Nationality, Religion, and Education
Paramount Ascendency of Latinism and Hellenism
In the great struggle of the nationalities within the wide circuit
of the Roman empire, the secondary nations seem at this period on
the wane or disappearing. The most important of them all, the
Phoenician, received through the destruction of Carthage a mortal
wound from which it slowly bled to death. The districts of Italy
which had hitherto preserved their old language and manners,
Etruria and Samnium, were not only visited by the heaviest blows
of the Sullan reaction, but were compelled also by the political
levelling of Italy to adopt the Latin language and customs in
public intercourse, so that the old native languages were reduced
to popular dialects rapidly decaying. There no longer appears
throughout the bounds of the Roman state any nationality entitled
even to compete with the Roman and the Greek.
Latinism
On the other hand the Latin nationality was, as respected both
the extent of its diffusion and the depth of its hold, in the most
decided ascendant. As after the Social war any portion of Italian
soil might belong to any Italian in full Roman ownership, and any
god of an Italian temple might receive Roman gifts; as in all
Italy, with the exception of the region beyond the Po, the Roman
law thenceforth had exclusive authority, superseding all other
civic and local laws; so the Roman language at that time became
the universal language of business, and soon likewise the universal
language of cultivated intercourse, in the whole peninsula from the
Alps to the Sicilian Straits. But it no longer restricted itself
to these natural limits. The mass of capital accumulating in
Italy, the riches of its products, the intelligence of its
agriculturists, the versatility of its merchants, found no adequate
scope in the peninsula; these circumstances and the public service
carried the Italians in great numbers to the provinces.(1) Their
privileged position there rendered the Roman language and the Roman
law privileged also, even where Romans were not merely transacting
business with each other.(2) Everywhere the Italians kept together
as compact and organized masses, the soldiers in their legions, the
merchants of every larger town as special corporations, the Roman
burgesses domiciled or sojourning in the particular provincial
court-district as "circuits" (-conventus civium Romanorum-) with
their own list of jurymen and in some measure with a communal
constitution; and, though these provincial Romans ordinarily
returned sooner or later to Italy, they nevertheless gradually
laid the foundations of a fixed population in the provinces,
partly Roman, partly mixed, attaching itself to the Roman settlers.
We have already mentioned that it was in Spain, where the Roman army
first became a standing one, that distinct provincial towns with
Italian constitution were first organized--Carteia in 583,(3)
Valentia in 616,(4) and at a later date Palma and Pollentia.(5)
Although the interior was still far from civilized,--the territory
of the Vaccaeans, for instance, being still mentioned long after
this time as one of the rudest and most repulsive places of abode
for the cultivated Italian--authors and inscriptions attest that as
early as the middle of the seventh century the Latin language was
in common use around New Carthage and elsewhere along the coast.
Gracchus first distinctly developed the idea of colonizing, or in
other words of Romanizing, the provinces of the Roman state by
Italian emigration, and endeavoured to carry it out; and, although
the conservative opposition resisted the bold project, destroyed
for the most part its attempted beginnings, and prevented its
continuation, yet the colony of Narbo was preserved, important even
of itself as extending the domain of the Latin tongue, and far more
important still as the landmark of a great idea, the foundation-
stone of a mighty structure to come. The ancient Gallic, and in
fact the modern French, type of character, sprang out of that
settlement, and are in their ultimate origin creations of Gaius
Gracchus. But the Latin nationality not only filled the bounds
of Italy and began to pass beyond them; it came also to acquire
intrinsically a deeper intellectual basis. We find it in the
course of creating a classical literature, and a higher instruction
of its own; and, though in comparison with the Hellenic classics
and Hellenic culture we may feel ourselves tempted to attach little
value to the feeble hothouse products of Italy, yet, so far as its
historical development was primarily concerned, the quality of
the Latin classical literature and the Latin culture was of far
less moment than the fact that they subsisted side by side with
the Greek; and, sunken as were the contemporary Hellenes in a
literary point of view, one might well apply in this case also
the saying of the poet, that the living day-labourer is better
than the dead Achilles.
Hellenism
But, however rapidly and vigorously the Latin language and
nationality gain ground, they at the same time recognize the
Hellenic nationality as having an entirely equal, indeed an earlier
and better title, and enter everywhere into the closest alliance
with it or become intermingled with it in a joint development.
