The History of Rome, Book III - Theodor Mommsen
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-Da mihi, vir,--quod dem Quinquatribus
Praecantrici, conjectrici, hariolae atquc haruspicae;
Tum piatricem clementer non potest quin munerem.
Flagitium est, si nil mittetur, quo supercilio spicit.-
The Romans did not create a "God of gold," as they had formerly
created a "God of silver";(2) nevertheless he reigned in reality alike
over the highest and lowest spheres of religious life. The old pride
of the Latin national religion--the moderation of its economic
demands--was irrevocably gone.
Theology
At the same time its ancient simplicity also departed. Theology, the
spurious offspring of reason and faith, was already occupied in
introducing its own tedious prolixity and solemn inanity into the old
homely national faith, and thereby expelling the true spirit of that
faith. The catalogue of the duties and privileges of the priest of
Jupiter, for instance, might well have a place in the Talmud. They
pushed the natural rule--that no religious service can be acceptable
to the gods unless it is free from flaw--to such an extent in
practice, that a single sacrifice had to be repeated thirty times in
succession on account of mistakes again and again committed, and that
the games, which also formed a part of divine service, were regarded
as undone if the presiding magistrate had committed any slip in word
or deed or if the music even had paused at a wrong time, and so had to
be begun afresh, frequently for several, even as many as seven, times
in succession.
Irreligious Spirit
This exaggeration of conscientiousness was already a symptom of its
incipient torpor; and the reaction against it--indifference and
unbelief--failed not soon to appear. Even in the first Punic war
(505) an instance occurred in which the consul himself made an open
jest of consulting the auspices before battle--a consul, it is true,
belonging to the peculiar clan of the Claudii, which alike in good and
evil was ahead of its age. Towards the end of this epoch complaints
were loudly made that the lore of the augurs was neglected, and that,
to use the language of Cato, a number of ancient auguries and auspices
were falling into oblivion through the indolence of the college. An
augur like Lucius Paullus, who saw in the priesthood a science and not
a mere title, was already a rare exception, and could not but be so,
when the government more and more openly and unhesitatingly employed
the auspices for the accomplishment of its political designs, or, in
other words, treated the national religion in accordance with the view
of Polybius as a superstition useful for imposing on the public at
large. Where the way was thus paved, the Hellenistic irreligious
spirit found free course. In connection with the incipient taste for
art the sacred images of the gods began as early as the time of Cato
to be employed, like other furniture, in adorning the chambers of the
rich. More dangerous wounds were inflicted on religion by the rising
literature. It could not indeed venture on open attacks, and such
direct additions as were made by its means to religious conceptions
--e.g. the Pater Caelus formed by Ennius from the Roman Saturnus in
imitation of the Greek Uranos--were, while Hellenistic, of no great
importance. But the diffusion of the doctrines of Epichar and
Euhemerus in Rome was fraught with momentous consequences. The
poetical philosophy, which the later Pythagoreans had extracted from
the writings of the old Sicilian comedian Epicharmus of Megara (about
280), or rather had, at least for the most part, circulated under
cover of his name, saw in the Greek gods natural substances, in Zeus
the atmosphere, in the soul a particle of sun-dust, and so forth. In
so far as this philosophy of nature, like the Stoic doctrine in later
times, had in its most general outlines a certain affinity with the
Roman religion, it was calculated to undermine the national religion
by resolving it into allegory. A quasi-historical analysis of
religion was given in the "Sacred Memoirs" of Euhemerus of Messene
(about 450), which, under the form of reports on the travels of the
author among the marvels of foreign lands, subjected to thorough and
documentary sifting the accounts current as to the so-called gods, and
resulted in the conclusion that there neither were nor are gods at
all. To indicate the character of the book, it may suffice to mention
the one fact, that the story of Kronos devouring his children is
explained as arising out of the existence of cannibalism in the
earliest times and its abolition by king Zeus. Notwithstanding, or
even by virtue of, its insipidity and of its very obvious purpose, the
production had an undeserved success in Greece, and helped, in concert
with the current philosophies there, to bury the dead religion. It is
a remarkable indication of the expressed and conscious antagonism
between religion and the new philosophy that Ennius already translated
into Latin those notoriously destructive writings of Epicharmus and
Euhemerus. The translators may have justified themselves at the bar
of Roman police by pleading that the attacks were directed only
against the Greek, and not against the Latin, gods; but the evasion
was tolerably transparent. Cato was, from his own point of view,
quite right in assailing these tendencies indiscriminately, wherever
they met him, with his own peculiar bitterness, and in calling even
Socrates a corrupter of morals and offender against religion.
