The latter centuries of the Roman commonwealth are filled with the

domestic struggles occasioned by the obstinacy with which political

restrictions were maintained upon the most sensitive of the social

relations. Beginning with wild and romantic legends, the account of these

troubles becomes in the end an important feature in history. As early as

the year 330 B.C., it is said, a great number of Roman matrons attempted

the lives of their husbands by poison. They were dragged before the

tribunals, probably domestic, and adjudged to death. As many as 170 are

said to have suffered. In the following century, after the promulgation

of the Oppian law, which forbade women to keep more than half an ounce

of gold, to wear robes of various colours, and to ride in the carpentum,

they formed a new conspiracy--such at least was the story--not to destroy

their husbands, but to refuse conversation with them and frustrate their

hopes of progeny. This was followed at the distance of half a century

by the _lex Voconia_, “the most unjust of laws,” in the judgment of the

Christian Augustine, which excluded women from the right of inheriting.

Of these laws, however, the first was speedily abrogated, the other was

evaded, and, by underhand and circuitous means, women came to receive

inheritances, to the great scandal, as afterward appeared, of the

reformers under the empire. But the continued quarrel of the sexes was

exaggerated by mutual jealousy, and at the outbreak of the Catilinarian

conspiracy, it was currently reported among the men that the traitors

obtained money for their enterprise from a multitude of matrons, who

longed for a bloody revolution to exterminate their husbands.

In the primitive ages the state had not only regulated the forms of

marriage, but had undertaken to enforce it. Among the duties of the

censors was that of levying fines upon the citizen who persisted in

remaining single to the detriment of the public weal. The censure of

Camillus and Postumius, 403 B.C., was celebrated for the patriotic vigour

with which this inquisition was made. In process of time the milder

method of encouraging marriage by rewards was introduced, the earliest

mention of which, perhaps, is in a speech of Scipio, censor in the

year 199 B.C. At this time it appears, certain immunities were already

granted to the fathers of legitimate, and even of adopted, children,

which last the censor denounced as an abuse. But neither rewards nor

penalties proved effectual to check the increasing tendency to celibacy,

and at the period of the Gracchi an alarm was sounded that the old

Roman race was becoming rapidly extinguished. The censor of the year

131 B.C., Metellus Macedonicus, expounded the evil to the senate in a

speech which seems to have been among the most curious productions of

antiquity. “Could we exist without wives at all,” it began, “doubtless we

should all rid ourselves of the plague they are to us; since, however,

nature has decreed that we cannot dispense with the infliction, it is

best to bear it manfully, and rather look to the permanent conservation

of the state than to our own transient satisfaction.” It is still more

curious, perhaps, that above a hundred years afterwards Augustus should

have ventured to recite in the polished senate of his own generation

the cynical invective of a ruder age. But, so it was, that when the

legislation of Julius Cæsar was found ineffectual for controlling

the still growing evil, it was reinforced by his successor with an

enhancement both of penalties and rewards, and the bitter measure

recommended by the arguments and even the language of the ancient censor.

The importance attached by the emperor to this fruitless legislation

appears from his turning his efforts in this direction from the first

year of his return to Rome. When he took the census with Agrippa in 28

B.C., he insisted on carrying into execution the regulations of the

dictator, which had been neglected during the interval of anarchy, and

were destined speedily to fall into similar neglect again. Upon this one

point the master of the Romans could make no impression upon the dogged

disobedience of his subjects. Both the men and the women preferred the

loose terms of union upon which they had consented to cohabit to the

harsh provisions of antiquity. They despised rewards, and penalties they

audaciously defied. Eleven years later Augustus caused the senate to pass

a new law of increased stringency, by which the marriage of citizens of

competent age was positively required. Three years grace was allowed

for making a choice and settling preliminaries; but when the allotted

interval was expired, it was found expedient to prolong it for two years

more; from time to time a further respite seems to have been conceded,

and we find the emperor still struggling almost to the close of his life

to impose this intolerable restraint upon the liberty or licence of the

times.

The consent of the fathers themselves, subservient as they generally

were, was given with murmurs of reluctance, the more so, perhaps, as they

alone were excepted from the indulgence, which was now prudently extended

to every lower order of citizens, of permission to form a legitimate

marriage with a freed woman. The measure was received indeed with outward

deference, but an inward determination to evade or overthrow it. Even the

poets, who were instructed to sing its praises, renounced the obligation

to fulfil its conditions; while others, whose voices were generally tuned

to accents of adulation, exulted openly in its relaxation or postponement.

The nature of the penalties and rewards assigned by this law shows

that the views of Augustus were for the most part confined to the

rehabilitation of marriage in the higher classes, and the restoration

of the purest blood of Rome. On the one hand, celibacy was punished by

incapacity to receive bequests, and even the married man who happened

to be childless was regarded with suspicion, and mulcted of one-half

of every legacy. On the other, the father of a family enjoyed a place

of distinction in the theatres, and preference in competition for

public office. He was relieved from the responsibilities of a tutor or

a judex, and, as by the earlier measure of the dictator, was excused

from a portion of the public burdens, if father of three children at

Rome, of four in Italy, or of five in the provinces. Of the two consuls,

precedence was given, not to the senior in age, according to ancient

usage, but to the husband and the father of the most numerous offspring.

It is clear that such provisions as these could have had little

application to the great mass of the citizens, who lived on the favour of

their noble patrons or the bounty of the treasury, and bred up a horde of

paupers to eat into the vitals of the state.

[Illustration: ROMAN TERRA-COTTA TOY

(Naples Museum)]

The perverse subjects of this domestic legislation seem at first to have

sought to evade it by entering into contracts of marriage which they

afterwards omitted to fulfil. It was necessary to enact new provisions

to meet this subterfuge. The facility allowed by the ancient usage

to divorce formed another obvious means of escape; but again did the

vigilant reformer interfere by appointing the observation of onerous

forms for the legal separation of married parties. When a divorce had

actually taken place, the parties fell again under the provisions of

the marriage law, and were required to find themselves fresh consorts

within a specified interval. Another mode of driving the reluctant

citizens within the marriage pale was the infliction of penalties and

disgrace upon unchastity beyond it; while now, for the first time,

adultery, which had been left to be punished by the domestic tribunal as

a private injury, was branded as a crime against the general well-being,

and subjected to the animadversion of the state. But Augustus was not

satisfied with directing his thunders against the guilty; he sought to

anticipate criminality by imposing fresh restraints upon the licentious

manners of the age. After the example of his predecessors in the

censorship, he fixed a scale of expense for the luxuries of the table,

and pretended to regulate the taste of the women for personal ornaments.

At the gladiatorial shows, from which they could no longer be excluded,

he assigned different places for the two sexes, removing the women to

the hinder rows, the least favourable either for seeing or being seen,

and altogether forbade them to attend the exhibitions of wrestling and

boxing.[c]

PATERNAL AUTHORITY AND ADOPTION: THE SLAVERY OF CHILDREN

If the Roman custom in relation to marriage and the position of women

generally is decidedly to be preferred to that of the Greeks, it cannot

be denied that the reverse was the case as regards the relations of

children, as the arbitrary power which the father had over them in Rome

was a flagrant injustice: the freedom of an individual was thus limited

in a most unjust manner, and the child held in an unnatural dependence on

his father. The great mistake consisted in the Roman father considering

the power which Nature imposes as a duty on the elders, of guiding

and protecting a child during infancy, as extending over his freedom,

involving his life and death, and continuing during his entire existence.

The Grecian law differed in two respects from the Roman: first, that the

father’s power ceased with the son’s independence, and this he attained

either by arriving at a certain period of life, or by marriage, or by

being entered on the list of citizens. Secondly, the Grecian father had

merely the right of terminating the relation between child and parent,

by banishing him from his house, or disinheriting him, without daring to

injure either his liberty or life.

The _patria potestas_ of the Romans was in theory indeed very different

from absolute possession (_dominium_), but in reality it approached very

near to it, especially in ancient times; only the latter extended over

things, the former over persons. Consequently this _potestas_ gave the

father the right over the life and liberty of his child. This law, said

to be as early as Romulus, but at any rate very ancient, was revived in

all its severity in the Twelve Tables. The unnatural part of this decree

was somewhat modified, in that the right of life and death belonged in

fact to that of discipline and punishment, which was permitted by the

state to the _pater familias_, and as the father could not act on his own

judgment, but must, conformably to custom, summon a family council. This

judgment is mentioned by Valerius Maximus,[k] where he says of T. Manlius

Torquatus, _ne consilio quidem necessariorum indigere se credidit_, as

his son had been accused by the Macedonians on account of extortion. The

father sat in judgment for three days, hearing witnesses and so on, and

at last banished his son from his presence, whereupon he killed himself.