The Italian revolution, which otherwise levelled all the non-Latin
nationalities in the peninsula, did not disturb the Greek cities of
Tarentum, Rhegium, Neapolis, Locri.(6) In like manner Massilia,
although now enclosed by Roman territory, remained continuously
a Greek city and, just as such, firmly connected with Rome. With
the complete Latinizing of Italy the growth of Hellenizing went hand
in hand. In the higher circles of Italian society Greek training
became an integral element of their native culture. The consul of 623,
the -pontifex maximus- Publius Crassus, excited the astonishment even
of the native Greeks, when as governor of Asia he delivered his judicial
decisions, as the case required, sometimes in ordinary Greek, sometimes
in one of the four dialects which had become written languages. And if
the Italian literature and art for long looked steadily towards the east,
Hellenic literature and art now began to look towards the west. Not only
did the Greek cities in Italy continue to maintain an active intellectual
intercourse with Greece, Asia Minor, and Egypt, and confer on the
Greek poets and actors who had acquired celebrity there the like
recognition and the like honours among themselves; in Rome also,
after the example set by the destroyer of Corinth at his triumph
in 608, the gymnastic and aesthetic recreations of the Greeks--
competitions in wrestling as well as in music, acting, reciting,
and declaiming--came into vogue.(7) Greek men of letters even thus
early struck root in the noble society of Rome, especially in the
Scipionic circle, the most prominent Greek members of which--the
historian Polybius and the philosopher Panaetius--belong rather to
the history of Roman than of Greek development. But even in other
less illustrious circles similar relations occur; we may mention
another contemporary of Scipio, the philosopher Clitomachus,
because his life at the same time presents a vivid view of the
great intermingling of nations at this epoch. A native of
Carthage, then a disciple of Carneades at Athens, and afterwards
his successor in his professorship, Clitomachus held intercourse
from Athens with the most cultivated men of Italy, the historian
Aulus Albinus and the poet Lucilius, and dedicated on the one hand
a scientific work to Lucius Censorinus the Roman consul who opened
the siege of Carthage, and on the other hand a philosophic
consolatory treatise to his fellow-citizens who were conveyed to
Italy as slaves. While Greek literary men of note had hitherto
taken up their abode temporarily in Rome as ambassadors, exiles,
or otherwise, they now began to settle there; for instance, the
already-mentioned Panaetius lived in the house of Scipio, and
the hexameter-maker Archias of Antioch settled at Rome in 652 and
supported himself respectably by the art of improvising and by epic
poems on Roman consulars. Even Gaius Marius, who hardly understood
a line of his -carmen- and was altogether as ill adapted as
possible for a Maecenas, could not avoid patronizing the artist
in verse. While intellectual and literary life thus brought the
more genteel, if not the purer, elements of the two nations into
connection with each other, on the other hand the arrival of troops
of slaves from Asia Minor and Syria and the mercantile immigration
from the Greek and half-Greek east brought the coarsest strata of
Hellenism--largely alloyed with Oriental and generally barbaric
ingredients--into contact with the Italian proletariate, and gave
to that also a Hellenic colouring. The remark of Cicero, that new
phrases and new fashions first make their appearance in maritime
towns, probably had a primary reference to the semi-Hellenic
character of Ostia, Puteoli, and Brundisium, where with foreign
wares foreign manners also first found admission and became thence
more widely diffused.
Mixture of Peoples
The immediate result of this complete revolution in the relations
of nationality was certainly far from pleasing. Italy swarmed with
Greeks, Syrians, Phoenicians, Jews, Egyptians, while the provinces
swarmed with Romans; sharply defined national peculiarities
everywhere came into mutual contact, and were visibly worn off; it
seemed as if nothing was to be left behind but the general impress
of utilitarianism. What the Latin character gained in diffusion
it lost in freshness; especially in Rome itself, where the middle
class disappeared the soonest and most entirely, and nothing was
left but the grandees and the beggars, both in like measure
cosmopolitan. Cicero assures us that about 660 the general culture
in the Latin towns stood higher than in Rome; and this is confirmed
by the literature of this period, whose most pleasing, healthiest,
and most characteristic products, such as the national comedy and
the Lucilian satire, are with greater justice described as Latin,
than as Roman. That the Italian Hellenism of the lower orders was
in reality nothing but a repulsive cosmopolitanism tainted at once
with all the extravagances of culture and with a superficially
whitewashed barbarism, is self-evident; but even in the case of
the better society the fine taste of the Scipionic circle did not
remain the permanent standard. The more the mass of society began
to take interest in Greek life, the more decidedly it resorted not
to the classical literature, but to the most modern and frivolous
productions of the Greek mind; instead of moulding the Roman
character in the Hellenic spirit, they contented themselves with
borrowing that sort of pastime which set their own intellect to
work as little as possible. In this sense the Arpinate landlord
Marcus Cicero, the father of the orator, said that among the
Romans, just as among Syrian slaves, each was the less worth,
the more he understood Greek.
National Decomposition
This national decomposition is, like the whole age, far from
pleasing, but also like that age significant and momentous.
The circle of peoples, which we are accustomed to call the ancient
world, advances from an outward union under the authority of Rome
to an inward union under the sway of the modern culture resting
essentially on Hellenic elements. Over the ruins of peoples of the
second rank the great historical compromise between the two ruling
nations is silently completed; the Greek and Latin nationalities
conclude mutual peace. The Greeks renounce exclusive claims for
their language in the field of culture, as do the Romans for theirs
in the field of politics; in instruction Latin is allowed to stand
on a footing of equality--restricted, it is true, and imperfect--
with Greek; on the other hand Sulla first allows foreign ambassadors
to speak Greek before the Roman senate without an interpreter.
The time heralds its approach, when the Roman commonwealth will
pass into a bilingual state and the true heir of the throne and
the ideas of Alexander the Great will arise in the west, at once
a Roman and a Greek.
The suppression of the secondary, and the mutual interpenetration
of the two primary nationalities, which are thus apparent on a
general survey of national relations, now fall to be more precisely
exhibited in detail in the several fields of religion, national
education, literature, and art.
Religion
The Roman religion was so intimately interwoven with the Roman
commonwealth and the Roman household--so thoroughly in fact the
pious reflection of the Roman burgess-world--that the political
and social revolution necessarily overturned also the fabric of
religion. The ancient Italian popular faith fell to the ground;
over its ruins rose--like the oligarchy and the -tyrannis- rising
over the ruins of the political commonwealth--on the one side
unbelief, state-religion, Hellenism, and on the other side
superstition, sectarianism, the religion of the Orientals, The
germs certainly of both, as indeed the germs of the politico-social
revolution also, may be traced back to the previous epoch (iii.
109-117). Even then the Hellenic culture of the higher circles was
secretly undermining their ancestral faith; Ennius introduced the
allegorizing and historical versions of the Hellenic religion into
Italy; the senate, which subdued Hannibal, had to sanction the
transference of the worship of Cybele from Asia Minor to Rome,
and to take the most serious steps against other still worse
superstitions, particularly the Bacchanalian scandal. But, as
during the preceding period the revolution generally was rather
preparing its way in men's minds than assuming outward shape, so
the religious revolution was in substance, at any rate, the work
only of the Gracchan and Sullan age.
