Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius Part 6

But the prince of public benefactors in the Antonine age was the great sophist Herodes Atticus, the tutor of M. Aurelius, who died in the same year as his pupil, 180 A.D. He acted up to his theory of the uses of wealth on a scale of unexampled munificence.(1289) His family was of high rank, and claimed descent from the Aeacidae of Aegina. They had also apparently inexhaustible resources. His father spent a sum of nearly 40,000 in supplementing an imperial grant for the supply of water to the Troad. The munificence of the son was extended to cities in Italy, as well as to Corinth, Thessaly, Euboea, Boeotia, Elis, and pre-eminently to Athens. He gave an aqueduct to Ca.n.u.sium and Olympia, a racecourse to Delphi, a roofed theatre to Corinth.(1290) He provided sulphur baths at Thermopylae for the visitors from Thessaly and the sh.o.r.es of the Maliac gulf. He aided in the restoration of Oric.u.m in Epirus, and liberally recruited the resources of many another decaying town in Greece. He was certainly benevolent, but he had also a pa.s.sion for splendid fame, and cherished an ambition to realise the dream of Nero, by cutting a ca.n.a.l across the Corinthian Isthmus.(1291) But Attica, where he was born, and where he had a princely house on the Ilissus, was the supreme object of his bounty. In his will he left each Athenian citizen an annual gift of a mina. He would offer to the Virgin G.o.ddess a sacrifice of a hundred oxen on a single day; and, when the great festivals came round, he used to feast the people by their tribes, as well as the resident strangers, on couches in the Ceramicus. He restored the ancient shrines and stadia with costly marbles. And, in memory of Rhegilla, his wife, he built at the foot of the acropolis a theatre for 6000 spectators, roofed in with cedar wood, which, to the eye of Pausanias, surpa.s.sed all similar structures in its splendour.(1292)

The liberality of Herodes Atticus, however astonis.h.i.+ng it may seem, was only exceptional in its scale. The same spirit prevailed among the leading citizens or the great _patroni_ of hundreds of communities, many of them only known to us from a brief inscription or two; and we have great reason to be grateful on this score to the imperial legislation of later days, which did its best to preserve these stone records for the eyes of posterity.(1293) But in forming an estimate of the splendid public spirit evoked by munic.i.p.al life, it is well to remind ourselves that much has necessarily been lost in the wreck of time, and also that what we have left represents the civic life of a comparatively brief period. Yet the remains are so numerous that it is almost impossible to give any adequate idea of their profusion to those who are unacquainted with the inscriptions. The objects of this liberality are as various as the needs of the community-temples, theatres, bridges, markets, a portico or a colonnade, the relaying of a road or pavement from the forum to the port, the repair of an aqueduct, above all the erection of new baths or the restoration of old ones, with perhaps a permanent foundation to provide for the free enjoyment of this greatest luxury of the south. The boon was extended to all citizens of both s.e.xes, and in some cases, even to strangers and to slaves.(1294) There is an almost monotonous sameness in the stiff, conventional record of this vast ma.s.s of lavish generosity. It all seems a spontaneous growth of the social system. One monument is erected by the senate and people of Tibur to a man who had borne all its honours, and had left the town his sole heir.(1295) On another, an Augustal of Cales, who had received the insignia of the duumvirate, tells posterity that he had laid down a broad road through the town.(1296) Another benefactor bore the chief cost of a new meat market at Aesernia, the authorities of the town supplying the pillars and the tiles.(1297) A priestess of Calama in Numidia expended a sum of 3400 on a new theatre.(1298) Perhaps the commonest object of private liberality was the erection or maintenance of public baths. An old officer of the fourth legion provided free bathing at Suessa Senonum for every one, even down to the slave girls.(1299) At Bononia, a sum of 4350 was bequeathed for the same liberal purpose.(1300) A magnate of Misenum bequeathed 400 loads of hard wood annually for the furnaces of the baths, but with the stipulation that his son should be made patron of the town, and that his successors should receive all the magistracies.(1301)

These are only a few specimens taken at random from the countless records of similar liberality to the parent city. The example of the emperors must have stimulated the creation of splendid public works in the provinces. It has been remarked by M. Boissier that the imperial government at all times displayed the politic or instinctive love of monarchy for splendour and magnificence.(1302) The Roman Code, down to the end of the Western Empire, gives evidence of a jealous care for the preservation of the monuments and historic buildings of the past, and denounces with very unconventional energy the "foul and shameful" traffic in the relics of ancient glory which prevailed in the last age of the Empire.(1303) After great fires and desolating wars, the first thought of the most frugal or the most lavish prince was to restore in greater grandeur what had been destroyed. After the great conflagration of A.D. 64, which laid in ashes ten out of the fourteen regions of Rome, Nero immediately set to work to rebuild the city in a more orderly fas.h.i.+on, with broader streets and open s.p.a.ces.(1304) Vespasian, on his accession, found the treasury loaded with a debt of 320,000,000. Yet the frugal emperor did not hesitate to begin at once the restoration of the Capitol, and all the other ruins left by the great struggle of A.D. 69 from which his dynasty arose.(1305) He even undertook some new works on a great scale, the temple of Peace and the amphitheatre, on the plans projected by Augustus. t.i.tus completed the Colosseum, and erected the famous baths.(1306) Domitian once more restored the Capitol, and added many new buildings, temples to his "divine" father and brother, with many shrines of his special patroness Minerva; a stone stadium for 30,000 people, and an Odeum for an audience of 10,000.(1307) Trajan was lauded by Pliny for his frugal administration of the treasury, combined with magnificence in his public works.(1308) Nor was the encomium undeserved. He made docks and erected warehouses at Ostia; he ran a new road through the Pomptine marshes; he lavished money on aqueducts and baths.(1309) His most imposing construction was a new forum between the Capitoline and the Quirinal, with stately memorials of the achievements of his reign. But the prince of imperial builders and engineers was Hadrian.

Wherever he went he took with him in his journeys a troop of architects to add something to the splendour or convenience of the cities through which he pa.s.sed. "In almost every city," says his biographer, "he erected some building."(1310) But the capital was not neglected by Hadrian. He restored historic structures such as the Pantheon and the temple of Neptune, the forum of Augustus, and Agrippa's baths, with no ostentatious intrusion of his own name.(1311) In his own name he built the temples of Venus and Roma, the bridge across the Tiber, and that stately mausoleum, which, as the castle of S. Angelo, links the memory of the pagan Empire with the mediaeval Papacy and the modern world. The example of the imperial masters of the world undoubtedly reinforced the various impulses which inspired the dedication of so much wealth to the public service or enjoyment through all the cities of the Empire.

But the wealthy and public-spirited citizen was also expected to cater for the immediate pleasure or amus.e.m.e.nt of his neighbours in games and feasts.

