The upright and virtuous men of Pliny’s circle, Corellius Rufus, Titinius Capito the historian, Pegasus the learned jurist, Trebonius Rufus the magistrate who suppressed the games at Vienne, Junius Mauricus, who would have denied them to the capital, and many others of the like stamp, have often been used to refute the pessimism of Juvenal. We have in a former chapter seen reason to believe that the satirist’s view of female character needs to be similarly rectified. Even in the worst reigns the pages of Tacitus reveal to us strong and pure women, both in the palace and in great senatorial houses. In the wide philosophic class there was probably many an Arria and Plotina. In the Agricola, and in Seneca’s letters to Marcia and Helvia, we can see that, even at the darkest hour, there were homes with an atmosphere of old Roman self-restraint and sobriety, where good women wielded a powerful influence over their husbands and their sons, and where the examples of the old Republic were used, as Biblical characters with us, to fortify virtue.1074 Seneca, in his views about women, as in many other things, is essentially modern. He admires indeed the antique ideal of self-contained strength and homely virtue. But he also believes in the equal capacity of women for culture, even in the field of philosophy, and he half regrets that an old-fashioned prejudice had debarred Helvia from receiving a philosophic discipline.1075 Tacitus and Pliny, who had no great faith in philosophy as a study for men, would hardly have recommended it for women. But they lived among women who were cultivated in the best sense. Pliny’s third wife, Calpurnia, was able to give him the fullest sympathy in his literary efforts.1076 But her fame, of which she probably little dreamt, is founded on her purity and sweetness of character. Her ancestors, like Pliny’s, belonged to the aristocracy of Como. Her aunt, Calpurnia Hispulla, who was a dear friend of Pliny’s mother, had watched over her during the years of girlhood with a sedulous care which made her an ideal wife. What Calpurnia was like as a girl, we may probably picture to ourselves from the prose elegy [pg 189]of Pliny on the death of the young daughter of Minutius Fundanus.1077 It is the picture of a beautiful character, and a fair young life cut off too soon. The girl had not yet reached her fourteenth year. She was already betrothed when she was seized with a fatal sickness. Her sweet girlish modesty, which was combined with a matronly gravity, charmed all her father’s friends. She had love for all the household, her tutors and slaves, nurses and maids. A vigorous mind triumphed over bodily weakness, and she passed through her last illness with a sweet patience, encouraging her father and sister to bear up, and showing no shrinking from death.

Although we know of a good many happy wedded lives in that age,1078 there is no picture so full of pure devotion and tenderness as that which we have in Pliny’s letters to Calpurnia. They are love-letters in the best sense and the most perfect style.1079 Pliny’s youth was long past when he won the hand of Calpurnia, yet their love for one another is that of boy and girl. When she has to go into Campania for her health, he is racked with all sorts of anxiety about her, and entreats her to write once, or even twice, a day. Pliny reads her letters over and over again, as if they had just come. He has her image before him by night, and at the wonted hour by day his feet carry him to her vacant room. His only respite from these pains of a lover is while he is engaged in court. Pliny had frequent care about Calpurnia’s health. They did not belong to the hideous class who preferred “the rewards of childlessness,” but their hopes of offspring were dashed again and again. These griefs were imparted to Calpurnia’s aunt, and to her grandfather, Calpurnius Fabatus, a generous old squire of Como, who was as anxious as Pliny to have descendants of his race. At the time of the old man’s death, Calpurnia was with her husband in Bithynia, and she wished to hasten home at once to console her aunt. Pliny, not having time to secure the emperor’s sanction, gave her the official order for the use of the public post on her journey back to Italy. In answer to his letter of explanation and excuse, Trajan sent his approval in his usual kind and courteous style. This is the last glimpse we have of Pliny and Calpurnia.1080