Greek Philosophy
Let us endeavour first to trace the tendency associating itself
with Hellenism. The Hellenic nation, which bloomed and faded far
earlier than the Italian, had long ago passed the epoch of faith
and thenceforth moved exclusively in the sphere of speculation and
reflection; for long there had been no religion there--nothing but
philosophy. But even the philosophic activity of the Hellenic mind
had, when it began to exert influence on Rome, already left the
epoch of productive speculation far behind it, and had arrived at
the stage at which there is not only no origination of truly new
systems, but even the power of apprehending the more perfect of
the older systems begins to wane and men restrict themselves to the
repetition, soon passing into the scholastic tradition, of the less
complete dogmas of their predecessors; at that stage, accordingly,
when philosophy, instead of giving greater depth and freedom to
the mind, rather renders it shallow and imposes on it the worst of
all chains--chains of its own forging. The enchanted draught of
speculation, always dangerous, is, when diluted and stale, certain
poison. The contemporary Greeks presented it thus flat and diluted
to the Romans, and these had not the judgment either to refuse it
or to go back from the living schoolmasters to the dead masters.
Plato and Aristotle, to say nothing of the sages before Socrates,
remained without material influence on the Roman culture, although
their illustrious names were freely used, and their more easily
understood writings were probably read and translated. Accordingly
the Romans became in philosophy simply inferior scholars of bad
teachers.
Leading Schools
Newer Academy
Epicurus and Zeno
Besides the historico-rationalistic conception of religion, which
resolved the myths into biographies of various benefactors of the
human race living in the grey dawn of early times whom superstition
had transformed into gods, or Euhemerism as it was called,(8) there
were chiefly three philosophical schools that came to be of
importance for Italy; viz. the two dogmatic schools of Epicurus
(484) and Zeno (491) and the sceptical school of Arcesilaus (513)
and Carneades (541-625), or, to use the school-names, Epicureanism,
the Stoa, and the newer Academy. The last of these schools, which
started from the impossibility of assured knowledge and in its
stead conceded as possible only a provisional opinion sufficient
for practical needs, presented mainly a polemical aspect, seeing
that it caught every proposition of positive faith or of
philosophic dogmatism in the meshes of its dilemmas. So far it
stands nearly on a parallel with the older method of the sophists;
except that, as may be conceived, the sophists made war more
against the popular faith, Carneades and his disciples more against
their philosophical colleagues. On the other hand Epicurus and
Zeno agreed both in their aim of rationally explaining the nature
of things, and in their physiological method, which set out from
the conception of matter. They diverged, in so far as Epicurus,
following the atomic theory of Democritus, conceived the first
principle as rigid matter, and evolved the manifoldness of things
out of this matter merely by mechanical variations; whereas Zeno,
forming his views after the Ephesian Heraclitus, introduces even
into his primordial matter a dynamic antagonism and a movement
of fluctuation up and down. From this are derived the further
distinctions--that in the Epicurean system the gods as it were did
not exist or were at the most a dream of dreams, while the Stoical
gods formed the ever-active soul of the world, and were as spirit,
as sun, as God powerful over the body, the earth, and nature; that
Epicurus did not, while Zeno did, recognize a government of the
world and a personal immortality of the soul; that the proper
object of human aspiration was according to Epicurus an absolute
equilibrium disturbed neither by bodily desire nor by mental
conflict, while it was according to Zeno a manly activity always
increased by the constant antagonistic efforts of the mind and
body, and striving after a harmony with nature perpetually in
conflict and perpetually at peace. But in one point all these
schools were agreed with reference to religion, that faith as such
was nothing, and had necessarily to be supplemented by reflection--
whether this reflection might consciously despair of attaining any
result, as did the Academy; or might reject the conceptions of
the popular faith, as did the school of Epicurus; or might partly
retain them with explanation of the reasons for doing so, and
partly modify them, as did the Stoics.
Carneades at Rome
It was accordingly only a natural result, that the first contact of
Hellenic philosophy with the Roman nation equally firm in faith and
adverse to speculation should be of a thoroughly hostile character.
The Roman religion was entirely right in disdaining alike the
assaults and the reasoned support of these philosophical systems,
both of which did away with its proper character. The Roman state,
which instinctively felt itself assailed when religion was
attacked, reasonably assumed towards the philosophers the attitude
which a fortress assumes towards the spies of the army advancing
to besiege it, and as early as 593 dismissed the Greek philosophers
along with the rhetoricians from Rome. In fact the very first
debut of philosophy on a great scale in Rome was a formal
declaration of war against faith and morals. It was occasioned
by the occupation of Oropus by the Athenians, a step which they
commissioned three of the most esteemed professors of philosophy,
including Carneades the master of the modern sophistical school,
to justify before the senate (599). The selection was so far
appropriate, as the utterly scandalous transaction defied any
justification in common sense; whereas it was quite in keeping with
the circumstances of the case, when Carneades proved by thesis and
counter-thesis that exactly as many and as cogent reasons might be
adduced in praise of injustice as in praise of justice, and when
he showed in the best logical form that with equal propriety the
Athenians might be required to surrender Oropus and the Romans
to confine themselves once more to their old straw huts on the
Palatine. The young men who were masters of the Greek language
were attracted in crowds by the scandal as well as by the rapid and
emphatic delivery of the celebrated man; but on this occasion at
least Cato could not be found fault with, when he not only bluntly
enough compared the dialectic arguments of the philosophers to
the tedious dirges of the wailing-women, but also insisted on the
senate dismissing a man who understood the art of making right
wrong and wrong right, and whose defence was in fact nothing but
a shameless and almost insulting confession of wrong. But such
dismissals had no great effect, more especially as the Roman youth
could not be prevented from hearing philosophic discourses at
Rhodes and Athens. Men became accustomed first to tolerate
philosophy at least as a necessary evil, and ere long to seek for
the Roman religion, which in its simplicity was no longer tenable,
a support in foreign philosophy--a support which no doubt ruined
it as faith, but in return at any rate allowed the man of culture
decorously to retain in some measure the names and forms of the
popular creed. But this support could neither be Euhemerism, nor
the system of Carneades or of Epicurus.
