A day in old Rome

[1] Outside of these limits were, of course, wide and populous suburbs whose inhabitants might be included in the estimated total of 1,500,000.

[2] At present, of course, largely a treeless waste, very sparsely populated and afflicted with malaria.

[3] These are modern heights; since the days of the Empire there has been much leveling down. All the hills were then somewhat higher.

[4] He wrote his great “Geography” not long after 1 A.D.

[5] This and many other terms for Roman building materials are from the modern Italian.

[6] Very possibly the Etruscans were the actual inventors, although the principle of the arch was known in the Old Orient.

[7] He died about 110 A.D.

[8] A well-known avenue in Pompeii was called “Mercury Street.”

[9] In describing Roman street life and its scenes let it be said once and for all that many very obvious things were so disgusting and revolting to modern notions that any description thereof is perforce omitted. Ancient life contained a great deal of social dross and filthy wickedness. There is no need to dwell on such matters, but their existence should not be forgotten.

[10] If a magistrate had met any persons on horseback, they also would have been bound to dismount on meeting him.

[11] If a praetor had been acting as governor, he would probably have had six lictors instead of merely two while he was a judge in Rome.

[12] The wall placards and inscriptions quoted in this and the following section are all substantially as found at Pompeii.

[13] For quotations of election notices at Pompeii see the author’s “Readings in Ancient History,” Vol. II, “Rome,” pp. 261–262.

[14] These figures seem to come from the fourth century, but there is no reason to think that housing conditions in Rome had changed very much since the second century.

[15] Rentals in Rome, for all classes of lodgings, were unreasonably high, as compared with the relative cost of other necessities: just as is now complained to be the case in New York, Paris, and other great cities.

[16] A familiar description of such a place by Juvenal.

[17] In small provincial cities like Pompeii the proportion of the people who could live in separate houses was much greater than in Rome; in fact separate residences were somewhat the rule. The Pompeiian houses were usually of two stories and nearly all were decidedly small. In Rome itself real estate was far too valuable to permit separate houses except for the wealthy.

[18] That was the price that Cicero paid for his town house, at a time when Roman real estate was worth probably much less than in the days of Hadrian.

[19] Petronius represents his rich upstart Trimalchio as having four ordinary dining rooms and also a special second story dining room.

[20] This heating by hypocausts was used much more in Roman villas in Gaul, the Rhinelands, and Britain, where winters were severe, than in Italy. In Rome itself people ordinarily managed to shiver through the relatively short cold spells by means of portable charcoal braziers, placed in the more important rooms, and by piling upon themselves extra tunics.

[21] One can make a long list of the marbles constantly used at Rome: e.g. white marbles from Carrara, Paros, and Pentelicos; crimson-streaked from Phrygia; orange-golden from Numidia; white and pale green from Carystos; serpentine from Laconia; porphyry from Egypt, etc.

[22] At this writing the number of wall paintings rescued from the excavations of Pompeii runs well up to 4000; and Pompeii was a city perhaps only a fortieth the size of Rome.

[23] Most of the finer scenes in Roman frescos seem to have been pretty good copies of famous paintings from Greek mythology originally produced by the masters of the Hellenistic age.

[24] It may be noted that the Romans seldom had built-in upholstery upon their couches and chairs. They depended upon removable cushions and apparently they had no metal springs.

[25] It had been suppressed for all practical purposes soon after 14 A.D.

[26] Witness, as most famous example, the case of Cornelia, mother of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus. Very many other instances could be cited.

[27] Readers of Plutarch will recall the story of how Appius Claudius, then “Princeps Senatus,” proposed to Tiberius Gracchus at an evening banquet of the College of Augurs that he should marry Claudius’s daughter. Young Gracchus promptly accepted and the older nobleman rushed home in delight (Tiberius being a great “catch”). On entering his house Claudius called out with loud voice to his wife “Antistia, I’ve got a husband for Claudia!” “What’s all the hurry about,” answered she, “unless he’s Tiberius Gracchus?” Antistia evidently had to be informed first; the glad news could be broken to her daughter later.

[28] This anecdote and the quotations are all from the letter of Pliny the Younger to his friend Mauricius advising the latter (as per request for counsel) to seek the hand of Minucius Ancilianus for his niece.

[29] All silk was imported by extremely long caravan routes from China. If this veil was actually of pure silk and not mixed with cotton, it was of enormous value.

[30] Possibly meaning “Hurrah for Talassus, the marriage god!” but the exact significance of this time-honored shout had probably been long since lost.

[31] Both of these instances are from Pliny the Younger.

[32] For a complete quotation of this highly interesting tablet, see Fowler’s “Social Life at Rome,” pp. 159–167.

[33] The use of this garment gave his familiar nickname to the Emperor Bassianus, “Caracalla,” who reigned 212–217 A.D. The Gauls also had kind of trousers. This was counted against them as a token of sheer barbarism: bracatæ nationes (“trouser-wearing peoples”) was a term of extreme contempt in Italy.

