The History of Rome, Book IV - Theodor Mommsen
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It is easy to form a general conception of the aspect which under
such economic conditions the social relations must have assumed;
but to follow out in detail the increase of luxury, of prices, of
fastidiousness and frivolity is neither pleasant nor instructive.
Extravagance and sensuous enjoyment formed the main object with
all, among the parvenus as well as among the Licinii and Metelli;
not the polished luxury which is the acme of civilization, but
that sort of luxury which had developed itself amidst the decaying
Hellenic civilization of Asia Minor and Alexandria, which degraded
everything beautiful and significant to the purpose of decoration
and studied enjoyment with a laborious pedantry, a precise
punctiliousness, rendering it equally nauseous to the man of fresh
feeling as to the man of fresh intellect. As to the popular
festivals, the importation of transmarine wild beasts prohibited
in the time of Cato(48) was, apparently about the middle of this
century, formally permitted anew by a decree of the burgesses
proposed by Gnaeus Aufidius; the effect of which was, that animal-
hunts came into enthusiastic favour and formed a chief feature of
the burgess-festivals. Several lions first appeared in the Roman
arena about 651, the first elephants about 655; Sulla when praetor
exhibited a hundred lions in 661. The same holds true of
gladiatorial games. If the forefathers had publicly exhibited
representations of great battles, their grandchildren began to
do the same with their gladiatorial games, and by means of such
leading or state performances of the age to make themselves a
laughing-stock to their descendants. What sums were spent on these
and on funeral solemnities generally, may be inferred from the
testament of Marcus Aemilius Lepidus (consul in 567, 579; 602);
he gave orders to his children, forasmuch as the true last honours
consisted not in empty pomp but in the remembrance of personal
and ancestral services, to expend on his funeral not more than
1,000,000 -asses- (4000 pounds). Luxury was on the increase also
as respected buildings and gardens; the splendid town house of the
orator Crassus (663), famous especially for the old trees of its
garden, was valued with the trees at 6,000,000 sesterces (60,000
pounds), without them at the half; while the value of an ordinary
dwelling-house in Rome may be estimated perhaps at 60,000 sesterces
(600 pounds).(49) How quickly the prices of ornamental estates
increased, is shown by the instance of the Misenian villa, for
which Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, paid 75,000 sesterces
(750 pounds), and Lucius Lucullus, consul in 680, thirty-three
times that price. The villas and the luxurious rural and sea-
bathing life rendered Baiae and generally the district around the
Bay of Naples the El Dorado of noble idleness. Games of hazard,
in which the stake was no longer as in the Italian dice-playing a
trifle, became common, and as early as 639 a censorial edict was
issued against them. Gauze fabrics, which displayed rather than
concealed the figure, and silken clothing began to displace the old
woollen dresses among women and even among men. Against the insane
extravagance in the employment of foreign perfumery the sumptuary
laws interfered in vain.
But the real focus in which the brilliance of this genteel life was
concentrated was the table. Extravagant prices--as much as 100,000
sesterces (1000 pounds)--were paid for an exquisite cook. Houses
were constructed with special reference to this object, and the
villas in particular along the coast were provided with salt-water
tanks of their own, in order that they might furnish marine fishes
and oysters at any time fresh to the table. A dinner was already
described as poor, at which the fowls were served up to the guests
entire and not merely the choice portions, and at which the guests
were expected to eat of the several dishes and not simply to taste
them. They procured at a great expense foreign delicacies and
Greek wine, which had to be sent round at least once at every
respectable repast. At banquets above all the Romans displayed
their hosts of slaves ministering to luxury, their bands of
musicians, their dancing-girls, their elegant furniture, their
carpets glittering with gold or pictorially embroidered, their
purple hangings, their antique bronzes, their rich silver plate.
Against such displays the sumptuary laws were primarily directed,
which were issued more frequently (593, 639, 665, 673) and in
greater detail than ever; a number of delicacies and wines were
therein totally prohibited, for others a maximum in weight and
price was fixed; the quantity of silver plate was likewise
restricted by law, and lastly general maximum rates were prescribed
for the expenses of ordinary and festal meals; these, for example,
were fixed in 593 at 10 and 100 sesterces (2 shillings and 1 pound)
in 673 at 30 and 300 sesterces (6 shillings and 3 pounds)
respectively. Unfortunately truth requires us to add that, of all
the Romans of rank, not more than three--and these not including
the legislators themselves--are said to have complied with these
imposing laws; and in the case of these three it was the law of the
Stoa, and not that of the state, that curtailed the bill of fare.
