city, but it is not altogether certain in what the “licence” of actors
consisted. At first sight it might appear that they were guilty
merely of a laxity of morals which is not uncommonly attributed,
with or without justice, to the theatrical profession, and that the
decrees prohibiting Senators and Equestrians from public and private
intercourse with actors were directed against purely private scandals;
but there is also evidence that the stage occupied to some extent
the position of the modern press, and that the licence of the actors
consisted in public and private derision of eminent men, and in the
exhibition of caricatures, which if not dangerous to public order, were
at least offensive. The fragments of references made on the stage to
Tiberius, preserved by Suetonius, are sufficient to indicate a freedom
of criticism which in our own day would be considered intolerable. Our
own habits allow our public men to be caricatured weekly in the comic
papers in a manner which is not found equally acceptable in Germany,
but lenient though we are in such matters, even Englishmen have failed
to tolerate the caricatures of eminent statesmen on the stage, and “the
Happy Land,” in which three Cabinet Ministers appeared under their
own names, and in a very successful counterfeit presentment of their
persons, was modified by the then Lord Chamberlain.
The laughter which greets a successful cartoon in _Punch_, and the
prompt recognition which greets a happy allusion to current events,
do little to shake a government or to disturb public order, but when
the representatives of law and order are held up to ridicule by the
unmistakeable gestures of a skilled actor in a large theatre, not
only is the effectiveness of ridicule enormously increased, but the
conflicting sympathies of the spectators provoke an immediate riot.
We have seen that among the business transacted by Tiberius and the
Senate in the first year of his reign was the discussion of a proposal
to restore to the Prætors the right of beating actors, which had been
withdrawn from them by Augustus. The reason for this proposal was an
increase of turbulence in the theatres, which had resulted in the
deaths of several of the spectators, the murder of some soldiers and
a centurion, and even of the commander of a prætorian cohort, who had
endeavoured to check the abuse of magistrates from the stage, and the
consequent disturbance in the audience. An Italian audience was quick
to catch even an undesigned allusion to current events, and allusion by
gesture never failed to meet with its response; thus the actors became
in a way the mouthpieces of public opinion, and the despotism of the
ruling powers was tempered by epigrams in flesh and blood, if not in
actual words; parties were formed, distinguished actors were supported
by men of rank, not merely from admiration of their professional
skill, but because they were in some sense a political power. In the
year 23 A.D. Tiberius found himself obliged to draw the attention of
the Senate to the continued insolence of the actors, and a decree was
passed by which they were banished from Italy. The particular form of
dramatic exhibition which called down this severity was that known
as the Atellan farce, which had long been used for the purposes of
political satire by educated men. It had been originally a performance
in the Oscan dialect; then what we should call “topical songs” had been
introduced in Latin. There had been a period during which the Atellan
plays had been considered eminently respectable, and men of rank had
taken part in them without losing dignity; but either the character
of the performance had degenerated, or the sentence of expulsion was
less general than the words of Tacitus would imply, and was restricted
to men whom we should not consider professional actors, and who had
adopted this way of expressing their criticisms of the government.
These performances were given both in public and in private houses.
The former might well be restrained as leading to riots; the objection
to the latter was undoubtedly the open ridicule of the government; for
the Atellan farce, which was originally chiefly spoken, had adopted
the procedure of the mimics who acted entirely in dumb show, and it is
not difficult to imagine the roars of laughter which would greet the
appearance of Tiberius himself and other eminent personages upon the
private stages of the Roman nobility.
In penalizing actors Tiberius in fact checked the liberty of the press,
and destroyed whatever popularity he had hitherto enjoyed. The Romans
were passionately devoted to acting, and never forgave the man who
discountenanced their favourite amusement. There was no readier road to
popularity at Rome than an exhibition of actors or gladiators. Cæsar
and Augustus had both encouraged the taste, and in the later Republican
days profusion in giving treats of this kind had been a necessary step
in the ladder by which political eminence was reached.
The wisdom of Tiberius in thus checking the expression of popular
feeling may be open to question, for we are not in a position to judge
how far the passions excited by the actors constituted a real danger to
public order, but the line which he took with reference to another kind
of legislation is indisputably wise.
Sumptuary laws are a well-known weakness of governments. We are by
no means rid of them yet, as is testified by the importance of the
temperance party in England. The Pagans of Greece and Italy were no
less eager than the Christians of the Middle Ages, or the Puritans
of the Reformation, to prescribe for men how they should dress, or
how they should eat, and the history of the Roman Senate offers many
instances of attempts to enforce moderation of living by stringent
laws. The Senate of Tiberius had not forgotten its old traditions; in
the year 16 A.D. the subject of increasing luxury had been discussed
in the Senate, and the Emperor had evaded action by stating that
the matter would be attended to when the period of the Censorship
came round. Apparently nothing was done, for in the year 22 A.D.
the Ædiles drew the attention of the Senate to the continued and
indeed increasing expenditure upon silken robes, household plate, and
the pleasures of the table; new laws were demanded, and vigour in
administering the old laws. Even on the evidence of Tacitus Tiberius
himself was moderate in his household expenditure; Suetonius indeed
reproaches him with niggardliness in this matter, saying that he would
serve up the remainder of a feast at a second day’s entertainment with
the observation “that the part had the same qualities as the whole.”
