ was irresistible; its outward symbols, the rods and axes of
the lictors, accompanied its holder wherever he went, to remind the
Roman that the first duty of a citizen was obedience to constituted
authority.
This word _imperium_ stood for three different kinds of power. First,
the king was supreme in matters of religion, for he was responsible for
the good relations between the human and divine inhabitants of the city,
for “the peace of the gods” as it was called. If this peace, or
covenant, were not kept up, it was believed that the State could not
prosper—the very life of the State depended on it.
But now let us note a point of the utmost importance in the development
of Roman public life. The king could not perform this duty entirely by
himself; no single man could have the necessary knowledge of all the
details of ancient religious custom. So he was assisted by a small board
of skilled experts called _pontifices_, perhaps also by another board of
_augurs_, skilled in the methods of discovering the divine will by
omens. Thus the _imperium_ in religious matters, though still legally
unlimited, was saved from becoming arbitrary and violating ancestral
custom: the king is entrusted with power which he uses in accordance
with the advice of sages.
Secondly, _imperium_ stood for the supreme judicial power, for the
maintenance of peace between individual citizens. The king had an
unlimited power not only in deciding disputes but in inflicting
punishments, even that of death. But here again, though his power was
absolute, it was not arbitrary. Custom governed the State even more than
he did, and his work was to see that custom was obeyed. In order to make
sure that this duty was rightly performed, he was provided with a
council of elderly men (_senatores_), fathers of families, whose advice
custom compelled him to ask, though it did not compel him to take it.
Here, then, the exercise of discipline was combined with a sense of duty
and obligation, as in the life of the family; the Senate of the State
was the same in principle as the council of relations in the family.
Thirdly, _imperium_ stood for the absolute power of the commander in
war: and here, as we might expect, custom seems hardly to have
interfered with it. A Roman king in war was outside the custom of his
own State, beyond the reach of the protection of his own deities, and
under the influence of unknown ones. Both before starting on a campaign,
and before entering the city on its return, the army had to undergo
certain religious rites, which show how nervous even Romans were about
leaving their own land and gods. Custom could not rule here, and the
power of the general in the field remained throughout Roman history not
only absolute but arbitrary. Doubtless he could, and often did, not only
ask advice but take it, but he was never even morally obliged to do so:
in this one department of State activity the wise judgment of the Romans
left the _imperium_ practically unhampered.
Such, then, was the _imperium_ in the hands of the chief magistrate, the
foundation-stone of the Roman government in all periods. But what of the
people who obeyed it? Of the people we unluckily know hardly anything
until nearly the end of the monarchical period. We do, indeed, know
that, as in many Greek city-states, there was a privileged and an
unprivileged class, and of these two classes a word shall be said
directly. What needs here to be made clear is how this population was
placed as regards duty and discipline, and our first real knowledge of
this dates traditionally from the reign of the last king but one. Here
we find the whole free population, privileged and unprivileged, serving
in the army as a civic duty, and paying such taxes as were necessary
mainly for military purposes. They served without pay, and the
infantry—that is, by far the greater part, provided their own arms and
equipment; the cavalry were provided with horses by the State, for
horses were expensive. Those who had most property were considered as
having the largest stake in the State, and therefore as bound to bear
the heaviest burden. This may be seen in the order of the army for
battle, for those who could afford the best equipment fought in front,
the poorest and worst armed in the rear. This was the wholesome
principle that governed the Roman army during the period of advance and
conquest in Italy. It was an army of citizens (_populus_), all of whom
served as a matter of duty, and paid taxes as a matter of duty according
to their means, leaving all command to the holder of _imperium_, and the
officers whom he appointed to carry out his orders.
Thus when the last king was expelled, and the kingship came to an end,
the people were thoroughly well trained in the ideas of duty and
discipline, and the practical results of such a training were obedience
as a habit, respect for authority and knowledge, steadiness and coolness
in danger. This people did not give way to excitement, either in civil
or military crises. They not only obeyed their rulers, but trusted them.
They were not much given to talking, but contented themselves with
action: and as talk is a more effective stimulus to quarrelling than
action, they did not as yet quarrel. Though Rome was destined to pass
through many political as well as military dangers in the generations to
come, it was nearly four centuries before blood was shed in civil strife
in her streets.
I must close this chapter with a very brief sketch of the political
history of the period of advance in Italy, in order to show how their
training in duty and discipline kept the people steady and sound at
home.
After the expulsion of the last king the Roman State became a
_respublica_—that is, literally translated, a public thing—or as we may
perhaps call it, a free State. This is another of the immortal words
bequeathed to modern European language by Latin speech, and its meaning
is still the same for us as it was for the Romans. When Cicero, almost
at the end of the life of the Roman free State, wrote to a friend, “We
have completely lost the _respublica_,” he meant that it had passed from
public management into the hands of private and irresponsible
individuals. What were the essential marks of this “public thing,” or
free State? As we might expect, they are to be found in the treatment of
the _imperium_, the governmental centre of gravity, by the founders of
the _respublica_.