We have seen that Pliny, during his administration of Bithynia, seems to have regarded the public feasts given to a whole commune on occasions of private rejoicing, as dangerous to the general tranquillity. Yet the usage meets us everywhere in the inscriptions, and even in the literary history of the time. This s.p.a.cious hospitality was long demanded from the rich and powerful, from the general at his triumph, from the great n.o.ble on his birthday or his daughter's marriage, from the rich burgher at the dedication of a temple or a forum which he had given to the city, from the man who had been chosen patron of a town in expectation of such largesses, not to speak of the many private patrons whose morning receptions were thronged by a hungry crowd, eager for an invitation to dinner, or its equivalent in the sportula.(1312) Julius Caesar on his triumph in 46 B.C.

had feasted the people at 22,000 tables.(1313) Great houses, like the sumptuous seat of Caninius Rufus at Como, had enormous banquet halls for such popular repasts.(1314) The Trimalchio of Petronius desires himself to be sculptured on his tomb in the character of such a lavish host.(1315) There was in that age no more popular and effective way of testifying grat.i.tude for the honours bestowed by the popular voice, or of winning them, than by a great feast to the whole commune, generally accompanied by a distribution of money, according to social or official grade. It was also the most popular means of prolonging one's memory to bequeath a foundation for the perpetual maintenance of such repasts in honour of the dead.(1316) One P. Lucilius of Ostia had held all the great offices of his town, and had rewarded his admirers with a munificence apparently more than equivalent to the official honours they had bestowed. He had paved a long road from the forum to the arch, restored a temple of Vulcan, of which he was the curator, and the temples of Venus, Spes, and Fortuna; he had provided standard weights for the meat market, and a tribunal of marble for the forum. But probably his most popular benefaction was a great banquet to the citizens, where 217 couches were arrayed for them.(1317) The same munificent person had twice entertained the whole of the citizens at luncheon. Elsewhere a veteran, with a long and varied service, had settled at Auximum where he had been elected patron of the community. His old comrades, the centurions of the Second Legion (Traj.

Fortis) erected a monument to his virtues, and, at the dedication, he gave a banquet to the townsfolk.(1318) One other example, out of the many which crowd the inscriptions, may serve to complete the picture of civic hospitality. Lucius Cornelius of Surrentum received on his death the honour of a public funeral by a vote of the Curia. The inscription on his statue records that, on a.s.suming the garb of manhood, he had provided a meal of pastry and mead for the populace; when he became aedile, he exhibited a contest of gladiators; and, twice reaching the honours of the duumvirate, he repaid the compliment by splendid games and a stately banquet.(1319)

At these entertainments a gift of money, always graduated according to the social rank of the guests, decurio, augustal, or plebeian, was generally added to the fare.(1320) Sometimes the distribution took the form of a lottery. A high official of Beneventum, who had probably inherited a fortune from his father, a leading physician of the capital, once scattered tickets among the crowd, which gave the finder the right to a present of gold, silver, dress, or other smaller prizes.(1321) Women appeared sometimes both as hostesses and guests on these occasions. Caesia Sabina of Veii, on the day on which her husband was entertaining all the citizens, invited the female relatives of the decurions to dinner, with the additional luxury of a gratuitous bath.(1322) It is curious to observe that at the festivities in which women are entertained, the sharp demarcation of ranks is maintained as strictly as it is among their male relations. Thus, in a distribution at Volceii, the decurions, augustales, and vicani, receive respectively thirty, twenty, and twelve sesterces apiece; while the proportion observed among the ladies of the three social grades is sixteen, eight, and four. Nor were children, even those of the slave cla.s.s, forgotten on these festive occasions. One kindly magnate of Ferentinum left a fund of about 750 to give an annual feast of pastry and mead upon his birthday for all the inhabitants with their wives, and at the same time, 300 pecks of nuts were provided for the children, bond and free.(1323)

These provincial societies, as we have already seen, were organised on aristocratic or plutocratic principles. The distinction between _honestior_ and _humilior_, which becomes so cruel in the Theodosian Code, was, even in the Antonine age, more sharply drawn and more enduring than is agreeable to our modern notions of social justice. The rich have a monopoly of all official power and social precedence; they have even the largest share in gifts and paltry distributions of money which wealth might be expected to resign and to despise. Their sons have secured to them by social convention, or by popular grat.i.tude and expectancy, a position equal to that of their ancestors. The dim plebeian crowd, save for the right of an annual vote at the elections, which was in a few generations to be withdrawn, seem to be of little more consequence than the slaves; they were of far less consequence than those freedmen who had the luck or the dexterity to build up a rapid fortune, and force their way into the chasm between the privileged and the disinherited. Yet this would hardly be a complete and penetrating view of the inner working and the spirit of that munic.i.p.al society. The apparent rigidity and harshness of the lines of demarcation were often relieved by a social sentiment which, on the one hand, made heavy demands on rank and wealth, and on the other, drew all cla.s.ses together by the strong bond of fellows.h.i.+p in a common social life. There has probably seldom been a time when wealth was more generally regarded as a trust, a possession in which the community at large has a right to share. There never was an age in which the wealthy more frankly, and even recklessly, recognised this imperious claim. It would indeed be difficult to resolve into its elements the complicated ma.s.s of motives which impelled the rich burgher to undertake such enormous, and often ruinous, expenditure for the common good or pleasure.

There was of course much of mere selfish ambition and love of popularity.

The pa.s.sion for prominence was probably never stronger. Direct or even veiled corruption of the electors was, indeed, strictly prohibited by law.(1324) But it was a recognised principle of public life that the city should honour its benefactors, and that those whom she had raised to her highest distinctions should manifest their grat.i.tude by some contribution to the comfort or the enjoyments of the people. But, when we have admitted all vulgar motives of munificence, a man would show himself a very un.o.bservant, or else a very cynical student of the time, if he failed to recognise that, among these countless benefactors, there were many animated, not only by a sense of duty, but by a real ardour of public spirit, men who wished to live in the love and memory of their fellows, and who had a rare perception of the duties of wealth. Philostratus has left us in his own words a record of the principles which inspired Herodes Atticus in his almost fabulous donations to many cities in Asia, Greece, and Italy. Herodes used to say that the true use of money was to succour the needs of others; riches which were guarded with a n.i.g.g.ard hand were only a "dead wealth"; the coffers in which they were stowed away were merely a prison; and the wors.h.i.+p of money resembled the sacrifice which the fabled Aloidae offered to a G.o.d after putting him in chains.(1325) The main characteristics of human nature are singularly fixed from age to age, although the objects of its love and devotion may endlessly vary. The higher unselfish impulses must a.s.sert themselves in any society which is not plunging into the abyss. The choicer spirits will be always ready to lavish effort or material wealth on objects which are sacred to their own age, although they may seen chimerical or unworthy to the next. And we may well believe that the man who in the second century built a bath or a theatre for fellow townsmen, might possibly, had he lived in the fifth, have dedicated a church to a patron saint, or bequeathed his lands to a monastery.