Other examples are related, of sentence being passed on sons by their

fathers, without mention of the family council, and probably because

the official position of the father rendered such aid unnecessary, as

in the harsh judgment of Brutus and T. Manlius Imperiosus. In capital

offences, too, the father could by himself inflict punishment, as it is

deemed more proper that he should himself condemn his son, than that

he should come himself as his accuser. Valerius Maximus relates two

instances of a father’s judgment in the time of Augustus. In the latter

case the father condemned the son for parricide, letting him off with

exile only. A solemn family council also preceded, to which the emperor

was invited; there the kindness of the father openly prevailed, and

whilst he made use of his right, he protected his son from the punishment

which he would have found in the public court of justice. The second case

proves the harshness and misuse to which this right could be applied.

But after all, not one case of absolute death is mentioned, but only

of cruel punishment. If a misuse of the _patria potestas_ occurred in

earlier times, the censor could resent it. Orosius even speaks of a

public indictment; in later days the emperor saw to it, as it is related

of Trajan and Hadrian. In the two-hundredth year of the empire this power

was taken away from the father by law.

Although the right of sale undeniably existed, and was recognised by the

Twelve Tables, no recorded instance of it exists; and we may therefore

suppose that it was early abolished, and used only as a form in the

_emancipatio_. Numa even seems to have limited this right, according to

Dionysius. In the form of _emancipatio_, the father had the right to sell

the son three times; after the third time he did not again come into the

_patria potestas_.

From the _patria potestas_ must be entirely separated the right with

which we frequently meet in antiquity, of killing or exposing new-born

children. In Rome it did not exist to so great an extent as elsewhere.

Romulus is said to have interdicted sons and first-born daughters from

being killed. On the other hand, it seems to have been commanded that

the deformed should be put to death. That the exposure and murder of the

new-born was not infrequent, even in the most important families, many

instances show.

The son remained in the father’s power until his death, unless either of

them had suffered a _capitis diminutio_. The _patria potestas_ ceased if

the son became a _flamen dialis_. Other dignities made no difference.

In the case of a daughter it ceased when she entered into marriage with

_manus_, or became a vestal virgin. If a father wished to renounce the

_patria potestas_ over his son, it must be done either by adoption

(by which he passed into another _potestas_) or by the formality of

emancipation.[l]

Created by nature or transferred by adoption, the paternal authority

could be replaced, at the death of the father of the family, by

guardianship (_tutela_) for the protection of children (_tutela

impuberum_, _pupillaris_) and women (_tutela muliebris_), or it could

even be revived after it had expired under the name of trusteeship

(_cura_), for the protection of persons of full age but recognised as

incapable of managing for themselves.

Jurisprudence concerning guardianship and trusteeship was first of all

dominated by the principles of the ancient gentilitious law as sanctioned

by the Twelve Tables.

At the death of a father the feminine portion of a family--the widow

and grown-up but unmarried daughters, were looked upon as _sui juris_

in the sense that they could administer their own property, but as they

could not bring actions (except in the case of the vestals), they needed

for all legal acts which concerned them, the authority (_auctoritas_)

of a guardian. The sons reached the age of puberty at fourteen; under

that age they required a guardian. If the family had a new head over

fourteen years old, he was the guardian of all those under age and of all

the females of the family; in the contrary case the guardian came from

outside the family.

The law of the Twelve Tables did not allow those interested the choice

of their guardian; the legitimate guardian was the nearest relation

(_agnat_) of the deceased, or, in default, one of the members of the

gens. It was exactly the same for the trusteeship which came into

operation when a citizen _sui juris_ was recognised as mad, or decreed

by the interdictum of the prætor to be in the position of a maniac on

account of prodigality. The trustee had the most unlimited powers over

the person and property of the person so decreed.

The lawyers laboured to make the guardianship of the young secure

and effective, to suppress the guardianship of women and to abolish

the interference of the gentilitious customs in favour of natural

relationship.

A first step had already been taken in the time of the Twelve Tables--the

father of the family was permitted to choose and appoint by will the

guardian of his children. The legitimate guardian according to the

gentilitious law was called upon to replace the testamentary guardian

in case the latter refused to undertake the guardianship. Later the law

_Atilia_, about 190 B.C., empowered the prætor urbanus or the college

of the tribunes of the plebs to nominate a guardian (_tutor atilianus_)

in default of a legitimate or testamentary guardian in case the latter

refused to undertake the guardianship. The custom was even introduced

at this epoch of leaving to the widows, by will, the choice of their

guardian (_tutor optivus_), either allowing them to change them once or

twice (_optio angusta_), or as many times as it pleased them (_optio

plena_). Women could even escape effective guardianship--especially with

the object of acquiring the right to make wills--by tricks of procedure.

For this purpose they made use of fiduciary co-emption. Co-emption

substituted the co-emptionator for the guardian. The man who thus

acquired the rights of a husband ceded the woman to a third person by

mancipation. The latter emancipated the woman whose guardian he remained

in form (_tutor fiduciarius_). This procedure was well known in the time

of Cicero. It must be added that it was not applied in such an easy

fashion when the guardian was the _tutor legitimus_ of gentilitious law;

the latter could not be forced to give his consent to the fictitious

marriage which began the work of deliverance.

Thus it was against the legitimate guardianship that the legists directed

their efforts. Augustus released from ordinary guardianship all women

having three children, and freed women who were mothers of four children.

Claudius absolutely suppressed gentilitious guardianship for women. It

was only kept up for children. There remained only ordinary guardianship

to be annihilated. Hadrian rendered fiduciary co-emptions unnecessary

by giving women the right of making wills with the consent of their

guardians, and Antoninus in certain cases recognised the legality of

wills made without this sanction. As women had already received the

right of administration of their property, guardianship was from that

time almost objectless as far as they were concerned. It disappeared

of itself. The movement of emancipation continued; from the time of

Diocletian women began to acquire the right of guardianship over their

own children.

As to the guardianship of young boys the legists had tried to extend,

not the liberty of the wards, but the responsibility of the guardians.

They even thought good to extend the guardianship under another name

beyond the age fixed by the ancient law, which declared male children

to have attained puberty at the age of fourteen. From the commencement

of the second century before Christ, a law Plætoria created a state of

minority from fourteen to twenty-five; for fear the minors should be

“circumvented,” it decreed that the loans agreed to by them should only

be legal if they had been witnessed by a trustee named by the prætor.

Marcus Aurelius made it a duty of the magistrates to give permanent

trustees to all minors who requested them, and it was to the latter’s

interest to do so, because otherwise they could not appeal to the law.

The trusteeship of minors had, in spite of distinctions, a singular

resemblance to that of madmen and persons interdicted, and to the

guardianship of children. And, from the time of Constantine, it was much

the same as the other kinds. There was however one difference; this was

that the interdicted persons were reduced to a passive condition, and a

ward was only allowed to act with authorisation of the guardian, whilst

the minor could contract debts without the consent of his trustee.

Jurisprudence here became confused by its precautions; it hesitated

between respect for individual liberty and the far more potent anxiety to

safeguard the material interests of the family.[g]

It will be understood that the respect for individual liberty here

referred to has reference only to a relatively small portion of the

community. The larger number of the inhabitants of Rome had no individual

liberty; nor, indeed, any other right that commanded respect. In a

word, the mass of the population was made up of slaves; therefore, even

a casual glance at the manners and customs of Roman society cannot

disregard this unfortunate class.

THE INSTITUTION OF SLAVERY

The slaves in a large Roman house sprang from two different origins:

either they had been bought or they were born in the house of a slave

father and a slave mother. These latter were called _vernæ_, and were

more esteemed than the others. It is to them that their masters refer

in the inscriptions with the greatest respect and tenderness. They were

supposed to be attached to the family in which they had been born.

Besides, they had not been branded by the humiliation of a public

sale, and this meant a great deal. The bought slave had appeared in

the market-place, his feet marked with white and a label round his

neck, on which his merits and defects were inscribed; he had been set

on a platform and had been made to jump, turn a somersault, walk, run,

laugh, and talk. The slave born in the house had at least escaped this

ignominious ordeal. It was as though his dignity as a man had been less

entirely lost, and as though he must be more capable of noble feeling.