Euhemerism Not an Adequate Support
The historical version of the myths came far too rudely into
collision with the popular faith, when it declared the gods
directly to be men; Carneades called even their existence in
question, and Epicurus denied to them at least any influence on
the destinies of men. Between these systems and the Roman religion
no alliance was possible; they were proscribed and remained so.
Even in the writings of Cicero it is declared the duty of a citizen
to resist Euhemerism as prejudicial to religious worship; and if the
Academic and the Epicurean appear in his dialogues, the former has
to plead the excuse that, while as a philosopher he is a disciple
of Carneades, as a citizen and -pontifex- he is an orthodox
confessor of the Capitoline Jupiter, and the Epicurean has even
ultimately to surrender and be converted. No one of these three
systems became in any proper sense popular. The plain intelligible
character of Euhemerism exerted doubtless a certain power of
attraction over the Romans, and in particular produced only too
deep an effect on the conventional history of Rome with its at
once childish and senile conversion of fable into history; but it
remained without material influence on the Roman religion, because
the latter from the first dealt only in allegory and not in fable,
and it was not possible in Rome as in Hellas to write biographies
of Zeus the first, second, and third. The modern sophistry could
only succeed where, as in Athens, clever volubility was indigenous,
and where, moreover, the long series of philosophical systems that
had come and gone had accumulated huge piles of intellectual
rubbish. Against the Epicurean quietism, in fine, everything
revolted that was sound and honest in the Roman character so
thoroughly addressing itself to action. Yet it found more
partisans than Euhemerism and the sophistic school, and this was
probably the reason why the police continued to wage war against
it longest and most seriously. But this Roman Epicureanism was not
so much a philosophic system as a sort of philosophic mask, under
which--very much against the design of its strictly moral founder--
thoughtless sensual enjoyment disguised itself for good society;
one of the earliest adherents of this sect, for instance, Titus
Albucius, figures in the poems of Lucilius as the prototype of
a Roman Hellenizing to bad purpose.
Roman Stoa
Far different were the position and influence of the Stoic
philosophy in Italy. In direct contrast to these schools it
attached itself to the religion of the land as closely as science
can at all accommodate itself to faith. To the popular faith with
its gods and oracles the Stoic adhered on principle, in so far as
he recognized in it an instinctive knowledge, to which scientific
knowledge was bound to have regard and even in doubtful cases
to subordinate itself. He believed in a different way from
the people rather than in different objects; the essentially true
and supreme God was in his view doubtless the world-soul, but every
manifestation of the primitive God was in its turn divine, the
stars above all, but also the earth, the vine, the soul of the
illustrious mortal whom the people honoured as a hero, and in fact
every departed spirit of a former man. This philosophy was really
better adapted for Rome than for the land where it first arose.
The objection of the pious believer, that the god of the Stoic had
neither sex nor age nor corporeality and was converted from a
person into a conception, had a meaning in Greece, but not in
Rome. The coarse allegorizing and moral purification, which were
characteristic of the Stoical doctrine of the gods, destroyed the
very marrow of the Hellenic mythology; but the plastic power of the
Romans, scanty even in their epoch of simplicity, had produced no
more than a light veil enveloping the original intuition or the
original conception, out of which the divinity had arisen--a veil
that might be stripped off without special damage. Pallas Athene
might be indignant, when she found herself suddenly transmuted into
the conception of memory: Minerva had hitherto been in reality not
much more. The supernatural Stoic, and the allegoric Roman,
theology coincided on the whole in their result. But, even if
the philosopher was obliged to designate individual propositions
of the priestly lore as doubtful or as erroneous--as when the Stoics,
for example, rejecting the doctrine of apotheosis, saw in Hercules,
Castor, and Pollux nothing but the spirits of distinguished men, or
as when they could not allow the images of the gods to be regarded
as representations of divinity--it was at least not the habit of
the adherents of Zeno to make war on these erroneous doctrines
and to overthrow the false gods; on the contrary, they everywhere
evinced respect and reverence for the religion of the land even
in its weaknesses. The inclination also of the Stoa towards a
casuistic morality and towards a systematic treatment of the
professional sciences was quite to the mind of the Romans,
especially of the Romans of this period, who no longer like their
fathers practised in unsophisticated fashion self-government and
good morals, but resolved the simple morality of their ancestors
into a catechism of allowable and non-allowable actions; whose
grammar and jurisprudence, moreover, urgently demanded a methodical
treatment, without possessing the ability to develop such a
treatment of themselves.
Wide Influence of Stoicism
Panaetius
So this philosophy thoroughly incorporated itself, as a plant
borrowed no doubt from abroad but acclimatized on Italian soil,
with the Roman national economy, and we meet its traces in the
most diversified spheres of action. Its earliest appearance beyond
doubt goes further back; but the Stoa was first raised to full
influence in the higher ranks of Roman society by means of the
group which gathered round Scipio Aemilianus. Panaetius of Rhodes,
the instructor of Scipio and of all Scipio's intimate friends in
the Stoic philosophy, who was constantly in his train and usually
attended him even on journeys, knew how to adapt the system to
clever men of the world, to keep its speculative side in the
background, and to modify in some measure the dryness of the
terminology and the insipidity of its moral catechism, more
particularly by calling in the aid of the earlier philosophers,
among whom Scipio himself had an especial predilection for the
Socrates of Xenophon. Thenceforth the most noted statesmen and
scholars professed the Stoic philosophy--among others Stilo and
Quintus Scaevola, the founders of scientific philology and of
scientific jurisprudence. The scholastic formality of system,
which thenceforth prevails at least externally in these
professional sciences and is especially associated with a fanciful,
charade-like, insipid method of etymologizing, descends from the
Stoa. But infinitely more important was the new state-philosophy
and state-religion, which emanated from the blending of the Stoic
philosophy and the Roman religion. The speculative element, from
the first impressed with but little energy on the system of Zeno,
and still further weakened when that system found admission to
Rome--after the Greek schoolmasters had already for a century been
busied in driving this philosophy into boys' heads and thereby
driving the spirit out of it--fell completely into the shade in
Rome, where nobody speculated but the money-changers; little more
was said as to the ideal development of the God ruling in the soul
of man, or of the divine world-law. The Stoic philosophers showed
themselves not insensible to the very lucrative distinction of
seeing their system raised into the semi-official Roman state-
philosophy, and proved altogether more pliant than from their
rigorous principles we should have expected. Their doctrine as to
the gods and the state soon exhibited a singular family resemblance
to the actual institutions of those who gave them bread; instead of
illustrating the cosmopolitan state of the philosopher, they made
their meditations turn on the wise arrangement of the Roman
magistracies; and while the more refined Stoics such as Panaetius
had left the question of divine revelation by wonders and signs
open as a thing conceivable but uncertain, and had decidedly
rejected astrology, his immediate successors contended for that
doctrine of revelation or, in other words, for the Roman augural
discipline as rigidly and firmly as for any other maxim of the
school, and made extremely unphilosophical concessions even to
astrology. The leading feature of the system came more and more
to be its casuistic doctrine of duties. It suited itself to the
hollow pride of virtue, in which the Romans of this period sought
their compensation amidst the various humbling circumstances of
their contact with the Greeks; and it put into formal shape a
befitting dogmatism of morality, which, like every well-bred system
of morals, combined with the most rigid precision as a whole the
most complaisant indulgence in the details.(9) Its practical
results can hardly be estimated as much more than that, as
we have said, two or three families of rank ate poor fare
to please the Stoa.
