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Dante Alighieri - "The Vision of Hell, Part 7, Translated By The Rev. H. F. Cary,"

James Weldon Johnson - "The Autobiography of an Ex Colored Man"

Dante Alighieri - "The Vision of Hell, Part 2, Translated By The Rev. H. F. Cary,"

Ellen M. Cyr - "Libro segundo de lectura"

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The History of Rome (Volumes 1 5) - Theodor Mommsen

T >> Theodor Mommsen >> The History of Rome (Volumes 1 5)

24. I. XIII. Landed Proprietors

25. II. III. Combination of the Plebian Aristocracy and the Farmers
against the Nobility

26. Varro (De R. R. i. 2, 9) evidently conceives the author of the
Licinian agrarian law as fanning in person his extensive lands;
although, we may add, the story may easily have been invented to
explain the cognomen (-Stolo-).

27. I. XIII. System of Joint Cultivation

28. I. XIII. Inland Commerce of the Italians

29. I. XIII. Commerce in Latium Passive, in Etruria Active

30. I. XIII. Etrusco-Attic, and Latino-Sicilian Commerce

31. I. XIII. Etrusco-Attic, and Latino-Sicilian Commerce

32. II. IV. Etruria at Peace and on the Decline, II. V. Campanian
Hellenism

33. The conjecture that Novius Flautius, the artist who worked at
this casket for Dindia Macolnia, in Rome, may have been a Campanian,
is refuted by the old Praenestine tomb-stones recently discovered,
on which, among other Macolnii and Plautii, there occurs also a Lucius
Magulnius, son of Haulms (L. Magolnio Pla. f.).

34. I. XIII. Etrusco-Attic, and Latino-Sicilian Commerce, II. II.
Rising Power of the Capitalists

35. II. III. The Burgess Body

36. II. III. The Burgess Body

37. II. III. Laws Imposing Taxes

38. II. III. The Burgess Body

39. II. VII. Construction of New Fortresses and Roads

40. We have already mentioned the censorial stigma attached to Publius
Cornelius Rufinus (consul 464, 477) for his silver plate.(II. VIII.
Police) The strange statement of Fabius (in Strabo, v. p. 228) that
the Romans first became given to luxury (--aisthesthae tou plouton--)
after the conquest of the Sabines, is evidently only a historical
version of the same matter; for the conquest of the Sabines falls in
the first consulate of Rufinus.

41. II. V. Colonizations in the Land of the Volsci

42. II. VI. Last Campaigns in Samnium

43. II. VIII. Inland Intercourse in Italy

44. I. III. Localities of the Oldest Cantons

45. I. II. Iapygians

46. II. V. Campanian Hellenism

47. II. VIII. Transmarine Commerce

48. II. VII. The Full Roman Franchise

49. II. VI. Battle of Sentinum

50. II. III. The Burgess-Body

51. II. VIII. Impulse Given to It

52. II. III. New Opposition

53. II. VII. Attempts at Peace




CHAPTER IX

Art and Science


The Roman National Festival--
The Roman Stage

The growth of art, and of poetic art especially, in antiquity was
intimately associated with the development of national festivals.
The thanksgiving-festival of the Roman community, which had been
already organized in the previous period essentially under Greek
influence and in the first instance as an extraordinary festival,
--the -ludi maximi- or -Romani-,(1) --acquired during the present
epoch a longer duration and greater variety in the amusements.
Originally limited to one day, the festival was prolonged by an
additional day after the happy termination of each of the three
great revolutions of 245, 260, and 387, and thus at the close of
this period it had already a duration of four days.(2)

A still more important circumstance was, that, probably on the
institution of the curule aedileship (387) which was from the first
entrusted with the preparation and oversight of the festival,(3) it
lost its extraordinary character and its reference to a special vow
made by the general, and took its place in the series of the ordinary
annually recurring festivals as the first of all. Nevertheless the
government adhered to the practice of allowing the spectacle proper
--namely the chariot-race, which was the principal performance--to
take place not more than once at the close of the festival. On the
other days the multitude were probably left mainly to furnish
amusement for themselves, although musicians, dancers, rope-walkers,
jugglers, jesters and such like would not fail to make their
appearance on the occasion, whether hired or not But about the year
390 an important change occurred, which must have stood in connection
with the fixing and prolongation of the festival, that took place
perhaps about the same time. A scaffolding of boards was erected at
the expense of the state in the Circus for the first three days, and
suitable representations were provided on it for the entertainment of
the multitude. That matters might not be carried too far however in
this way, a fixed sum of 200,000 -asses- (2055 pounds) once for all
appropriated from the exchequer for the expenses of the festival; and
the sum was not increased up to the period of the Punic wars. The
aediles, who had to expend this sum, were obliged to defray any
additional amount out of their own pockets; and it is not probable
that they at this time contributed often or considerably from their
own resources. That the new stage was generally under Greek influence,
is proved by its very name (-scaena-, --skene--). It was no doubt at
first designed merely for musicians and buffoons of all sorts, amongst
whom the dancers to the flute, particularly those then so celebrated
from Etruria, were probably the most distinguished; but a public stage
had at any rate now arisen in Rome and it soon became open also to
the Roman poets.