His personal example was entirely in the direction of temperate living,
and it was from no want of sympathy with the worthy aspirations of
the Senate that he refused to legislate in the matter. Tacitus has
preserved for us the letter which he addressed to the Senate on the
subject; it is a document sufficiently remarkable to be given in full.
“Although, Conscript Fathers, it is perhaps more expedient that on all
other occasions I should be asked in your presence my opinion of what
is good for the State, and reply in the same way, still on the present
occasion it was better that my eyes should be withdrawn, for if you
should openly note the faces of anxiety of those who were involved in
the charge of infamous luxury, I should myself see them, and as it were
catch them in the act. If indeed our energetic Ædiles had taken counsel
with me beforehand, I am inclined to think that I should have advised
them to abstain from interfering with vices so firmly rooted, so
vigorous, rather than make it publicly manifest that we are too weak to
contend with these abuses. Well--they have done their duty as I should
wish other magistrates also to do theirs; I could neither be silent
with honour, nor was it expedient that I should be the first to speak,
seeing that I am neither Ædile, nor Prætor, nor Consul. Something more,
something higher is demanded of the Prince, and whereas each individual
earns the reward of his own good actions, upon the Prince alone is
visited the odium incurred by the bad actions of all.
“Now what shall I first try to check and to cut down to the ancient
measures? The boundless extent of country estates? The numbers of
native and alien slaves? The weight of gold and silver plate? The
marvellous bronzes and pictures? The rich materials common to male
and female dress? Or again those peculiarly feminine forms of luxury
owing to which our money is transferred to foreign and even hostile
races for the sake of mere stones? I am perfectly well aware that
these are things with which fault is found at dinner parties and
social entertainments, and that there is a cry for interference; but
when a law is passed, penalties are assigned, and those same guardians
of the public virtue will not then fail to clamour that the State is
being turned upside down, that any magnificent man is threatened with
ruin, that every one is liable to prosecution. And yet it is only by
severe remedies that long-standing diseases of the body can be checked,
and the fever of the mind at once corrupt and corrupting can only be
quenched by remedies no less violent than the lusts with which it
burns. All the laws which were discovered by our ancestors, all those
that were passed by the sainted Augustus, have added confidence to
luxury, the former because they have been forgotten, the latter, which
is much worse, because they have been abrogated by contempt. For should
a man wish to do a thing which has not yet been forbidden, he would be
in fear of a prohibition, but if he transgresses a known prohibition,
there is no longer any fear, or any sense of shame. Now why did frugal
living at one time prevail? Because every man imposed restraint on
himself, because we were then the citizens of a single city; there was
not even temptation for us when our dominion was confined to Italy.
It was through our foreign victories that we learned to waste the
property of others, by our civil wars to waste our own. And what a
small thing it is to which our attention is called by the Ædiles! What
a trifle if it is compared with our other responsibilities! Yes, nobody
bethinks himself that Italy is dependent upon external resources,
that the sustenance of the Roman people is exposed every day to the
uncertainties of the winds and waves!
“And should the resources of the Provinces fail to come to the rescue
of our landowners, and slaves, and farms, our own forests, forsooth,
our own estates will protect us! This is the anxiety, Conscript
Fathers, which falls upon the shoulders of the Prince, and if he
refuses to attend to this, the State will be dragged down to perdition.
For those other difficulties a remedy can be found in our own conduct;
may a sense of honour improve ourselves, necessity restrain the poor,
satiety the rich. Or if any one of the magistrates holds out a prospect
of so much industry, such rigour as to be able to contend with these
abuses, I both commend him, and admit that I am thereby relieved of
part of my burden. But if they are willing enough to demonstrate
abuses, and then, when they have obtained the credit of this action,
stir animosities, and hand them over to me, believe me, Conscript
Fathers, that I too have no taste for unpopularity; tasks involving
serious, and generally unjust, unpopularity I will undertake for the
good of the State. I rightly protest against being required to incur
trivial and useless causes of offence likely to be profitable neither
to myself nor to you.”
The language of Tacitus leaves it uncertain as to whether these words
are the actual letter of Tiberius, or only an epitome of the real
letter; but the sense, if not the form, is clearly the Emperor’s own.
