to the general question of its influence in destroying the morality of
Rome I have already ventured to express disbelief in the popular view.
From all that we read, it does not appear that the ordinary Roman was
naturally addicted to intemperance either in eating or drinking. The
praise of wine is with Horace a literary pose; personally he had a
poor head and a poor stomach. The Italian is not, and probably never
was a great natural eater or drinker judged by northern standards. But
rhetoricians and satirists have delighted to dwell upon the immensity
of Roman dinner-parties which often lasted all day and included a
hideous series of curious and exotic dainties. This was the form
which, in default of any nobler ideals, wealth at Rome had chosen for
its display. Time hung heavily on this slave-tended aristocracy: to
dine from dawn to daylight was one of the ways of killing it. So the
guests reclined on their couches, dancers jigged before them, musicians
played, occasionally a tumbler or a tight-rope walker would appear, in
literary households a slave would read philosophy; and all the time
the soft-footed slaves were coming and going with dishes of strange
morsels gathered from the ends of the earth, and rare wines from the
four corners of the globe. A dish of nightingales’ tongues is not
the sort of thing to please one who is a _gourmet_ by conviction or
natural taste. Eating was for most of these poor starved imaginations
the only form of culture they understood. It was, however, conducted
with tremendous ceremony. There was a “tricliniarch” to marshal his
“decuries” of slaves as each dish came into the room. There was a
special “structor” to arrange the dishes, a special “analecta” to pick
up the fragments that the diners dropped. Carving was a science with
various branches, as in old England, and the skilful carver had his
scheme of gesticulations for each kind of dish. There was another slave
specially appointed to cry out the name and quality of each _plat_.
In addition to these every guest had his own footman standing behind
his couch. The most characteristic and the most unpleasant feature of
a Roman banquet was the manner in which the diners assisted nature to
provide them with an appetite. Even Julius Cæsar “took his vomit” both
before and after his dinner-party with Cicero.
The public shows, which formed the chief recreation of rich and poor
alike, grew yearly more brutal and bloody. As they were the means by
which ambitious candidates for office sought to canvass popularity, the
principal aim was to present something novel and startling. No doubt
the more refined spectators regarded the butchery of wild beasts or
paid gladiators with disgust, but the populace at large only shouted
for more blood. Five hundred lions were slaughtered on one day at the
triumphal games given by Pompeius. Cicero writes that the wholesale
destruction of elephants in the arena actually moved the people to
pity. There were still some real theatrical performances in Rome.
Actors and mimics, indeed, if they were handsome and graceful, made
large fortunes. Most Roman nobles of a literary bent amused themselves
with writing tragedies. Cicero’s soldier brother composed four on a
fortnight’s journey to Gaul. But these were only employed to bore one’s
friends at dinner. Original literary dramas were even less often
staged at Rome than they are in London. Plautus and Terence for comedy,
and Pacuvius, Attius, and Ennius for tragedy, had already become
classics and were still regularly performed. The drama died stillborn
at Rome.
Historians of Rome, fortified by Juvenal and Petronius, love to depict
the vices of the emperors and the imperial period. The later Republic
can show us a morality no more exalted. The fragments of Varro’s
satires written in the heyday of the Republic are in precisely the
same strain of despondency as are the satires of Juvenal. For him,
too, virtue is a thing of the past. Sober fact compels us to see that
the aristocratic society of Republican Rome was hideously immoral.
Voluntary celibacy and “race-suicide” were already rife. The family
was a decaying institution, divorce was common, and the sterility of
wickedness had long been at work to sap the ranks of the nobility. Even
Cicero divorced his wife Terentia upon a trivial pretext after a long
period of happy conjugal life in order to marry an heiress. Cæsar had
four wives of his own, not to mention Cleopatra, without begetting a
single legitimate son. Cato, the strict censor of morals, having been
jilted in his youth, married a wife, divorced her for adultery after
she had borne him two sons, married another, lent her for six years to
the orator Hortensius, and on his death resumed her again. Mark Antony
married Fadia, then Antonia, then divorced her and lived publicly with
Cytheris the actress, then married Fulvia, who had already been twice
a widow, then married Octavia, then Cleopatra. These marriages were
made and dissolved freely for political reasons. A large part of Roman
politics was carried on in the salons of the Roman ladies, and if half
of what Cicero alleges be true Messalina herself had her republican
prototypes in women like Clodia and Fulvia. Beside almost promiscuous
relations between the sexes, the darker forms of Oriental vice were
extremely fashionable among the gilded youth of Rome.