The Antonine age was on one side perhaps rather coa.r.s.e in its ideals, pa.s.sionately fond of splendour and brilliant display, proud of civic dignity, and keenly alive to the ease and comfort and brightness which common effort or individual generosity might add to the enjoyment of life.

It was also an intensely sociable age. Men looked for their happiness to their city rather than to the family or the state. If their city could not play a great part as an independent commonwealth, it might, by the self-sacrifice of its sons, a.s.sert its dignity among its rivals. It could make itself a society which men would proudly or affectionately claim as their "patria" and their parent, and on which they would vie with one another in lavis.h.i.+ng their time and their gold. And the buildings and banquets and bright festivals, on which so much was lavished, were enjoyed by all citizens alike, the lowest and the highest, although high and low had sometimes by prescriptive usage an unequal share in the largesses. The free enjoyment of sumptuous baths, of good water from the Atlas, the Apennines, or the Alban Hills, the right to sit at ease with one's fellows when the _Pseudolus_ or the _Adelphi_ was put upon the boards, the pleasure of strolling in the shady colonnades of the forum or the market, surrounded by brilliant marbles and frescoes, with fountains shedding their coolness around; the good fellows.h.i.+p which, for the time, levelled all ranks, in many a simple communal feast, with a coin or two distributed at the end to recall or heighten the pleasure-all these things tended to make the city a true home, to some extent almost a great family circle.

There was much selfishness and grossness, no doubt, in all this civic life. Which later age can cast the first stone? Yet a study of the inscriptions of the Antonine age leaves the impression that, amid all the sharply drawn distinctions of rank, with all the petty ambition and self-a.s.sertion, or the fawning and expectant servility, there was also a genuine patriotic benevolence on the one hand, and a grateful recognition of it on the other. The citizens record on many a tablet their grat.i.tude to patron or duumvir or augustal, or to some simple old centurion, returned from far frontier camps, who had paved their promenade, or restored their baths, or given them a shrine of Neptune or Silva.n.u.s. They also preserved the memory of many a kindly benefactor who left, as he fondly thought for ever, the funds for an annual feast, with all the graduated shares scrupulously prescribed, to save an obscure tomb from the general oblivion. Thus, although that ancient city life had its sordid side, which is laid bare with such pitiless Rabelaisian realism by Petronius, it had its n.o.bler aspect also. Notwithstanding the aristocratic tone of munic.i.p.al society in the age of the Antonines, it is possible that the separation of cla.s.ses in our great centres of population is morally more sharp and decided than it was in the days when the gulf between social ranks was in theory impa.s.sable.

There is however another side to this picture of fraternal civic life. If some of its pleasures were innocent and even softening and elevating, there were others which pandered to the most brutal and cruel pa.s.sions.

The love of amus.e.m.e.nt grew upon the Roman character as civilisation developed in organisation and splendour, and unfortunately the favourite amus.e.m.e.nts were often obscene and cruel. The calendar of the time is sufficiently ominous. The number of days which were annually given up to games and spectacles at Rome rose from 66 in the reign of Augustus, to 135 in the reign of M. Aurelius, and to 175, or more, in the fourth century.

In this reckoning no account is taken of extraordinary festivals on special occasions.(1326) The Flavian amphitheatre was inaugurated by t.i.tus with lavish exhibitions extending over 100 days.(1327) The Dacian triumphs of Trajan were celebrated by similar rejoicings for 123 days, and 10,000 gladiators were sent down into the arena.(1328) The rage of all cla.s.ses of the Roman populace for these sights of suffering and shame continued unabated to the very end of the Western Empire. The lubricity of pantomime and the slaughter of the arena were never more fiercely and keenly enjoyed than when the Germans were thundering at the gates of Treves and Carthage.(1329)

It is difficult for us now to understand this l.u.s.t of cruelty among a people otherwise highly civilised, a pa.s.sion which was felt not merely by the base rabble, but even by the cultivated and humane.(1330) There was undoubtedly at all times a coa.r.s.e insensibility to suffering in the Roman character. The inst.i.tution of slavery, which involves the denial of ordinary human rights to ma.s.ses of fellow-creatures, had its usual effect in rendering men contemptuously callous to the fate of all who did not belong to the privileged cla.s.s. Even a man of high moral tone like Tacitus, while he condemns Drusus for gloating over his gladiatorial shows, has only a word of scorn for the victims of the butchery.(1331) And the appet.i.te grew with what it fed on. From father to son, for nearly seven centuries, the Roman character became more and more indurated under the influence of licensed cruelty. The spectacle was also surrounded by the emperors, even the greatest and best, for politic reasons, with ever growing splendour. The Flavian amphitheatre, which remains as a monument of the glory of the Empire and of its shame, must have been a powerful corruptor. There, tier above tier, was gathered the concentrated excitability and contagious enthusiasm of 87,000 spectators. The imperial circle and the emperor himself, members of high senatorial houses, the great officers of state, the priests, the vestal virgins, gave an impressive national dignity to the inhuman spectacle. And now and then an Eastern prince or amba.s.sador, or the chief of some half-savage tribe in Germany or Numidia,(1332) amused the eyes of the rabble who swarmed on the upper benches. Every device of luxurious art was employed to heighten the baser attractions of the scene. The magnificent pile was brightened with gems of artistic skill.(1333) The arena was tesselated with rich colouring from the sunlight which streamed through the awnings. The waters of perfumed fountains shot high into the air, spreading their fragrant coolness; and music filled the pauses in the ghastly conflict. From scenes like these was probably drawn the picture in the Apocalypse: _Mulier circ.u.mdata purpura et coccino-mater fornicationum-ebria de sanguine sanctorum._

In the first and second centuries the pa.s.sion for cruel excitement was as strong in the provincial towns as it was even at Rome. This may have been partly due to the monotony of provincial life. It was also stimulated by the ease with which public sentiment extorted the means for these gratifications from the richer citizens. The opinion of the powerful and enlightened cla.s.s, with rare exceptions, made no effort to purify and humanise the grossness of the ma.s.ses. Seneca and Demonax indeed display a modern humanity in their view of the degrading influence of these displays.(1334) A humane magistrate of Vienne, one Trebonius Rufinus, in the reign of Trajan, having autocratically abolished them in his city, was called upon to defend his conduct before the emperor, and Junius Mauricus had the courage to express before the council a wish that they could be abolished also at Rome.(1335) Augustus had, by an imperial edict, restrained the cruel exhibitions of the father of Nero.(1336) Vespasian, according to Dion Ca.s.sius,(1337) had little pleasure in the shows of the arena. But the emperors generally, and not least Vespasian's sons, encouraged and pandered to the l.u.s.t for blood.(1338) The imperial gladiators were organised elaborately in four great schools by Domitian,(1339) with a regular administration, presided over by officers of high rank. The gentle Pliny, who had personally no liking for such spectacles, applauded his friend Maximus for giving a gladiatorial show to the people of Verona, to do honour to his dead wife, in the true spirit of the old Bruti and Lepidi of the age of the Punic Wars.(1340) He found in the shows of Trajan a splendid incentive of contempt for death.

