inscriptions have been nowhere more active than in producing _sentimental_
inscriptions. That on Julia Alpinula was received as genuine by Johannes
Mueller, the historian of Switzerland and pronounced by Lord Byron to be
the most pathetic of human compositions. JULIA ALPINULA HIC JACEO.
INFELICIS PATRIS INFELIX PROLES DEAE AVENTICAE SACERDOS. EXORARE PATRIS
NECEM NON POTUI. MALE MORI IN FATIS ILLI ERAT. VIXI ANN. XXIII. The hint
was taken from Tacitus (Hist. 1, 68), where Caecina is said to have put
Julius Alpinus, the chief man of Aventicum, to death. It was sent by
Paulus Gulielmus, a notorious literary impostor, to Lipsius, but the
original has never been seen, and it is now universally admitted to be a
forgery. Not a few of the poetical inscriptions in Burmann's "Anthologia"
are of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was certainly,
however, by no fraud of the author that the beautiful lines in Jortin's
"Lusus Poetici" beginning,--
Quae te tam tenera rapuerunt Poeta juventa,
have been received into collections as ancient.
Among the sepulcral inscriptions arising out of the relations of life,
those of husbands and wives are naturally the most common. The celebrated
speech of Metellus Numidicus the Censor, when exhorting the Romans to
marriage, does not indicate a high appreciation of the female sex. "If,"
said he, "O Quirites, we could do without wives, we should all like to be
free from the annoyance; but since nature has so arranged things that we
can neither live comfortably with them nor at all without them, we should
put up with a temporary inconvenience for the sake of a permanent
benefit." Gellius, who reports the speech, naturally remarks that this was
no very powerful recommendation of matrimony, and that he should rather
have said that in general marriage had no troubles; that if they sometimes
seem to occur, they were few and light and easy to be borne, and were
thrown into the shade by greater pleasures and advantages; and that the
troubles which did arise did not happen to all, nor by the fault of
nature, but from the fault and injustice of husbands. Castricius, on the
other hand, vindicated Metellus, and maintained that as Censor he was
bound to tell the whole truth, known to himself and admitted by every one
else.[91] On such a subject it is not fair to take the evidence of books,
in which, in ancient times at least, only one side is heard; or of
satirists, who are, one and all, caricaturists, and very generally
ill-tempered men; or of poets, whose own lives were flagrantly licentious;
nor to draw conclusions respecting the character of Roman women generally
from a few notorious examples of vice in elevated stations. I believe that
we may obtain a truer as well as a more favourable conception of the
conjugal relation in the imperial times, from the sepulcral inscriptions.
They proceed from the middle classes, who give its moral character to a
community; they are very numerous, and I cannot but believe the testimony
which they bear to the general happiness of the married state.
The few inscriptions on women which have come down to us from the times of
the republic, show what were the practical, unostentatious, and
home-keeping qualities which were prized in the Roman matron, yet not
without those gifts of pleasant speech and graceful carriage which set off
the more solid virtues of female character.
Hospes quod deico paullum est: asta ac pellige.
Heic est sepulcrum pulcrum pulcrai feminae.
Nomen parentes nominarunt Claudiam.
Suom mareitom corde dilexit souo.
Gnatos duo creavit: horunc alterum
In terra linquit, alium sub terra locat.
Sermone lepido, tum autem incessu commodo,
Domum servavit, lanam fecit. Dixi. Abei.[92]
The same qualities are predominant in an inscription of later date. HIC
SITA EST AMYMONE MARCI OPTIMA ET PULCHERRIMA, LANIFICA, PIA, PUDICA,
FRUGI, CASTA, DOMISEDA.[93] Intellectual accomplishments, however, were
not overlooked. JULIAE LUC. FILIAE TYRANNIAE VIXIT ANN. XX.M.VIII. QUAE
MORIBUS PARITER ET DISCIPLINA COETERIS FEMINIS EXEMPLO FUIT, AUTARCIUS
NURUI. LAURENTIUS UCSORI.[94] The married life of the Romans appears to
have been remarkably free from those domestic differences which Paley,
according to a well-known anecdote, considered to be a useful corrective
of its dulness. CONJUX INCOMPARABILIS, CUM QUA VIXI XXX ANNOS SINE
QUERELA; SINE JURGIO; SINE DISSIDIO; SINE AEMULATIONE; SINE ULLA ANIMI
LAESIONE, are testimonies constantly occurring on the part of husbands to
their wives. The collection of Fabretti contains several inscriptions,
declaring that this harmony had continued during half a century of married
life.[95] The monuments erected by wives to their husbands are less
numerous, but they bear the same testimony to conjugal harmony. D.M. D.