Religion was almost purely formal or political. Augurships and
priesthoods still existed as the perquisite of aristocratic families.
People still uttered the formulæ of oaths and vows. There was still
some belief in omens and prodigies, the altars still smoked with
sacrifice when triumphant generals went up to the capitol, but few
prayers ascended to Jupiter in sincerity. Instead the importation of
strange deities continued. Again and again in this first century before
Christ the senate tried to expel the worship of Isis from the precincts
of Rome, but it always returned, and eventually the triumvirs built a
temple to Isis and Serapis as a measure to court popular favour. The
Magna Mater of the Phrygian corybants had long been firmly established
at Rome.
I think it was general materialism and immorality which killed the old
State religion at Rome. Greek philosophy had generally been able to
exist amicably by the side of religion. It now came in to fill up the
gap left by the absence of real religious feeling. But at Rome, though
Stoicism afterwards became a powerful force of inspiration to the
noblest minds, philosophy was in the main a form of literary activity
for dilettantists. Cato of Utica was a Stoic by temperament before he
became one by doctrine. Cicero amused his leisure by recasting and
combining the doctrines of the leading Greek schools in a Roman form of
dialogue, in imitation of Plato; but with him it was more of a literary
exercise than anything else, and Cicero has added little or nothing to
the world’s stock of philosophical ideas. Only in the poet Lucretius
does the fire of philosophy burn with genuine ardour. Lucretius had
before him the task of proselytising at Rome for the doctrines of
Epicurus and Democritus. People accustomed to the modern associations
of the word “epicure” may wonder what there was to arouse the
enthusiasm of a poet in the philosophy of Epicurus. That creed offered
a rational explanation of the universe. With its theory of spontaneous
atomic creation, and its surprising foreknowledge of some at least of
the ideas of natural selection and evolution, it claimed to satisfy the
intellect of mankind and to drive out all the grovelling superstition
and empty rites which had usurped at Rome, as they tend to do always
and everywhere, the throne of religion. All the enthusiasm with which
the nineteenth century approached the new discoveries of science glowed
in the heart of this rugged poet of the first century before Christ.
“Voluptas” was his only goddess, but it was no vulgar pleasure of the
body upon earth. It was the spirit soaring to freedom and knowledge.
This atheist Epicurean is, in the true sense of the word, the most
religious of all poets. He explains the nature of lightning in order
that his fellow-creatures may not live in fear of thunderbolts. He
explains with the same confident logic the nature of death in order
that they may not fear the natural resolution of body and soul into
their primordial atoms. He is moved almost to tears by the folly and
sorrow of his brother-men, and he pleads with them to suffer the sacred
lamp of philosophy to shine upon their darkened minds:
at nisi purgatum est pectus, quæ prælia nobis
atque pericula sunt ingratis insinuandum?
quantæ tum scindunt hominem cupedinis acres
sollicitum curæ? quantique perinde timores?
quidue superbia, spurcitia ac petulantia, quantas
efficiunt cladeis? quid luxus, desidiæque?
hæc igitur qui cuncta subegerit, ex animoque
expulerit dictis, non armis, nonne decebit
hunc hominem numero diuom dignarier esse?[20]
His doctrine is medicine for the feverish unrest of the day:
exit sæpe foras magnis ex ædibus ille
esse domi quem pertæsum est, subitoque reuentat;
quippe foris nihilo melius qui sentiat esse.
currit agens mannos ad uillam præcipitanter
auxilium tectis quasi ferre ardentibus instans:
oscitat extemplo tetigit quom limina uillæ
aut abit in somnum grauis, atque obliuia quærit,
aut etiam properans urbem petit atque reuisit.
hoc se quisque modo fugit ...[21]
He has a compassionate scorn for the mourner:
aufer abhinc lacrumas, barathre, et compesce querelas ...
cedit enim rerum nouitate extrusa uetustas
semper et ex aliis aliud reparare necesse est;
nec quisquam in barathrum, nec Tartara deditur alta.
materies opus est ut crescant postera sæcla;
quæ tamen omnia te, uita perfuncta, sequentur:
nec minus ergo ante hæc quam tu cecidere cadentque.