It is little wonder that, with such examples and such approval, the ma.s.ses gloated unrestrained over these inhuman sports. The rag-dealer at Trimalchio's dinner is certainly drawn to the life.(1341) They are going to have a three days' carnival of blood. There is to be no escape; the butcher is to do his work thoroughly in full view of the crowded tiers of the amphitheatre. It was in Etruria, and in Campania, where Trimalchio had his home, that the gladiatorial combats took their rise. Campanian hosts used to entertain their guests at dinner with them in the days before the second Punic War.(1342) And it was in Campanian towns that in the first century was displayed most glaringly the not unusual combination of cruelty and voluptuousness. The remains of Pompeii furnish us with the most vivid and authentic materials for a study of the sporting tastes of a provincial town. It is significant that the amphitheatre of Pompeii, which was capable of holding 20,000 people, was built fifty years before the first stone amphitheatre erected by Statilius Taurus at Rome.(1343) It is also remarkable that, although Pompeii is mentioned only twice by Tacitus, one of the references is to a b.l.o.o.d.y riot arising out of the games of the amphitheatre.(1344) In the year 59 A.D. a Roman senator in disgrace, named Livineius Regulus, gave a great gladiatorial show at Pompeii, which attracted many spectators from the neighbouring town of Nuceria. The scenes of the arena were soon reproduced in a fierce street fight between the people of the two towns, in which many Nucerians were left dead or wounded. The catastrophe was brought before the emperor, and referred by him to the Senate, with the result that Pompeii was sternly deprived of its favourite amus.e.m.e.nt for a period of ten years. But when the interdict was removed, the Pompeians had the enjoyment of their accustomed pleasure for ten years more, till it was finally interrupted by the ashes of Vesuvius.

A building at Pompeii, which was originally a colonnade connected with the theatre,(1345) had been converted into barracks for a school of gladiators in the time of the early Empire.(1346) Behind the colonnade of more than seventy Doric columns had been built a long row of small cells, with no opening except on the central enclosure. There was a mess room, and the _exedra_ on the southern side served as a retiring room for the trainers and the men in the intervals of exercise. The open area was used for practice. These buildings have yielded many specimens of gladiators' arms, helmets, and greaves richly embossed in relief, scores of mail-coats, s.h.i.+elds, and horse-trappings. In one room there were found the stocks, and four skeletons with irons on their legs. In another, eighteen persons had taken refuge in the last catastrophe, and, among them, a woman wearing costly jewels. The walls and columns were covered with inscriptions and rude sketches of gladiatorial life. Indeed the graffiti relating to it are perhaps the most interesting in Pompeii. On some of the tombs outside the city we can still read the notices of coming games, painted on the walls by a professional advertiser, one Aemilius Celer, "by the light of the moon."(1347) They announce that a duumvir or aedile or flamen will exhibit twenty or thirty pairs of combatants on the calends of May or the ides of April. There will also be a hunt, athletic games, a distribution of gifts, and awnings will be provided. Programmes were for sale in advance, with a list of the events. The contents of one can still be read scratched on a wall, with marginal notes of the results of the compet.i.tion. In one conflict, Pugnax, in the Thracian arms, had beaten Murra.n.u.s the Myrmillo, fighting in the arms of Gaul, with the fish upon his helmet; and the fate of Murra.n.u.s is chronicled in one tragic letter p. (_periit_). Two others fought in chariots in old British fas.h.i.+on. And the Publius Ostorius who won was, as his name may suggest, a freedman, now fighting as a voluntary combatant, according to the inscription, in his fifty-first conflict.(1348) The tomb of Umbricius Scaurus, on the highway outside the Herculaneum gate, was adorned in stucco relief with animated scenes from the arena of hunting and battle. Hunters with sword and cloak, like a modern toreador, are engaging lions or tigers. Two gladiators are charging one another on horseback. Here, a vanquished combatant, with upturned hand, is imploring the pity of the spectators, while another is sinking in the agony of death upon the sand. The name, the school, and the fighting history of each combatant are painted beside the figure.(1349) The universal enthusiasm for the shows is expressed in many a rude sketch which has been traced by boyish hands upon the walls. The record of the heroes of the arena was evidently then as familiar as that of a champion footballer or cricketer is now to our own sporting youth. In the peristyle of a house in Nola Street, the names of some thirty gladiators can be read, with the character of their arms and the number of their conflicts.

Portraits of gladiators are figured on lamps and rings and vases of the period. The charm of their manly strength, according to Juvenal, was fatal to the peace of many a Roman matron of the great world. And the humbler girls of Pompeii have left the memorial of their weakness in more than one frank outburst of rather unmaidenly admiration.(1350)

It is a grave deduction from the admiring judgment of the glory of the Antonine age, that its most splendid remains are the stately buildings within whose enclosure, for centuries, the populace were regaled with the sufferings and the blood of the n.o.blest creatures of the wild animal world and of gallant men. The deserts and forests of Africa and the remotest East contributed their elephants and panthers and lions to these scenes.

And every province of the Empire sent its contingent of recruits for the arena, Gaul, Germany, and Thrace, Britain and Dacia, the villages of the Atlas, and the deserts of the Soudan.(1351) Just in proportion to the depth of the impress made by Roman civilisation, was the amphitheatre more or less popular in the provinces. In Italy itself the pa.s.sion was naturally strongest. Quiet little places, buried in the Apennines, or in the mountains of Samnium, had their regular spectacles, and record their grat.i.tude for the pleasure to some magistrate or patron.(1352) The little town of Fidenae, in the reign of Tiberius, gained for a moment a sinister fame by the collapse of its amphitheatre, involving the death or mutilation of 50,000 spectators.(1353) An augustal of Praeneste endowed his town with a school of gladiators, and received a statue for this contribution to the pleasures of the populace.(1354) A. Clodius Flaccus of Pompeii, in his first duumvirate, on the Apollinaria, gave an exhibition in the forum of bull-fighting, pugilism, and pantomime. He signalised his second tenure of the office by a show of thirty-five pairs of gladiators, with a hunting scene of bulls, boars, and bears.(1355) At Minturnae, a monument reminds "the excellent citizens" that, in a show lasting for four days, eleven of the foremost of Campanian gladiators had died before their eyes, along with ten ferocious bears.(1356) At Compsa in Samnium, a place hardly ever heard of, the common people erected a statue to a priest of Magna Mater, who had given them a splendid show, and he in turn rewarded their grat.i.tude by a feast to both s.e.xes, which lasted over two days.(1357) Similar records of misplaced munificence might be produced from Bovianum and Beneventum, from Tibur and Perusia, and many another obscure Italian town. But the brutal insensibility of the age is perhaps nowhere so glaringly paraded as in the days following the short-lived victory of the Vitellian arms at Bedriac.u.m. There, on that ghastly plain, on which his rival had been crushed and had closed a tainted life by a not inglorious death, Vitellius gloated over the wreck of the great struggle.

