The Old Roman World : the Grandeur and Failure of Its Civilization Part 28

If we turn to the cla.s.s which, before the dictators.h.i.+p of Julius, had the ascendency in the state, and, for several centuries, the supreme power, we shall find but little that is flattering to a nation or to humanity.

[Sidenote: The Roman aristocracy.]

The Roman aristocracy was the most powerful, most wealthy, and most august that this world has probably seen. It was under patrician leaders.h.i.+p that the great conquests were made, and the greatness of the state reached. The glory of Rome was centred in those proud families which had conquered and robbed all the nations known to the Greeks. The immortal names of ancient Rome are identified with the aristocracy. It was not under kings, but under n.o.bles, that military ambition became the vice of the most exalted characters. In the days of the republic, they exhibited a stern virtue, an inflexible policy, an indomitable will, and most ardent patriotism. The generals who led the armies to victory, the statesmen who deliberated in the Senate, the consuls, the praetors, the governors, originally belonged to this n.o.ble cla.s.s. It monopolized all the great offices of the state, and it maintained its powers and privileges, in spite of conspiracies and rebellions. It may have yielded somewhat to popular encroachments, but when the people began to acquire the ascendency, the seeds of public corruption were sown. The real dignity and glory of Rome coexisted with patrician power.

[Sidenote: Great families.]

And powerful families existed in Rome until the fall of the empire. Some were descendants of ancient patrician houses, and numbered the ill.u.s.trious generals of the republic among their ancestors. Others owed their rank and consequence to the acc.u.mulation of gigantic fortunes.

Others, again, rose into importance from the patronage of emperors. All the great conquerors and generals of the republic were founders of celebrated families, which never lost consideration. Until the subversion of the const.i.tution, they took great interest in politics, and were characterized for manly patriotism. Many of them were famous for culture of mind as well as public spirit. They frowned on the growing immoralities, and maintained the dignity of their elevated rank.

The Senate was the most august a.s.sembly ever known on earth, controlling kings and potentates, and making laws for the most distant nations, and exercising a power which was irresistible.

[Sidenote: Degeneracy of the n.o.bles.]

Under the emperors this n.o.ble cla.s.s had degenerated in morals as well as influence. They still retained their enormous fortunes, originally acquired as governors of provinces, and continually increased by fortunate marriages and speculations. Indeed, nothing was more marked and melancholy at Rome than the disproportionate fortunes, the general consequences of a low or a corrupt civilization. In the better days of the republic, property was more equally divided. The citizens were not ambitious for more land than they could conveniently cultivate. But the lands, obtained by conquest, gradually fell into the possession of powerful families. The cla.s.ses of society widened as great fortunes were acc.u.mulated. Pride of wealth kept pace with pride of ancestry. And when Plebeian families had obtained great estates, they were amalgamated with the old aristocracy. The Equestrian order, founded substantially on wealth, grew daily in importance. Knights ultimately rivaled senatorial families. Even freedmen, in an age of commercial speculation, became powerful for their riches. Ultimately the rich formed a body by themselves. Under the emperors, the pursuit of money became a pa.s.sion; and the rich a.s.sumed all the importance and consideration which had once been bestowed upon those who had rendered great public services. The laws of property were rigorous among the Romans, and wealth, when once obtained, was easily secured and transmitted.

[Sidenote: Gigantic fortunes.]

Such gigantic fortunes were ultimately made, since the Romans were masters of the world, that Rome became a city of palaces, and the spoils and riches of all nations flowed to the capital. Rome was a city of princes, and wealth gave the highest distinction. The fortunes were almost incredible. It has been estimated that the income of some of the richest of the senatorial families equaled a sum of five million dollars a year in our money. It took eighty thousand dollars a year to support the ordinary senatorial dignity. Some senators owned whole provinces.

Trimalchio--a rich freedman whom Petronius ridiculed--could afford to lose thirty millions of sesterces in a single voyage without sensibly diminis.h.i.+ng his fortune. Pallas, a freedman of the Emperor Claudius, possessed a fortune of three hundred millions of sesterces. Seneca, the philosopher, ama.s.sed an enormous fortune.

[Sidenote: Character of the n.o.bles.]

[Sidenote: Excessive luxury.]

[Sidenote: Luxury of the aristocracy.]

[Sidenote: Luxury of the n.o.bles.]