sic alid ex alio nunquam desistet oriri;
uitaque manciplo nulli datur, omnibus usu.[22]
Death has no sting for him:
num quid ibi horribile apparet? num triste uidetur
quidquam? non omni somno securius exstat?[23]
Lucretius was, of course, set down by Cicero, as was Shakespeare by
Dryden, as being rude and unpolished. His poem is indeed sheer didactic
argument with occasional digressions, and he strings his points
together with the bald transitional words and phrases of argumentative
prose. But in virility of thought and expression, even in majesty of
sound and force of vivid imagery, he is, when he cares to be, on a
plane quite above and away from the ordinary sphere of classic Latin
poetry. Almost alone among Roman writers he has a message of his own
to deliver. His fellow-countrymen thought little of him, and failed to
preserve any details of his biography. The monks of the Middle Ages
consigned him to the hell he had flouted, and Jerome provided him, five
hundred years after his death, with an end edifying to piety, but quite
incredible to any one who has read his work with sympathy. He was said
to have died of a love potion, and to have composed his poem in the
intervals of delirium. He appears to have lived between 100 and 50 B.C.
In addition to the tragedies and epics which noblemen threw off as
an elegant pastime for their superfluous leisure hours, love-poetry,
pasquinades, and _vers de société_ travelled merrily from salon to
salon. If Lucretius carries the heaviest metal of Latin poets, Catullus
has by far the lightest touch. He writes with an ease which makes
Horace seem laboured, and with a simplicity which makes Propertius and
even Ovid look like pedants, though Catullus himself, like all Romans,
thought fit occasionally to adopt the classical pose, and fill his
verses with learned allusions. If it were not for the influence of the
schoolroom, to which most of Catullus’s work is for the best of reasons
unknown, he would be recognised as possessing far more of the vital
spark of poetry than Horace. Roman culture, being mainly second-hand,
is almost entirely lacking in the quality of fresh youth which we
enjoy in such writers as Chaucer and the early Elizabethan singers.
Catullus, therefore, the earliest important lyric poet of Rome, is by
no means unsophisticated. On the contrary, he is a clever son of the
_forum_--a boulevardier, one might say--with a pretty but savage wit in
reviling democrats like Cæsar and Mamurra. But, with his truly Italian
scurrility, he combines the quintessence of Italian charm. When the
inspiration takes him he is simple, direct, and natural. Indeed, the
shorter poems of Catullus seem to me to reveal more of the
[Illustration]
essential Roman than all the rest of Roman literature put together. We
have the innocent pleading of the April lover in:
soles occidere et redire possunt:
nobis cum semel occidit breuis lux
nox est perpetua una dormienda.
da mi basia mille, deinde centum,
dein mille altera, dein secunda centum,
deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum.[24]
and the awful simplicity of his wrath at betrayal:
Cæli, Lesbia nostra, Lesbia illa,
illa Lesbia, quam Catullus unam
plus quam se atque suos amavit omnes,
nunc in quadriuiis et angiportis
glubit magnanimi Remi nepotes.
We have a more genuine-sounding love of nature in his praises of
Sirmio, and a more natural pathos in the famous lament for his brother,
than any other Latin poet can give us. In one species of composition,
the _Epithalamium_, he is supreme. For example:
flere desine, non tibi Au-
runculeia, periculum est
nequa femina pulchrior
clarum ab Oceano diem
uiderit uenientem.
talis in uario solet
diuitis domini hortulo
stare flos hyacinthinus.
sed moraris, abit dies:
prodeas, noua nupta.
prodeas, noua nupta, si
iam uidetur, et audias
nostra uerba. uiden? faces
aureas quatiunt comas:
prodeas noua nupta.[25]
The music of this, with its beautiful imagery and refrains, is no
doubt based upon an Alexandrian foundation. There is a distinct echo
of Theocritus. But it is also distinctively Italian, and the greatest
of modern Italian poets, Carducci, writes like a legitimate descendant
of Catullus. Catullus has as little biography as Lucretius. He must
have died at an early age in the fifties B.C. He was a poor man. He
had only a town house and two villas, one on the Lago di Garda and one
at Tivoli. He hated Cæsar and loved Cicero. That his “Lesbia” was the
infamous Clodia is generally asserted. I do not believe it.