Ballad Singers, -Satura- --
Censure of Art

There was no want of such poets in Latium. Latin "strolling minstrels"
or "ballad-singers" (-grassatores-, -spatiatores-) went from town to
town and from house to house, and recited their chants (-saturae-(4)),
gesticulating and dancing to the accompaniment of the flute.
The measure was of course the only one that then existed, the
so-called Saturnian.(5) No distinct plot lay at the basis of the
chants, and as little do they appear to have been in the form of
dialogue. We must conceive of them as resembling those monotonous
--sometimes improvised, sometimes recited--ballads and -tarantelle-,
such as one may still hear in the Roman hostelries. Songs of this sort
accordingly early came upon the public stage, and certainly formed the
first nucleus of the Roman theatre. But not only were these beginnings
of the drama in Rome, as everywhere, modest and humble; they were, in
a remarkable manner, accounted from the very outset disreputable.
The Twelve Tables denounced evil and worthless song-singing, imposing
severe penalties not only upon incantations but even on lampoons
composed against a fellow-citizen or recited before his door, and
forbidding the employment of wailing-women at funerals. But far more
severely, than by such legal restrictions, the incipient exercise of
art was affected by the moral anathema, which was denounced against
these frivolous and paid trades by the narrowminded earnestness of
the Roman character. "The trade of a poet," says Cato, "in former
times was not respected; if any one occupied himself with it or was a
hanger-on at banquets, he was called an idler." But now any one who
practised dancing, music, or ballad-singing for money was visited
with a double stigma, in consequence of the more and more confirmed
disapproval of gaining a livelihood by services rendered for
remuneration. While accordingly the taking part in the masked
farces with stereotyped characters, that formed the usual native
amusement,(6) was looked upon as an innocent youthful frolic, the
appearing on a public stage for money and without a mask was
considered as directly infamous, and the singer and poet were in
this respect placed quite on a level with the rope-dancer and the
harlequin. Persons of this stamp were regularly pronounced by the
censors(7) incapable of serving in the burgess-army and of voting
in the burgess-assembly. Moreover, not only was the direction of the
stage regarded as pertaining to the province of the city police--a
fact significant enough even in itself--but the police was probably,
even at this period, invested with arbitrary powers of an
extraordinary character against professional stage-artists. Not only
did the police magistrates sit in judgment on the performance after
its conclusion--on which occasion wine flowed as copiously for those
who had acquitted themselves well, as stripes fell to the lot of the
bungler--but all the urban magistrates were legally entitled to
inflict bodily chastisement and imprisonment on any actor at any
time and at any place. The necessary effect of this was that dancing,
music, and poetry, at least so far as they appeared on the public
stage, fell into the hands of the lowest classes of the Roman
burgesses, and especially into those of foreigners; and while at
this period poetry still played altogether too insignificant a part
to engage the attention of foreign artists, the statement on the other
hand, that in Rome all the music, sacred and profane, was essentially
Etruscan, and consequently the ancient Latin art of the flute,
which was evidently at one time held in high esteem,(8) had been
supplanted by foreign music, may be regarded as already applicable
to this period.

There is no mention of any poetical literature. Neither the masked
plays nor the recitations of the stage can have had in the proper
sense fixed texts; on the contrary, they were ordinarily improvised
by the performers themselves as circumstances required. Of works
composed at this period posterity could point to nothing but a sort
of Roman "Works and Days"--counsels of a farmer to his son,(9) and
the already-mentioned Pythagorean poems of Appius Claudius(10) the
first commencement of Roman poetry after the Hellenic type. Nothing
of the poems of this epoch has survived but one or two epitaphs
in Saturnian measure.(11)

Roman Historical Composition

Along with the rudiments of the Roman drama, the rudiments of Roman
historical composition belong to this period; both as regards the
contemporary recording of remarkable events, and as regards the
conventional settlement of the early history of the Roman community.