The man himself was so proud of this title of _verna_ that in some

instances it was retained even after liberation, and the freedman caused

it to be inscribed on his tomb.

[Illustration: ROMAN SLAVE WORKING IN THE FIELDS]

The number of slaves which these two sources of servitude, birth and

purchase, introduced into Rome must have been very considerable. The

Syrian or Numidian whom the steward of a great noble had bought in the

street of the Subura or near the temple of Castor, for the purpose of

making use of him as runner or cook, was sure, on entering the palace

of his new master, to find himself in a numerous company. The moralists

complain that in the great houses the servitors were counted by

thousands, and here they cannot be accused of exaggerating. Tacitus and

Pliny say the same. In a satire by Petronius, Trimalchio, who does not

know the tenth part of the slaves he possesses, is informed every morning

of the number of them born during the night on his domain. This is not,

as might be supposed, an imaginary scene, and history confirms the fable.

Seneca tells us nearly the same thing of one of Pompey’s freedmen. Even

this freedman had legions of slaves; and according to the custom of

good generals who keep a reckoning of the number of their soldiers, a

secretary was ordered to inform him every day of the changes that birth,

sales, or death had made in this army since the day before.

At the present time wealth is more equally distributed, life has become

more simple, and we have some difficulty in forming a conception of

the households of the great nobles of ancient Rome. Let us imagine

one of those rich patricians or knights who possessed four or five

thousand slaves, like that Cæcilius of whom Pliny the Elder speaks. This

multitude, crowded together in the palaces or scattered amongst the

farms, belong to different nations and speak different tongues. Besides,

each nation has its specialty. Greece furnishes chiefly grammarians

and scholars; the Asiatics are musicians or cooks; from Egypt come the

beautiful children whose chatter amuses their masters; the Africans run

in front of the litter to clear the way. As for the Germans, with their

huge bodies and their heads perched none knows where (_caput necio ubi

impositum_), their only use is to get killed in the arena for the greater

diversion of the Roman people. Some order must be established in this

confusion: they are classed according to their nation, and are known by

the colour of their skin (_per nationes et colores_) or, which is oftener

the case, they are divided into groups of ten, or decuries, with a

decurion to command them. Above the decurions are placed, in the country

the farmers (_villici_), in the town the stewards (_dispensatores_).

It is easy to see that to feed all these people was no easy matter, and

it is a rule that in a well-regulated establishment the master buys

nothing outside, but has enough on his own estates to supply his whole

household. His domains supply him with every kind of commodity, his

town houses contain workmen of every trade. To guard against failure

of supplies he lays up stores of every kind in huge storehouses, whose

riches he does not always know. It is related that during the time

when, as at the present day, the theatre sought to attract the crowd

by the brilliancy of the _mise-en-scène_, a manager who had to provide

dresses for a large number of the chorus, and did not want to go to

this expense, went to Lucullus and asked him to lend him one hundred

tunics. “A hundred tunics,” answered the rich Roman, “where do you expect

me to find them? Nevertheless I will see.” The next day he sent five

thousand. The management of these huge fortunes must have given a great

deal of trouble, and consequently the master often excused himself from

attending to it. Given up entirely to pleasure, he left all his affairs

in the hands of stewards, who robbed him. When he consented to manage

his business himself the laborious task was not without profit. It has

been said with reason that if the Roman nobles had for many centuries a

keen political sense, and if they showed themselves capable of ruling

the world, this was because each one could undergo in his own domains

an apprenticeship in the art of governing. The working of these vast

estates, the millions of sesterces to be handled, the nations of slaves

to be managed, rendered the great nobles administrators and financiers

from their youth up.

It is the rule that everyone imitates those above him, and it is the

custom for the inferior classes to follow as much as possible the

examples set them by the aristocracy. We have seen that the nobles of

Rome displayed their wealth by the number of their slaves; the middle

class did likewise. Perhaps, even, this great number of servitors

is still more striking in a modest house, so little does it seem to

correspond with the owner’s means. Marcus Scaurus, who afterwards became

a great personage, began by being very poor. He said in his memoirs

that his father only left him thirty-seven thousand sesterces [£296

or $1,480], and ten slaves. Certainly at the present day no one who

possessed only £296 in the world would have ten servants. The poet Horace

was not very rich either: he lived on the liberality of Mæcenas, who gave

him ease rather than riches. And yet he tells us that when he returned

home in the evening he had three slaves ready to serve his dinner. He

gives us the bill of fare of this dinner; there are leeks, chick peas,

and a few cakes. It would seem that three waiters are a great many for

such a poor dinner, and that the repast is not in keeping with the

service.

And though the expense was small, it is impossible that the great number

of superfluous slaves could have failed to be a general nuisance. Why

did people have them? Why did the middle classes impose upon themselves

a burden which weighed heavily on the rich? The answer is easy--they

desired to make a show. Everybody wished to dazzle the eyes by an

imposing retinue. The great personages, when they went to the Forum,

trailed after them a whole army of clients and friends. They required

hundreds of servitors or of freedmen whenever they left Rome. This is why

they had to turn their country or town houses into veritable barracks.

Under Nero the prefect of Rome, Pedanius Secundus, having been

assassinated by one of his slaves, all those that had that night slept

under his roof were arrested as accomplices. There were four hundred

of them. The man who walked out alone had to defy prejudice, as Horace

did. A magistrate who went out with only five servants, was pointed at

in the streets. The people had even begun to measure their esteem for a

man according to the number of servants who accompanied him. An advocate

was not considered eloquent if he did not have at least eight servitors

behind his litter. When he was not rich enough to buy them he hired

them, this being the only way by which he could get causes to plead and

be listened to when he spoke. Women also made use of them to attract

public attention. Juvenal says that Ogulnia took good care not to go to

the theatre alone; who would have turned round to look at her? She hired

female attendants and a fair-haired damsel, to whom she pretended to

give frequent orders. She carried display to such an extent that she was

always accompanied by a respectable nurse and some female friends of good

appearance. In this way Ogulnia was sure to create a sensation wherever

she went.

Thus the slaves were very useful out of doors; they accompanied

their masters, created a good opinion of him, and contributed to his

importance; but what was to be done with them in the house? There were

too many for occupation to be found for all in an ordinary household, and

in order to give them something to do each had his particular office.

“I use my slaves,” said a Greek, “like my limbs, one for each thing.”

From this arose the extreme division of labour in ancient houses; it was

never carried farther than at Rome. There were slaves to open the door

to a visitor, others to bring him in, others to lift up before him the

heavy draperies, and others to announce him. There were some to carry

the dishes to the table, others to carve, some to taste them before

the guests, and others to offer them. “These unhappy creatures,” says

Seneca, “live only to carve the poultry well.” Each portion of a woman’s

toilet was given to a different slave.

The slave who had charge of the clothes was not the same as the one who

looked after the jewels or the purple. There were special artists for

hairdressing and for perfuming. The tomb has even been discovered of an

unhappy man whose sole function in life was to paint the aged Livia. Thus

the master as soon as he returns home finds a crowd of servitors who are

on the lookout for his wants and anticipate his orders. “I sit down,”

says a character in a comedy, “my slaves run up to me and take off my

shoes, others hasten to arrange the couches and to prepare the repasts.

They all take as much trouble as possible.” What is the result? That by

force of being surrounded and waited upon the master contracts the habit

of doing absolutely nothing. All these people who gather around him,

and to whom he is so grateful, render him the worst service possible;

they take from him the necessity of doing anything for himself. The

Roman of the early days of the republic, who had hardly more than one

personal servant and who waited upon himself, was active and energetic;

he conquered the world. The Roman of the empire, continually surrounded

by a troop of slaves, became cowardly, effeminate, and a dreamer. Of all

the furniture in his house, his couch is the one he is most ready to

use. He lies down to sleep, to eat, to read, and to think. His servants

divide amongst themselves all the functions of life, and all is minutely

calculated to give him nothing to do. But this regularity which he

admires so much is full of danger. Physical activity cannot be relaxed

without moral activity suffering as well, and he who ceases to act ends

by ceasing to have any will. This race of men who had given up exercising

their bodies and keeping themselves in condition, also allowed their

souls to become enervated. It is therefore a true saying that the large

number of slaves which the Romans kept up contributed in no small measure

to render themselves the slaves of the cæsars.