1. To abolish the _imperium_ was out of the question; no Roman ever
dreamed of such a thing, for it would be like digging up the foundations
of a building already in part constructed. But the _imperium_ was no
longer to be held for life, nor to be held by a single person. It was
now to be entrusted to two magistrates instead of one, and for a year
only; at the end of the year the holders, henceforward to be called
Consuls or Prætors, were to lay down their insignia and resign their
power, becoming simply private citizens again. Meanwhile new consuls had
been elected; and the voice of the whole people was to be heard in the
election, for it was to be effected by the army of citizens, arranged
according to property as in military service. Every Roman who was to
obey the _imperium_ was to have a voice in the election of its holders,
but those who had most stake in the State, and served in the front ranks
in war, were to have a preponderating voice.
2. The dread _imperium_ was now not only limited in the period of its
tenure, but the possibility of an arbitrary use of it was averted in two
ways. First, the two consuls had a veto on each other’s action, and both
at home and in the field they took it in turn to exercise the
_imperium_. Secondly, they could not put a citizen to death in the city
unless the people in their assembly sanctioned it; in the field the
Romans wisely left the _imperium_ unlimited, feeling, as we still feel,
that military discipline needs a more forceful sanction than civil. And
besides these two restrictions, the council of elders, the Senate, was
retained to act as a general advising body for the consuls, who,
however, themselves had the power of filling up vacancies in it from
time to time. We do not know exactly what its composition was at this
time; but it is certain that all who had held the _imperium_ had seats
in it, as men whose service and experience best entitled them to advise
and criticise their successors. This principle, that ex-magistrates
should be members of the Senate, was adhered to at all times, and
eventually made this great council into the most effective assembly of
men of capacity and experience in practical life that the world has ever
seen.
Before we leave the _imperium_, for the present, one interesting fact
must be noted. The Romans were not afraid to withdraw for a time these
restrictions on the magistrate’s power, and to revert to absolute
government, if they thought it necessary for the safety of the State. In
moments of great peril, civil or military, the consul, on the advice of
the Senate, would appoint a single individual to hold office for a fixed
time with unlimited _imperium_; and in this case the assembly was not
called on even to ratify the choice, so great was the trust reposed in
the Fathers of the State. They did not call this single magistrate by
the hated name of Rex, but used another word well known in Latium,
Dictator. The institution was of the utmost value to a people constantly
in a state of struggle and endeavour, and shows well the practical
sagacity which a long training in duty and discipline had already
developed.
But this practical sagacity was to be put to many a hard test in the
period we sketched in the last chapter. No sooner was the _respublica_
established, than a great question pressed for solution, that of the
mutual relations of the privileged and unprivileged classes. What was
really the origin of this distinction of class we do not yet know, and
perhaps never shall. Here the fact must suffice, that the privileged,
the patricians as they were called, the representatives of families
belonging to the old clans (_gentes_) were alone deemed capable of
preserving the peace between citizens and gods, or between the citizens
themselves, and therefore they alone could hold the _imperium_ and take
the auspices. Both classes served in the army and voted at elections,
but without the chance of holding the _imperium_ the plebeians were
helpless. Yet it is quite certain that they had grievances of their own,
and real ones. We must think of them as in the main small holders of
land, with little or no capital, and constantly obliged to borrow either
in the form of money or stock. They became debtors to the rich, who
would usually be the patricians, and the old customary law of debt was
hard and even savage.
The result of this was, according to the traditional story, that once at
least, if not twice, they actually _struck_; they left their work and
went off in a body, threatening to found a new city some miles farther
up the Tiber. They knew well that they were indispensable to the State
as soldiers, and the patricians knew it too. Fortunately, the plebeians
also knew that the State, with all its traditions of religion and
government, of duty and discipline, was indispensable to themselves.
They knew nothing of the forms and formulæ which were deemed necessary
for the maintenance of peace with gods and men. They could not carry
away with them the gods of the city, under whose protection they and
their forefathers had lived. They would simply be adrift, without oars
or rudder, and such a position was absolutely unthinkable. So they
returned to the city—so the story runs—and the result was a compromise,
the first of a long series of compromises which finally made Rome into a
compact and united commonwealth, and enabled her to tide over three
centuries of continual struggle and endeavour. The story of these
compromises is too long and complicated to be told in this book, but the
successive stages can briefly be pointed out.