Registers of Magistrates

The writing of contemporary history was associated with the register
of the magistrates. The register reaching farthest back, which was
accessible to the later Roman inquirers and is still indirectly
accessible to us, seems to have been derived from the archives of the
temple of the Capitoline Jupiter; for it records the names of the
annual presidents of the community onward from the consul Marcus
Horatius, who consecrated that temple on the 13th Sept. in his year of
office, and it also notices the vow which was made on occasion of a
severe pestilence under the consuls Publius Servilius and Lucius
Aebutius (according to the reckoning now current, 291), that
thenceforward a nail should be driven every hundredth year into the
wall of the Capitoline temple. Subsequently it was the state officials
who were learned in measuring and in writing, or in other words, the
pontifices, that kept an official record of the names of the annual
chief magistrates, and thus combined an annual, with the earlier
monthly, calendar. Both these calendars were afterwards comprehended
under the name of Fasti--which strictly belonged only to the list of
court-days. This arrangement was probably adopted not long after the
abolition of the monarchy; for in fact an official record of the
annual magistrates was of urgent practical necessity for the purpose
of authenticating the order of succession of official documents. But,
if there was an official register of the consuls so old, it probably
perished in the Gallic conflagration (364); and the list of the
pontifical college was subsequently completed from the Capitoline
register which was not affected by that catastrophe, so far as this
latter reached back. That the list of presidents which we now have
--although in collateral matters, and especially in genealogical
statements, it has been supplemented at pleasure from the family
pedigrees of the nobility--is in substance based from the beginning
on contemporary and credible records, admits of no doubt. But it
reproduces the calendar years only imperfectly and approximately: for
the consuls did not enter on office with the new year, or even on a
definite day fixed once for all; on the contrary from various causes
the day of entering on office was fluctuating, and the -interregna-
that frequently occurred between two consulates were entirely omitted
in the reckoning by official years. Accordingly, if the calendar years
were to be reckoned by this list of consuls, it was necessary to note
the days of entering on and of demitting office in the case of each
pair, along with such -interregna- as occurred; and this too may have
been early done. But besides this, the list of the annual magistrates
was adjusted to the list of calendar years in such a way that a pair
of magistrates were by accommodation assigned to each calendar year,
and, where the list did not suffice, intercalary years were inserted,
which are denoted in the later (Varronian) table by the figures 379,
383, 421, 430, 445, 453. From 291 u. c. (463 B. C.) the Roman list
demonstrably coincides, not indeed in detail but yet on the whole,
with the Roman calendar, and is thus chronologically certain, so far
as the defectiveness of the calendar itself allows. The 47 years
preceding that date cannot be checked, but must likewise be at least
in the main correct.(12) Whatever lies beyond 245 remains,
chronologically, in oblivion.

Capitoline Era

No era was formed for ordinary use; but in ritual matters they
reckoned from the year of the consecration of the temple of the
Capitoline Jupiter, from which the list of magistrates also started.