JUNI PRIMIGENIO QUI VIXIT ANNIS XXXV JUNIA PALLAS FECIT, CONJUGI KARISSIMO
ET PIENTISSIMO DE SE BENEMERENTI, CUM QUO VIXIT ANNIS XV MENSES VI
DULCITER SINE QUERELA.[96] We find a husband recording on the tomb of his
wife his vow never to contract a second marriage. TEMPIUS HERMEROS CONJUGI
CARISSIMAE FECIT CON (sic) QUA VIXIT ANNOS XVIII SINE QUERELA. CUJUS
DESIDERIO JURATUS EST SE POST EAM UXOREM NON HABITURUM.[97] It is not an
unfrequent sentiment, that the death of the wife was the very first cause
of sorrow that she had given to her husband, as in the following example
at Rome. T. FL. CAPITO CONJUGI CASTISSIMAE PIISSIMAE ET DE SE OPTIME MERITAE,
DE QUA NULLUM DOLOREM NISI ACERBISSIMAE MORTIS EJUS ACCEPERAT.[98]
One inscription might seem to indicate a different feeling, a husband
saying of his wife on her monument, CUJUS IN DIE MORTIS GRATIAS MAXIMAS
EGI APUD DEOS ET APUD HOMINES; and the editor, Orelli, remarks upon it
"mirum dicterium!"--a strange sarcasm. It would, indeed, be not only
strange, but brutal, in the sense which he attributes to it, but it surely
admits the more candid construction that the husband had seen his wife
suffering long and was grateful for her release. It may be illustrated by
another. OMIDIA BASILISSA VIXIT ANNOS XXV. QUAE POST LONGAS ET VARIAS
INFIRMITATES HOMINIBUS EXEMPTA EST. MISERA VALE. MACEDO MARITUS.[99] Such
too, was the import of the consolation which C. Publicius addresses to his
parents.
Tempera jam genitor lacrimis, tuque, O optima mater,
Desine jam flere: poenam non sentio mortis.
Poena fuit vita; requies mihi morte parata est.[100]
Death sometimes came speedily to blight the prospects of happiness. D. M.
L. ARULENUS SOSIMUS FECIT CLODIAE CHARIDI SUAE CONJUGI DULCISSIMAE, QUAE SI AD
VITAE METAM PERVENISSET, NON HOMINIBUS NEQUE DIS INVIDISSET; SET VIX SECUM
VIXIT DIES XV.[101] The following inscription beautifully expresses the
wish that the harmony in which P. Manlius Surus and his wife had lived
might be prolonged in the joint resting-place of their remains; UT CONCORS
VIVORUM ANIMUS STETIT, ITA CONCORS MORTUORUM CINIS HIC JACEAT.[102] It is
sometimes recorded on the tombs of mothers by their husbands or their
children, that they had fulfilled the duty which the philosopher
Favorinus urged on the Roman matrons,[103] and Tansillo and Roscoe on the
women of Italy and England, that of being nurse as well as mother. GRATIAE
ALEXANDRIAE, INSIGNIS EXEMPLI AC PUDICITIAE, QUAE ETIAM FILIOS SUOS PROPRIIS
UBERIBUS EDUCAVIT, PUDENS MARITUS. LICINIAE PROCESSAE, MATRI PIAE NUTRICI
DULCISSIMAE, CRESCENS FECIT.[104]
We find traces, however, of the effects of the facility of divorce.