The trees were cut down, the crops trampled into mire; the soil was soaked and festering with blood, while mangled forms of men and horses still lay rotting till the vultures should complete their obsequies. Within forty days of the battle, the emperor attended great gladiatorial combats given by his generals at Cremona and Bononia, as if to revive the memory of the carnage by a cruel mimicry.(1358) The grim literary avenger of that carnival of blood has pictured the imperial monster's end, within a short s.p.a.ce, in colours that will never fade, deserted by his meanest servants, shuddering at the ghastly terrors of the vast, silent solitudes of the palace, dragged forth from his hiding, and flung with insults and execrations down the Gemonian Stairs. The dying gladiator of Cremona was more than avenged.(1359)

The western provinces bordering on the Mediterranean, Gaul, Spain, and Africa, drank deepest of the spirit which created the great amphitheatres of Arles, Treves, and Carthage, Placentia and Verona, of Puteoli, Pompeii, and Capua. But the East caught the infection, and gladiatorial combats were held at Antioch in Pisidia, at Nysa in Caria, and at Laodicea; Alexandria had its amphitheatre from the days of Augustus, and a school of gladiators, presided over by a high imperial officer.(1360) The Teutonic regions of the north and Greece were almost the only provinces in which the b.l.o.o.d.y games were not popular. The one Greek town where the taste for them was fully developed was the mongrel city of Corinth, which was a Roman colony. In the novel of Apuleius we meet a high Corinthian magistrate travelling through Thessaly to collect the most famous gladiators for his shows.(1361) Yet even in Greece, even at Athens, which had been the home of kindly pity from the days of Theseus, the cruel pa.s.sion was spreading in the days of the Antonines. Plutarch urges public men to banish or to restrain these exhibitions in their cities.(1362) When the Athenians, from an ambition to rival the splendour of Corinth, were meditating the establishment of a gladiatorial show, the gentle Demonax bade them first to overturn their altar of Pity.(1363) The apostles of h.e.l.lenism, Dion, Plutarch, and Lucian, were unanimous in condemning an inst.i.tution which sacrificed the bravest men to the brutal pa.s.sions of the mob.

The games of the arena were sometimes held at the expense of the munic.i.p.ality on great festivals, with a public officer, bearing the t.i.tle of _curator_,(1364) to direct them. But, perhaps more frequently, they were given by great magistrates or priests at their own expense; or some rich _parvenu_, like the cobbler of Bologna or the fuller of Modena, who have been ridiculed by Martial, would try by such a display to force an entrance into the guarded enclosure of Roman rank.(1365) There were also frequent bequests to create a permanent agonistic foundation. The most striking example of such a legacy is to be found on an inscription in honour of a munificent duumvir of Pisaurum. He left a capital sum of more than 10,000 to the community. The interest on two-fifths of this bequest, perhaps amounting to 500, was to be spent in giving a general feast on the birthday of the founder's son. The acc.u.mulated interest of the remaining three-fifths, amounting, perhaps, to 4000, was to be devoted to a quinquennial exhibition of gladiators.(1366) An aedile in Petronius is going to spend between 3000 and 4000 on a three days' show.(1367) The cost of these exhibitions, however, must have widely varied. We hear of one in the second century B.C. which cost over 7000.(1368) The number of pairs engaged appears from the inscriptions to have ranged from five to thirty. The shows lasted from one to as many as eight days.(1369) And the quality of the combatants was also very various. Tiberius once recalled some finished veterans from their retirement at a fee of about 800 each.(1370) On the other hand, a grumbler at Trimalchio's dinner sneers at a stingy aedile, whose gladiators were "two-penny men," whom you might knock over with a breath.(1371) Besides the great imperial schools at Praeneste, Capua, or Alexandria, and the "families" maintained at all times by some of the great n.o.bles, there were vagrant troops, kept up by speculative trainers for hire, such as that gang into which Vitellius sold his troublesome minion Asiaticus.(1372)

The profession of gladiator was long regarded as a tainted one, on which social sentiment and law alike placed their ban. It was a calling which included the vilest or the most unfortunate of mankind. Slaves, captives in war, or criminals condemned for serious offences, recruited its ranks.(1373) The death in the arena was thus often, really, a deferred punishment for crime. But even from the later days of the Republic, men of free birth were sometimes attracted by the false glory or the solid rewards of the profession. Freedmen sometimes fought at the call of their patrons.(1374) And, when Septimius Severus began to recruit the Pretorian guard from the provinces, the youth of Italy, who had long enjoyed the monopoly of that pampered corps, satisfied their combative or predatory instincts by joining the ranks either of the gladiators or of the brigands.(1375) The gladiator had, indeed, to submit to fearful perils and a cruel discipline. His oath bound him to endure unflinchingly scourging, burning, or death.(1376) His barracks were a closely guarded prison, and, although his fare was necessarily good, his training was entirely directed to the production of a fine fighting animal, who would give good sport in the arena. Yet the profession must have had some powerful attractions.

Some of the emperors,(1377) t.i.tus and Hadrian, themselves took a pleasure in the gladiatorial exercises. Commodus, as if to confirm the scandal about his parentage, actually descended into the arena,(1378) and imperial example was followed by men of high rank, and even, according to the satirist, by matronly viragoes.(1379) The splendour of the arms, the ostentatious pomp of the scene of combat, the applause of thousands of spectators on the crowded benches, the fascination of danger, all this invested the cruel craft with a false glory.(1380) The mob of all ages are ready to make a hero of the man who can perform rare feats of physical strength or agility. And the skilful gladiator evidently became a hero under the early Empire, like his colleague of the red or green. His professional record was of public interest; the number of his combats and his victories was inscribed upon his tomb.(1381) His name and his features were scratched by boys on the street walls. He attracted the unconcealed, and not always discreet, admiration of women,(1382) and his praise was sung in cla.s.sic verse, as his pathetic dignity in death has been immortalised in marble. The memories of a n.o.bler life of freedom sometimes drove the slave of the arena to suicide or mutiny.(1383) But he was oftener proud of his skill and courage, and eager to display them. When shows were rare in the reign of Tiberius, a Myrmillo was heard to lament that the years of his glorious prime were running to waste.(1384) Epictetus says that the imperial gladiators were often heard praying for the hour of conflict.(1385)