Pliny’s character, as displayed in his Letters, is the embodiment of the finest moral tone of the great age which had opened when he died, in kindlier or juster treatment of the slave, in high respect for women, in conscientious care for the education of the young, in beneficent provision for the helpless and distressed. But it would be a mistaken view to regard these ideas as an altogether new departure. It is dangerous to assert that anything is altogether new in Roman social history. The truth is that the moral sentiment in which these movements took their rise had been for generations in the air. It was diffused by the Stoic preaching of the brotherhood and equality of men as fellow-citizens of one great commonwealth. The duty of redeeming the captive and succouring the poor had been preached by Cicero a century and a half before Pliny’s Letters appeared.1081 Horace had, a few years later, asked the searching question, “Why should the worthy be in want while you have wealth?”1082 Seneca preaches, with the unction of an evangelist, all the doctrines on which the humane legislation of the Antonine age was founded, all the principles of humanity and charity of every age. He asserts the natural equality of bond and free, and the claim of the slave to kindness and consideration.1083 He brands in many a passage the cruelty and contempt of the slaveholder. He preaches tolerance of the froward, forgiveness of insult and injury.1084 He enforces the duty of universal kindness and helpfulness by the example of God, who is bounteous and merciful even to the evildoer.1085 Juvenal was little of a philosopher, but he had unconsciously drunk deep of the gospel of philosophy. Behind all his bitter pessimism there is a pure and lofty moral tone which sometimes almost approaches the ideal of charity in S. Paul. The slave whom we torture or insult for some slight negligence is of the same elements as we are.1086 The purity of childhood is not to be defiled by the ribaldry of the banquet and the example of a mother’s intrigues or a father’s brutal excesses.1087 Revenge is the pleasure of a puny soul.1088 [pg 191]The guilty may be left to the scourge of the unseen inquisitor. Juvenal regards the power of sympathy for any human grief or pain as the priceless gift of Nature, “who has given us tears.”1089 It is by her command that we mourn the calamity of a friend or the death of the babe “too small for the funeral pyre.” The scenes of suffering and pity which the satirist has sketched in some tender lines were assuredly not imaginary pictures. We are apt to forget, in our modern self-complacency, that, at least among civilised races, human nature in its broad features remains pretty much the same from age to age. On an obscure epitaph of this period you may read the words—Bene fac, hoc tecum feres.1090 Any one who knows the inscriptions may be inclined to doubt whether private benefactions under the Antonines were less frequent and generous than in our own day.

The duties of wealth, both in Greece and Rome, were at all times rigorously enforced by public opinion. The rich had to pay heavily for their honours and social consideration in the days of Cicero, and in the days of Symmachus, as they had in the days of Pericles.1091 They had to contribute to the amusement of the people, and to support a crowd of clients and freedmen. In the remotest municipality, the same ambitions and the same social demands, as we shall show in the next chapter, put an enormous strain on the resources of the upper class. Men must have often ruined themselves by this profuse liberality. In the reign of Augustus a great patron had several times given a favourite freedman sums of £3000 or £4000. The patron’s descendant in the reign of Nero had to become a pensioner of the emperor. Juvenal and Martial reveal the clamorous demands by which the great patron was assailed.1092 The motives for this generosity of the wealthy class were at all times mixed and various. But in our period, the growth of a pure humane charity is unmistakable, of a feeling of duty to the helpless, whether young or old. The State had from the time of the Gracchi taken upon itself the immense burden of providing food for a quarter of a million of the proletariat of Rome. But in the [pg 192]days of Pliny it recognised fresh obligations. The importance of education and the growth of poverty appealed powerfully to a ruling class, which, under the influence of philosophy, was coming to believe more and more in the duty of benevolence and of devotion to things of the mind. All the emperors from Vespasian to M. Aurelius made liberal provision for the higher studies.1093 But this endowment of culture, which in the end did harm as well as good, is not so interesting to us as the charitable foundations for the children of the poor. It was apparently the emperor Nerva, the rigid economist who sold the imperial furniture and jewels to replenish the treasury,1094 who first made provision for the children of needy parents throughout Italy. But epigraphy tells us more than literary history of the charity of the emperors. The tablet of Veleia is a priceless record of the charitable measures adopted by Trajan. The motive of the great emperor was probably, as his panegyrist suggests, political as much as benevolent.1095 He may have wished to encourage the rearing of children who should serve in the armies of the State, as well as to relieve distress. The provision was even more evidently intended to stimulate agriculture. The landed proprietors of the place, to the number of forty-six, received on mortgage a loan from the State of about £10,000 in our money, at an interest of five per cent, which was less than half the usual rate of that time.1096 The interest was appropriated to the maintenance of 300 poor children, at the rate of about £1:11s. a year for each male child, and £1 for each girl. The illegitimate children, who, it may be noted, were only two or three out of so many, received a smaller allowance. The boys were supported till their eighteenth year, the girls till fourteen. It was a bold and sagacious attempt to encourage Italian agriculture, to check the ominous depopulation of Italy,1097 and to answer the cry of the poor. Hadrian continued and even added to the benefaction of Trajan.1098 Antoninus Pius, in [pg 193]honour of his wife Faustina, established a foundation for young girls who were to be called by her not altogether unspotted name.1099 A similar charity was founded in honour of her daughter by M. Aurelius.1100