Northern superstition has represented a mother as disquieted in her grave
by the ill-usage of her children, and coming in nightly visions to terrify
their stepmother into better treatment of them; but a Roman mother lived
to record on the tomb of her son that he had been poisoned by his
stepmother. D. M. L. HOSTILI TER SILVANI ANN. XXIV. M. II. D. XV. MATER
FILIO PIISSIMO. MISERA ET IN LUCTU AETERNALI BENEFICIO (VENEFICIO)
NOVERCAE.[105] Another conjugal tribute discloses a singular result of the
same state of the law. T. Sentius Januarius and L. Terentius Trophimus
jointly raise a memorial to Hostilia Capriola.[106] She must have been
married to the one after having been divorced from the other; and as they
agree in calling her CONJUGI BENE MERENTI, we must suppose the first
marriage to have been dissolved without criminality on her part. Such an
association would seem strange, even in those continental countries, where
a divorced wife may sit at table between her first and second husband.
I will conclude this subject of the "affectus conjugum" by the quotation
of a beautiful inscription, said to have been found on a monument at Rome,
which is figured in Gruter.[107] It purports to be a dialogue between
Atimetus, a freedman of Tiberius Caesar, and his deceased wife (collibertae
et contubernali) Claudia Homonoea, the husband professing his desire to
die and rejoin his wife; the wife expressing her hope, that what had been
taken from her own life might be added to his. It has not escaped
suspicion, though the majority of critics admit its genuineness. If
genuine, it proceeds from the golden age of Latin literature; if the work
of a scholar of the sixteenth century, it will still have an interest for
the reader of taste.
Tu qui secura procedis mente parumper
Siste gradum quaeso, verbaque pauca lege.
HOMONOEA.
Illa ego quae claris fueram praelata puellis
Hoc Homonoea brevi condita sum tumulo.
Cui formam Paphie, Charites tribuere decorem;
Quam Pallas cunctis artibus erudiit.
Nondum bis denos aetas mea viderat annos:
Injecere manus invida fata mihi.
Nec pro me queror hoc, morte est mihi tristior ipsa
Moeror Atimeti conjugis ille mei.
ATIMETUS.
Si pensare animas sinerent crudelia fata
Et posset redimi morte aliena salus,
Quantulacumque meae debentur tempora vitae
Pensarem pro te, cara Homonoea libens.
At nunc, quod possum, fugiam lucemque deosque
Ut te matura per Styga morte sequar.
HOMONOEA.
Parce tuam conjux, fletu quassare juventam,
Fataque moerendo sollicitare mea.
Nil prosunt lacrimae, nec possunt fata moveri:
Viximus: hic omnes exitus unus habet.
Parce: ita non unquam similem experiare dolorem,
Et faveant votis numina cuncta tuis.
Quodque mihi eripuit more immatura juventae
Id tibi victuro proroget ulterius.
We know from the Latin poets that favourite animals were honoured by a
monument ("Lusciniae tumulum si Thelesina dedit," Martial, 7, 86). The
following inscription on a pet greyhound is found in the "Anthologia:"--
Docta per incertas audax discurrere silvas
Collibus hirsutas atque agitare feras;
Non gravibus vinclis unquam consueta teneri,
Verbera nec niveo corpore saeva pati.
Molli namque sinu domini dominaeque jacebam,
Et noram in strato lassa cubare toro.
Et plus quam licuit muto canis ore loquebar;
Nulli latratus pertimuere meos.[108]
D. M. is even prefixed to the epitaph on a Barbary mare (equa Gaetulica),
named Speudusa ([Greek: speudousa]), who is declared to be fleet as the
wind, "flabris compar." After the example of the Greeks, the Romans gave
significant names to their race and chariot horses, several of which are
preserved on the monument of Diodes, the driver of the Red Faction.[109]
* * * * *
There still remains the most interesting of all the subjects of inquiry
which the Roman sepulcral inscriptions suggest, what was the state of
religious feeling and belief among the people with whom they originated?