Great imperial schools were organised on the strictest military principles, and were under the command of a procurator who had often held high office in the provinces or the army.(1386) Each school had attached to it a staff of ma.s.seurs, surgeon-dressers, and physicians to attend to the general health of the members. There were various grades according to skill or length of service, and a man might rise in the end to be trainer of a troop. Gladiators, like all other callings in the second century, had their colleges. We have the roll of one of these, in the year 177 A.D., a college of Silva.n.u.s.(1387) The members are divided into three decuries, evidently according to professional rank, and their names and arms are also given. Their comrades often erected monuments to them with a list of their achievements. Thus a dear companion-in-arms commemorates a young Secutor at Panormus, who died in his thirtieth year, who had fought in thirty-four combats, and in twenty-one came off victorious.(1388)

Our authorities do not often permit us to follow the gladiator into retirement. The stern discipline of the _Ludus_ no doubt made better men even of those condemned to it for grievous crimes. The inscriptions contain a few brief records of their family life, which seems to have been as natural and affectionate as that of any other cla.s.s; wives and daughters lamenting good husbands and fathers in the usual phrases, and fathers in turn mourning innocent young lives, cut short by the cruelty of the G.o.ds.(1389) Sometimes the veteran gladiator might be tempted to return to the old scenes for a high fee, or he might become a trainer in one of the schools.(1390) His son might rise even to knightly rank;(1391) but the career of ambition was closed to himself by the taint of a profession which the people found indispensable to their pleasures, and which they loaded with contempt.

The inscriptions pay all honour to the voluntary, single-minded generosity with which men bore costly charges, and gave time and effort to the business of the city. But there was a tendency to treat public benefactions as the acknowledgment of a debt, a return for civic honours.

We can sometimes even see that the gift was extorted by the urgency of the people, in some cases even by menaces and force.(1392) The cities took advantage of the general pa.s.sion for place and social precedence, and, often from sordid motives, crowded their curial lists with _patroni_ and persons decorated with other honorary distinctions. On the famous roll of the council of Ca.n.u.sium, out of a total of 164 members, there are 39 _patroni_ of senatorial or knightly rank, and 25 _praetextati_, mere boys, who were almost certainly of the same aristocratic cla.s.s, and were probably destined to be future patrons of the town.(1393) In the desire to secure the support of wealth and social prestige, the munic.i.p.al law as to the age for magisterial office was frequently disregarded, and even mere infants were sometimes raised to the highest civic honours.(1394) The position of patron seems to have been greatly prized, as it was heavily paid for. A great man with a liberal soul might be patron of several towns,(1395) and sometimes women of rank had the honour conferred on them.(1396) The _ornamenta_ or external badges of official rank were frequently bestowed on people who were not eligible by law for the magistracy. A resident alien (_incola_), or an augustal, might be co-opted into the "splendid order" of the Curia, or he might be allowed to wear its badges, or those of some office which he could not actually hold.(1397) But it is plain that such distinctions had to be purchased or repaid. The city seldom made any other return for generous devotion, unless it were the s.p.a.ce for a grave or the pageant of a public funeral. It is true that a generous benefactor or magistrate is frequently honoured with a statue and memorial tablet. Indeed, the honour is so frequently bestowed that it seems to dwindle to an infinitesimal value.(1398) And it is to our eyes still further reduced by the agreeable convention which seems to have made it a matter of good taste that the person so distinguished by his fellow-citizens should bear the expense of the record himself!(1399) Nor did the expectations of the grateful public end even there; for, at the dedication of the monument, it was seemingly imperative to give a feast to the generous community which allowed or required its benefactor to bear the cost of the memorial of his own munificence.(1400) It is only fair, however, to say that this civic meanness was not universal, and that there are records to show that even the poorest cla.s.s sometimes subscribed among themselves to pay for the honour which they proposed to confer.(1401)

The Antonine age was an age of splendid public spirit and great material achievement. But truth compels us to recognise that even in the age of the Antonines, there were ominous signs of moral and administrative decay.

Munic.i.p.al benefactors were rewarded with local fame and lavish flattery; but the demands of the populace, together with the force of example and emulation, contributed to make the load which the rich had to bear more and more heavy. Many must have ruined themselves in their effort to hold their place, and to satisfy an exacting public sentiment. Men actually went into debt to do so;(1402) and as munic.i.p.al life became less attractive or more burdensome, the career of imperial office opened out and offered far higher distinction. The reorganisation of the imperial service by Hadrian had immense effects in diverting ambition from old channels. It created a great hierarchy of office, which absorbed the best ability from the provinces. Provincials of means and position were constantly visiting the capital for purposes of private business or pleasure, or to represent their city as envoys to the emperor. They often made powerful friends during their stay, and their sons, if not they themselves, were easily tempted to abandon a munic.i.p.al career for the prospect of a high place in the imperial army or the civil service.(1403) It is true that the local tie often remained unbroken. The country town, of course, was proud of the distinction to which its sons rose in the great world; and many a one who had gained a knighthood or some military rank, returned to his birthplace in later years, and was enrolled among its patrons. We may be sure that many a successful man, like the Stertinii of Naples, paid "nurture fees" in the most generous way. But already in the reign of Domitian, as we have seen, legal provision had to be made for the contingency of an insufficient number of candidates for the munic.i.p.al magistracies. Already, in the reign of Trajan, the cities of Bithynia are compelling men to become members of the Curia, and lowering the age of admission to official rank.(1404) Plutarch laments that many provincials are turning their backs on their native cities and suing for lucrative offices at the doors of great Roman patrons.(1405) Apollonius of Tyana was indignant to find citizens of Ionia, at one of their great festivals, masquerading in Roman names.(1406) The ill.u.s.trious son of Chaeronea, with a wistful backward glance at the freedom and the glories of the Periclean age, frankly recognises that, under the shadow of the Roman power, the civic horizon has drawn in.(1407) It is a very different thing to hold even the highest magistracy at Thebes or Athens from what it was in the great days of Salamis or Leuctra. But Plutarch accepts the Empire as inevitable. He appreciates its blessings as much as Aristides or Dion Chrysostom. He has none of the revolutionary rage which led Apollonius to cast reproaches at Vespasian, or to boast of his complicity in the overthrow of Nero.(1408) He has little sympathy with philosophers like Epictetus, who would sink the interests of everyday politics in the larger life of the universal commonwealth of humanity. The Empire has extinguished much of civic glory and freedom, but let us recognise its compensating blessings of an ordered peace. _Spartam nactus es, hanc exorna_, might be the motto of Plutarch's political counsels. He himself, with a range of gifts and culture, which has made his name immortal, did not disdain to hold a humble office in the poor little place which was his home. And he appeals to the example of Epameinondas, who gave dignity to the magistracy which was concerned with the duty of the cleansing of the sewers and streets of Thebes.(1409) He tells his young pupil that, although we have now no wars to wage, no alliances to conclude, we may wage war on some evil custom, revive some charitable inst.i.tution, repair an aqueduct, or preside at a sacrifice. Yet Plutarch has a keen insight into the munic.i.p.al vices of his age, the pa.s.sion for place and office, the hot unscrupulous rivalry which will stoop to any demagogic arts, the venality of the crowd, and the readiness of the rich to pamper them with largesses and shows, the insane pa.s.sion for pompous decrees of thanks and memorial statues; above all, the eager servility which abandoned even the poor remnant of munic.i.p.al liberty, and was always inviting the interference of the prince on the most trivial occasions.(1410) Such appeals paralyse civic energy and hasten the inevitable drift of despotism. He exhorts men to strive by every means to raise the tone of their own community, instead of forsaking it in fastidious scorn, or ambition for a more s.p.a.cious and splendid life.