State-Religion
Closely allied to this new state-philosophy--or, strictly speaking,
its other side--was the new state-religion; the essential
characteristic of which was the conscious retention, for reasons of
outward convenience, of the principles of the popular faith, which
were recognized as irrational. One of the most prominent men of
the Scipionic circle, the Greek Polybius, candidly declares that
the strange and ponderous ceremonial of Roman religion was invented
solely on account of the multitude, which, as reason had no power
over it, required to be ruled by signs and wonders, while people of
intelligence had certainly no need of religion. Beyond doubt the
Roman friends of Polybius substantially shared these sentiments,
although they did not oppose science and religion to each other
in so gross and downright a fashion. Neither Laelius nor Scipio
Aemilianus can have looked on the augural discipline, which
Polybius has primarily in view, as anything else than a political
institution; yet the national spirit in them was too strong and
their sense of decorum too delicate to have permitted their coming
forward in public with such hazardous explanations. But even in
the following generation the -pontifex maximus- Quintus Scaevola
(consul in 659;(10)) set forth at least in his oral instructions in
law without hesitation the propositions, that there were two sorts
of religion--one philosophic, adapted to the intellect, and one
traditional, not so adapted; that the former was not fitted for
the religion of the state, as it contained various things which
it was useless or even injurious for the people to know; and that
accordingly the traditional religion of the state ought to remain
as it stood. The theology of Varro, in which the Roman religion
is treated throughout as a state institution, is merely a further
development of the same principle. The state, according to his
teaching, was older than the gods of the state as the painter is
older than the picture; if the question related to making the gods
anew, it would certainly be well to make and to name them after a
manner more befitting and more in theoretic accordance with the
parts of the world-soul, and to lay aside the images of the gods
which only excited erroneous ideas,(11) and the mistaken system of
sacrifice; but, since these institutions had been once established,
every good citizen ought to own and follow them and do his part,
that the "common man" might learn rather to set a higher value on,
than to contemn, the gods. That the common man, for whose benefit
the grandees thus surrendered their judgment, now despised this
faith and sought his remedy elsewhere, was a matter of course and
will be seen in the sequel. Thus then the Roman "high church"
was ready, a sanctimonious body of priests and Levites, and an
unbelieving people. The more openly the religion of the land was
declared a political institution, the more decidedly the political
parties regarded the field of the state-church as an arena for
attack and defence; which was especially, in a daily-increasing
measure, the case with augural science and with the elections to
the priestly colleges. The old and natural practice of dismissing
the burgess-assembly, when a thunderstorm came on, had in the hands
of the Roman augurs grown into a prolix system of various celestial
omens and rules of conduct associated therewith; in the earlier
portion of this period it was even directly enacted by the Aelian
and Fufian law, that every popular assembly should be compelled
to disperse if it should occur to any of the higher magistrates
to look for signs of a thunderstorm in the sky; and the Roman
oligarchy was proud of the cunning device which enabled them
thenceforth by a single pious fraud to impress the stamp of
invalidity on any decree of the people.
Priestly Colleges
Conversely, the Roman opposition rebelled against the ancient
practice under which the four principal colleges of priests filled
up their own ranks when vacancies arose, and demanded the extension
of popular election to the stalls themselves, as it had been
previously introduced with reference to the presidents, of these
colleges.(12) This was certainly inconsistent with the spirit of
these corporations; but they had no right to complain of it, after
they had become themselves untrue to their spirit, and had played
into the hands of the government at its request by furnishing
religious pretexts for the annulling of political proceedings.
This affair became an apple of contention between the parties:
the senate beat off the first attack in 609, on which occasion the
Scipionic circle especially turned the scale for the rejection of
the proposal; on the other hand the project passed in 650 with the
proviso already made in reference to the election of the presidents
for the benefit of scrupulous consciences, that not the whole
burgesses but only the lesser half of the tribes should make
the election;(13) finally Sulla restored the right of co-optation
in its full extent.(14)
Practical Use Made of Religion
With this care on the part of the conservatives for the pure
national religion, it was of course quite compatible that the
circles of the highest rank should openly make a jest of it.