[Illustration: ROMAN FISH HOOKS

(In the British Museum)]

Let us suppose the newly purchased slave thrown amidst the multitude

of servants that fills the Roman house; his first thought is naturally

for his new master. He tries anxiously to know him, that he will see

what he may expect from him, and how he will be treated. Let us do

like him, and let us ask first of all to what treatment he will be

subjected, and what will be the relations between master and slave.

The answer to this question is not easy; the lot of the slave may be

conceived of in different ways, and, for instance, it entirely changes

its aspect according to whether we study it from the laws or from the

facts. Until the days of the Antonines, the law in relation to him is

terribly hard. It abandons him wholly to his master, whose property

he is as much as a field or a flock of sheep. He has the right to use

him or abuse him according to his fancy. He is free to inflict upon

him all kinds of insults and dishonour; he can beat and kill him.

We are therefore forced to admit that according to the laws there

has never been a worse condition than that of a Roman slave; but it

must be remembered that human institutions never do all the good or

harm of which they are capable. In public morals and in the general

feeling there exist obstacles which cannot be surmounted. Laws may be

excellent or detestable; man, who is little capable of perfection and

who is instinctively averse to barbarism, corrects their exaggeration

in practice; as a rule he only carries them out in so far as they are

not opposed to the mediocrity of his nature. We are therefore liable

to mistake, if we judge the social condition of a nation according to

its legislation. The first thing to discover is in what manner it was

actually applied. There is reason to think that in Rome, even at the

time when manners were most barbaric, the terrible rights that the law

gave to the masters were rarely taken advantage of. Cato might say that

it is wise to sell a slave when he is old and can be of no further use;

custom might allow him to be abandoned without mercy when he was ill and

left in the island of the Tiber near the temple of Æsculapius, in order

that he might recover or die without any expense; but it is probable

that, in generous souls, nature has always revolted against such cowardly

desertion. There are several reasons for thinking that even in Cato’s

time the slave was as a rule humanely treated, that he lived on familiar

terms with his master, and that he nearly always grew old in his master’s

house. After the battle of Cannæ, Rome having no more soldiers did not

hesitate to arm eight thousand slaves. They fought bravely side by side

with the legions, and deserved their liberty. Would they have exposed

themselves to die for masters whom they detested?

All slaves, however, were not treated alike, and distinctions must be

made between them. They were as a rule less well treated in the country

than in the town. The agriculturists, in describing the stock of a farm

and the instruments of cultivation, have no hesitation in classing the

slave in the same category with the oxen. In reality the master does not

make much difference between him and the cattle. At night he is shut up

in a species of stables or underground prisons (ergastula), with narrow

windows, at such a distance above ground that he cannot reach them with

his hand. During the day, if he is to work alone, irons are put on his

feet in case the fresh air and open field should suggest to him the idea

of escape. This is certainly rigorous treatment, and nevertheless the

slave seems to support it with no great difficulty. A comic author makes

him say, “When one’s work is in a distant field, where the master rarely

comes, one is not a servitor but master.”

When a day of festival comes round and work is suspended, he celebrates

it with such noisy joy that “those in the neighbourhood can hardly

support his outbursts of delight.” It would have been difficult to

imagine--seeing him after the harvest or the vintage, amusing himself

with such good will, laughing and singing at the games of the cross-ways

(compitalia) or jumping gaily over the straw fires at the Palilia--that

he was so harshly treated the rest of the year. What proves that on

the whole this lot was not thought so wretched is that the town slave

sometimes envied his country brother. Horace had at Rome a slave of an

unstable disposition who asked his master as a favour to send him to his

Sabine farm. It is true he soon repented this.

As a rule the slave was sent to the fields only as a punishment when he

had given dissatisfaction. It is certain that he was better treated and

happier in town. Placed near his master he might have to suffer more

from his caprice, but he also reaped advantage from it. He had the best

chance of obtaining his liberty and making his fortune. There were some

whose situations were even brilliant and envied, namely the imperial

slaves. To belong to Cæsar’s household was to be somebody, and the great

lords who esteemed themselves happy to be known by the porter of Sejanus

bought the good graces of the stewards of Tiberius by presents and

degrading acts. Even before being liberated these slaves often filled

real public offices; they were officers of the mint, the finances, and

the commissariat of Rome. They had also a sense of their own importance.

They were proud and insolent and thought they were under an obligation to

see that the dignity of the emperor was respected in their own persons.

After these we should naturally place the slaves belonging to the towns,

the temples, and the different civil and religious bodies. When authority

is thus divided and when nobody takes the entire burden, not only is the

servitor not under control but in reality it is he who dominates. Thus

the slaves of this class appear as a rule to be rich and contented with

their lot. Some there are who make large donations to the societies which

have bought them, giving themselves the piquant pleasure of being the

benefactors of their masters.

Nor are those belonging to some great houses much to be pitied. If

they attain high functions in the establishment they make good profit.

Sometimes the steward of a rich man found the position so lucrative

that he preferred to remain a slave, rather than give it up. The most

fortunate were those who happened to fall to a master who prided himself

upon being humane and enlightened, who cultivated literature and

practised the lessons of the philosophers. Pliny the Younger treated

his dependents with the greatest kindness. Not only did he forbid irons

to be put on them when they were tilling his fields, but he did not

allow them to be crowded together in narrow cells or dark prisons. In

his house at Laurentum the accommodation was so good that he could put

guests there. He looked after them whenever they were ill, he allowed

them to make wills and leave their small possessions to their friends;

his humanity went so far that he wept at losing them. In the service of

a rich and wise man like Pliny the slave is not really very unhappy. It

is when he is with humbler people that his lot is harder. As he shares

the fortune of the house, with the poor he is of course poor, and he may

chance to fall into the hands of a master in very wretched circumstances.

Everybody, even the workmen and soldiers, had slaves in those days. Even

the peasant of the _Moretum_ whose worldly wealth consists of a little

garden, and who gets up so early to prepare his dish of garlic, cheese,

and salt, is not alone in his hut; he has for maidservant a negress, whom

the poet describes to us with such striking realism: “Her hair is woolly,

her lips thick, her skin black; her body badly made, her legs lank, and

nature has given her a foot which spreads at ease” (spatiosa prodiga

planta). In the poor houses little money was made and life was hard.

The only compensation the slave had in his miserable life was that

he lived near his master, that he was more familiarly treated; that,

being obliged to help him in his sufferings and share his hard lot, he

was looked upon less as a slave than a kinsman. Moreover, it must be

noted that, in Rome as in the East to-day, he always formed part of the

family. In modern times master and servants, being both free and united

by a temporary contract on conditions already agreed upon between them,

live apart from one another, although under the same roof. They are two

jealous individualities who keep a watch on each other and are very

determined to maintain their respective rights. At Rome the slave had

no rights; he was not a citizen and hardly a man. His dignity did not

prevent him from wholly abandoning himself to the man to whom he belonged

and becoming one with him.

There was thus more intimacy and less reserve in their bearing towards

each other. There remain many tombs erected by masters in memory of their

servitors. They often bear the expression of the most tender feelings;

not only is homage paid to their good service, they are also thanked for

their affection. In return it must be remembered that they were treated

with kindness,“like sons of the house,” and some significant words are

even ascribed to them: “Servitude, thou hast never been too heavy for

me.” On the tomb of a centurion of the fourth legion, which was erected

by his freedmen, are these words: “I never married, and I possessed

children,” and the slaves’ answer, “Thanks and farewell.”

What strikes us most of all in studying Roman society is that most of

the vices which devoured it and caused its ruin were due to slavery. We

have seen that it favoured the corruption of the higher classes, that

in accustoming a man to rely continually on the activity of others it

paralysed his strength and enfeebled his will. It is also responsible

for having nourished a contempt of human life. Cruelty may be learned.

Perhaps it is naturally repugnant to mankind, but it feeds on example.

It may be said that the houses of many of the rich were public schools

of inhumanity. The slave long suffered from it and the master also ended

by being its victim. If under the cæsars the crowd saw the deaths of

so many illustrious people with great indifference, was it not because

tortures and death were no new things to them, and because, when they

had become used to seeing manhood no longer respected in the slave, they

were less moved to anger at seeing it outraged in the noble? Another

graver reproach which can be made against slavery is that it created

that miserable populace of the time of the empire which disgusts us so

much in the narratives of Tacitus. Its baseness and cowardice are no

longer astonishing when we remember its origin. It was the outcome of

slavery; slavery formed it, and naturally it was formed for slavery. Not

only did its moral degradation and political indifference render the

tyranny of the cæsars possible, but the recollection of the injustice it

had suffered must have nourished in it those feelings of bitterness and

hostility which exposed society to perils little dreamed of.