In his view of the inefficiency of sumptuary legislation Tiberius was
far in advance of his time; no law can in these matters do for the
individual what he refuses to do for himself. Indirectly Tiberius
reproaches the Senate for their individual complicity in the offences
against which legislation was demanded; he also reproaches those
zealous magistrates, the Ædiles, whose business it was to look after
the markets and repress extravagant expenditure, for their previous
neglect of duty; he also points out that there was an abundance of laws
to meet the offence, and an equally abundant neglect of those laws. The
constitutional position which Tiberius takes up is also noteworthy; it
was not for him to anticipate the action of the ordinary magistrates;
on the other hand, the greater cares of the Empire are his, and these
domestic concerns can be left to those officials whom the constitution
provided for the purpose.
Throughout the letter we detect a profound contempt for the Senate,
as being a body ever ready to talk, but never ready to act, and we
are therefore prepared to believe that there is some truth in the
story which tells us that Tiberius seldom left the Senate House
without exclaiming, “Men made for slavery!” We also see that Tiberius
was sensitive to public opinion, and was not prepared to face
unpopularity except with good reason. The implied warning against the
folly of passing laws which it is impossible to enforce shows sound
statesmanship; the vice of clamouring for fresh laws in order to check
offences which have been already provided for by old ones, and of
invoking the aid of legislation in matters where good example and sound
conduct on the part of individuals are more effective, is a vice which
has survived the Roman Senate.
The result of the debate was fresh energy on the part of the Ædiles,
but Tacitus says that it was not until the reign of Vespasian that
there was any marked improvement, that Emperor being himself averse to
luxury. As, however, Tiberius was no less distinguished by plainness of
living, it is more probable that the effect was produced by a general
equalizing of fortunes among the well-to-do.
While Tiberius thus refused to take upon himself the responsibilities
of the Senate in domestic matters, he was equally little inclined to
allow them to throw upon him the burden of administering their own
Provinces, and carefully referred deputations from the Senatorial
Provinces to the Consuls; he punished a private servant of his own who
had the management of his estates in Asia, a Senatorial Province, for
attempting to exercise powers other than those of the business agent of
a private person.
We may remark that the care of feeding the city, which we should have
expected to be in the department of the Senate, was really in the hands
of the Emperor, who held Egypt in his own exclusive management for that
special purpose; nor was Tiberius a sufficiently enlightened economist
not to attempt to control the price of corn.
Another subject which from time to time still taxed the energies of the
Senate was the prevalence of alien rites, and especially of all forms
of magic and divination.
It has been held that the Senate and people of Rome were particularly
free from religious intolerance; their behaviour in this matter has
been favourably contrasted with that of Christian governments, and
there are many who believe that the Romans never interfered with
religious observances till they adopted an attitude of exceptional
malignity towards the professors of Christianity. Such a view does
not, however, correctly represent the facts of the case. Comparatively
early in its history the Roman Senate had proceeded with considerable
severity against those who were infected with that strange hysterical
epidemic which spread over Europe under the guise of the worship of
Bacchus, and in the year 19 A.D. we find the Senate passing decrees to
repress Egyptian and Jewish religious rites. According to Suetonius
the devotees were ordered to burn their vestments and other religious
furniture, while he and Tacitus agree in telling us that four thousand
freedmen “infected with that superstition” who were of fitting age for
military service were sent off to Sardinia to check brigandage there,
“and if they should perish in the unwholesome climate, it was not a
serious loss.” “The rest,” according to Tacitus, “were to withdraw from
Italy unless they abandoned their profane observances before a fixed
date.” The language of Tacitus does not distinguish between Jew and
Egyptian so far as religion was concerned, for though he mentions both
races, he only alludes to one superstition.
The persecution of Jews on religious grounds is thus anterior to
Christianity, and the persecutions were not confined to Jews and
Egyptians; Chaldæans were included, and as we have already seen, after
the case of feather-headed Scribonius Libo Magians and “mathematicians”
were also expelled from Italy.
In these persecutions Tiberius is not directly responsible, he left
the matter in the hands of the Senate. Sardinia was a Senatorial
Province, and he apparently saw no reason for interference. Italy was
not, however, swept clear of “mathematicians” and other persons under
the ban of the Senate, with whom in fact the head of the executive was
probably in private sympathy, for Thrasyllus the “mathematician” had
been his constant attendant since the days of the retirement at Rhodes.
Decrees for the expulsion of these undesirables recur under subsequent
Emperors.
The subject is a complicated one, and the more complicated to us
because men so diverse according to our conceptions are included in the
same ban. We do not know much of the Chaldæans and Magians, but we know
something of the Jews, and we are surprised to find them classed with
Egyptians and subjected to the same penalties as Chaldæans, Magians and
“mathematicians,” and we further ask ourselves why the Senate, which
countenanced the worship of the Great Mother and other alien deities,
assumed an attitude of intolerance towards the Jews.