It is worth while to dwell for a moment on the luxury that went
on increasing in defiance of these laws, as respects silver plate.
In the sixth century silver plate for the table was, with the
exception of the traditionary silver salt-dish, a rarity; the
Carthaginian ambassadors jested over the circumstance, that at
every house to which they were invited they had encountered the
same silver plate.(50) Scipio Aemilianus possessed not more than
32 pounds (120 pounds) in wrought silver; his nephew Quintus Fabius
(consul in 633) first brought his plate up to 1000 pounds (4000
pounds), Marcus Drusus (tribune of the people in 663) reached
10,000 pounds (40,000 pounds); in Sulla's time there were already
counted in the capital about 150 silver state-dishes weighing 100
pounds each, several of which brought their possessors into the
lists of proscription. To judge of the sums expended on these,
we must recollect that the workmanship also was paid for at enormous
rates; for instance Gaius Gracchus paid for choice articles of
silver fifteen times, and Lucius Crassus, consul in 659, eighteen
times the value of the metal, and the latter gave for a pair of
cups by a noted silversmith 100,000 sesterces (1000 pounds).
So it was in proportion everywhere.
How it fared with marriage and the rearing of children, is shown
by the Gracchan agrarian laws, which first placed a premium on
these.(51) Divorce, formerly in Rome almost unheard of, was now an
everyday occurrence; while in the oldest Roman marriage the husband
had purchased his wife, it might have been proposed to the Romans
of quality in the present times that, with the view of bringing
the name into accordance with the reality, they should introduce
marriage for hire. Even a man like Metellus Macedonicus, who for
his honourable domestic life and his numerous host of children was
the admiration of his contemporaries, when censor in 623 enforced
the obligation of the burgesses to live in a state of matrimony by
describing it as an oppressive public burden, which patriots ought
nevertheless to undertake from a sense of duty.(52)
There were, certainly, exceptions. The circles of the rural towns,
and particularly those of the larger landholders, had preserved
more faithfully the old honourable habits of the Latin nation.
In the capital, however, the Catonian opposition had become a mere
form of words; the modern tendency bore sovereign sway, and though
individuals of firm and refined organization, such as Scipio
Aemilianus, knew the art of combining Roman manners with Attic
culture, Hellenism was among the great multitude synonymous with
intellectual and moral corruption. We must never lose sight of
the reaction exercised by these social evils on political life,
if we would understand the Roman revolution. It was no matter
of indifference, that of the two men of rank, who in 662 acted
as supreme masters of morals to the community, the one publicly
reproached the other with having shed tears over the death of a
-muraena- the pride of his fishpond, and the latter retaliated on
the former that he had buried three wives and had shed tears over
none of them. It was no matter of indifference, that in 593 an
orator could make sport in the open Forum with the following
description of a senatorial civil juryman, whom the time fixed
for the cause finds amidst the circle of his boon-companions.
"They play at hazard, delicately perfumed, surrounded by their
mistresses. As the afternoon advances, they summon the servant
and bid him make enquiries on the Comitium, as to what has occurred
in the Forum, who has spoken in favour of or against the new project
of law, what tribes have voted for and what against it. At length
they go themselves to the judgment-seat, just early enough not to
bring the process down on their own neck. On the way there is no
opportunity in any retired alley which they do not avail themselves
of, for they have gorged themselves with wine. Reluctantly they
come to the tribunal and give audience to the parties. Those who
are concerned bring forward their cause. The juryman orders the
witnesses to come forward; he himself steps aside. When he returns,
he declares that he has heard everything, and asks for the documents.
He looks into the writings; he can hardly keep his eyes open for wine.
When he thereupon withdraws to consider his sentence, he says to his
boon-companions, 'What concern have I with these tiresome people?
why should we not rather go to drink a cup of mulse mixed with Greek wine,
and accompany it with a fat fieldfare and a good fish, a veritable pike
from the Tiber island?' Those who heard the orator laughed; but was it
not a very serious matter, that such things were subjects for laughter?"
Chapter XII
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.