If there was no servile war in Italy after Spartacus, it is none the

less true that slavery kept up a kind of perpetual conspiracy against

the public safety. Above all it was the most determined enemy of that

spirit of conservatism and tradition which had been the strength of

the Roman race. The slaves did not spring from the soil of Rome, their

recollections and affections were elsewhere, and when they became

citizens they did not hesitate to welcome foreign customs and to

introduce them into the city. Whilst the statesmen and leading men wore

themselves out in trying to preserve what remained of the ancient spirit

and the old customs, down below, amongst those classes of the populace

which were constantly being recruited from slavery, there was a continual

working to destroy it. It was thus that, thanks to this secret and

powerful influence, new religions easily spread throughout the empire.

At the time nobody seems to have perceived the amount of the evil, and

as its extent was not realised only partial remedies were proposed.

Efforts, often successful, were made to render the slaves’ lot less hard.

They were given some security against their masters; the philosophers

proclaimed, and all recognised with them, that these were men; lawyers

even inscribed in the codes that slavery was contrary to nature. It seems

as if this principle, had it been followed out in all its consequences,

must have eventually led to the abolition of slavery; but when would

the day for it have come, or would it have come at all, if the ancient

world had continued? It may well be doubted, in view of the slowness with

which progress is accomplished and the frequent recurrence of causeless

reactions. Even in the most enlightened times, when opinion seems to give

the strongest impulse towards liberal measures, it may chance on a sudden

that power, obeying other instincts, again becomes cruel or severe, or

that it hovers between severity and indulgence, unable to decide which

course to pursue.

[Illustration: ROMAN DOLLS

(From the British Museum)]

It is under Augustus, just when manners are becoming milder and humanity

seems to triumph, that a _senatus-consultum_ ordains that when a master

has been assassinated by a servant, all those who slept under his roof

that night, innocent or guilty, shall be put to death. It is no less a

matter of surprise that under Constantine, in Christian times, the laws,

which since the Antonines had become much more humane, all at once revert

to the ancient severities against slaves. These sudden relapses made them

lose in a moment all the ground that they had gained during centuries,

and all had to be begun again. Let us add that the measures taken to

protect slaves were not always so efficacious as might be expected.

Humane laws were hardly ever carried out except by well-disposed men,

who were themselves inclined to humanity. Others found ways to evade

the laws. Authority, always averse to interfering with the family and

restraining the sacred power of the master, generally shut its eyes, and

thus abuses, practically beyond the reach of the law, became general.

What is most remarkable of all is that no ancient writer ever expressed,

either as a far-away hope, or as a fugitive wish, or as an improbable

hypothesis, the idea that slavery might one day be abolished. Whether

favourable to slavery or not, no one so much as imagined that it could

cease to be. Those even who complain of it with bitterness, who count up

the dangers that it occasions and the annoyances to which it gives rise,

those who say with Seneca: “How many starving animals, whose voracity we

have to gratify! What expense to clothe them! What anxiety to watch all

those rapacious hands! What pleasure is there in being waited upon by

people who murmur against us and detest us?”--even they did not seem to

think that some day these people might be dispensed with. The institution

was so ancient, and had so entered into the habits of the nation,

that life could not be imagined without it. Men who thought slavery

indispensable were not inclined, even when they knew it to be unjust, to

take much trouble to abolish it. It was one of those radical reforms that

one is scarcely justified in expecting in the ordinary course of events,

and we may say that such a complete change, which no one either desired

or foresaw, could only be accomplished by one of those revolutions which

renovate the world.[h]

Let us turn from this depressing picture of the one labouring class in

Rome to the complementary theme of games and recreations.

GAMES AND RECREATIONS

Nothing is more enlightening to the understanding both of the

peculiarities of the individual and of the character of a nation, than to

observe the free motion which begins where work leaves off. Professional

activity is illustrated more or less in the same fashion all the world

over, and it is forced into a more or less perfect uniformity, for it

always follows the same aim. Recreation, on the other hand, opens the

door to play, in which spontaneous inclination embodies its expression.

As the traveller will note with particular attention the games and

entertainments in which a nation spends its leisure, so the student of

antiquity is prompted to direct his gaze to this side of life. But on no

question are the sources of information so reticent, so far as the Romans

are concerned, as on the question before us.

If we take as our basis the description which the ancients themselves

give us of the activity peculiar to the Romans and their rooted

disinclination for the Greek _far niente_ (otium Græcum), the dignified

motion and bearing (gravitas) that was so little fitted for gaiety that

even Cicero says that only a man drunk or mad can dance; if we bear

in mind the foreign nature of the apparatus which, at all events in

the time of the emperors, was engaged for the carrying on of games and

festivals--the actors, mimes, pantomimes, athletes, gladiators who were

employed for amusement, paid and despised,--we shall be inclined to infer

that the Romans had altogether little talent for a spirited enjoyment of

life and for national rejoicing.

But one piece of general information at least has been unequivocally

handed down to us, and this is the fact that they took an early and

religious pleasure in dancing, in studying, and in games. At the _pompa

circensis_ in the _ludi magni_, which were celebrated between the 4th and

the 19th of September, two detachments of dancers were employed; first

those bearing arms in three choruses of men, youths, and boys, all in red

tunics with bronze girdles, equipped with swords, lances, and crested

helmets, then the comic dancers in sheepskins. Similarly dancing was a

part of the ritual of the salii and of the arvales long before it became

fashionable with the youths of distinction. Music, too, is acceptable to

the gods, and not only in foreign rites, but it is a necessary ingredient

in Roman ritual for which the old college of the _tubicines_ and the

_tibinices_ provided. Music was indispensable in all festal celebrations,

triumphs, funeral processions; and at the feast of Pales (on the 21st

of April) the whole town was a blare of wind instruments, cymbals, and

kettledrums. Songs and mimic representations were not missing either in

the ceremonial of worship, or at home, or on the occasion of popular

rejoicing, as we may see from the songs of the salii and of the arvales,

from the songs of praise during meals, from the _fescennini_, _saturæ_,

and _atellanæ_, as well as from the comic interludes at the Saturnalia,

at the Floralia, at the Megalesia, at triumphs, and at funeral

processions.

True, these beginnings of an original Roman national poetry never reached

their perfect development, because they submitted to the influence of

Greek literature, so much admired by the educated classes; but, on the

other hand, they resisted this influence so strenuously that Augustus

still continued to make _fescennini_, and the four masked types are

still unchanged to-day in the Italian _commedia dell’ arte_. We may

assume the same to have been generally the case with the games of

amusement. What was specially Greek in them was absorbed by the higher

orders chiefly; what was really national is still to be traced more or

less in the Italy of to-day. So the well-known game _mora_, in which

two players hold out a number of fingers at the same moment and let

their adversary guess how many they were, is found certainly with the

Greeks, but is of extreme antiquity in Italy, where it is described

by the expression _micare digitis_, and was used on grave occasions,

and particularly on the occasion of business transactions, as a kind

of lottery (_sors_). On the whole, the information on Roman games is

uncommonly scanty, and it is vain to attempt to imagine a definite

picture of the entertainments at the Matronalia, the Vinalia, and the

Saturnalia.

Ovid once describes the festival of Anna Perenna that was celebrated on

a heath on the Via Flaminia, but there is nothing characteristic in the

whole description; people eat, drink, dance, and sing, but what they

sing are not national songs. “_Cantant_,” says Ovid, “_cantant quidquid

didicere theatris_.” What we hear of games in Rome is all Greek or is

reckoned as such at least; even the old game of jumping upon full leather

bottles that were oiled, and trying, it would appear, to stand on one’s

head upon them, is mentioned by Virgil as Attic, and in fact identical

with the Greek ἀσκωλιάξειν. Under these circumstances we must not attempt

to prove the existence of any form of national rejoicing peculiar to the

Romans, and must confine ourselves to gathering together those games

which, although customary in Greece also, are frequently mentioned in

Rome. On the one hand, we have children’s and young men’s games; on the

other, games of hazard and board games.