Soon after the strike, or secession, the plebeians were authorised to
elect magistrates, or more strictly officers, of their own, to protect
them from any arbitrary use of the _imperium_; these were called
Tribunes, because the assembly that chose them was arranged according to
tribes, local divisions in which both patricians and plebeians were
registered for taxpaying purposes. The good-will of the patricians in
making this concession is seen in the fact that the tribunes of the
plebs (as they were henceforward called), were placed under the
protection of the gods (_sacrosancti_), so that any one violating them
was made liable to divine anger. As the plebeians grew more numerous and
indispensable, their assembly and officers became steadily more
powerful, and eventually won the right to pass laws binding the whole
State.
Again, it was not long before their ignorance of the customary law and
its methods of procedure found a remedy. A code of law was drawn up in
twelve tables, containing partly old customs now for the first time
written down, partly new rules, some of them perhaps imported from
Athens. Of this code we still possess many fragments, which show plainly
that it was meant for all citizens, whatever their social standing. “The
idea of legislating for a class ... is strikingly absent. The code is
thoroughly Roman in its caution and good sense, its respect for the
past, which it disregards only when old customs violate the rules of
common sense, and its judicious disregard of symmetry.”[4] As the
historian Tacitus said of it long afterwards, it was “the consummation
of equal right.” And it was the source of the whole mighty river of
Roman law, ever increasing in volume, which still serves to irrigate the
field of modern European civilisation.
There was to be a long and bitter contest before the plebeians forced
their way into the central patrician stronghold of the _imperium_, but
even this was accomplished without civil war or bloodshed. We hear of a
series of evasive manœuvres by the patricians, who naturally believed
that all would go wrong if the duty of keeping “the peace of the gods”
were committed to men whom the gods could not be supposed to take count
of. But these patrician consuls and senators were responsible for the
State’s existence, and it could not exist without the plebeians; the two
classes were authorised by law to intermarry, which (strange to say) had
been unlawful hitherto, and then the old class-feeling and prejudice,
far exceeding in force any such feeling known to us now, gradually
subsided. By the middle of the fourth century B.C., not only could a
plebeian be consul, but one of the two consuls _must_ be a plebeian. And
before that century was over the old patrician nobility was beginning to
disappear, giving way to a new one based on the leading idea of _good
service done for the State_. If a man had held the consulship, no matter
whether he were patrician or plebeian, he became _nobilis_—_i.e._
distinguished—and so, too, did his family. The great Roman aristocracy
of later times consisted of the descendants of men who had thus become
distinguished.
I will conclude this chapter with a few words about one remarkable
institution which well illustrates the Roman instinct for duty and
discipline. It was in this period, 443 B.C., according to the
traditional date, that a new magistracy was established, intended at
first merely to relieve the consuls of difficult duties for which in
that warlike age they had no sufficient leisure, but destined eventually
to become even a higher object of ambition than the consulship itself.
The Roman love of order made it necessary to be sure that every citizen
was justly and legally a citizen, that he fulfilled his duties in the
army, and paid his taxes according to a right estimate of his property.
Every four or five years an inquiry had to be made with this object in
view, and two censors, holding office for a year and a half, were now
elected to undertake it. These censors, though they had no _imperium_,
were irresponsible; their decisions were final, and they could not be
called to account for any official act. They were almost always—in later
times invariably—reverend seniors who had held the consulship, men in
whose justice and wisdom the people could put implicit confidence. And
such confidence was needed; for their power of examination easily became
extended from details of registration to the personal conduct of the
citizen in almost every relation of life. All heads of families might be
questioned about their performance of family duties, and any shameful
cruelty to a slave, or injustice to a client, or neglect of children,
might be punished by removal from the list of tribesmen; and this meant
loss of civil rights, and _infamia_ (civic disgrace), a terrible word,
greatly dreaded by the Roman. Neglect of land or other property, useless
luxury, bad faith in contracts or legal guardianship—all came in course
of time to be taken count of by the censors. A senator might have his
name struck off the list of the Senate, and a cavalry soldier might be
removed from the roll, if the horse provided him by the State were ill
cared for, or if in any other way he were deemed unworthy of his
position.
It may be hard for us to understand how such a power of inquisition can
have been submitted to in a free State. But apart from the age and
standing of the holders of this office, and the Roman habit of obedience
to constituted authority, there are two facts that will help us to
understand it. One is simple: the censors were _collegæ_ like the
consuls; each had a veto on the action of the other, and if that veto
were not used, if they were unanimous in condemning a citizen, the
authority of their decision was naturally irresistible. The other fact
is harder for a modern to understand. There was a religious element in
the work of the censors; the final act of a censorship was the religious
“purification” (_lustratio_) of the whole citizen body, with sacrifice
and prayer, in the field of Mars outside the walls of the city. What
exactly a Roman of that day believed, or rather felt, to be the result
of this rite, we can only guess; but we can be sure that he was
convinced that the life of the State would be imperilled without it, and
that this conviction was strong enough to compel him to submit to the
whole process of which it was the consummation.