Home and Foreign Superstition
Thus the old national religion was visibly on the decline; and, as
the great trees of the primeval forest were uprooted the soil became
covered with a rank growth of thorns and of weeds that had never been
seen before. Native superstitions and foreign impostures of the most
various hues mingled, competed, and conflicted with each other. No
Italian stock remained exempt from this transmuting of old faith into
new superstition. As the lore of entrails and of lightning was
cultivated among the Etruscans, so the liberal art of observing birds
and conjuring serpent? flourished luxuriantly among the Sabellians
and more particularly the Marsians. Even among the Latin nation, and
in fact in Rome itself, we meet with similar phenomena, although they
are, comparatively speaking, less conspicuous. Such for instance were
the lots of Praeneste, and the remarkable discovery at Rome in 573 of
the tomb and posthumous writings of the king Numa, which are alleged
to have prescribed religious rites altogether strange and unheard of.
But the credulous were to their regret not permitted to learn more
than this, coupled with the fact that the books looked very new; for
the senate laid hands on the treasure and ordered the rolls to be
summarily thrown into the fire. The home manufacture was thus quite
sufficient to meet such demands of folly as might fairly be expected;
but the Romans were far from being content with it. The Hellenism of
that epoch, already denationalized and pervaded by Oriental mysticism,
introduced not only unbelief but also superstition in its most
offensive and dangerous forms to Italy; and these vagaries moreover
had quite a special charm, precisely because they were foreign.
Worship of Cybele
Chaldaean astrologers and casters of nativities were already in the
sixth century spread throughout Italy; but a still more important
event--one making in fact an epoch in the world's history--was the
reception of the Phrygian Mother of the Gods among the publicly
recognized divinities of the Roman state, to which the government had
been obliged to give its consent during the last weary years of the
Hannibalic war (550). A special embassy was sent for the purpose to
Pessinus, a city in the territory of the Celts of Asia Minor; and the
rough field-stone, which the priests of the place liberally presented
to the foreigners as the real Mother Cybele, was received by the
community with unparalleled pomp. Indeed, by way of perpetually
commemorating the joyful event, clubs in which the members entertained
each other in rotation were instituted among the higher classes, and
seem to have materially stimulated the rising tendency to the
formation of cliques. With the permission thus granted for the
-cultus- of Cybele the worship of the Orientals gained a footing
officially in Rome; and, though the government strictly insisted that
the emasculate priests of the new gods should remain Celts (-Galli-)
as they were called, and that no Roman burgess should devote himself
to this pious eunuchism, yet the barbaric pomp of the "Great Mother"
--her priests clad in Oriental costume with the chief eunuch at their
head, marching in procession through the streets to the foreign music
of fifes and kettledrums, and begging from house to house--and the
whole doings, half sensuous, half monastic, must have exercised a most
material influence over the sentiments and views of the people.
Worship of Bacchus
The effect was only too rapidly and fearfully apparent. A few years
later (568) rites of the most abominable character came to the
knowledge of the Roman authorities; a secret nocturnal festival in
honour of the god Bacchus had been first introduced into Etruria
through a Greek priest, and, spreading like a cancer, had rapidly
reached Rome and propagated itself over all Italy, everywhere
corrupting families and giving rise to the most heinous crimes,
unparalleled unchastity, falsifying of testaments, and murdering by
poison. More than 7000 men were sentenced to punishment, most of them
to death, on this account, and rigorous enactments were issued as to
the future; yet they did not succeed in repressing the ongoings, and
six years later (574) the magistrate to whom the matter fell
complained that 3000 men more had been condemned and still there
appeared no end of the evil.