The natural affections, springing from sources which exist in every human
breast, will express themselves with a certain similarity in all ages and
countries. But there is a wide difference in the religious faith and
sentiment with which the bereavements of life are met, and which find
their record on the funeral monument. One remarkable contrast strikes us
on comparing ancient with modern, Heathen with Christian inscriptions--the
entire absence in the former of anything like resignation to the will of a
superior Power, or any acknowledgment of a benevolent purpose in a painful
dispensation. If the gods are alluded to it is in the way of complaint.
MANUS LEBO (levo) CONTRA DEUM QUI ME INNOCENTEM SUSTULIT,[110] is a bold
defiance of Providence. Cornelius Victor, who died at the age of
thirty-one, complains that his virtues had not secured him a longer life.
VIXI SEMPER BENE UT VOLUI. NEMINEM LAESI. CUR MORTUUS SIM NESCIO;[111]
while Marsilia Stabilis regrets that her eminent piety could not purchase
exemption from the common destiny.
Si pietate aliquam redimi fatale fuisset,
Marsilia Stabilis prima redemta forem.[112]
If such a feeling of impatience and complaint could be allowed, we might
sympathize with T. Claudius Hermes, who inscribes a monument, MERULAE UXORI
BENE DE SE MERENTI ET CAMPILIO ALBUNO INFANTI DULCISSIMO QUOS DII IRATI
UNO DIE AETERNO SOMNO DEDERUNT.[113] Antinous and Panthea, who placed on
the tomb of their infant daughter Isiatis the sentiment, QUAM DI AMAVERUNT
HAC MORITUR INFAS, appear from their names to have been Greeks, and to
have copied the Greek poet Menander.[114]
Nor does the deceased speak from the tomb with any words of consolation
to those who are left behind, except that cold comfort, the "solamen
miseris socios habuisse doloris." C. Gavius Primigenius, who died at the
age of seven, thus addresses his mother:--
Desine jam mater lacrimis renovare querelas
Namque dolor talis non tibi contigit uni.[115]
The possibility that longer life might have been vicious or unhappy is
urged as a motive to abstain from grief, as in the inscription on Lucia
Toreuma, who died at the age of nineteen:--
Exiguo, vitae spacio feliciter acto
Effugi crimen longa senecta tuum.[116]
There would be no difficulty in deciding between the two following
inscriptions, in each of which a deceased mother addresses her surviving
husband and children, which of them proceeded from a Heathen and which
from a Christian source:--
Care marite mihi, dulcissima nata valete,
Et memores nostris semper date justa sepulcris.[117]
Parcite vos lacrimis dulces cum conjuge natae
Viventemque Deo credits flere nefas.[118]
Nor are inscriptions wanting which declare the vanity of human wishes,
and the fallaciousness of human hopes;--
Decipimur votis et tempore fallimur, et mors
Deridet curas; anxia vita nihil,
is a distich which frequently occurs.[119] VIVE LAETUS QUIQUE (quicunque)
VIVIS. VITA PARVUM MUNUS EST MOX EXORTA EST SENSIM VIGESCIT DEINDE SENSIM
DEFICIT, expresses a similar sentiment. The sentiment on the tomb of
Vettius Hermes, MATER GENUIT ME, MATER RECEPIT, is not very different from
that of Scripture, "Dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return." The
inscription, C. POMPEIUS EUPHROSYNUS ET JUNIA GEMELLA UXOR EJUS EX OMNIBUS
BONIS SUIS HOC SIBI SUMPSERUNT, that the grave in which they lay was all
they had retained of their possessions, reminds us of the passage, "We
brought nothing into this world, and it is certain that we can take
nothing out."