Annals

The idea naturally suggested itself that, along with the names of
the magistrates, the most important events occurring under their
magistracy might be noted; and from such notices appended to the
catalogue of magistrates the Roman annals arose, just as the
chronicles of the middle ages arose out of the memoranda marginally
appended to the table of Easter. But it was not until a late period
that the pontifices formed the scheme of a formal chronicle (-liber
annalis-), which should steadily year by year record the names of all
the magistrates and the remarkable events. Before the eclipse of the
sun noticed under the 5th of June 351, by which is probably meant that
of the 20th June 354, no solar eclipse was found recorded from
observation in the later chronicle of the city: its statements as to
the numbers of the census only begin to sound credible after the
beginning of the fifth century,(13) the cases of fines brought before
the people, and the prodigies expiated on behalf of the community,
appear to have been regularly introduced into the annals only after
the second half of the fifth century began. To all appearance the
institution of an organized book of annals, and--what was certainly
associated with it--the revision (which we have just explained) of the
earlier list of magistrates so as to make it a year-calendar by the
insertion, where chronologically necessary, of intercalary years, took
place in the first half of the fifth century. But even after it became
a practically recognized duty of the -pontifex maximus- to record year
after year campaigns and colonizations, pestilences and famines,
eclipses and portents, the deaths of priests and other men of note,
the new decrees of the people, and the results of the census, and
to deposit these records in his official residence for permanent
preservation and for any one's inspection, these records were still
far removed from the character of real historical writings. How scanty
the contemporary record still was at the close of this period and how
ample room is left for the caprice of subsequent annalists, is shown
with incisive clearness by a comparison of the accounts as to the
campaign of 456 in the annals and in the epitaph of the consul
Scipio.(14) The later historians were evidently unable to construct a
readable and in some measure connected narrative out of these notices
from the book of annals; and we should have difficulty, even if the
book of annals still lay before us with its original contents, in
writing from it in duly connected sequence the history of the times.
Such chronicles, however, did not exist merely in Rome; every Latin
city possessed its annals as well as its pontifices, as is clear from
isolated notices relative to Ardea for instance, Ameria, and Interamna
on the Nar; and from the collective mass of these city-chronicles
some result might perhaps have been attained similar to what has
been accomplished for the earlier middle ages by the comparison of
different monastic chronicles. Unfortunately the Romans in later times
preferred to supply the defect by Hellenic or Hellenizing falsehoods.

Family Pedigrees

Besides these official arrangements, meagrely planned and uncertainly
handled, for commemorating past times and past events, there can
scarcely have existed at this epoch any other records immediately
serviceable for Roman history. Of private chronicles we find no trace.
The leading houses, however, were careful to draw up genealogical
tables, so important in a legal point of view, and to have the family
pedigree painted for a perpetual memorial on the walls of the
entrance-hall. These lists, which at least named the magistracies held
by the family, not only furnished a basis for family tradition, but
doubtless at an early period had biographical notices attached to
them. The memorial orations, which in Rome could not be omitted at the
funeral of any person of quality, and were ordinarily pronounced by
the nearest relative of the deceased, consisted essentially not merely
in an enumeration of the virtues and excellencies of the dead, but
also in a recital of the deeds and virtues of his ancestors; and so
they were doubtless, even in the earliest times, transmitted
traditionally from one generation to another. Many a valuable
notice may by this means have been preserved; but many a daring
perversion and falsification also may have been in this way
introduced into tradition.

Roman Early History of Rome

But as the first steps towards writing real history belonged to
this period, to it belonged also the first attempts to record, and
conventionally distort, the primitive history of Rome. The sources
whence it was formed were of course the same as they are everywhere.
Isolated names like those of the kings Numa, Ancus, Tullus, to whom
the clan-names were probably only assigned subsequently, and isolated
facts, such as the conquest of the Latins by king Tarquinius and the
expulsion of the Tarquinian royal house, may have continued to live in
true general tradition orally transmitted. Further materials were
furnished by the traditions of the patrician clans, such as the
various tales that relate to the Fabii. Other tales gave a symbolic
and historic shape to primitive national institutions, especially
setting forth with great vividness the origin of rules of law. The
sacredness of the walls was thus illustrated in the tale of the death
of Remus, the abolition of blood-revenge in the tale of the end of
king Tatius(15), the necessity of the arrangement as to the -pons
sublicius- in the legend of Horatius Cocles,(15) the origin of the
-provocatio- in the beautiful tale of the Horatii and Curiatii, the
origin of manumission and of the burgess-rights of freedmen in the
tale of the Tarquinian conspiracy and the slave Vindicius. To the same
class belongs the history of the foundation of the city itself, which
was designed to connect the origin of Rome with Latium and with Alba,
the general metropolis of the Latins. Historical glosses were annexed
to the surnames of distinguished Romans; that of Publius Valerius the
"servant of the people" (-Poplicola-), for instance, gathered around
it a whole group of such anecdotes. Above all, the sacred fig-tree and
other spots and notable objects in the city were associated with a
great multitude of sextons' tales of the same nature as those out of
which, upwards of a thousand years afterwards, there grew up on the
same ground the Mirabilia Urbis. Some attempts to link together these
different tales--the adjustment of the series of the seven kings, the
setting down of the duration of the monarchy at 240 years in all,
which was undoubtedly based on a calculation of the length of
generations,(16) and even the commencement of an official record of
these assumed facts--probably took place already in this epoch. The
outlines of the narrative, and in particular its quasi-chronology,
make their appearance in the later tradition so unalterably fixed,
that for that very reason the fixing of them must be placed not in,
but previous to, the literary epoch of Rome. If a bronze casting of
the twins Romulus and Remus sucking the teats of the she-wolf was
already placed beside the sacred fig-tree in 458, the Romans who
subdued Latium and Samnium must have heard the history of the origin
of their ancestral city in a form not greatly differing from what
we read in Livy. Even the Aborigines--i. e. "those from the very
beginning"--that simple rudimental form of historical speculation as
to the Latin race--are met with about 465 in the Sicilian author
Callias. It is of the very nature of a chronicle that it should attach
prehistoric speculation to history and endeavour to go back, if not
to the origin of heaven and earth, at least to the origin of the
community; and there is express testimony that the table of the
pontifices specified the year of the foundation of Rome. Accordingly
it may be assumed that, when the pontifical college in the first half
of the fifth century proceeded to substitute for the former scanty
records--ordinarily, doubtless, confined to the names of the
magistrates--the scheme of a formal yearly chronicle, it also added
what was wanting at the beginning, the history of the kings of Rome
and of their fall, and, by placing the institution of the republic on
the day of the consecration of the Capitoline temple, the 13th of
Sept. 245, furnished a semblance of connection between the dateless
and the annalistic narrative. That in this earliest record of the
origin of Rome the hand of Hellenism was at work, can scarcely
be doubted. The speculations as to the primitive and subsequent
population, as to the priority of pastoral life over agriculture, and
the transformation of the man Romulus into the god Quirinus,(17) have
quite a Greek aspect, and even the obscuring of the genuinely national
forms of the pious Numa and the wise Egeria by the admixture of alien
elements of Pythagorean primitive wisdom appears by no means to be
one of the most recent ingredients in the Roman prehistoric annals.