[34] Probably there were simpler and more complicated forms of togas. The first were apparently shaped like an irregular semi-circle. We hear of extremely large togas (in bad taste) whereof the total length was four yards before draping. Experiments in certain American universities at making and then draping a toga corresponding in effect to many well-known statues have amply illustrated the great difficulty of putting on the garment gracefully, and the real art required of a Roman nobleman’s valet.

[35] See “A Day in Old Athens,” p. 44.

[36] There were various simpler garments, similar to the stola, permitted to common women and to young girls. The distinctive feature of the stola, forbidden to all save honorable matrons, seems to have been the lower flounce, reaching to the feet.

[37] About twenty years after the reign of Hadrian, Chinese annals record that certain “Roman” (Græco-Levantine?) traders actually reached China, and gave themselves out as envoys to the “Son of Heaven” from “Antun” (Antoninus Pius).

[38] Very like a modern copying press.

[39] Apuleius, writing probably a little later than this time, asserts that a lady, with no matter how fine clothes or jewels, cannot be considered really handsome unless an equal amount of attention has been bestowed upon her hair.

[40] Called the “luna” (crescent); but the origin is really unknown, although attempts were made to trace it back to some institution of Romulus.

[41] Diamonds were not unknown, but they were so hard to cut and so scarce that they figured rather seldom in Roman jewelry. They do not appear in the list of the twelve precious stones given in Revelation, XXI: 19–20.

[42] Stories about pearls are easily multiplied: e.g. how the son of Asopus, a famous actor, on coming into a vast patrimony, deliberately dissolved a large pearl in vinegar, then drank it down, in order to boast that he had “tossed off a million sesterces ($40,000) at one gulp!”

[43] Even less profitable, it would seem, is to try to list the cosmetics wherewith many Roman ladies, like their sisters of all times, covered their faces. Rouge was used in great quantities, and effeminate young men were known to have employed it. Eyebrows were blackened with antimony; lips were reddened, and of course hair dye was a familiar article. Propertius suggests that some women went so far as to trace over the veins in their temples with blue. Other women indulged in small black patches somewhat as did English ladies in the days of Queen Anne:—“There is nothing new under the sun.”

[44] In Capua there was a whole great square of the city, the Seplasia, given over to perfumery shops and their wholesale trade.

[45] Vitellius was by no means alone in this disgusting practice. Seneca denounced the numerous gluttons who “Vomit that they may eat, and eat that they may vomit.”

[46] The difficulty of preserving fresh meat, once butchered, would militate against its use as compared with poultry easily killed for each customer.

[47] See “A Day in Old Athens,” p. 20.

[48] Posca was probably the drink in which the sponge was steeped, that was extended to Jesus as He hung on the cross.

[49] A long and curious list of gourmand’s precepts are enumerated ironically by Horace in a familiar Satire (Sat., bk. II. 4).

[50] The very imperfect means of illumination alone available with olive-oil lamps, would make many modern evening entertainments out of the question. The ancient lamps were beautiful in shape but utterly ineffective for lighting large halls, indoor theaters, etc.

[51] The love of “first-seats” at feasts, denounced in the New Testament, was anything but a strictly Jewish vice; Greeks and Romans were every whit as bad as Orientals.

[52] So given because here dispatches, etc., could be most readily handed to a consul or other great officer if he were among the guests.

[53] Sometimes a guest’s personal valet brought a special towel for his own master. Diners of an objectionable variety were occasionally charged with stealing the towels or napkins if the host supplied them.

[54] This, of course, was a very simple private dinner. For the menu of a really extensive banquet, see the citation from Macrobius, in the writer’s “Readings in Ancient History,” Vol. II (Rome), p. 253.

[55] Brought, of course, from the summits of the Apennines with infinite labor.

[56] They could not, of course, wear the toga, or, if female slaves, the matronly stola.

[57] The ancients had intense fear of epilepsy, supposedly a visitation of the gods. The questions given were the points on which slave-venders had to give assurance, or formally to waive all responsibility.

[58] This is almost precisely the slave auctioneer’s speech in Horace. (Epodes, bk. II, 1.)—If the dealer had failed to mention that the boy had once tried to run away, he would have been legally liable.

[59] Probably, however, it would be counted discreditable to sell a slave born in one’s house (a verna) unless the fellow was wholly reprobate, or the master was in great financial straits.

[60] Slave unions had no legal status, but only a harsh and tactless master would ordinarily break them up.

[61] Of course, in a large slave household frequently there were unruly elements who often had to be punished privately, when, if free men, their actions would have landed them in the police courts. The stripes might be inflicted as a mild correction with the cane, or leather strap, or more severely with the terrific flagellum (loaded whip), usually with three chains set with metal. A sound lashing with this could cause death (see below, p. 137). The prejudice against brutal whipping and the like was growing steadily, thanks to the advance of the Stoic philosophy, even before the triumph of Christianity. Juvenal denounces those who inflict outrageous floggings for slight faults. “Does a man set his son a good lesson by calling in the torturer and having a slave branded for stealing a couple of towels? Does such a man hold that the bodies and souls of slaves are of the same elements as our own?”

[62] “Three Letter Man” or “Man of Letters” became a common taunt among slaves.