The game of ball, which is known to all antiquity, is certainly a game

for young men, but owing to the healthy movement which it affords, and

which Galen quite particularly recommends in a singular pamphlet on the

little ball, it was also a recreation for elder persons as useful as

it was agreeable. In Rome and Italy generally ball was played, both on

the Campus Martius, where the younger Cato himself might have been seen

taking part in the game, and in the _sphæristeria_ especially laid out

for the purpose in the baths and villas. Among the players of ball were

Mucius Scævola, Cæsar, the emperor Augustus, Mæcenas, the old Spurinna

the friend of Pliny, the emperor Alexander Severus; and there were people

who spent their whole time in this amusement.

During the empire five kinds of balls were employed, one small, one

middle-sized, one large, one very large, one full of air. Perhaps these

five kinds correspond to the Latin expressions _pila_, _trigon_ or _pila

trigonalis_, _pila paganica_, _harpastum_, perhaps identical with _pila

arenaria_, and _follis_. The ordinary ball was stuffed with hair and sewn

with bright or at all events coloured patches; the _paganica_, the name

of which indicates a game between people _en masse_, in which the whole

village (pagus) in the country took part, was a large ball stuffed with

feathers; the _follis_, which was first discovered in the time of Pompey,

was the largest and was full of air (κενή); of the _harpastum_ we know

nothing further than that it was a small hard ball.

The different kinds of games may be determined first by the nature of

the throw and secondly by the number of people engaged in the games.

First the ball may be thrown up and caught by the thrower himself or by

another--this is the Greek οὐρανία; secondly the ball may pass between

two or more players (datatim ludere), the object being skill in throwing

(διδόναι), _dare, ittere_, _jactare_, in catching (λαμβάνειν, δέχεσθαι,

facere, excipere), and in throwing back (remittere, repercutere). Finally

the ball may be bounced violently on the ground or against the wall, so

that it rebounds and may be repeatedly slapped with the hand. In this

game, which is the Greek ἀποῤῥαξις and the Latin _expulsim ludere_,

the number of bounces are counted, and if several play, the winner is

he who can keep it up longest without letting the ball fall. The true

significance of the word _pilicrepus_ is certainly to be found from this

game, as elsewhere the ball makes no especial kind of noise. According to

this, apart from the height of the throw, we may indicate all the methods

of playing ball by the formulæ of _datatim_, _reptim_, _expulsim ludere_.

[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE COLOSSEUM]

So far as the number of players is concerned, first of all there was the

single game in which one played alone with one, or also with two and

three balls, keeping them in perpetual motion as he sat or walked. From

this juggler’s game was derived the art of Ursus Togatus, who, proud of

his steadiness, first used glass balls. Then there was the double game in

which two played and threw the ball to each other, and then one of the

most popular games, which was played before the bath and very frequently

in the Campus Martius, was the _trigon_, in which three players took

part. It is often mentioned but never described. The stations of the

three players were at the three corners of an equilateral triangle; but

the ball did not travel simply from one player to another; it was thrown

at one of them arbitrarily, so that he had to rid himself of two balls

at the same time, a process which involved the use of both hands, and

not only the catching of the two balls but their discharge at one of

the other players. Besides the players themselves, three persons were

necessary for the _trigon_ to pick up the balls, and three others to keep

the score.

The games for players _en masse_ (sphæromachiæ) were particularly

interesting to the Romans. There were three kinds, ἡ ἐπίσκυρος or

ἐπίκοινος τὸ φενίνδα, and τὸ ἁρπαστόν. We are only partially informed

of the difference between them; according to the latest investigation

however the following may be assumed to be probably correct particulars.

In the ἐπίσκυρος, the players divide into sides of equal numbers which

are separated by a line marked in stones (σκῦρος): they also had a limit

at the back of them beyond which they were not allowed to go. The ball is

placed on the σκῦρος. One of the sides, whichever is the first to capture

the placed ball, throws off as far as possible; the other side remains

where it is caught and in turn throws it back. The object is to throw

the ball with such force that the opposite side are driven back, and to

drive them right back to the boundaries of the court, in which case they

have lost the game.

In the second game, the φενίνδα, two sides are also engaged. The man who

throws off challenges a definite person on the opposing side to catch the

ball, but then throws it in quite another direction, in which case it has

to be caught by someone else. If it falls to the ground, the side which

failed to catch it has lost. We know least of all about the _harpastum_,

but the ball seems to have been thrown up in the air so that the thrower

himself is in a position to catch it again. In order to stop this all

the players scrum up, and while they are struggling for the ball upset

one another to the accompaniment of a tremendous noise. Finally, the

game described by Cinnamus the Byzantine, which Meineke and after him

Grasberger have identified with the _harpastum_, has nothing whatever to

do with it. It was quite a particular game for the imperial family, was

played on horseback, and the ball was hit with a racket, none of these

features being characteristic of the _harpastum_.[f]

_The Roman Theatre and Amphitheatre_

[Illustration: ROMAN LAMP]

If the Roman people was ill accommodated in its streets, it might derive

compensation in the vast constructions which were erected for its

amusement, the ample walks and gardens devoted to its recreation, and

the area which was sedulously preserved for its exercise in the Campus

Martius, and the circuses of Romulus and Flaminius. The theatre of

Pompey, the first fabricated of stone for permanent use, was rivalled by

that of Balbus, and Augustus dedicated a third to the pleasures of the

citizens under the title of the theatre of Marcellus. From the enormous

size of these celebrated edifices, it is clear that the idea of reserving

them for dramatic performances entered but little into the views of

their builders. The Roman theatre was an institution very different from

ours, where a select audience pay their price of admission to a private

spectacle on a large scale. They were the houses of the Roman people, to

which every citizen claimed the right of entrance; for they were given

to him for his own by their munificent founders, and the performances

which took place in them were provided gratuitously by the magistrates.

The first object, therefore, was to seat the greatest number of people

possible; and when that was accomplished, the question followed of how

they should be safely and conveniently entertained.

An assemblage of thirty thousand spectators, gathering excitement from

the consciousness of their own multitude, could not sit tamely under

the blaze of an Italian sun, tempered only by an awning, in the steam

and dust of their own creating, which streams of perfumed waters were

required to allay, to hear the formal dialogue of the ancient tragedy

declaimed by human puppets from brass-lipped masques, staggering on

the stilted cothurnus. Whatever might be the case with the Greeks, it

was impossible, at least for the plainer Romans, so to abstract their

imaginations from the ungraceful realities thus placed before them as to

behold in them a symbolic adumbration of the heroic and the divine. For

the charms, however, both of music and dancing, which are also considered

pleasures of the imagination, they appear to have had a genuine though

perhaps a rude taste. Their dramatic representations, accordingly, were

mostly conducted in pantomime; this form at least of the drama was that

which most flourished among them, and produced men of genius, inventors,

and creators in their own line.

Some of the most famous of the mimic actors were themselves Romans; but

the ancient prejudice against the exercise of histrionic art by citizens

was never perhaps wholly overcome. Accordingly Greek names figure more

conspicuously than Roman in the roll of actors on the Roman stage; and

two of these, Bathyllus and Pylades, divided between them, under the mild

autocracy of Augustus, the dearest sympathies and favours of the masters

of the world. The rivalry of these two competitors for public applause,

or rather of their admirers and adherents, broke out in tumultuous

disorders, which engaged at last the interference of the emperor himself.

“It is better for your government,” said one of them to him, when

required to desist from a professional emulation which imperilled the

tranquillity of the city--“it is better that the citizens should quarrel

about a Pylades and a Bathyllus than about a Pompey and a Cæsar.”