The practical side of the Roman priesthood was the priestly cuisine;
the augural and pontifical banquets were as it were the official
gala-days in the life of a Roman epicure, and several of them
formed epochs in the history of gastronomy: the banquet on the
accession of the augur Quintus Hortensius for instance brought
roast peacocks into vogue. Religion was also found very useful
in giving greater zest to scandal. It was a favourite recreation
of the youth of quality to disfigure or mutilate the images of the
gods in the streets by night.(15) Ordinary love affairs had for
long been common, and intrigues with married women began to become
so; but an amour with a Vestal virgin was as piquant as the
intrigues with nuns and the cloister-adventures in the world of
the Decamerone. The scandalous affair of 640 seq. is well known,
in which three Vestals, daughters of the noblest families, and their
paramours, young men likewise of the best houses, were brought to
trial for unchastity first before the pontifical college, and then,
when it sought to hush up the matter, before an extraordinary court
instituted by special decree of the people, and were all condemned
to death. Such scandals, it is true, sedate people could not
approve; but there was no objection to men finding positive
religion to be a folly in their familiar circle; the augurs might,
when one saw another performing his functions, smile in each
other's face without detriment to their religious duties. We learn
to look favourably on the modest hypocrisy of kindred tendencies,
when we compare with it the coarse shamelessness of the Roman
priests and Levites. The official religion was quite candidly
treated as a hollow framework, now serviceable only for political
machinists; in this respect with its numerous recesses and trapdoors
it might and did serve either party, as it happened. Most of
all certainly the oligarchy recognized its palladium in the state-
religion, and particularly in the augural discipline; but the
opposite party also made no resistance in point of principle to
an institute, which had now merely a semblance of life; they rather
regarded it, on the whole, as a bulwark which might pass from the
possession of the enemy into their own.
Oriental Religions in Italy
In sharp contrast to this ghost of religion which we have just
described stand the different foreign worships, which this epoch
cherished and fostered, and which were at least undeniably
possessed of a very decided vitality. They meet us everywhere,
among genteel ladies and lords as well as among the circles of
the slaves, in the general as in the trooper, in Italy as in the
provinces. It is incredible to what a height this superstition
already reached. When in the Cimbrian war a Syrian prophetess,
Martha, offered to furnish the senate with ways and means for the
vanquishing of the Germans, the senate dismissed her with contempt;
nevertheless the Roman matrons and Marius' own wife in particular
despatched her to his head-quarters, where the general readily
received her and carried her about with him till the Teutones were
defeated. The leaders of very different parties in the civil war,
Marius, Octavius, Sulla, coincided in believing omens and oracles.
During its course even the senate was under the necessity, in the
troubles of 667, of consenting to issue directions in accordance
with the fancies of a crazy prophetess. It is significant of
the ossification of the Romano-Hellenic religion as well as of
the increased craving of the multitude after stronger religious
stimulants, that superstition no longer, as in the Bacchic
mysteries, associates itself with the national religion; even
the Etruscan mysticism is already left behind; the worships matured
in the sultry regions of the east appear throughout in the foremost
rank. The copious introduction of elements from Asia Minor and
Syria into the population, partly by the import of slaves, partly
by the augmented traffic of Italy with the east, contributed very
greatly to this result.
The power of these foreign religions is very distinctly apparent
in the revolts of the Sicilian slaves, who for the most part were
natives of Syria. Eunus vomited fire, Athenion read the stars;
the plummets thrown by the slaves in these wars bear in great part
the names of gods, those of Zeus and Artemis, and especially that
of the mysterious Mother who had migrated from Crete to Sicily and
was zealously worshipped there. A similar effect was produced by
commercial intercourse, particularly after the wares of Berytus and
Alexandria were conveyed directly to the Italian ports; Ostia and
Puteoli became the great marts not only for Syrian unguents and
Egyptian linen, but also for the faith of the east. Everywhere
the mingling of religions was constantly on the increase along with
the mingling of nations. Of all allowed worships the most popular
was that of the Pessinuntine Mother of the Gods, which made a deep
impression on the multitude by its eunuch-celibacy, its banquets,
its music, its begging processions, and all its sensuous pomp; the
collections from house to house were already felt as an economic
burden. In the most dangerous time of the Cimbrian war Battaces
the high-priest of Pessinus appeared in person at Rome, in order
to defend the interests of the temple of his goddess there which
was alleged to have been profaned, addressed the Roman people by
the special orders of the Mother of the Gods, and performed also
various miracles. Men of sense were scandalized, but the women
and the great multitude were not to be debarred from escorting
the prophet at his departure in great crowds. Vows of pilgrimage
to the east were already no longer uncommon; Marius himself, for
instance, thus undertook a pilgrimage to Pessinus; in fact even
thus early (first in 653) Roman burgesses devoted themselves
to the eunuch-priesthood.
Secret Worships
But the unallowed and secret worships were naturally still more
popular. As early as Cato's time the Chaldean horoscope-caster had
begun to come into competition with the Etruscan -haruspex- and the
Marsian bird-seer;(16) star-gazing and astrology were soon as much
at home in Italy as in their dreamy native land. In 615 the Roman
-praetor peregrinus- directed all the Chaldeans to evacuate Rome
and Italy within ten days. The same fate at the same time befel
the Jews, who had admitted Italian proselytes to their sabbath.
In like manner Scipio had to clear the camp before Numantia from
soothsayers and pious impostors of every sort. Some forty years
afterwards (657) it was even found necessary to prohibit human
sacrifices. The wild worship of the Cappadocian Ma, or, as the
Romans called her, Bellona, to whom the priests in their festal
processions shed their own blood as a sacrifice, and the gloomy
Egyptian worships began to make their appearance; the former
Cappadocian goddess appeared in a dream to Sulla, and of the later
Roman communities of Isis and Osiris the oldest traced their origin
to the Sullan period. Men had become perplexed not merely as to
the old faith, but as to their very selves; the fearful crises of a
fifty years' revolution, the instinctive feeling that the civil war
was still far from being at an end, increased the anxious suspense,
the gloomy perplexity of the multitude. Restlessly the wandering
imagination climbed every height and fathomed every abyss, where it
fancied that it might discover new prospects or new light amidst
the fatalities impending, might gain fresh hopes in the desperate
struggle against destiny, or perhaps might find merely fresh
alarms. A portentous mysticism found in the general distraction--
political, economic, moral, religious--the soil which was adapted
for it, and grew with alarming rapidity; it was as if gigantic
trees had grown by night out of the earth, none knew whence
or whither, and this very marvellous rapidity of growth
worked new wonders and seized like an epidemic on all minds
not thoroughly fortified.