[63] A slave might be lashed to a furca for some hours, as a minor penalty without desire to put him to death.

[64] An actual proclamation from Petronius.

[65] There would be just enough of negroes in Rome for them to cease to be great curiosities.

[66] It is impossible to estimate the proportion of the population “enfranchised” finally by the oft-discussed edict of Caracalla in 214 A.D. It must have been over one half of the entire total.

[67] Apparently it was quite possible for impecunious persons to sleep much of the year under the public arches and porticoes, and thus even dispense with the need of paying rent!

[68] These hopes had practically died out by Hadrian’s day.

[69] That St. Paul was presently released after trial at Rome is the consensus among very many competent scholars.

[70] Women as well as men could sometimes be enrolled as clients. Comical stories abounded; how a husband appeared with a litter claiming that his “sick wife” was inside—“and would the steward please hurry with the fee”—when, on brushing aside the curtains, the litter was found to be empty.

[71] Especially in Gaul, Spain, and North Africa; in the Eastern provinces the city governments were not run so strictly in the Roman mold and often kept their native characteristics.

[72] Hence they were often called Curiales from their seat in the local Senate House (Curia).

[73] This name is not wisely translated as “Knights,” unless there is complete disassociation from the idea of the mediæval baron in armor.

[74] Apparently at this time two thirds of the jurors were equites and one third senators, but the point is not quite certain.

[75] The Republican censors could also give the order, “Sell your horse” without stigma to equites who appeared in the review when too old or too fat!

[76] By the age of Hadrian we see signs of that rigid separation between upper-class citizens (majores) and lower-class (minores) which marked the Later Empire. The equites tended to be mingled with the senators in the majores.

[77] Marcus Aurelius confirmed this legally about 170 A.D.

[78] See “A Day in Old Athens,” p. 77.

[79] Antoninus Pius, the ruler succeeding Hadrian, formally enjoined the remission of civic burdens for “community physicians” in the Province of Asia; five in small cities, seven in larger ones, and ten in the largest.

[80] Establishments selling ready prepared salves, plasters, and other standard remedies were not unknown, and must have supplied many doctors.

[81] Chemical analysis was, of course, unknown.

[82] These titles and much more of the data here given are from the writings of the great Galen—the master physician of the imperial age; who wrote his books under Commodus about 185 A.D.

[83] As in the case of the death of Cæsar Germanicus (19 A.D.) whose death at Antioch was probably natural, but which all his friends attributed to poison given by his personal enemy, the Proconsul Piso.

[84] Probably there were such in the eastern provinces.

[85] Without clinical thermometers or second-watches, the taking of temperature, timing of pulse, etc., must have been a very tedious and disagreeable as well as uncertain process.

[86] Apparently the organization of public hospitals in the fourth century of our era, was among the earliest and worthiest of the distinctly Christian charities, after the toleration of Christianity by the Roman government.

[87] Two similar cases are recorded in Pliny the Younger; in one of them the person contemplating suicide, on being assured by the physicians that his case was not quite desperate, “agreed to fight on a little longer.”

[88] The legal status of women made it needful to resort to various legal fictions when they drew wills, but they could execute effective testaments also.

[89] Still greater revenge could be taken by making insulting references in wills to old enemies, making them bequests of no value, or burdened with unwelcome conditions, or even explaining at length, without fear of a slander suit, why no bequest was left to them at all!

[90] An actual tomb inscription.

[91] A hundred imagines of curule ancestors would be a very respectable but not an extraordinary showing. When young Marcellus (Augustus’s nephew) died, six hundred imagines of noble ancestors were borne in his procession.

[92] Under the Empire only the Emperor could actually ride in a triumph; but his lieutenants could enjoy the “triumphal ornaments.”

[93] The granting of an actual funeral pyre inside of Rome was an extraordinary honor—reserved only for emperors and other unusually favored personages.

[94] This, of course, was the monument which Trimalchio, Petronius’s famous character, arranged for himself.

[95] Compare “A Day in Old Athens,” p. 57.

[96] The father might have “taken up” the child earlier to indicate his intentions not to expose it, but some later act of legal acknowledgment before witnesses was necessary.

[97] And hardly anybody outside the Claudian gens was ever named Appius.

[98] Literally “Number Ten”; but that meaning had disappeared.

[99] Very many such lengthy names are found under Hadrian.

[100] See “A Day in Old Athens,” p. 63.

[101] These verses have been preserved to the present age by being inscribed upon the foot of the colossal statue of the “Speaking Memnon” in Egypt, during the visit there of Hadrian and Sabina.

[102] Of course, there would be many lower class Italians who, although fairly at ease with Latin, would be entirely unfamiliar with Greek.

[103] The writing end of the stylus (bone or metal) was sharp. The opposite end was blunt and flattened for erasing on the soft wax.

[104] See “A Day in Old Athens,” p. 64.

[105] These are the words of Eumenius, a teacher of about 300 A.D., but they would have been equally proper in the age of Hadrian.

[106] Persons who could recite the whole of the Iliad and Odyssey from memory were not unknown, although they were usually learned slaves, not Romans of the higher class.