Repressive Measures
Of course all rational men were agreed in the condemnation of these
spurious forms of religion--as absurd as they were injurious to the
commonwealth: the pious adherents of the olden faith and the partisans
of Hellenic enlightenment concurred in their ridicule of, and
indignation at, this superstition. Cato made it an instruction to his
steward, "that he was not to present any offering, or to allow any
offering to be presented on his behalf, without the knowledge and
orders of his master, except at the domestic hearth and on the
wayside-altar at the Compitalia, and that he should consult no
-haruspex-, -hariolus-, or -Chaldaeus-." The well-known question, as
to how a priest could contrive to suppress laughter when he met his
colleague, originated with Cato, and was primarily applied to the
Etruscan -haruspex-. Much in the same spirit Ennius censures in true
Euripidean style the mendicant soothsayers and their adherents:
-Sed superstitiosi vates impudentesque arioli,
Aut inertes aut insani aut quibus egestas imperat,
Qui sibi semitam non sapiunt, alteri monstrant viam,
Quibus divitias pollicentur, ab eis drachumam ipsi petunt.-
But in such times reason from the first plays a losing game against
unreason. The government, no doubt, interfered; the pious impostors
were punished and expelled by the police; every foreign worship not
specially sanctioned was forbidden; even the consulting of the
comparatively innocent lot-oracle of Praeneste was officially
prohibited in 512; and, as we have already said, those who took part
in the Bacchanalia were rigorously prosecuted. But, when once men's
heads are thoroughly turned, no command of the higher authorities
avails to set them right again. How much the government was obliged
to concede, or at any rate did concede, is obvious from what has been
stated. The Roman custom, under which the state consulted Etruscan
sages in certain emergencies and the government accordingly took steps
to secure the traditional transmission of Etruscan lore in the noble
families of Etruria, as well as the permission of the secret worship
of Demeter, which was not immoral and was restricted to women, may
probably be ranked with the earlier innocent and comparatively
indifferent adoption of foreign rites. But the admission of the
worship of the Mother of the Gods was a bad sign of the weakness which
the government felt in presence of the new superstition, perhaps even
of the extent to which it was itself pervaded by it; and it showed in
like manner either an unpardonable negligence or something still
worse, that the authorities only took steps against such proceedings
as the Bacchanalia at so late a stage, and even then on an accidental
information.
Austerity of Manners
Catos's Family Life
The picture, which has been handed down to us of the life of Cato the
Elder, enables us in substance to perceive how, according to the ideas
of the respectable burgesses of that period, the private life of the
Roman should be spent. Active as Cato was as a statesman, pleader,
author, and mercantile speculator, family life always formed with him
the central object of existence; it was better, he thought, to be a
good husband than a great senator. His domestic discipline was
strict. The servants were not allowed to leave the house without
orders, nor to talk of what occurred to the household to strangers.
The more severe punishments were not inflicted capriciously, but
sentence was pronounced and executed according to a quasi-judicial
procedure: the strictness with which offences were punished may be
inferred from the fact, that one of his slaves who had concluded a
purchase without orders from his master hanged himself on the matter
coming to Cato's ears. For slight offences, such as mistakes
committed in waiting at table, the consular was wont after dinner to
administer to the culprit the proper number of lashes with a thong
wielded by his own hand. He kept his wife and children in order no
less strictly, but by other means; for he declared it sinful to lay
hands on a wife or grown-up children in the same way as on slaves.