But whatever claims pantomime might have as a legitimate child of the

drama, the Roman stage was invaded by another class of exhibitions,

for which no such pretensions could be advanced. The vast proportions

of the theatre invited a grander display of scenic effects than could

be supplied by the chaste simplicity of the Greek chorus, in which the

priests or virgins, whatever their number might be, could only present

so many repetitions of a single type. The finer sentiment of the upper

classes was overpowered by the vulgar multitude, who demanded with noisy

violence the gratification of their coarse and rude tastes. Processions

swept before their eyes of horses and chariots, of wild and unfamiliar

animals; the long show of a triumph wound its way across the stage; the

spoils of captured cities, and the figures of the cities themselves

were represented in painting or sculpture; the boards were occupied in

every interval of more serious entertainment by crowds of rope-dancers,

conjurers, boxers, clowns, and posture-makers, men who walked on their

hands, or stood on their heads, or let themselves be whirled aloft by

machinery, or suspended upon wires, or who danced on stilts, or exhibited

feats of skill with cups and balls. But these degenerate spectacles were

not the lowest degradation to which the theatres were subjected. They

were polluted with the grossest indecencies; and the luxury of the stage,

as the Romans delicately phrased it, drew down the loudest indignation of

the reformers of a later age. Hitherto at least legislators and moralists

had been content with branding with civil infamy the instruments of the

people’s licentious pleasures; but the pretext even for this was rather

the supposed baseness of exhibiting one’s person for money than the

iniquity of the performances themselves. The legitimate drama, which was

still an exercise of skill among the Romans, was relegated, perhaps,

to the smaller theatres of wood, which were erected year by year for

temporary use. There were also certain private theatres, in which knights

and senators could exercise their genius for singing and acting without

incurring the stigma of public representation.

The appetite for grandeur and magnificence, developed so rapidly among

the Romans by the pride of opulence and power, was stimulated by the

furious rivalry of the great nobles. The bold and ingenious tribune,

Curio, whose talents found a more fatal arena in the contests of the

civil wars, was perhaps the first to imagine the form of the double

hemicycle, which he executed with an immense wooden structure and a vast

mechanical apparatus, by which two theatres, after doing their legitimate

duty to the drama, could be wheeled front to front, and combined into a

single amphitheatre for gladiatorial spectacles. There can be no doubt

that this extraordinary edifice was adapted to contain many thousands of

spectators; and there are few perhaps, even of our own engineers, who

build tubular bridges and suspend acres of iron network over our heads,

who would not shrink from the problem of moving the population of a great

city upon a single pair of pivots.

The amphitheatre of Julius Cæsar in the Campus was of wood also, and

this, as well as its predecessors, seems to have been taken down after

serving the purpose of the day. It remained for Statilius Taurus, the

legate of Augustus, to construct the first edifice of this character

in stone, and to bequeath to future ages the original model of the

magnificent structures which bear that name, some of which still attest

the grandeur of the empire in her provinces; but the most amazing

specimen of which, and indeed the noblest existing monument of all

ancient architecture, is the glorious Colosseum at Rome.

Like most of the splendid buildings of this period, the amphitheatre of

Taurus was erected in the Campus Martius, the interior of the city not

admitting of the dedication of so large a space to the purpose; though it

was rumoured indeed that Augustus had purposed to crown the series of his

public works by an edifice of this nature, in the centre of his capital,

to be attached perhaps to his forum. While the amphitheatre, however, was

a novel invention, the circus, to which it was in a manner supplementary,

was one of the most ancient institutions of the city. The founder himself

had convened his subjects in the Murcian valley, beneath his cabin on the

Palatine, to celebrate games of riding, hunting, and charioteering.

The enclosure in which these shows were annually exhibited was an oblong,

curved at the farther end, above six hundred yards in length, but

comparatively narrow. The seats which ranged round the two larger sides

and extremity of this area (which derived its name of arena from the sand

with which it was strewed) were originally cut for the most part out of

the rising ground and turfed; less rude accommodation was afterwards

supplied by wooden scaffoldings, but the whole space was eventually

surrounded by masonry and decorated with all the forms and members of

Roman architecture.

The arena was adapted for chariot racing by a partition, a dwarf wall,

surmounted with various emblematic devices, which ran along the middle

and terminated at either end in goals or ornamented pillars, round which

the contending cars were driven a stated number of times. The eye of the

spectator, from his position aloft, was carried over this spinal ridge,

and he obtained a complete view of the contest, which thus passed and

repassed, amidst clouds of dust and roars of sympathising excitement,

before his feet. The Romans had from the first an intense delight in

these races; and many of the most graphic passages of their poets

describe the ardour of the horses, the emulation of their drivers, and

the tumultuous enthusiasm of the spectators.

These contests maintained their interest from the cradle to the very

grave of the Roman people. The circus of Constantinople, under the Greek

designation of Hippodrome, was copied from the pattern of the Roman; and

the factions, which divided the favour of the tribes almost from the

beginning of the empire, continued to agitate the city of Theodosius

and Justinian. The citizens were never satiated with this spectacle, and

could sit without flagging through a hundred heats, which the liberality

of the exhibiter sometimes provided for them. But the races were more

commonly varied with contests of other kinds. All the varieties of the

Greek pancratium, such as boxing, wrestling, and running, were exhibited

in the circus; gladiators fought one another with naked swords, sometimes

in single combat, sometimes in opposing bands.

The immense size of the arena, unfavourable for the exhibition of the

duel, was turned to advantage for the display of vast multitudes of

wild animals, which were let loose in it to be transfixed with spears

and arrows. This practice seems to date from the sixth century, when

victorious generals first returned to Rome from the far regions of the

teeming East, to ingratiate themselves with the populace by showing

them the strange monsters of unknown continents, lions and elephants,

giraffes and hippopotami. As in other things, the rivalry of the nobles

soon displayed itself in the number of these creatures they produced for

massacre; and the favour of the citizens appears to have followed with

constancy the champion who treated it with the largest effusion of blood.

The circus was too spacious for the eye to gloat upon the expression

of conflicting passions, and watch the last ebbings of life; but the

amphitheatre brought the greatest possible number of spectators within

easy distance of the dead and dying, and fostered the passion for the

sight of blood, which continued for centuries to vie in interest with the

harmless excitement of the race.

The idea of the theatre is representation and illusion, and the stage is,

as it were, magic ground, over which the imagination may glance without

restraint and wander at will from Thebes to Athens, from the present to

the past or future. But in the amphitheatre all is reality. The citizen,

seated face to face with his fellow-citizens, could not for a moment

forget either his country or his times. The spectacles here presented

to him made no appeal to the discursive faculties; they brought before

his senses, in all the hardness of actuality, the consummation of those

efforts of strength, skill, and dexterity in the use of arms to which

much of his own time and thoughts were necessarily directed.

The exhibition of gladiatorial combats, which generally preceded the

departure of a general upon a foreign campaign, was part of the soldier’s

training (and every citizen was regarded as a soldier), from which he

received the last finish of his education, and was taught to regard

wounds and death as the natural incidents of his calling. These were

probably the most ancient of the military spectacles. The combats of wild

beasts, and of men with beasts, were a corruption of the noble science

of war which the gladiatorial contests were supposed to teach; they

were a concession to the prurient appetite for excitement, engendered

by an indulgence which, however natural in a rude and barbarous age,

was actually hardening and degrading. The interest these exercises at

first naturally excited degenerated into a mere passion for the sight of

death; and as the imagination can never be wholly inactive in the face

of the barest realities, the Romans learned to feast their thoughts on

the deepest mystery of humanity, and to pry with insatiate curiosity into

the secrets of the last moments of existence. In proportion as they lost

their faith in a future life, they became more restlessly inquisitive

into the conditions of the present.

The eagerness with which the great mass of the citizens crowded to

witness these bloody shows, on every occasion of their exhibition, became

one of the most striking features of Roman society, and none of their

customs has, accordingly, attracted more of the notice of the ancient

writers who profess to describe the manners of their times. By them they

are often represented as an idle and frivolous recreation, unworthy of

the great nation of kings; nor do we find the excuse officially offered

for the combats of gladiators, as a means of cherishing courage and

fostering the ruder virtues of antiquity, generally put forward as their

apology by private moralists. Men of reflection, who were far themselves

from sharing the vulgar delight in these horrid spectacles (and it should

be noticed that no Roman author speaks of them with favour, or gloats

with interest on their abominations), acquiesced without an effort in the

belief that it was necessary to amuse the multitude, and was better to

gratify them with any indulgence they craved for than to risk the more

fearful consequences of thwarting and controlling them. The blood thus

shed on the arena was the price they calculated on paying for the safety

and tranquillity of the realm.