[107] A tombstone for a boy who died at the age of ten boasts that its subject “knew the dogmas of Pythagoras and the teaching of the books of the learned.” He was also alleged to have read all of Homer and to have studied Euclid “tablets in hand.”

[108] Senators, degraded and banished for reasons good or bad, could earn a living in the provinces by opening rhetoric schools. Thus Lucinianus did so in Sicily in Trajan’s time. Pliny the Younger records that he began his first set oration by declaring: “O Fortune, what sport you make to amuse yourself! You make professors into senators, and senators into professors.”

[109] An actual case for young orators as explained by the Elder Seneca. Less advanced pupils could be pitted in arguments as to “Whether country life is better than city life,” or “married life better than celibacy.”

[110] The zeal for philosophy and rhetoric, or at least for the patronage thereof, is shown by the story of how Trajan, a very simple-minded soldier, used to invite the great rhetorician Dion Chrysostom to visit him and take long journeys with him. The Emperor, greatly impressed by the other’s learning, openly declared to him, “I don’t in the least understand what you keep talking about, but for all that I love you like my own soul!”

[111] It is impossible to recover the exact details of these two games. We know of “solitaire” forms of these games, with the board made of terebinth wood, and with crystal pieces, or with gold and silver coins in place of the common black and white counters.

[112] In very early Roman days public records seem to have been kept on books of linen; but these soon disappeared.

[113] We hear, however, of a single copy of Thucydides that required 578 pages, making a roll about 100 yards long—a most cumbersome volume.

[114] The use of flat opening books of the style later so familiar came in before the fall of the Roman Empire, but they were apparently used only for merchants’ ledgers, etc., in the time of Hadrian.

[115] This was the probable method of multiplying popular books, but we lack very precise knowledge.

[116] Pliny the Younger had a favorite reader Eucolpus. When he fell ill his master was sadly tormented: “Who will read my books and take such an interest in them? Where can I find another with so pleasant a reading voice?”

[117] Hadrian’s famous and pathetic poem “To his own soul” was not, of course, composed until he lay on his death bed (138 A.D.).

[118] These men were well-known poets according again to Pliny the Younger. The world undoubtedly gained when their verses perished.

[119] The record for a private collection—62,000 rolls, owned by the senator Serenus, dates about 235 A.D., but there is no reason to suppose that there were not libraries equally large under Hadrian.

[120] Concerning the actual arrangement of these public libraries we know very little.

[121] Of course, by Hadrian’s time an increasingly large proportion of the privates of the army was being recruited in the provinces.

[122] All these hucksters’ stalls as well as the beggars and the playing children are depicted in certain very informing frescos in a house at Pompeii, showing life in the forum of that little city.

[123] See “A Day in Old Athens,” p. 24.

[124] This form of advertisement is given in Petronius.

[125] 12 per cent (one per cent per month) was the lawful and normal rate of interest. Greater interest could be demanded on risky ventures, especially those by sea. Rates of 36 and 48 per cent, heard of under the Later Republic, were excessive, and usually unlawful.

[126] These verses are from the wall of an inn in Pompeii, and the foregoing description is that of an actual Pompeiian inn.

[127] This scene is a familiar one from Juvenal.

[128] Another scene taken from an actual bas-relief and inscription.

[129] Marcus Aurelius belonged to this rich family on his mother’s side.

[130] The real name of such a vessel.

[131] The expression “Sharer in the Public Grain Doles” appears on many tombstones of worthy burghers, to indicate that they enjoyed the full rights of citizenship.

[132] It became so under the Later Empire.

[133] When Commodus became Emperor in 180 A.D., the congiarium came to the ruinous sum of 725 denarii per citizen. This was $96.00 each, if the coins were of full weight and fineness, which probably at that period they were not.

[134] Figures given by Lucian for a craft of this type.

[135] See “A Day in Old Athens,” pp. 125–134.

[136] There was practically no naval warfare worth mentioning in the whole course of Roman history from the battle of Actium (31 B.C.) to 323 A.D., when considerable naval fighting took place at the time Constantine captured Byzantium from his rival Licinius.

[137] As at Ephesus where Demetrius used the guild of the silversmiths to start his riot against St. Paul. (Acts, 19:25.)

[138] Such improvised gaming-boards have been discovered by the archæologists.

[139] See “A Day in Old Athens,” p. 216.

[140] Later than the age of Hadrian this area was occupied by such famous structures as the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina, the Basilica of Constantine, etc.

[141] A difficult archæological question is connected with the exact site of the Rostra before Julius Cæsar’s time. Probably its original position was nearer the other end of the Forum.

[142] Janus was about the only Latin deity for whom there could not be assigned a Greek counterpart.

[143] Later visitors to the Forum would, of course, be impressed with the fine, if ornate, Arch of Septimius Severus, erected about 211 A.D. at the northwest corner of the plaza.

[144] The column of Marcus Aurelius, erected about 180 A.D. in much the same style as that of Trajan, although a magnificent monument, is not equal in execution to the older column.

[145] He magnanimously allowed Agrippa’s name still to appear as the builder of the temple. The Pantheon apparently owed its preservation through the Middle Ages to the fact that it was early consecrated as a Christian church, and hence was exempt from profanation.