The Romans were a sensual, ostentatious, and luxurious people, and they accordingly wasted their fortunes by an extravagance in their living which has had no parallel. The pleasures of the table and the cares of the kitchen were the most serious avocation of the aristocracy in the days of the greatest corruption. They had around them a regular court of parasites and flatterers, and they employed even persons of high rank as their chamberlains and stewards. Carving was taught in celebrated schools, and the masters of this sublime art were held in higher estimation than philosophers or poets. Says Juvenal:--

"To such perfection now is carving brought, That different gestures, by our curious men Are used for different dishes, hare or hen."

Their entertainments were accompanied with every thing which could flatter vanity or excite the pa.s.sions. Musicians, male and female dancers, players of farce and pantomime, jesters, buffoons, and gladiators, exhibited while the guests reclined at table. The tables were made of Thuja-root, with claws of ivory or Delian bronze, and cost immense sums. Even Cicero, in an economical age, paid six hundred and fifty pounds for his banqueting table. These tables were waited upon by an army of slaves, clad in costly dresses. In the intervals of courses they played with dice, or listened to music, or were amused with dances.

They wore a great profusion of jewels--such as necklaces and rings and bracelets. They reclined at table after the fas.h.i.+on of the Orientals.

They ate, as delicacies, water-rats and white worms. Gluttony was carried to such a point that the sea and earth scarcely sufficed to set off their tables. The women pa.s.sed whole nights at the table, and were proud of their power to carry off an excess of wine. As Cleopatra says of her riotings with Antony,--

"O times!-- I laughed him out of patience; and that night I laughed him into patience: and next morn, Ere the ninth hour, I drank him to his bed."

The wines were often kept for two ages, and some qualities were so highly prized as to sell for about twenty dollars an ounce. Large hogs were roasted whole at a banquet. The ancient epicures expatiate on ram's-head pies, stuffed fowls, boiled calf, and pastry stuffed with raisins and nuts. Dishes were made of gold and silver, set with precious stones. Cicero and Pompey one day surprised Lucullus at one of his ordinary banquets, when he expected no guests, and even that cost fifty thousand drachmas--about four thousand dollars. His beds were of purple, and his vessels glittered with jewels. The halls of Heliogabalus were hung with cloth of gold, enriched with jewels. His beds were of ma.s.sive silver, his table and plate of pure gold, and his mattresses, covered with carpets of cloth of gold, were stuffed with down found only under the wings of partridges. Cra.s.sus paid one hundred thousand sesterces for a golden cup. Banqueting rooms were strewed with lilies and roses.

Apicius, in the time of Trajan, spent one hundred millions of sesterces in debauchery and gluttony. Having only ten millions left, he ended his life with poison, thinking he might die of hunger. The suppers of Heliogabalus never cost less than one hundred thousand sesterces. And things were valued for their cost and rarity, rather than their real value. Enormous prices were paid for carp, the favorite dish of the Romans. Drusillus, a freedman of Claudius, caused a dish to be made of five hundred pounds weight of silver. Vitellius had one made of such prodigious size that they were obliged to build a furnace on purpose for it; and at a feast in honor of this dish which he gave, it was filled with the livers of the scarrus (fish), the brains of peac.o.c.ks, the tongues of a bird of red plumage, called Phaesuicopterus, and the roes of lampreys caught in the Carpathian Sea. Falernian wine was never drunk until ten years old, and it was generally cooled with ices. The pa.s.sion for play was universal. Nero ventured four hundred thousand sesterces on a single throw of the dice. Cleopatra, when she feasted Antony, gave each time to that general the gold vessels, enriched with jewels, the tapestry and purple carpets, embroidered with gold, which had been used in the repasts. Horace speaks of a debauchee who drank at a meal a goblet of vinegar, in which he dissolved a pearl worth a million of sesterces, which hung at the ear of his mistress. Precious stones were so common that a woman of the utmost simplicity dared not go without her diamonds. Even men wore jewels, especially elaborate rings, and upon all the fingers at last. The taste of the Roman aristocracy, with their immense fortunes, inclined them to pomp, to extravagance, to ostentatious modes of living, to luxurious banquets, to conventionalities and ceremonies, to an unbounded epicureanism. They lived for the present hour, and for sensual pleasures. There was no elevation of life. It was the body and not the soul, the present and not the future, which alone concerned them. They were grossly material in all their desires and habits. They squandered money on their banquets, their stables, and their dress. And it was to their crimes, says Juvenal, that they were indebted for their gardens, their palaces, their tables, and their fine old plate. The day was portioned out in the public places, in the bath, the banquet. Martial indignantly rebukes these extravagances, as unable to purchase happiness, in his Epigram to Quintus: "Because you purchase slaves at two hundred thousand sesterces; because you drink wines stored during the reign of Numa; because your furniture costs you a million; because a pound weight of wrought silver costs you five thousand; because a golden chariot becomes yours at the price of a whole farm; because your mule costs you more than the value of a house--do not imagine that such expenses are the proof of a great mind." [Footnote: Book iii. p. 62.]