These and similar sentiments express truths forced everywhere on man's
notice, and which may be looked for in many countries, and under many
religions. The inquiry, to which we might especially expect that the
sepulcral inscriptions would furnish a full reply, is, what was the belief
of the Romans, in the ages to which these memorials belong, respecting the
condition of man after death. The almost universal commencement of
epitaphs with Diis Manibus, or the abbreviation D. M., might seem to
indicate an universal belief in the continued existence of the spiritual
part of his nature. For "the divine Manes" were the disembodied spirits of
men, waiting, according to those who believed in the transmigration of
souls, for reunion with another body; or, according to a more popular
conception, lingering around the tomb, acutely sensitive to any violation
or neglect, and gratified by the tokens of remembrance and affection; or
in a still different view, the presiding deities of the world of spirits
exercising a control over its inhabitants. Such must have been the
conception of Furia Spes, when in the inscription upon her husband's tomb
she addresses a prayer to the Manes, that she might be permitted to see
him in her nightly dreams. PETO VOS MANES SANCTISSIMAE, COMMENDATUM
HABEATIS MEUM CONJUGEM ET VELITIS HUIC INDULGENTISSIMI ESSE, HORIS
NOCTURNIS UT EUM VIDEAM. ET ETIAM ME FATO SUO ADDERE VELIT, UT ET EGO
DULCIUS ET CELERIUS APUD EUM PERVENIRE POSSIM.[120] How far the formulary
mention of the Dii Manes on sepulcres may be taken as a proof of the
continued existence of the belief in which it undoubtedly originated is a
question very difficult to decide. Pliny, while he ridicules the
superstition, acknowledges the existence of the belief.[121] Juvenal, on
the contrary, declares that the belief in the Manes did not extend beyond
the nursery:--
Esse aliquid Manes et subterranea regna----
Nec pueri credunt nisi qui nondum aere lavantur.
Sat. 2, 149.
I should receive with caution the testimony of a poetical censor of his
age, who naturally fixes his eye on those circumstances only which justify
his fierce indignation. Nor do I draw any inference unfavourable to the
belief in a future existence from such expressions as "domus aeterna,"
"quies aeterna," and others of the same kind. They are found on Christian
sepulcres, and may have a reference to the body, which it was hoped might
never be disturbed in its peaceful resting-place. It is natural also to
regard the grave as a place of repose from the toils, the pains, and the
troubles of life, without believing it to be the "be-all and the end-all"
of man's history. Even the inscription, D. M. ET SOMNO AETERNALI.
SECURITATI MEMORIAEQUE PERPETUAE AELIAE FLAVIAE MELITANAE,[122] may not involve
that disbelief which the words "eternal sleep" seem to us to imply. From
the list of doubters, at all events, must be excluded T. Claudius
Panoptes, who erects a monument to his two daughters, in obedience to a
vision (ex viso), and placed this challenge to sceptics on their tomb. TU
QUI LEGES ET DUBITAS MANES ESSE, SPONSIONE FACTA INVOCA NOS ET
INTELLIGES.[123] On the other hand, it is not to be denied that many
inscriptions breathe a very Epicurean spirit. AMICI DUM VIVIMUS VIVAMUS,
was an exhortation rather to the enjoyment than the improvement of life.
The inscription on the tomb of Publius Clodius, QUOD COMEDI ET EBIBI
TANTUM MEUM EST, seems copied from that of Sardanapalus.[124] Such
sentiments, openly professed, revolt our moral taste. The most determined
modern votary of luxury and pleasure would not imitate Claudius Secundus,
in declaring, HIC SECUM HABET OMNIA. BALNEA VINA VENUS CORRUMPUNT CORPORA
NOSTRA. SED VITAM FACIUNT BALNEA VINA VENUS.[125] Public opinion, and,
indeed, public authority, now impose restraints on the profession of
irreligious or immoral sentiments, which were unknown to the more
free-spoken Romans. In truth, at the time to which our inscriptions
belong, though there was a national _cultus_, there cannot be said to have
been a national religion.
Even when their epitaphs imply a hope of a future existence, it is of that
doubtful and hypothetical kind, with the expression of which Tacitus
closes his life of Agricola. "_Si_ quis piorum Manibus locus; si, ut
sapientibus placet, non cum corpore extinguuntur magnae animae, placide
quiescas."