[146] At the end of his reign the Senate so disliked him that (although he had been in the main an excellent ruler) his successor Antoninus had much trouble in getting him voted a “divus,” as were all good Emperors.

[147] We have no copy of the Acta Diurna. We possess, however, what seems a pretty literal parody of its style and contents in Petronius, and can reconstruct part of an issue with some confidence.

[148] Both of these are actual cases from the reign of Augustus.

[149] Old Latin goddesses.

[150] The only important addition after Domitian was made by Septimius Severus, who, about 200 A.D., built the very lofty Septizonium, a new palace at the south-east corner of the hill.

[151] As is, of course, well known, such emperors as Tiberius, Nero, and Domitian were popular with the provinces, which were usually well governed under them. Their cruelties smote mainly upon the senatorial nobility.

[152] About 230 A.D. Alexander Severus caught a palace menial selling gossip, and had him executed by being burned in a fire of damp wood. “He is punished by smoke,” said the irate monarch, “who sold ‘smoke.’”

[153] The ceremony was not unlike that of the levée of French kings like Louis XIV, under the Old Régime before 1789.

[154] The Empresses would give a similar reception, however, to the wives of their husbands’ “Friends.”

[155] Sometimes, with an affectation of democracy, almost any decently clad person would be admitted to present petitions or merely to pay respects. Servile prostrations before the Emperor were not encouraged under the Early Principate; once when a petitioner went through great bowings and scrapings while presenting a scroll to Augustus, the latter cried testily, “You act as if you were presenting some money to an elephant.”

[156] This was the form used by Augustus in announcing to Fabius Maximus the withdrawal of imperial favor.

[157] Polite chatter, as reported by Horace, such as was vouchsafed by Augustus and his great associate Mæcenas, to their social favorites.

[158] Hadrian, although not a bloody man, was so averse to being opposed in argument that the philosopher Favorinus, with whom he took issue on a point in etymology, promptly announced that “Caesar was correct,” and so ended the discussion amiably. “But you were really correct,” protested Favorinus’s friends afterward. “Ah!” replied he with a laugh, “the master of thirty legions must be allowed to know better.”

[159] These old “Republican” officers, now six in number, retained a certain control of the public markets, baths, taverns, etc.

[160] As discovered by modern archæologists.

[161] For the attitude of provincials under Roman rule the student can with interest read the speech put in the mouth of King Agrippa, the descendant of Herod, by Josephus (“Jewish War”: book II, ch. 16) in which he tells the Jews of Nero’s day, (1) that on the whole the Roman rule is so reasonable and tolerable they have no real cause to revolt against it; (2) that all nations, including the most warlike such as Sparta, Macedonia, the turbulent Gauls and Spain, have long since submitted; (3) that these have not merely submitted but keep obedient with only a trifling local display of armed force; (4) that resistance to Rome is so hopeless in any case that a revolt would be impious suicide.

[162] About 200 A.D. they were raised to 33.

[163] Its site to-day is occupied by the chief railroad station of Rome, by which most foreign visitors enter the city and depart.

[164] An ever larger proportion of legionary troops had to be enlisted in the provinces, although preferably in the parts somewhat Romanized.

[165] In Hadrian’s time a change was taking place whereby the first cohort in a legion contained about twice as many men as there were in any of the other nine; but this alteration became only gradually effective.

[166] In the earlier Empire it was only 900 sesterces ($36).

[167] It might be added that Roman legions appear to have had a medical department under a medicus legionis, which cared efficiently for the health of the troops. Camp sanitation was well understood, and epidemics in the army were rare.

[168] The only materials for a crown assumed to be available in a rescued fortress.

[169] The distribution of the legions varied somewhat from one period to another according to the probable dangers on the exposed frontiers, but the largest armies were always stationed along the Rhine, the Danube, and the Euphrates. In Hadrian’s time apparently the main forces lay thus:

Britain, 3 legions.

Germany (Rhinelands), 4 legions.

Danubian lands and Dacia, 10 legions.

Syria and Palestine, 5 legions.

Cappadocia, 2 legions.

In all the other provinces requiring legionary troops at all (e.g. Egypt, Spain, Numidia, etc.), only one legion.

Apparently in the second Christian century the greatest danger point seemed near the Danube, and the second greatest along the Euphrates, with the Rhinelands relatively more secure than earlier, when more legions had been stationed near them.

[170] Some legions were named for their organizers: Augustus, Claudius, etc.; some for real or alleged martial qualities, “Ferrata,” “Fulminata,” “Victrix,” and the like; one, the “Alauda,” from the lark’s wings worn on the helmets; several which were made by dividing existing legions were known as “Gemina,” and some from their place of original recruiting, “Gallica,” “Italica,” etc.

[171] The centurion to whom St. Paul’s custody was intrusted (Acts XXVII, 1) was of the “Augustan band,” i.e. one of the somewhat numerous cohorts named for Augustus—the special number not being given.