Unbounded pride, insolence, inhumanity, selfishness, and scorn marked this n.o.ble cla.s.s. Of course there were exceptions, but the historians and satirists give the saddest pictures of their cold-hearted depravity.

The sole result of friends.h.i.+p with a great man was a meal, at which flattery and sycophancy were expected; but the best wine was drunk by the host, instead of by the guest. Provinces were ransacked for fish and fowl and game for the tables of the great, and sensualism was thought to be no reproach. They violated the laws of chast.i.ty and decorum. They scourged to death their slaves. They degraded their wives and sisters.

They patronized the most demoralizing sports. They enriched themselves by usury, and enjoyed monopolies. They practiced no generosity, except at their banquets, when ostentation balanced their avarice. They measured every thing by the money-standard. They had no taste for literature, but they rewarded sculptors and painters, if they prost.i.tuted art to their vanity or pa.s.sions. They had no reverence for religion, and ridiculed the G.o.ds. Their distinguis.h.i.+ng vices were meanness and servility, the pursuit of money by every artifice, the absence of honor, and unblus.h.i.+ng sensuality.

[Sidenote: Gibbon's account of the n.o.bles.]

[Sidenote: Sarcasms of Ammia.n.u.s Marcellinus.]

Gibbon has eloquently abridged the remarks of Ammia.n.u.s Marcellinus, respecting these people: "They contend with each other in the empty vanity of t.i.tles and surnames. They affect to multiply their likenesses in statues of bronze or marble; nor are they satisfied unless these statues are covered with plates of gold. They boast of the rent-rolls of their estates. They measure their rank and consequence by the loftiness of their chariots, and the weighty magnificence of their dress. Their long robes of silk and purple float in the wind, and, as they are agitated by art or accident, they discover the under garments, the rich tunics embroidered with the figures of various animals. Followed by a train of fifty servants, and tearing up the pavement, they move along the streets as if they traveled with post-horses; and the example of the senators is boldly imitated by the matrons and ladies, whose covered carriages are continually driving round the immense s.p.a.ce of the city and suburbs. Whenever they condescend to enter the public baths, they a.s.sume, on their entrance, a tone of loud and insolent command, and maintain a haughty demeanor, which, perhaps, might have been excused in the great Marcellus, after the conquest of Syracuse. Sometimes these heroes undertake more arduous achievements: they visit their estates in Italy, and procure themselves, by servile hands, the amus.e.m.e.nts of the chase. And if, at any time, especially on a hot day, they have the courage to sail in their gilded galleys from the Lucrine Lake to their elegant villas on the sea-coast of Puteoli and Cargeta, they compare these expeditions to the marches of Caesar and Alexander. Yet, should a fly presume to settle on the silken folds of their gilded umbrellas, should a sunbeam penetrate through some unguarded c.h.i.n.k, they deplore their intolerable hards.h.i.+ps, and lament, in affected language, that they were not born in the regions of eternal darkness. In the exercise of domestic jurisdiction they express an exquisite sensibility for any personal injury, and a contemptuous indifference for the rest of mankind. When they have called for warm water, should a slave be tardy in his obedience, he is chastised with an hundred lashes; should he commit a willful murder, his master will mildly observe that he is a worthless fellow, and should be punished if he repeat the offense. If a foreigner of no contemptible rank be introduced to these senators, he is welcomed with such warm professions that he retires charmed with their affability; but when he repeats his visit, he is surprised and mortified to find that his name, his person, and his country are forgotten. The modest, the sober, and the learned are rarely invited to their sumptuous banquets; but the most worthless of mankind--parasites who applaud every look and gesture, who gaze with rapture on marble columns and variegated pavements, and strenuously praise the pomp and elegance which he is taught to consider as a part of his personal merit. At the Roman table, the birds, the squirrels, the fish which appear of uncommon size, are contemplated with curious attention, and notaries are summoned to attest, by authentic record, their real weight. Another method of introduction into the houses of the great is skill in games, which is a sure road to wealth and reputation. A master of this sublime art, if placed, at a supper, below a magistrate, displays in his countenance a surprise and indignation which Cato might be supposed to feel when refused the praetors.h.i.+p. The acquisition of knowledge seldom engages the attention of the n.o.bles, who abhor the fatigue and disdain the advantages of study; and the only books they peruse are the 'Satires of Juvenal,' or the fabulous histories of Marius Maximus. The libraries they have inherited from their fathers are secluded, like dreary sepulchres, from the light of day; but the costly instruments of the theatre, flutes and hydraulic organs, are constructed for their use. In their palaces sound is preferred to sense, and the care of the body to that of the mind. The suspicion of a malady is of sufficient weight to excuse the visits of the most intimate friends. The prospect of gain will urge a rich and gouty senator as far as Spoleta; every sentiment of arrogance and dignity is suppressed in the hope of an inheritance or legacy, and a wealthy, childless citizen is the most powerful of the Romans. The distress which follows and chastises extravagant luxury often reduces the great to use the most humiliating expedients. When they wish to borrow, they employ the base and supplicating style of the slaves in the comedy; but when they are called upon to pay, they a.s.sume the royal and tragic declamations of the grandsons of Hercules. If the demand is repeated, they readily procure some trusty sycophant to maintain a charge of poison or magic against the insolent creditor, who is seldom released from prison until he has signed a discharge of the whole debt. And these vices are mixed with a puerile superst.i.tion which disgraces their understanding. They listen with confidence to the productions of haru-spices, who pretend to read in the entrails of victims the signs of future greatness and prosperity; and this superst.i.tion is observed among those very skeptics who impiously deny or doubt the existence of a celestial power." [Footnote: Found in the sixth chapter of the fourteenth, and the fourth of the twenty-eighth, book of Ammia.n.u.s Marcellinus.]