But, while the emperors were responding to the call of charity by using the resources of the State, it is clear, from the Letters of Pliny and from the inscriptions, that private benevolence was even more active. Pliny has a conception of the uses and responsibilities of wealth which, in spite of the teaching of Galilee, is not yet very common. Although he was not a very wealthy man, he acted up to his principles on a scale and proportion which only a few of our millionaires have yet reached. The lavish generosity of Pliny is a commonplace of social history. We have not the slightest wish to detract from the merited fame of that kindliest of Roman gentlemen. But a survey of the inscriptions may incline the inquirer to believe that, according to their means, there were many men and women in obscure municipalities all over the world, who were as generous and public-spirited as Pliny.1101 With Pliny, as with those more obscure benefactors, the impelling motive was love for the parent city or the village which was the home of their race, and where the years of youth had been passed. Pliny, the distinguished advocate, the famous man of letters, the darling of Roman society, still remained the loyal son of Como, from which his love never strays.1102 He followed and improved upon the example of his father in munificence to his native place.1103 He had little liking for games and gladiatorial shows, which were the most popular objects of liberality in those days. But he gave a sum of nearly £9000 for the foundation of a town library, with an annual endowment of more than £800 to maintain it.1104 Finding that promising youths of Como had to resort to Milan for their higher education, he offered to [pg 194]contribute one-third of the expense of a high school at Como, if the parents would raise the remainder. The letter which records the offer shows Pliny at his best, wise and thoughtful as well as generous.1105 He wishes to keep boys under the protection of home influence, to make them lovers of their mother city; and he limits his benefaction in order to stimulate the interest of the parents in the cause of education, and in the appointment of the teachers. Another sum of between £4000 and £5000 he gave to Como for the support of boys and girls of the poorer class.1106 He also left more than £4000 for public baths, and a sum of nearly £16,000 to his freedmen, and for communal feasts. On two of his estates he built or repaired temples at his own expense.1107 His private benefactions were on a similar scale. It is not necessary to adopt the cynical conclusion that Pliny has told us all his liberality. The kindly delicacy with which Pliny claims the right of a second father to make up the dowry of the daughter of his friend Quintilian, might surely save him from such an imputation.1108 In the same spirit he offers to Romatius Firmus the £2500 which was needed to raise his fortune to the level of equestrian rank.1109 When the philosophers were banished by Domitian, Pliny, who was then praetor, at the most imminent risk visited his friend Artemidorus, and lent him, free of interest, a considerable sum of money.1110 The daughter of one of his friends was left with an embarrassed estate; Pliny took up all the debts and left Calvina with an inheritance free from all burdens.1111 He gave his old nurse a little estate which cost him about £800.1112 But the amount of this good man’s gifts, which might shame a modern testator with ten times his fortune, is not so striking as the kindness which prompted them, and the modest delicacy with which they were made.

Yet Pliny, as we have said, is only a shining example of a numerous class of more obscure benefactors. For a thousand who know his Letters, there are few who have read the stone records of similar generosity. Yet these memorials abound for those who care to read them. And any one who will spend a few days, or even a few well-directed hours, in examining the [pg 195]inscriptions of the early Empire, will find many a common, self-complacent prejudice melting away. He will discover a profusion of generosity to add to the beauty, dignity, or convenience of the parent city, to lighten the dulness of ordinary life, to bring all ranks together in common scenes of enjoyment, to relieve want and suffering among the indigent. The motives of this extraordinary liberality were indeed often mixed, and it was, from our point of view, often misdirected. The gifts were sometimes made merely to win popularity, or to repay civic honours which had been conferred by the populace. They were too often devoted to gladiatorial shows and other exhibitions which only debased the spectators. Yet the greatest part of them were expended on objects of public utility—baths, theatres, markets, or new roads and aqueducts, or on those public banquets which knitted all ranks together. There was in those days an immense “civic ardour,” an almost passionate rivalry, to make the mother city a more pleasant and a more splendid home. The endless foundations for civic feasts to all orders, in which even children and slaves were not forgotten, with a distribution of money at the close, softened the sharp distinctions of rank, and gave an appreciable relief to poverty. Other foundations were more definitely inspired by charity and pity. In remote country towns, there were pious founders who, like Pliny and Trajan, and the Antonines, provided for the nurture of the children of the poor. Bequests were left to cheapen the main necessaries of life.1113 Nor were the aged and the sick forgotten. In Lorium, near the old home of the Antonines, a humble spice dealer provided in his will for a free distribution of medicines to the poor people of the town.1114 The countless gifts and legacies to the colleges, which were the refuge of the poor in that age, in every region of the Roman world, are an irresistible proof of an overflowing charity. Pliny’s love of the quiet town where his infancy was passed, and the record of a like patriotism or benevolence in so many others, draw us on to the study of that free and generous municipal life which was the great glory of the Antonine age.