These two poets, Lucretius and Catullus, then, stand almost alone as
representatives of Republican Roman literature on the poetical side.
Both are Romanising various Alexandrian Greek modes, but both have
something genuinely Roman, a quality which we may best describe as
virility, to add to their originals. This was the point from which a
genuine Roman literature might have taken its departure. Instead of
that, the next era is that of a courtly school of classicists, largely
writing to order, who gave to Latin its distinctively classical bent.
Cicero, the most classical of all classics, is, however, far the
greatest literary product of the Republic. He is, indeed, far too vast
a figure for these modest pages. By his colossal industry and immense
fertility of genius his influence dominates the whole field of Latin
prose literature. He is not only the greatest of all orators, but
he stands as the type of the orator in life as in literature. We of
this generation, who live in the eclipse of rhetoric, do not find it
easy to be just to him. With such gifts of eloquence, such a power of
uttering tremendous phrases about duty and patriotism, we cannot but
feel affronted at his political incapacity. Mommsen, who is all for
action, peppers him with contemptuous expressions--“a statesman without
insight, opinion or purpose”; “a short-sighted egoist”; “a journalist
of the worst description”; “his lawyer’s talent of finding excuses--or,
at any rate, words--for everything.” And, indeed, among men like Cæsar
with legions at their backs, or creatures like Clodius with their packs
of hooligans, a man of golden words and honest principles does cut a
sorry figure on the pages of history--so much the worse for history! He
had, as we have seen, a policy, his talents made him a leader among the
moderates of the senate, and his character made him genuinely popular
among all the more respectable classes of society. But Rhetoric is one
of the feminine Muses, and Cicero’s nature was as soft and sympathetic
as a woman’s. So he turns his coat at a word from Pompeius, utters
brave words one day and eats them on the next, publishes magnificent
denunciations which he has not had the courage to deliver. Moreover,
we see his intimate thoughts revealed in all the frankness of an
unexpurgated private correspondence--and there are few statesmen,
certainly very few orators, whose reputations can sustain that test.
Thus the golden words often ring hollow. His vanity is often ludicrous,
as when he writes to Lucceius, to beseech a conspicuous place in his
history, even if the truth has to be distorted for the purpose; or when
he loiters at Brundisium, with his lictors’ rods continually wreathed
in laurel for the futile hope of a triumph. Certainly he was an egoist.
Probably in their private correspondence all men are. But he was also a
gentleman, one of the few Romans of his day with whom one would care to
shake hands in Elysium.
To Mommsen, Cæsar is the “sole creative genius” of Roman history. We
may well ask what he created. Certainly not the empire, for that fell
to pieces at his death, and had to be re-created on a new plan by
his successor. Not even the Gallic province, for though he conquered
it, he left the problem of its organisation to Augustus. Possibly
the _Lex Julia municipalis_. But Cicero[26] created Latin prose out
of next to nothing and left it to the world as its grandest form of
literary expression. The splendid Latin period, with its clear logical
order, its chain of dependent clauses each in its place with absolute
precision, a thought built of words as a temple is built of marble,
is the best expression of Roman grandeur, as typical and as enduring
as a Roman road or wall. It was not mere art. It was the natural
expression of a Roman mind trained in law and rhetoric. It was perhaps
the finest thing the Romans ever made, and the Latin period is the
true justification for retaining Latin in its place for the education
of young barbarians accustomed to string their random ideas together
like dish-clouts on a line. Although it was the result of long training
under all the most distinguished masters of Rome and Greece, and was
perfected with infinite labour, Cicero’s style, when once achieved,
was extraordinarily rapid and fluent, as the number of his works
can testify. It is true that, like many great stylists--Dryden, for
example--he came to believe that style was everything. He was prepared
to write a geography of the world or a history of Rome. He only wanted
a few notes from his brother Quintus to write an account of Britain.