The attitude of the Jews towards other religions was essentially
different from that of the priests of Cybele or any other Pagan
divinity. Jupiter or Mars or Vesta could tolerate the temples of other
Gods, and the respect paid to other Gods--it was of the essence of
polytheism to multiply divinities--but the Jew declared that there
was only one God; his God was not one of many Gods, but the only God,
and the worship of other Gods was wrong and monstrous. Thus to the
Roman Senate the observances of the Jews were actually “profane”;
they involved hostility to existing religions, and toleration of the
Jews was therefore impossible for the orthodox Pagan. Again, it is
important to remember that the Jews at this period were not shut up
in ghettos, and visibly separated from the rest of the community;
whatever differences in dress and customs distinguished them from
other inhabitants of the cities in which they dwelt were not peculiar
to them; the Syrian, the Egyptian, the Gaul, men of many other
nationalities wore their distinctive dress and practised their national
religions in every populous city of the Empire. The Jews might for
convenience live in the neighbourhood of a synagogue, and thus give
portions of the cities which they inhabited the aspect of a Jewish
quarter; but such separate residence was not enforced upon them; they
moved freely among the people; many of them were in positions of trust,
their princes, the Herods, were on intimate terms with the Imperial
family, and their young men took part in the diversions of the Roman
youth; among them were ardent proselytisers, their peculiar doctrines
were well known to the educated, and though Horace might laugh at their
credulity, his sneer indicates how well they were known. The unhappy
four thousand young men who were sent to Sardinia were either freedmen
or the sons of freedmen, a fact which shows that they, or their
fathers, had been the trusted servants of Romans. But the Jews were no
more homogeneous then than now; if they had their Rothschilds, they
had also their Jews of mean streets, their “vagabond Jews, exorcists”;
and if the great financier was the trusted friend of an Emperor, the
small moneylender of the slums was as much detested in ancient Rome as
he is in modern London. There were Jews who were deservedly respected
for their great intellectual ability, for the purity of their lives,
for the dignity of their religion; but there were also Jews whose
disreputable callings and mean habits involved at least a section
of their race in such contempt as to lead Tacitus to contemplate
with satisfaction their extinction in the fever-haunted swamps of
Sardinia. We should, however, be on our guard against attributing to
the contemporaries of Tiberius the same degree of animosity against
the Jews which was felt by the contemporaries of Trajan; for, in spite
of the sweeping decrees of the Senate, the Jews steadily advanced in
importance, and the anti-Semitic sentiment of Tacitus was evoked not
only by the disreputable section of the chosen people, but also by the
men who, as members of the Imperial household, had a large share in the
administration of the State.
Again, we should be mistaken if we attributed to the whole Jewish race
distributed throughout the civilized world the same sentiments which
prevailed among the bigoted Jews of Jerusalem. Even at Jerusalem, where
the introduction of the Roman standards invariably produced a riot,
the priests of the Temple accepted the offerings made by the different
Roman generals who passed by or occupied the Sacred City; and the
omission of a Gentile commander to show this form of respect to the
one God was somewhat inconsistently resented. At Alexandria especially
free intercourse with men who represented the wisdom of the Egyptians
and the Greeks modified the conceptions of orthodox but not bigoted
Jews, and the spirituality of Judaism steadily tended to prevail over
its ceremonial exclusiveness. Learned Jews enjoyed as wide reputations
as other learned men, and were in communication with learned Greeks;
Tiberius himself is said to have nicknamed Apion the Greek, to whose
anti-judaic treatise Josephus replied, “the rattle of the universe.”
But while on the one hand a reformed and spiritualized Judaism was
tending to become the effective religion of the Empire, the debased
Judaism was joining hands with the other demoralizing superstitions of
the East. No one who has read the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles
of St. Paul attentively can deny that if there were spiritually-minded
Jews like the great Apostle, there were also Jews who practised
exorcisms and divination, and who studied “curious books.” We know
little of the peculiar tenets of the Chaldæans and the Magians, equally
little of the Egyptians, except as worshippers of Isis, but we know
that fortune-telling and witchcraft were practised by them, no less
than dignified inquiries into the laws of nature, so far as their
imperfect means of observation permitted. The dividing line between
Thrasyllus the “mathematician,” the friend of Tiberius, and those men
whom foolish Libo consulted, would have been difficult to draw, science
was not to be clear of superstition for many ages, but there were
respectable astrologers, genuine, though perhaps mistaken, searchers
after truth, alongside of the disreputable charlatans who interpreted
dreams and told fortunes and held sway over the dissolute imaginations
of needy profligates by means of conjuring tricks and skilfully
organized conspiracies with numerous confederates. Even the purest of
Jewish sects--if indeed they can be called a sect--the Essenians, laid
stress upon their powers of predicting events by means of the stars.