The growing distaste for munic.i.p.al honours was to some extent caused by bureaucratic encroachments on the independence of the Curia. As early as the reign of Trajan there are unmistakable signs, as we have seen, of financial mismanagement and decay. The case of Bithynia, in Trajan's reign, is sometimes treated as an exceptional one. It may be doubted whether it is not a conspicuous example of general disorganisation. The Bithynian towns were probably not alone in their ill-considered expenditure on faultily planned aqueducts and theatres. Apamea was certainly not the only city which called for an imperial auditor of its accounts. Inscriptions of the reign of Trajan show that many towns in Italy, Como, Ca.n.u.sium, Praeneste, Pisa, Bergamum, and Caere, had curators of their administration appointed, some as early as the reigns of Hadrian or Trajan.(1411) These officers, who were always unconnected with the munic.i.p.ality, took over the financial control, which had previously belonged to the duumvirs and quaestors. They were often senators or equites of high rank, and a single curator sometimes had the supervision of several munic.i.p.alities. The case of Caere is peculiarly instructive and interesting.(1412) There, an imperial freedman, named Vesbinus, proposed to erect at his own cost a club-house (_phretrium_), for the augustales, and asked the munic.i.p.al authorities for a site close to the basilica. At a formal meeting of the Curia, the ground was granted to him, subject to the approval of Curiatius Cosa.n.u.s, the curator, with a vote of thanks for his liberality. A letter to that official was drawn up, stating the whole case, and asking for his sanction. The curator, writing from Ameria, granted it in the most cordial terms. It is noteworthy that at the very time when Caere was consulting its curator about the proposal of Vesbinus,(1413) the Bithynian cities were laying bare their financial and engineering difficulties to Pliny and Trajan. The glory of free civic life is already on the wane. The munic.i.p.ality has invited or submitted to imperial control. The burdens of office have begun to outweigh its glory and distinction. In a generation or two the people will have lost their elective power, and the Curia will appoint the munic.i.p.al officers from its own ranks. It will end by becoming a mere administrative machine for levying the imperial taxes; men will fly from its crus.h.i.+ng obligations to any refuge; and the flight of the curiales will be as momentous as the coming of the Goths.(1414)

The judgment on that externally splendid city life of the Antonine age will be determined by the ideals of the inquirer. There was a genuine love of the common home, a general pride in its splendour and distinction. And the duty, firmly imposed by public sentiment on the well-endowed to contribute out of their abundance to its material comfort and its glory, was freely accepted and lavishly performed. Nor was this expenditure all devoted to mere selfish gratification. The helplessness of orphanhood and age, the penury and monotonous dulness of the lives of great sunken cla.s.ses, the education of the young, were drawing forth the pity of the charitable. Munificence was often indeed, in obedience to the sentiment of the time, wasted on objects which were unworthy, or even to our minds base and corrupting. Men seemed to think too much of feasting and the cruel amus.e.m.e.nt of an hour. Yet when a whole commune was regaled at the dedication of a bath or a temple, there was a healthy social sympathy diffused for the moment through all ranks, which softened the hard lines by which that ancient society was parted.

Yet, in looking back, we cannot help feeling that over all this scene of kindliness and generosity and social good-will, there broods a shadow. It is not merely the doom of free civic life, which is so clearly written on the walls of every curial hall of a.s.sembly from the days of Trajan, to be fulfilled in the long-drawn tragedy of the fourth and fifth centuries; three hundred years have still to run before the inevitable catastrophe.

It is rather the feeling which seems to lurk under many a sentence, half pitiful, half contemptuous, of M. Aurelius, penned, perhaps, as he looked down on some gorgeous show in the amphitheatre, when the Numidian lion was laid low by a deft stroke of the hunting-spear, or a gallant Myrmillo from the Thames or the Danube sank upon the sand in his last conflict.(1415) It is the feeling of Dion, when he watched the Alexandrians palpitating with excitement over a race in the circus, or the cities of Bithynia convulsed by some question of shadowy precedence or the claim to a line of sandhills. It is the swiftly stealing shadow of that mysterious eclipse which was to rest on intellect and literature till the end of the Western Empire. It is the burden of all religious philosophy from Seneca to Epictetus, which was one long warning against the perils of a materialised civilisation. The warning of the pagan preacher was little heeded; the lesson was not learnt in time. Is it possible that a loftier spiritual force may find itself equally helpless to arrest a strangely similar decline?

CHAPTER III

THE COLLEGES AND PLEBEIAN LIFE

The _Populus_ or _Plebs_ of a munic.i.p.al town of the early Empire is often mentioned in the inscriptions along with the _Ordo_ and the Augustales, generally in demanding some benefaction, or in doing honour to some benevolent patron.(1416) They also appear as recipients of a smaller share at public feasts and distributions. They occasionally engage in a fierce conflict with the higher orders, as at Puteoli in the reign of Nero, when the discord was so menacing as to call for the presence of a praetorian cohort.(1417) The election placards of Pompeii also disclose a keen popular interest in the munic.i.p.al elections.(1418) But the common people are now as a rule chiefly known to us from the inscriptions on their tombs. Fortunately there is an immense profusion, in all the provinces as well as in Italy, of these brief memorials of obscure lives. And although Roman literature, which was the product of the aristocratic cla.s.s or of their dependents, generally pays but little attention to the despised ma.s.s engaged in menial services or petty trades, we have seen that the novel of Petronius flashes a brilliant light upon it in the reign of Nero.