The pedigrees of the noble clans were completed in a manner analogous
to these -origines- of the community, and were, in the favourite style
of heraldry, universally traced back to illustrious ancestors. The
Aemilii, for instance, Calpurnii, Pinarii, and Pomponii professed to
be descended from the four sons of Numa, Mamercus, Calpus, Pinus, and
Pompo; and the Aemilii, yet further, from Mamercus, the son of
Pythagoras, who was named the "winning speaker" (--aimulos--)

But, notwithstanding the Hellenic reminiscences that are everywhere
apparent, these prehistoric annals of the community and of the leading
houses may be designated at least relatively as national, partly
because they originated in Rome, partly because they tended primarily
to form links of connection not between Rome and Greece, but between
Rome and Latium.

Hellenic Early History of Rome

It was Hellenic story and fiction that undertook the task of
connecting Rome and Greece. Hellenic legend exhibits throughout an
endeavour to keep pace with the gradual extension of geographical
knowledge, and to form a dramatized geography by the aid of its
numerous stories of voyagers and emigrants. In this, however, it
seldom follows a simple course. An account like that of the earliest
Greek historical work which mentions Rome, the "Sicilian History" of
Antiochus of Syracuse (which ended in 330)--that a man named Sikelos
had migrated from Rome to Italia, that is, to the Bruttian peninsula
--such an account, simply giving a historical form to the family
affinity between the Romans, Siculi, and Bruttians, and free from all
Hellenizing colouring, is a rare phenomenon. Greek legend as a whole
is pervaded--and the more so, the later its rise--by a tendency to
represent the whole barbarian world as having either issued from the
Greeks or having been subdued by them; and it early in this sense spun
its threads also around the west. For Italy the legends of Herakles
and of the Argonauts were of less importance--although Hecataeus
(after 257) is already acquainted with the Pillars of Herakles, and
carries the Argo from the Black Sea into the Atlantic Ocean, from the
latter into the Nile, and thus back to the Mediterranean--than were
the homeward voyages connected with the fall of Ilion. With the first
dawn of information as to Italy Diomedes begins to wander in the
Adriatic, and Odysseus in the Tyrrhene Sea;(18) as indeed the
latter localization at least was naturally suggested by the Homeric
conception of the legend. Down to the times of Alexander the countries
on the Tyrrhene Sea belonged in Hellenic fable to the domain of the
legend of Odysseus; Ephorus, who ended his history with the year 414,
and the so-called Scylax (about 418) still substantially follow it.
Of Trojan voyages the whole earlier poetry has no knowledge;
in Homer Aeneas after the fall of Ilion rules over the Trojans
that remained at home.