His multitudinous philosophical works were, as we have seen, more style
than philosophy, thrown off in a few months to while away the time at
his Tusculan villa at intervals when the temperature of Rome, literally
or politically, was too high to suit his health. In such work he may
fairly be called a journalist, though a very great one. When he writes
of a subject he really understands, such as rhetoric, he is at his
best. Again, in his forensic speeches or writings he is much better
as an advocate than as a lawyer. His mind is not capable of juristic
precision, he is neither deep nor subtle, and so far his influence
is wholly detrimental in the history of Roman law. He would probably
infuriate a trained judge; but give him a jury, and, if possible, a
large Italian one, and he is irresistible, now with translucent rapid
narrative, now with clever mystification, breaking off into thundering
appeals to conscience or heaven, or again with passionate denunciation
of his opponent or majestic encomium for his client. In the senate
he is not at his best. We are told that a few blunt words from Cato
had more power to move that assembly of practical men than all the
Catilinarian orations. But if Rome had been governed as Greece was, by
orations in the market-place, Cicero would have been in Cæsar’s place
as dictator of the world. Imagine the Roman mob assembling in 63 B.C.
to hear their consul’s account of Catiline’s flight--
tandem aliquando, Quirites, L. Catilinam, furentem audacia, scelus
anhelantem, pestem patriæ nefarie molientem, uobis atque huic urbi
ferrum flammamque minitantem, ex urbe uel eiecimus, uel emisimus,
uel ipsum egredientem uerbis prosecuti sumus. abiit, excessit,
euasit, erupit. nulla iam pernicius a monstro illo atque prodigio
mœnibus ipsis intra mœnia comparabitur. non enim iam inter latera
nostra sica illa uersabitur: non in Campo, non in foro, non in
Curia, non denique intra domesticas parietes, pertimescemus[27]
--his voice screams with passion, or sinks into pathos; presently he
drops into the tones of calm reason or fluent narrative; as he nears
his peroration his eyes flash, his hands gesticulate, his body sways
from side to side, his foot stamps the ground, he seems to foam at the
mouth:
dolebam, dolebam, patres conscripti, rempublicam uestris quondam
meisque consiliis conseruatam, breui tempore esse perituram ...
audite, audite, patres conscripti, et cognoscite reipublicæ
uolnera....[28]
“Why, you did not even stamp your foot!” he exclaims in rebuking the
coolness of an opposing counsel. It is true that there were purists
of the severer school of Roman oratory who thought such vehemence
meretricious and undignified. The true Roman eloquence of the old
school is to be found in that ambassador who came to the Carthaginian
senate with “peace or war,” gathered in the folds of his mantle and
briefly commanded them to choose; or that other who drew a circle in
the dust round the Great King and demanded an answer before he left
the circle. Cicero had studied his art both in the flowery Asiatic and
the severer Attic schools. There was still, his critics complained,
too much Asia in his style. But that was part of the tendency of his
age. The austerity of Cato, with his simple formulæ, was gone for ever.
The Romans of this age are more emotional, more sentimental, more
characteristically Southern.
If we reproach Cicero with weakness and cowardice in his political
life, the story of his end may atone for it. After Cæsar’s murder,
when Antony was master of Rome, a man utterly unscrupulous and wedded
to a still more unscrupulous wife, Cicero flung away all his timidity
and hesitation. Convinced that the consul was trying to re-establish a
monarchy, the old orator came down to the senate and launched at him
the series of ferocious but most eloquent philippics. Some were spoken,
some merely written and published. It was courting death in the cause
of liberty. Cicero was not blind to the danger he was running. But he
is probably sincere when he says that life has no more attractions for
him.
defendi rempublicam adolescens; non deseram senex: contempsi
Catilinæ gladios; non pertimescam tuos. quin etiam corpus libenter
obtulerim, si repræsentari morte mea libertas ciuitatis potest;
ut aliquando dolor populi Romani pariat quod iamdiu parturit.
etenim si, abhinc prope annos uiginti, hoc ipso in templo, negaui
posse mortem immaturam esse consulari, quanto uerius nunc negabo
seni! mihi uero, iam etiam optanda mors est, perfuncto rebus iis
quas adeptus sum quasque gessi. duo modo hæc opto: unum, ut
moriens populum Romanum liberum relinquam; hoc mihi maius a dis
immortalibus dari nihil potest: alterum ui ita cuique eueniat, ut
de republica quisque mereatur.[29]
As he foresaw so plainly, the philippics caused his doom. When the
triumvirate drew up its proscription-lists, Octavian is said to have
pleaded for his life. But Antony’s wrath was implacable. Cicero’s head
and his hands were nailed to the rostra from which he had so often
poured out his rhetoric, and the virago Fulvia, so the story goes,
thrust her needle through his eloquent, venomous tongue.