Suscipe nunc conjunx, si quis post funera sensus,
Debita sacratis Manibus officia.[126]
The expression of a more confident hope, as in the two following
inscriptions, does not exclude the suspicion that there it may be rather
poetical imagery than religious faith. Atilia Marcella thus speaks in the
name of her deceased husband Fabatus:--
Terrenum corpus, coelestis spiritus in me;
Quo repetente sedem suam nunc vivimus illic,
Et fruitur superis aeterna in luce Fabatus.[127]
The mother of Theodote thus consoles herself for the loss of her daughter,
who was hardly five years old.
Virginis hic tenerae, lector miserere sepultae;
Unius huic lustri vix fuit acta dies.
O quam longinquae fuerat dignissima vitae
Heu! cujus vivit nunc sine fine dolor--
Sola tamen tanti restant solatia luctus
Quod tales animae protinus astra petunt.[128]
Upon the whole the evidence, negative even more than positive, of the
Roman sepulcral inscriptions, abundantly confirms the testimony of heathen
as well as Christian writers, to the absence of any definite and practical
belief in a future state, in the three or four first centuries after the
Christian aera. Yet few would be able tranquilly to acquiesce in the
doctrine of annihilation. They sought in other sources for that assurance
which neither religion nor philosophy could afford them. Never was the
practice of magic, incantations, necromancy, and mysteries more prevalent
than during the period in which Christianity was slowly supplanting the
ancient superstitions. It was evident that the fulness of the times was
come, and that if the world were not to be divided between the victims of
religious imposture and the disciples of Epicurus, light from on high must
visit the earth.
Other inscriptions, not properly sepulcral, afford the same proof of the
loss of all vital power in the old religion. Among all the religious
monuments which the Museum of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society
contains, there is not one to Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, or any of the great
gods of the popular creed. There is one to Hercules--a hero, not a god;
one to Fortune--a deified personification; one to the Genius of the
place--an elegant creation of poetry; one to the fictitious deity of the
Emperor. The gods of the barbarians have evidently dethroned those of
Greece and Rome. The legate of a Roman Legion records that he has rebuilt
from the foundation a temple of the Egyptian Serapis. A Roman commander
must have constructed the cave in which the mystic rites of the Asiatic
Mithras were performed. We have an altar to the tutelary goddess of
Brigantia; to Viterineus, a local deity of the neighbourhood of Hadrian's
Wall; and, lastly, to the god Arciacon, wholly unknown but from this
unique inscription. It is evident that the popular religion was altogether
"a creed outworn." Art had familiarized men with the human representations
of their deities; and even by the perfection of its visible and material
works had destroyed the belief in their spiritual existence and invisible
power. Philosophy had exposed the folly of an anthropomorphic polytheism;
poetry and the stage had made the gods contemptible. Nothing was left
which could awaken reverence or love: instead of aiding, the popular
religion checked the impulse of the mind to connect the ideas of
infinitude and deity. But in the gods of the barbarous nations, who had
remained without art, and without a mythology converting gods into men,
there was something obscure, mysterious, and indefinite; something on
which imagination could fasten, and which it could readily invest with
supernatural attributes. He who looked on the Apollo of the Belvedere with
no other feeling than that he beheld the triumph of the sculptor's art in
action and expression, was overcome with a religious awe when he gazed on
the unmeaning faces and half-bestial forms of Egyptian deities. The genius
of Rome was tolerant of all religions but the true; a hearty belief in the
gods of his own Pantheon would not have prevented a Roman soldier from
doing homage to those of the country in which he was quartered, and
seeking thus to gain their favour or avert their displeasure. But this
will not account for the extensive diffusion of the worship of Phrygia and
Thrace, Persia and Egypt, throughout the Roman empire. It was certainly an
indication of a restless longing for something that could supply
nourishment to the craving for religious faith which exists in the heart
of man, and feeds itself on superstition when it can find no purer
aliment.