[172] Also we know from the by-laws of these soldiers’ benefit clubs that every member was entitled to a fine funeral, to an allowance for travel money if obliged to go on a long journey, and finally to a fixed sum as consolation money in case he was demoted!

[173] The process of demilitarizing the population went so far that Trajan even discouraged the organization of regular bands of firemen in cities of Bithynia “lest they become the prey of factions”—i.e. somehow start a movement against the government.

[174] The Roman Empire has been rightly called a “military monarchy,” but was such only because the disarming of the civilian population and the extreme efficiency of the professional army put the former at the mercy of the latter. The imperial army and navy hardly exceeded 350,000 men, and may have been as small as 300,000. At the time this book was written the United States, with a population not greatly exceeding that of the Roman Empire, had a total of some 250,000 men in its standing forces (army, navy, and marine corps) not counting any organized militia. Almost nobody would have pretended that the addition of some 100,000 men to this force could have rendered a “military monarchy” possible in America except as very peculiar conditions favored it—as they did in the Roman Empire.

[175] Bad Emperors, e.g. Domitian, made it a practice to speak first in the Curia; any senator who later opposed their opinions was liable to charges of disloyalty. If, however, an Emperor spoke last he also left the groundlings miserable because they might unwittingly have opposed him.

[176] The last avowedly constitutional “Princeps” was Alexander Severus (murdered 235 A.D.); then followed the military monarchy. Aurelian (270–275 A.D.) took on practically all the trappings of a despot, and with Diocletian (284 A.D.) the absolute monarchy existed without concealment.

[177] The law required, however, a minimum of certain specified numbers for the passing of various important kinds of decrees.

[178] He did this because as holder of the military power it was unlawful for him to come inside the consecrated city limits (pomerium); so he built a suburban Senate House outside of these confines.

[179] So called because, being last on the Senate list, and seldom called upon to speak, they could express themselves with their “feet” only—i.e. by voting when they walked out in divisions of the house.

[180] Under the later Empire this statue (originally set up by Augustus) came to be looked upon as the “Palladium” of Rome and its removal from the Senate House in 384 A.D. by Valentinian the Second, despite vigorous protests by the pagan party, was looked upon as an official announcement of the triumph of Christianity.

[181] The other consul in 134 A.D. was Gaius Julius Servianius. The consuls would settle as to their presidency from day to day either by mutual agreement, by taking turns in rotation, or by the casting of lots.

[182] This trial follows closely the account of the prosecution of Marius Priscus, proconsul of Africa, before the Senate by Pliny the Younger and Tacitus the historian; but in Priscus’s trial the mere oratory actually took three whole days! (See Pliny the Younger: Book II, 11.)

[183] Any student interested in the coarse and violent personalities permissible in speeches before the Senate, should read Cicero’s speech “Against Piso.”

[184] Short-hand reports of the Senate meetings were taken, and seemingly embodied everything said, including even the applause and the unfriendly interruptions. We do not know, however, whether they were taken by senators, or by reporters brought in for the purpose.

[185] Apparently men not of prætorian rank rather seldom got the floor, although in highly important cases the presiding officer had to call for sententiæ down through the ex-quæstors.

[186] As did, of course, Cicero in his “Orations against Verres,” and in other orations.

[187] See “A Day in Old Athens,” p. 135.

[188] Very few civil cases involving merely private rights would be heard by the Emperor, although they might by his deputy, the Prætorian Præfect. Claudius sometimes seems to have sat on the tribunal, out of a pedantic sense of duty, but often falling asleep until the advocates bawled “O Cæsar!” loudly enough to wake him.

[189] “Eloquence” was looked upon as indispensable for everybody expecting any kind of a public career. Even in the army there was much speech-making prior to a pitched battle. Tacitus speaks of how an army was so utterly surprised that its general “could neither harangue his men nor draw them up in battle array”—two operations apparently equally necessary. (Tacitus, “History,” iv, 33.)

[190] Litigants were required by law to take oath that before the trial they had not promised any sum to their advocates or entered into any bargain with them. After the trial they were “allowed” to “offer” their lawyers not over 10,000 sesterces if they wished.

[191] See “A Day in Old Athens,” p. 138.

[192] Space lacks for a discussion of the formal training of the Roman lawyer-orators, or concerning those public recitations which sometimes were the means of winning even greater reputation than any ordinary successes in the courts.

Some of these recitations in hired halls, with the audience carefully sprinkled with a paid claque, were worse than pedantic and artificial. Pliny the Younger, although he denounced the use of a claque, repeated with pleasure how he gave a reading from his own works and plays which lasted two days, “necessitated by the applause of my audience”; and boasted how he “had not allowed himself to skip one word.”

[193] The Roman week, nundinæ, had eight days—seven working days, then a market day. The Jewish week of seven days (hebdomas) became known to the Romans by the time of Pompeius Magnus, but it was not generally adopted until Christianity became the state religion.

[194] Undoubtedly along with this incessant bathing there often went the presence of much squalor, dirt, obnoxious insects, etc. which seem inescapable in Mediterranean countries. Probably many persons injured their health by excessive and debilitating bathing.

[195] An actual inscription. From the small provincial towns we have other inscriptions, advertising bath-houses “in city style (more urbico) and fitted with every convenience.”