The immense development of the free proletariat, in the time of the early Empire, is one of the most striking social phenomena which the study of the inscriptions has brought to light. It has sometimes been the custom to speak of that society as depending for the supply of its wants entirely on slave labour. And undoubtedly at one time slave labour occupied the largest part of the field of industry. A household in the time of the Republic, of even moderate wealth, might have 400 slaves, while a Cra.s.sus would have as many as 20,000, whom he hired out in various industries.(1419) But several causes conspired gradually to work a great industrial revolution. From the days of Augustus, the wars beyond the frontier, which added fresh territory and yielded crowds of captives to the slave-markets, had become less frequent. And it is probable that births among the slave cla.s.s hardly sufficed to maintain its numbers against the depletion caused by mortality and manumission. The practice of emanc.i.p.ating slaves of the more intelligent cla.s.s went on so rapidly that it had even to be restrained by law.(1420) Masters found it economically profitable to give skilful slaves an interest in the profits of their industry, and the _peculium_, which was thus acc.u.mulated, soon provided the means of purchasing emanc.i.p.ation. At the same time, the dispersion of colossal fortunes, gained in the age of rapine and conquest, and squandered in luxury and excess, together with the exploitation of the resources of favoured regions, which were now enjoying the blessings of unimpeded commerce, rapid intercommunication, and perfect security, must have given an immense stimulus to free industry. A very casual glance at the inscriptions, under the heading _Artes et Opificia_,(1421) will show the enormous and flouris.h.i.+ng development of skilled handicrafts, with all the minutest specialisation of the arts that wait on a highly-organised and luxurious society. The epitaphs of these obscure toilers have been brought to light in every part of the Roman world, in remote towns in Spain, Gaul, Noric.u.m, Dacia, and North Africa, as well as in the ancient centres of refinement in Italy or the Greek East. On a single page or two you can read the simple record of the bridle-maker or flask-maker of Narbonne, the cabriolet-driver of Senegallia, the cooper of Treves, the stone-cutter of Nimes, the purple-dealer of Augsburg, beside those of the wool-comber of Brescia, the oculist of Bologna, the plumber of Naples, or the vendors of unguents in the Via Sacra, and the humble fruiterer of the Circus Maximus.(1422) Many of these people had risen from slavery into the freedman cla.s.s. Most of them are evidently humble folk, although, like a certain female pearl-dealer of the Via Sacra, they may have freedmen and freedwomen of their own, for whom they provide a last resting-place beside themselves.(1423) The barber, or auctioneer, or leather-seller, who had become the owner of lands and houses, and who could even give gladiatorial shows, excited the contempt of Juvenal and Martial.(1424) But these insignificant people, although despised by the old world of aristocratic tradition, were proud of their crafts. They tell posterity who and what they were, without any vulgar concealment; nay, they have left expensive tombs, with the emblems or instruments of their petty trades proudly blazoned upon them like the armorial devices of our families of gentle birth. In the museum of S. Germain may be seen the effigy of the apple-seller commending his fruit to the attention of the ladies of the quarter; the cooper, with a cask upon his shoulder; the smith, hammer in hand, at the forge; the fuller, treading out and dressing the cloth.(1425) This pride in honest industry is a new and healthy sign, as a reaction from the contempt for it which was engrained in old Roman society, and which is always congenial to an aristocratic caste supported by slave labour. In spite of the grossness and base vulgarity of sudden wealth, portrayed by Petronius and Juvenal, the new cla.s.s of free artisans and traders had often, so far as we can judge by stone records, a sound and healthy life, sobered and dignified by honest toil, and the pride of skill and independence. Individually weak and despised, they were finding the means of developing an organisation, which at once cultivated social feeling, heightened their self-respect, and guarded their collective interests. While the old aristocracy were being rapidly thinned by vice and extravagance, or by confiscation, the leaders of the new industrial movement probably founded many a senatorial house, which, in the fourth and fifth centuries, in an ever-recurring fas.h.i.+on, came to regard manual industry with sublime contempt, and traced themselves to Aemilius Paullus or Scipio, or even to Aeneas or Agamemnon.(1426)

The organisation of industry through the colleges attained an immense development in the Antonine age, and still more in the third century, after the definite sanction and encouragement given to these societies by Alexander Severus. The records of the movement are numerous, and we can, after the scholarly sifting of recent years, now form a tolerably complete and vivid conception of these corporations which, springing up at first spontaneously, in defiance of government, or with its reluctant connivance, were destined, under imperial control, to petrify into an intolerable system of caste servitude in the last century of the Empire of the West.(1427)

The sodalitia and collegia were of immemorial antiquity. Certain industrial colleges and sacred sodalities were traced back to Numa, and even to the foundation of Rome.(1428) In the flouris.h.i.+ng days of the Republic they multiplied without restraint or suspicion, the only a.s.sociations at which the law looked askance being those which met secretly or by night. It was only in the last century of the Republic that the colleges came to be regarded as dangerous to the public peace, and they were, with some necessary exceptions, suppressed by a decree of the Senate in 64 B.C. They were revived again for factious or revolutionary purposes in 58 B.C. by Clodius.(1429) The emperors Julius and Augustus abolished the free right of a.s.sociation, except in the case of a few consecrated by their antiquity or their religious character.(1430) And it was enacted that new colleges could not be created without special authorisation. In the middle of the second century, the jurist Gaius lays it down that the formation of new colleges was restrained by laws, decrees of the Senate, and imperial const.i.tutions, although a certain number of societies, both in Rome and the provinces, such as those of the miners, salt workers, bakers, and boatmen, were authorised.(1431) And down to the time of Justinian, the right of free a.s.sociation was jealously watched as a possible menace to the public peace. The refusal of Trajan to sanction the formation of a company of firemen in Nicomedia, with the reasons which he gave to Pliny for his decision, furnishes the best concrete ill.u.s.tration of the imperial policy towards the colleges.(1432) That the danger from the colleges to the public order was not an imaginary one, is clear from the pa.s.sage in Tacitus describing the b.l.o.o.d.y riots between the people of Nuceria and Pompeii in the reign of Nero, which had evidently been fomented by "illicit" clubs.(1433) It is seen even more strikingly in the serious troubles of the reign of Aurelian, when 7000 people were killed in the organised outbreak of the workmen of the mint.(1434) Yet it is pretty clear that, in spite of legislation, and imperial distrust, the colleges were multiplying, not only in Rome, but in remote, insignificant places, and even in the camps, from which the legislator was specially determined to avert their temptations. In the blank wilderness, created by a universal despotism, the craving for sympathy and mutual succour inspired a great social movement, which legislation was powerless to check. Just as in the reigns of Theodosius and Honorius, imperial edicts and rescripts were paralysed by the impalpable, quietly irresistible force of a universal social need or sentiment. One simple means of evasion was provided by the government itself, probably as early as the first century.

In an inscription of Lanuvium, of the year 136 A.D., there is a recital of a decree of the Senate according the right of a.s.sociation to those who wish to form a funerary college, provided the members did not meet more than once a month to make their contributions.(1435) It appears from Marcian's reference to this law that other meetings for purposes of religious observance might be held, the provisions of the _senatusconsultum_ against illicit colleges being carefully observed.(1436) Mommsen has shown that many other pious and charitable purposes could be easily brought within the scope of the funerary a.s.sociation. And it was not difficult for a society which desired to make a monthly contribution for any purpose to take the particular form recognised by the law. In the reign of M. Aurelius, although members.h.i.+p of two colleges is stil