In the choice of a wife he disapproved marrying for money, and
recommended men to look to good descent; but he himself married in
old age the daughter of one of his poor clients. Moreover he adopted
views in regard to continence on the part of the husband similar to
those which everywhere prevail in slave countries; a wife was
throughout regarded by him as simply a necessary evil. His writings
abound in invectives against the chattering, finery-loving,
ungovernable fair sex; it was the opinion of the old lord that "all
women are plaguy and proud," and that, "were men quit of women, our
life might probably be less godless." On the other hand the rearing
of children born in wedlock was a matter which touched his heart and
his honour, and the wife in his eyes existed strictly and solely for
the children's sake. She nursed them ordinarily herself, or, if she
allowed her children to be suckled by female slaves, she also allowed
their children in return to draw nourishment from her own breast; one
of the few traits, which indicate an endeavour to mitigate the
institution of slavery by ties of human sympathy--the common impulses
of maternity and the bond of foster-brotherhood. The old general was
present in person, whenever it was possible, at the washing and
swaddling of his children. He watched with reverential care over
their childlike innocence; he assures us that he was as careful lest
he should utter an unbecoming word in presence of his children as if
he had been in presence of the Vestal Virgins, and that he never
before the eyes of his daughters embraced their mother, except when
she had become alarmed during a thunder-storm. The education of the
son was perhaps the noblest portion of his varied and variously
honourable activity. True to his maxim, that a ruddy-checked boy was
worth more than a pale one, the old soldier in person initiated his
son into all bodily exercises, and taught him to wrestle, to ride, to
swim, to box, and to endure heat and cold. But he felt very justly,
that the time had gone by when it sufficed for a Roman to be a good
farmer and soldier; and be felt also that it could not but have an
injurious influence on the mind of his boy, if he should subsequently
learn that the teacher, who had rebuked and punished him and had won
his reverence, was a mere slave. Therefore he in person taught the
boy what a Roman was wont to learn, to read and write and know the law
of the land; and even in his later years he worked his way so far into
the general culture of the Hellenes, that he was able to deliver to
his son in his native tongue whatever in that culture he deemed to be
of use to a Roman. All his writings were primarily intended for his
son, and he wrote his historical work for that son's use with large
distinct letters in his own hand. He lived in a homely and frugal
style. His strict parsimony tolerated no expenditure on luxuries. He
allowed no slave to cost him more than 1500 -denarii- (65 pounds) and
no dress more than 100 -denarii- (4 pounds: 6 shillings); no carpet was
to be seen in his house, and for a long time there was no whitewash on
the walls of the rooms. Ordinarily he partook of the same fare with
his servants, and did not buffer his outlay in cash for the meal to
exceed 30 -asses- (2 shillings); in time of war even wine was
uniformly banished from his table, and he drank water or, according to
circumstances, water mixed with vinegar. On the other hand, he was no
enemy to hospitality; he was fond of associating both with his club in
town and with the neighbouring landlords in the country; he sat long
at table, and, as his varied experience and his shrewd and ready wit
made him a pleasant companion, he disdained neither the dice nor the
wine-flask: among other receipts in his book on husbandry he even
gives a tried recipe for the case of a too hearty meal and too deep
potations. His life up to extreme old age was one of ceaseless
activity. Every moment was apportioned and occupied; and every
evening he was in the habit of turning over in his mind what he had
heard, said, or done during the day. Thus he found time for his own
affairs as well as for those of his friends and of the state, and time
also for conversation and pleasure; everything was done quickly and
without many words, and his genuine spirit of activity hated nothing
so much as bustle or a great ado about trifles. So lived the man who
was regarded by his contemporaries and by posterity as the true model
of a Roman burgess, and who appeared as it were the living embodiment
of the--certainly somewhat coarse-grained--energy and probity of Rome
in contrast with Greek indolence and Greek immorality; as a later
Roman poet says:
-Sperne mores transmarinos, mille habent offucias.
Cive Romano per orbem nemo vivit rectius.
Quippe malim unum Catonem, quam trecentos Socratas.- (3)
Such judgments will not be absolutely adopted by history; but every
one who carefully considers the revolution which the degenerate
Hellenism of this age accomplished in the modes of life and thought
among the Romans, will be inclined to heighten rather than to lessen
that condemnation of the foreign manners.
New Manners
The ties of family life became relaxed with fearful rapidity. The
evil of grisettes and boy-favourites spread like a pestilence, and, as
matters stood, it was not possible to take any material steps in the
way of legislation against it. The high tax, which Cato as censor
(570) laid on this most abominable species of slaves kept for luxury,
would not be of much moment, and besides fell practically into disuse
a year or two afterwards along with the property-tax generally.