[Illustration: ROMAN WEIGHTS]

In theory, at least, the men who were thus thrust forth to engage the

wild beasts were condemned criminals; but it was often necessary to

resort to the expedient of hiring volunteers to furnish the numbers

required, and this seems to prove that the advantage was generally on the

side of the human combatant. The gladiators, although their profession

might be traced by antiquarians to the combats of armed slaves around the

pyre of their master, ending in their mutual destruction in his honour,

were devoted to no certain death. They were generally slaves purchased

for the purpose, but not unfrequently free men hired with liberal wages;

and they were in either case too costly articles to be thrown away with

indifference. They were entitled to their discharge after a few years’

service, and their profession was regarded in many respects as a public

service, conducted under fixed regulations. Under the emperors, indeed,

express laws were required to moderate the ardour even of knights and

senators to descend into the arena, where they delighted to exhibit

their courage and address in the face of danger. Such was the ferocity

engendered by the habitual use of arms, so soothing to the swordsman’s

vanity the consciousness of skill and valour, so stimulating to his pride

the thunders of applause from a hundred thousand admirers, that the

practice of mortal combat, however unsophisticated nature may blench at

its horrors, was actually the source perhaps of more pleasure than pain

to the Roman prize-fighters. If the companions of Spartacus revolted and

slew their trainers and masters, we may set against this instance of

despair and hostility the signal devotion of the gladiators of Antonius,

who cut their way through so many obstacles in a fruitless effort to

succour him. But the effect of such exhibitions upon the spectators

themselves was wholly evil; for while they utterly failed in supplying

the bastard courage for which they were said to be designed, they

destroyed the nerve of sympathy for suffering which distinguishes the

human from the brute creation.[c]

[Illustration: TO THE TIGERS]

SHEPPARD’S ESTIMATE OF THE GLADIATORIAL CONTEST

The gladiatorial combats were, above all things else, the distinctive

characteristics of Rome. Rome, in her fallen days, without virtue,

without faith, without trust in her gods or in herself, loved, believed

in, deified one idol still--Homicide. The butcheries of the amphitheatre

exerted a charm upon the minds of men, for which literature, art,

philosophy, religion, and the simple enjoyments of domestic life were

flung aside. Existence became a frightful phantasmagoria--an alternation

of debauch and blood.

The practice itself can be traced back to one of the darkest

superstitions of the human mind. It originated in the barbarous instinct

of the savage to sacrifice his victim upon the tomb of the dead as a

satisfaction, and perhaps as an attendant upon the departed spirit.

The example, from whatever source derived, was first set to the Roman

people by Marcus and Decimus Brutus, who matched together gladiators in

the Forum Boarium, for the purpose of casting unprecedented éclat upon

the obsequies of their father, 264 B.C. The seed fell upon fruitful

ground, for it soon grew and ripened into a harvest more destructive

than the dragon’s teeth of Grecian fable. The wealth and ingenuity

of the Roman aristocracy were taxed to the uttermost to content the

populace and provide food for the indiscriminate slaughter of the circus,

where brute fought with brute and man with man, or where the skill and

weapons of the latter were matched against the strength and ferocity of

the first. In one day Pompey poured six hundred lions into the arena.

Augustus delighted the multitude with the sight of four hundred and

twenty panthers. Twenty elephants, Pliny tells us, contended against a

band of six hundred Gætulian captives. The games given by Trajan lasted

for more than one hundred and twenty days. Ten thousand gladiators

descended to combat, and more than ten thousand beasts were slain. Titus,

that “delight of the human race,” had upwards of five thousand animals

slaughtered in a single day. Every corner of the earth was ransacked for

some strange creature whose appearance was hailed with frantic applause

by the spectators. We hear of camelopards, white elephants, and the

rhinoceros. Scaurus produced upon the stage a hippopotamus and five

crocodiles. Game of the nobler sorts became scarce. The Roman populace

was as indignant with those who in any way damaged its supplies, as the

country sportsman is with a poacher or with the unlucky culprit who has

made away with a fox. In the time of Theodosius it was forbidden by law

to destroy a Gætulian lion, even in self-defence.

But the death-agonies of the wild animals of the desert were too tame a

spectacle to satisfy the Roman thirst for blood. It was when man strove

with man, and when all that human strength and skill, increased by

elaborate training and taxed to the uttermost, could do, was put forth

before their unrelenting eyes, that the transport of their sanguinary

enthusiasm was at its height. It is impossible to describe the aspect

of the amphitheatre at such a time. The audience became frantic with

excitement; they rose from their seats; they yelled; they shouted their

applause, as one blow more ghastly than another was dealt by lance, or

sword, or dagger, and the life-blood spouted forth. “Hoc habet”--“he has

it, he has it!”--was the cry which burst from ten thousand throats, and

was re-echoed, not only by a debased and brutalised populace, but by the

lips of royalty, by purple-clad senators and knights, by noble matrons,

and even by those consecrated maids whose presence elsewhere saved the

criminal from his fate, but whose function here it was to consign the

suppliant to his doom by reversing the thumb upon his appeal for mercy.

His blood was soon licked up by the thirsty sand, or concealed beneath

the sawdust sprinkled over it by the ready attendant; his body dragged

hastily from the stage by an iron hook, and flung into a gory pit; his

existence forgotten, and his place supplied by another and yet another

victim, as the untiring work of death went on.

And we must remember that these things were not done casually, or under

the influence of some strange fit of popular frenzy. They were done

purposely, systematically, and calmly; they formed the staple amusement,

I had almost said the normal employment, of a whole people, whose one

audible cry was for “panem et circenses”--“bread and blood.” Neither were

they fostered by the brutalised habits and associations which surround

the cockpit or the prize-ring. When men were “butchered to make a Roman

holiday,” it was among all the delicate appliances of the most refined

sensualism. An awning, gorgeous with purple and gold, excluded the rays

of the midday sun; sweet strains of music floated in the air, drowning

the cries of death; the odour of Syrian perfumes overpowered the scent

of blood; the eye was feasted by the most brilliant scenic decoration,

and amused by elaborate machinery; and, as a crowning degradation to the

whole, the Paphian chamber of the courtesan arose beside the bloody den

into which were flung the mangled bodies of men and brutes.

Such things seem impossible to those who live beneath a civilisation

which Christianity has influenced, however imperfectly, by its presence.

And indeed it needs much--the concurrent testimony of poet, historian,

and philosopher; the ruins of a hundred amphitheatres before our

eyes; the frescoes of the Museo Borbonico; the very programmes of the

performance, which something higher than accident has preserved; the

incidental witness of an inspired apostle--it needs all this to convince

us of the truth. But they are true, undisputed facts of history, and

facts which carry with them no obscure intimation of the reasons which

worked the fall of the imperial city. They prove that she deserved

to fall, and by the hands of those in whose persons she had outraged

humanity. It was not a poet remarkable for overstraining the religious

sentiment of divine retribution, who wrote:

“Shall he expire,

And unavenged! Arise, ye Goths! and glut your ire.”

The gladiator, whether directly a captive or a refractory slave, was

generally the child of those races who wreaked, in after times, a bloody

vengeance upon the city of blood. And if her own degenerate sons,

freedman, knight, or senator, nay, even her degraded daughters, descended

into the arena and combated by his side, this could only bespeak her more

entire debasement and unfitness to direct the destinies of the world.[i]

FOOTNOTES

[36] [It is well to bear in mind that a more optimistic view of the early

empire has its supporters. As has already been pointed out, there are

different estimates of such emperors as Tiberius. It is urged, also, that

the cruelties and vices of the emperors affected but a limited circle;

and that meantime the provinces might be well governed, healthful, and

prosperous. It has been alleged, _e.g._, that Tiberius and Domitian ruled

the provinces better than the Antonines.]

[37] The Appian way was the fashionable drive of the Roman nobility.

[38] The Romans rode in carriages on a journey, but rarely for amusement,

and never within the city. Even beyond the wall it was considered

disreputable to hold the reins one’s self, such being the occupation of

the slave or hired driver. Juvenal ranks the consul, who creeps out at

night to drive his own chariot, with the most degraded of characters:

that he should venture to drive by daylight, while still in office, is an

excess of turpitude transcending the imagination of the most sarcastic

painter of manners as they were. And this was a hundred years later than

the age of Augustus. See Juvenal, VIII, 145.

[39] The _leges Juliæ_ allowed two hundred sesterces for a repast on

ordinary days, three hundred on holidays, one thousand for special

occasions, such as a wedding, etc. Gellius[d] II, 24.

[40] The structor or carver was an important officer at the sideboard.

Carving was even taught as an art, which, as the ancients had no forks

(χειρονομᾶν, to manipulate, was the Greek term for it), must have

required grace as well as dexterity. Moreau de Jonnès observes, with some

reason, that the invention of the fork, apparently so simple, deserves to

be considered difficult and recondite. The Chinese, with their ancient

and elaborate civilisation, have failed to attain to it.

[Illustration]