Education
Just as in the sphere of religion, the revolution begun in the
previous epoch was now completed also in the sphere of education
and culture. We have already shown how the fundamental idea of
the Roman system--civil equality--had already during the sixth
century begun to be undermined in this field also. Even in the
time of Pictor and Cato Greek culture was widely diffused in Rome,
and there was a native Roman culture; but neither of them had then
got beyond the initial stage. Cato's encyclopaedia shows tolerably
what was understood at this period by a Romano-Greek model
training;(16) it was little more than an embodiment of the
knowledge of the old Roman householder, and truly, when compared
with the Hellenic culture of the period, scanty enough. At how
low a stage the average instruction of youth in Rome still stood
at the beginning of the seventh century, may be inferred from
the expressions of Polybius, who in this one respect prominently
censures the criminal indifference of the Romans as compared
with the intelligent private and public care of his countrymen;
no Hellene, not even Polybius himself, could rightly enter
into the deeper idea of civil equality that lay at the root
of this indifference.
Now the case was altered. Just as the naive popular faith was
superseded by an enlightened Stoic supernaturalism, so in education
alongside of the simple popular instruction a special training, an
exclusive -humanitas-, developed itself and eradicated the last
remnants of the old social equality. It will not be superfluous
to cast a glance at the aspect assumed by the new instruction of
the young, both the Greek and the higher Latin.
Greek Instruction
It was a singular circumstance that the same man, who in a
political point of view definitively vanquished the Hellenic
nation, Lucius Aemilius Paullus, was at the same time the first or
one of the first who fully recognized the Hellenic civilization as--
what it has thenceforth continued to be beyond dispute--the
civilization of the ancient world. He was himself indeed an old
man before it was granted to him, with the Homeric poems in his
mind, to stand before the Zeus of Phidias; but his heart was young
enough to carry home the full sunshine of Hellenic beauty and the
unconquerable longing after the golden apples of the Hesperides
in his soul; poets and artists had found in the foreigner a more
earnest and cordial devotee than was any of the wise men of the
Greece of those days. He made no epigram on Homer or Phidias,
but he had his children introduced into the realms of intellect.
Without neglecting their national education, so far as there
was such, he made provision like the Greeks for the physical
development of his boys, not indeed by gymnastic exercises which
were according to Roman notions inadmissible, but by instruction in
the chase, which was among the Greeks developed almost like an art;
and he elevated their Greek instruction in such a way that the
language was no longer merely learned and practised for the sake
of speaking, but after the Greek fashion the whole subject-matter
of general higher culture was associated with the language and
developed out of it--embracing, first of all, the knowledge of
Greek literature with the mythological and historical information
necessary for understanding it, and then rhetoric and philosophy.
The library of king Perseus was the only portion of the Macedonian
spoil that Paullus took for himself, with the view of presenting it
to his sons. Even Greek painters and sculptors were found in his
train and completed the aesthetic training of his children. That
the time was past when men could in this field preserve a merely
repellent attitude as regarded Hellenism, had been felt even by
Cato; the better classes had probably now a presentiment that the
noble substance of Roman character was less endangered by Hellenism
as a whole, than by Hellenism mutilated and misshapen: the mass of
the upper society of Rome and Italy went along with the new mode.
There had been for long no want of Greek schoolmasters in Rome; now
they arrived in troops--and as teachers not merely of the language
but of literature and culture in general--at the newly-opened
lucrative market for the sale of their wisdom. Greek tutors and
teachers of philosophy, who, even if they were not slaves, were
as a rule accounted as servants,(17) were now permanent inmates
in the palaces of Rome; people speculated in them, and there is
a statement that 200,000 sesterces (2000 pounds) were paid for
a Greek literary slave of the first rank. As early as 593 there
existed in the capital a number of special establishments for
the practice of Greek declamation. Several distinguished names
already occur among these Roman teachers; the philosopher Panaetius
has been already mentioned;(18) the esteemed grammarian Crates of
Mallus in Cilicia, the contemporary and equal rival of Aristarchus,
found about 585 at Rome an audience for the recitation and
illustration, language, and matter of the Homeric poems. It is
true that this new mode of juvenile instruction, revolutionary
and anti-national as it was, encountered partially the resistance
of the government; but the edict of dismissal, which the authorities
in 593 fulminated against rhetoricians and philosophers, remained
(chiefly owing to the constant change of the Roman chief
magistrates) like all similar commands without any result worth
mentioning, and after the death of old Cato there were still
doubtless frequent complaints in accordance with his views, but
there was no further action. The higher instruction in Greek and
in the sciences of Greek culture remained thenceforth recognized
as an essential part of Italian training.
Latin Instruction
Public Readings of Classical Works
But by its side there sprang up also a higher Latin instruction.
We have shown in the previous epoch how Latin elementary instruction
raised its character; how the place of the Twelve Tables was taken
by the Latin Odyssey as a sort of improved primer, and the Roman
boy was now trained to the knowledge and delivery of his mother-tongue
by means of this translation, as the Greek by means of the original:
how noted teachers of the Greek language and literature, Andronicus,
Ennius, and others, who already probably taught not children properly
so called, but boys growing up to maturity and young men, did not
disdain to give instruction in the mother-tongue along with the Greek.