[196] The great Baths of Caracalla (built circ. 215 A.D.) and those of Diocletian (circ. 300 A.D.) were not in existence, of course, in the days of Hadrian. Their ruins are at present among the most imposing in Rome, and they were probably somewhat larger than the Baths of Trajan, which are to-day nearly demolished, but their aspect and general arrangement were hardly different.

[197] Houses near private baths were counted undesirable for residence or investment purposes on account of the noise, which, in private baths, often kept up late into the night.

[198] The famous group of Laocoön and his sons, now in the Vatican, was found in the ruins of these Baths of Titus and Trajan.

[199] Petronius’s “Satyricon” gives a vivid and informing picture of the amusements and horseplay in the thermæ.

[200] The tepidarium in the later Baths of Diocletian was about 300 feet long by 92 feet wide, but probably that in the Baths of Trajan was somewhat smaller.

[201] The Tomb of Hadrian was not actually completed until 139 A.D.—after his death.

[202] Under the Republic the ædiles had to preside over very expensive games. Augustus, however, turned the Cura Ludorum (“supervision of the games”) over to the prætors, and the ædiles only gave spectacles voluntarily.

[203] In the later Empire we hear of the case of Symmachus, an office-holder whose games cost him 2000 pounds of gold, about $400,000.

[204] Italian audiences stowed very close. According to the marking upon the stone seats in the theater at Pompeii, only 16 inches were allowed for each spectator.

[205] High-flying tragedies were indeed ground out by Seneca and by many inferior literary dabblers, but these “dramas” were hardly intended to be genuine acting plays, but only to be read aloud.

[206] The ancient orchestra was of course for the dances of the chorus never for seating the spectators.

[207] This figure seems decidedly too high; but the present ruinous state of the Circus Maximus makes it very difficult to determine the number more exactly.

[208] As many as ten cars could contend at once in the greatest games.

[209] The description of the Roman-style chariot race in Lew Wallace’s famous novel “Ben Hur” is technically as well as rhetorically admirable and accurate. However, no high-rank Roman, such as Messala is represented to have been, would have driven a quadriga in the public circus. The drivers were nearly always low-born men of provincial if not of servile origin.

[210] The Spanish bull fights at their very worst were a relatively harmless imitation.

[211] The gladiatorial games were never introduced in Athens. Once when, in the local council, it was proposed to imitate Rome and build an amphitheater, a prominent philosopher quashed the whole project by moving “first to abolish the altar of Pity.”

[212] Actual epithets bestowed on gladiators in the Pompeiian wall inscriptions.

[213] Taken from the “Gladiator Gossip” at Trimalchio’s Dinner in Petronius’s “Satyricon.”

[214] As we know from paintings showing the surroundings of the Amphitheater at Pompeii.

[215] Ordinarily it is stated that there was room for about 87,000 persons in the Flavian Amphitheater. There were seats, however, for only some 50,000, although possibly 20,000 more could find standing room in the great upper sections.

[216] The regular gladiatorial oath.

[217] Augustus once protested against the custom of eating in the amphitheater as being undignified and said he would prefer to go away and return. “That is all right for you,” answered his hearer, “but your seat is sure to be kept for you!”

[218] There were at least two other types of heavy-armed gladiators who are often mentioned—the “Samnites” and the “Myrmillones”; but it hardly seems profitable to examine the small particulars in which their arms differed from those of the “Thracians.”

[219] An actual Roman epitaph. The Epicurean theory was capable of statement in much more pleasing language than is given above, but the effect of such a philosophy upon the ordinary human viewpoint and conduct was inevitable.

At the Roman colony of Thamugade in Africa, a checkerboard was found scratched in the pavement of the Forum, and beside it this plebeian version of the Prætor’s inscription: “To hunt, to bathe, to gamble, to laugh—that’s living!”

[220] In all the extensive correspondence of Pliny the Younger there is hardly a single reference indicating that he had any religious beliefs, or took the least interest in religious matters save as they involved outward ceremonies or official policies.

[221] This apparently continued true until well into the fourth century, when the whole pagan system was swept away by Christianity.

[222] Janus had no Greek counterpart. It was one of the absurdities of the late Græco-Latin mythology that his wife Diana (Dia Jana = “Madame Goddess Jana”) should have been confounded with Artemis.

[223] Under the later Republic these sacred colleges were filled according to the majority vote of 17 tribes of the people, selected by lot from the entire 35 tribes into which the Comitia Tributa was divided.

[224] In early times the Pontifex Maximus also kept a kind of dry annals of sacred and profane events (Annales Maximi), valuable for the preservation of many facts in early Roman history.

[225] A general in the field had to “take the auspices” to get good omens for his army, but of course he could not always have an augur present. Once in the first Punic War, Publius Claudius, a consul about to engage in a naval battle, was disgusted to be told, “The chickens will not eat.” “Very well then,” he retorted, “let them drink!” and flung them into the sea. To his own ruin and to the vindication of the official religion he was thereupon completely defeated by the Carthaginians!