Celibacy--as to which grave complaints were made as early as 520--and
divorces naturally increased in proportion. Horrible crimes were
perpetrated in the bosom of families of the highest rank; for
instance, the consul Gaius Calpurnius Piso was poisoned by his wife
and his stepson, in order to occasion a supplementary election to the
consulship and so to procure the supreme magistracy for the latter
--a plot which was successful (574). Moreover the emancipation of
women began. According to old custom the married woman was subject
in law to the marital power which was parallel with the paternal, and
the unmarried woman to the guardianship of her nearest male -agnati-,
which fell little short of the paternal power; the wife had no
property of her own, the fatherless virgin and the widow had at any
rate no right of management. But now women began to aspire to
independence in respect to property, and, getting quit of the
guardianship of their -agnati- by evasive lawyers' expedients
--particularly through mock marriages--they took the management
of their property into their own hands, or, in the event of being
married, sought by means not much better to withdraw themselves
from the marital power, which under the strict letter of the law was
necessary. The mass of capital which was collected in the hands of
women appeared to the statesmen of the time so dangerous, that they
resorted to the extravagant expedient of prohibiting by law the
testamentary nomination of women as heirs (585), and even sought by a
highly arbitrary practice to deprive women for the most part of the
collateral inheritances which fell to them without testament. In like
manner the exercise of family jurisdiction over women, which was
connected with that marital and tutorial power, became practically
more and more antiquated. Even in public matters women already
began to have a will of their own and occasionally, as Cato thought,
"to rule the rulers of the world;" their influence was to be traced
in the burgess-assembly, and already statues were erected in the
provinces to Roman ladies.
Luxury
Luxury prevailed more and more in dress, ornaments, and furniture, in
buildings and at table. Especially after the expedition to Asia Minor
in 564 Asiatico-Hellenic luxury, such as prevailed at Ephesus and
Alexandria, transferred its empty refinement and its dealing in
trifles, destructive alike of money, time, and pleasure, to Rome.
Here too women took the lead: in spite of the zealous invective of
Cato they managed to procure the abolition, after the peace with
Cartilage (559), of the decree of the people passed soon after the
battle of Cannae (539), which forbade them to use gold ornaments,
variegated dresses, or chariots; no course was left to their zealous
antagonist but to impose a high tax on those articles (570). A
multitude of new and for the most part frivolous articles--silver
plate elegantly figured, table-couches with bronze mounting, Attalic
dresses as they were called, and carpets of rich gold brocade--now
found their way to Rome. Above all, this new luxury appeared in the
appliances of the table. Hitherto without exception the Romans had
only partaken of hot dishes once a day; now hot dishes were not
unfrequently produced at the second meal (-prandium-), and for the
principal meal the two courses formerly in use no longer sufficed.
Hitherto the women of the household had themselves attended to
the baking of bread and cooking; and it was only on occasion of
entertainments that a professional cook was specially hired, who in
that case superintended alike the cooking and the baking. Now, on
the other hand, a scientific cookery began to prevail. In the
better houses a special cook was kept The division of labour became
necessary, and the trade of baking bread and cakes branched off from
that of cooking--the first bakers' shops in Rome appeared about 583.
Poems on the art of good eating, with long lists of the most palatable
fishes and other marine products, found their readers: and the theory
was reduced to practice. Foreign delicacies--anchovies from Pontus,
wine from Greece--began to be esteemed in Rome, and Cato's receipt for
giving to the ordinary wine of the country the flavour of Coan by
means of brine would hardly inflict any considerable injury on the
Roman vintners. The old decorous singing and reciting of the guests
and their boys were supplanted by Asiatic -sambucistriae-. Hitherto
the Romans had perhaps drunk pretty deeply at supper, but drinking-
banquets in the strict sense were unknown; now formal revels came into
vogue, on which occasions the wine was little or not at all diluted
and was drunk out of large cups, and the drink-pledging, in which each
was bound to follow his neighbour in regular succession, formed the
leading feature--"drinking after the Greek style" (-Graeco more
bibere-) or "playing the Greek" (-pergraecari-, -congraecare-) as the
Romans called it. In consequence of this debauchery dice-playing,
which had doubtless long been in use among the Romans, reached such
proportions that it was necessary for legislation to interfere. The
aversion to labour and the habit of idle lounging were visibly on the
increase.(4) Cato proposed to have the market paved with pointed
stones, in order to put a stop to the habit of idling; the Romans
laughed at the jest and went on to enjoy the pleasure of loitering
and gazing all around them.