These were the first steps towards a higher Latin instruction, but
they did not as yet form such an instruction itself. Instruction
in a language cannot go beyond the elementary stage, so long as it
lacks a literature. It was not until there were not merely Latin
schoolbooks but a Latin literature, and this literature already
somewhat rounded-off in the works of the classics of the sixth century,
that the mother-tongue and the native literature truly entered into
the circle of the elements of higher culture; and the emancipation
from the Greek schoolmasters was now not slow to follow. Stirred up
by the Homeric prelections of Crates, cultivated Romans began to read
the recitative works of their own literature, the Punic War of Naevius,
the Annals of Ennius, and subsequently also the Poems of Lucilius first
to a select circle, and then in public on set days and in presence of
a great concourse, and occasionally also to treat them critically after
the precedent of the Homeric grammarians. These literary prelections,
which cultivated -dilettanti- (-litterati-) held gratuitously, were not
formally a part of juvenile instruction, but were yet an essential means
of introducing the youth to the understanding and the discussion of
the classic Latin literature.
Rhetorical Exercises
The formation of Latin oratory took place in a similar way.
The Roman youth of rank, who were even at an early age incited
to come forward in public with panegyrics and forensic speeches,
can never have lacked exercises in oratory; but it was only at this
epoch, and in consequence of the new exclusive culture, that there
arose a rhetoric properly so called. Marcus Lepidus Porcina (consul
in 617) is mentioned as the first Roman advocate who technically
handled the language and subject-matter; the two famous advocates
of the Marian age, the masculine and vigorous Marcus Antonius (611-
667) and the polished and chaste orator Lucius Crassus (614-663)
were already complete rhetoricians. The exercises of the young men
in speaking increased naturally in extent and importance, but still
remained, just like the exercises in Latin literature, essentially
limited to the personal attendance of the beginner on the master of
the art so as to be trained by his example and his instructions.
Formal instruction both in Latin literature and in Latin rhetoric
was given first about 650 by Lucius Aelius Praeconinus of Lanuvium,
called the "penman" (-Stilo-), a distinguished Roman knight of
strict conservative views, who read Plautus and similar works with
a select circle of younger men--including Varro and Cicero--and
sometimes also went over outlines of speeches with the authors,
or put similar outlines into the hands of his friends. This was
instruction, but Stilo was not a professional schoolmaster; he
taught literature and rhetoric, just as jurisprudence was taught
at Rome, in the character of a senior friend of aspiring young men,
not of a man hired and holding himself at every one's command.
Course of Literature and Rhetoric
But about his time began also the scholastic higher instruction
in Latin, separated as well from elementary Latin as from Greek
instruction, and imparted in special establishments by paid
masters, ordinarily manumitted slaves. That its spirit and method
were throughout borrowed from the exercises in the Greek literature
and language, was a matter of course; and the scholars also consisted,
as at these exercises, of youths, and not of boys. This Latin
instruction was soon divided like the Greek into two courses;
in so far as the Latin literature was first the subject of
scientific lectures, and then a technical introduction was given
to the preparation of panegyrics, public, and forensic orations.
The first Roman school of literature was opened about Stilo's time
by Marcus Saevius Nicanor Postumus, the first separate school for
Latin rhetoric about 660 by Lucius Plotius Gallus; but ordinarily
instructions in rhetoric were also given in the Latin schools of
literature. This new Latin school-instruction was of the most
comprehensive importance. The introduction to the knowledge of
Latin literature and Latin oratory, such as had formerly been
imparted by connoisseurs and masters of high position, had
preserved a certain independence in relation to the Greeks.
The judges of language and the masters of oratory were doubtless
under the influence of Hellenism, but not absolutely under that of
the Greek school-grammar and school-rhetoric; the latter in particular
was decidedly an object of dread. The pride as well as the sound
common sense of the Romans demurred to the Greek assertion that
the ability to speak of things, which the orator understood and felt,
intelligibly and attractively to his peers in the mother-tongue
could be learned in the school by school-rules. To the solid
practical advocate the procedure of the Greek rhetoricians, so
totally estranged from life, could not but appear worse for the
beginner than no preparation at all; to the man of thorough culture
and matured by the experience of life, the Greek rhetoric seemed
shallow and repulsive; while the man of serious conservative views
did not fail to observe the close affinity between a professionally
developed rhetoric and the trade of the demagogue. Accordingly
the Scipionic circle had shown the most bitter hostility to the
rhetoricians, and, if Greek declamations before paid masters were
tolerated doubtless primarily as exercises in speaking Greek, Greek
rhetoric did not thereby find its way either into Latin oratory or
into Latin oratorical instruction. But in the new Latin rhetorical
schools the Roman youths were trained as men and public orators by
discussing in pairs rhetorical themes; they accused Ulysses, who
was found beside the corpse of Ajax with the latter's bloody sword,
of the murder of his comrade in arms, or upheld his innocence; they
charged Orestes with the murder of his mother, or undertook to
defend him; or perhaps they helped Hannibal with a supplementary
good advice as to the question whether he would do better to comply
with the invitation to Rome, or to remain in Carthage, or to take
flight. It was natural that the Catonian opposition should once
more bestir itself against these offensive and pernicious conflicts
of words. The censors of 662 issued a warning to teachers and
parents not to allow the young men to spend the whole day in
exercises, whereof their ancestors had known nothing; and the man,
from whom this warning came, was no less than the first forensic
orator of his age, Lucius Licinius Crassus. Of course the
Cassandra spoke in vain; declamatory exercises in Latin on the
current themes of the Greek schools became a permanent ingredient
in the education of Roman youth, and contributed their part to
educate the very boys as forensic and political players and to
stifle in the bud all earnest and true eloquence.
As the aggregate result of this modern Roman education there sprang
up the new idea of "humanity," as it was called, which consisted
partly of a more or less superficial appropriation of the aesthetic
culture of the Hellenes, partly of a privileged Latin culture as
an imitation or mutilated copy of the Greek. This new humanity,
as the very name indicates, renounced the specific characteristics
of Roman life, nay even came forward in opposition to them, and
combined in itself, just like our closely kindred "general
culture," a nationally cosmopolitan and socially exclusive
character. Here too we trace the revolution, which separated
classes and blended nations.