[226] These plants (verbenæ) seem to have been grown within one special inclosure on the Capitol hill. They were carried by one of the fetiales known as the verbenarius.

[227] A rustic goddess sometimes also called Ops.

[228] For a translation of this “Song of the Arval Brethren,” see the author’s “Readings in Ancient History,” vol. II, p. 6.

[229] As is well known Tiberius in his ignoble retirement on the Isle of Capri surrounded himself with “Chaldæans” and other types of stargazers and magicians.

[230] There were a few isolated survivals in Italy of the practices of ancient savagery. For example at Aricia, in Latium about 16 miles from Rome, there was a holy grove of Diana wherein the priest was always a runaway slave who obtained his position by killing his predecessor. He was then safe from pursuit as long as he remained in the grove, until another fugitive slave in turn killed him—and so on through a succession of tragedies!

[231] Pigs were very common Roman offerings and were the regular victims in most of the rustic sacrifices.

[232] Slightly adapted from the form of prayer given in Cato the Elder’s “Handbook on Agriculture.”

[233] This qualification of patrician birth was sometimes waived under the Empire, when genuine old-line patricians had become extremely few, but great pains were taken as to all the other requirements.

[234] Alone of all the important buildings in Rome, the Atrium Vestæ had no piped water-supply; everything had to be borne in by the vestals or (for non-religious purposes) by their numerous attendants.

[235] This did not prevent Vestals from attending the arena spectacles. The gladiators and persons thrown to the beasts had in theory a chance for life.

[236] It was quite proper to play “April Fool” jokes at the Saturnalia: e.g. to present what seemed a platter of delicious food when all the viands were actually of clay.

[237] Substantially on the scale of “Christmas presents.”

[238] Owing to rough dealings with the Senate, Hadrian himself came near missing deification, but Antoninus won his title of “Pius” by his zeal for vindicating his adoptive father’s memory. Antoninus Pius himself and Marcus Aurelius after him were, of course, promptly deified.

[239] Much of what we know of these cults of the pagan Orient comes from early Christian writers who have no hesitation in betraying the “Mysteries,” but whose statements naturally are often biased and very incomplete.

[240] The quotations are from Apuleius, “The Golden Ass” (book XI, passim), and are given at greater length in the author’s “Readings from Ancient History,” vol. II (Rome), pp. 282–284.

[241] Technically he was the highest archangel under the one actual god Ahura-Mazda, but the Persian “magi” soon attributed to him practical divinity.

[242] Nearly all our evidence for Mithraism is archæological; we know little of either its doctrines or its ritual. Apparently it had a system of priests not unlike the Christian clergy and a ceremony resembling the Christian sacrament. It owed its success largely to the real nobility of its doctrines, but could not in the end maintain itself by appealing simply to a remote myth, while Christianity was able to appeal to a personal Founder.

[243] Mithras worship was only beginning to be important in the Age of Hadrian, and the Taurobolium was then still comparatively rare; by 200 A.D. it had become decidedly common; by 300 A.D. it was very frequent indeed.

[244] From the age of Augustus to that of Nero Judaism had a considerable popularity in Rome. Its austere monotheism coupled with the mysterious Mosaic law and ceremonies made a considerable appeal to public opinion, and many fashionable persons—including apparently Nero’s Empress, the notorious Poppæa Sabina—gave “Jewish doctrines” a superficial patronage. It was also somewhat the fad to treat the Hebrew Sabbath as a kind of “holy day.” All this favor collapsed after the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. The Jews became a scattered and persecuted sect, without influence. As for Christianity, after 70 A.D. it lost nearly all its Jewish element and became pretty strictly a Gentile religion.

[245] Tacitus undoubtedly obtained his statement about Christ and Pilate from the official government reports in the Roman Record Office. There is no reason to suppose that he, any more than his friend Pliny, investigated Christian sources.

[246] The following are some only of the reasons why the Roman government insisted on persecuting the Christians, despite its usual policy of religious tolerance:

[247] An actual wall-picture. For the charges here given against Christian assemblies and for many gross details, see Minucius Felix (“Octavius” VIII, 9.), who quotes the stories in order to refute them.

It seems needless in a book concerned strictly with pagan Rome, to discuss the actual tenets and liturgies of the Early Christians. The only point to be understood here is the vile character of the charges brought against them by the ignorant heathen.

[248] Probably the Roman carriages were more convenient than anything known later in Europe prior to 1800; and travel facilities in general were as good, the inns possibly averaging worse but the roads decidedly better, than at the dawn of the Nineteenth Century.

[249] The following is an abridgment of Pliny the Younger’s well-known description of his Tuscan villa.

[250] The Romans delighted in formal and highly artificial gardens such as were in vogue in the Italian Renaissance and the France of Louis XIV.

[251] Well known, of course, is the famous dictum of Gibbon (“Decline and Fall of Roman Empire”: vol. i, chap. 2. Bury edition, p. 78): “If a man were called to fix the period during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus.” From the standpoint of a believer in aristocracy or monarchy this opinion is largely justifiable.

[252] Where according to firm Christian tradition St. Paul was beheaded in the days of Nero, having been rearrested after having once been set at liberty.