Such, in the latter days of the empire, was the leading cla.s.s at Rome, and probably in the cities which aped the fas.h.i.+ons of the capital. There was a melancholy absence of elevation of sentiment, of patriotism, of manly courage, and of dignity of character. Frivolity and luxury loosened all the ties of society. The animating principle of their lives was a heartless Epicureanism. They lived for the present hour, and for their pleasures, indifferent to the great interests of the public, and to the miseries of the poor. They were bound up in themselves. They were grossly material in all their aims. They had lost all ideas of public virtue. They degraded women; they oppressed the people; they laughed at philanthropy; they could not be reached by elevated sentiments; they had no concern for the future. Scornful, egotistical, haughty, self- indulgent, affected, cynical, all their thoughts and conversation were directed to frivolities. Nothing made any impression upon them but pa.s.sing vanities. They ignored both Heaven and h.e.l.l. They were like the courtiers of Louis XV. in the most G.o.dless period of the monarchy. They were worse, for they superadded pagan infidelities. There were memorable exceptions, but not many, until Christianity had reached the throne.

"One after another, the n.o.bles sunk into a lethargy almost without a parallel. The proudest names of the old republic were finally a.s.sociated with the idlest amus.e.m.e.nts and the most preposterous novelties. A Gabrius, a Callius, and a Cra.s.sus were immortalized by the elegance of their dancing. A Lucullus, a Hortensius, a Philippus estimated one another, not by their eloquence, their courage, or their virtue, but by the perfection of their fish-ponds, and the singularity of the breeds they nourished. They seemed to touch the sky with their finger if they had stocked their preserves with bearded mullets, and taught them to recognize their masters' voices, and come to be fed from their hands."

[Footnote: Merivale, chap. ii.]

[Sidenote: Condition of the people.]

As for the miserable cla.s.s whom they oppressed, their condition became worse every day from the accession of the emperors. The Plebeians had ever disdained those arts which now occupy the middle cla.s.ses. These were intrusted to slaves. Originally, they employed themselves upon the lands which had been obtained by conquest. But these lands were gradually absorbed or usurped by the large proprietors. The small farmers, oppressed with debt and usury, parted with their lands to their wealthy creditors. In the time of Cicero, it was computed that there were only about two thousand citizens possessed of independent property.

These two thousand people owned the world. The rest were dependent; and they were powerless when deprived of political rights, for the great candidate for public honors and offices liberally paid for votes. But under the emperors the commons had subsided into a miserable populace, fed from the public stores. They would have perished but for largesses.

Monthly distributions of corn were converted into daily allowance for bread. They were amused with games and festivals. From the stately baths they might be seen to issue without shoes and without a mantle. They loitered in the public streets, and dissipated in gaming their miserable pittance. They spent the hours of the night in the lowest resorts of crime and misery. As many as four hundred thousand sometimes a.s.sembled to witness the chariot races. The vast theatres were crowded to see male and female dancers. The amphitheatres were still more largely attended by the better populace. They expired in wretched apartments without attracting the attention of government. Pestilence and famine and squalid misery thinned their ranks, and they would have been annihilated but for constant succession to their ranks from the provinces. In the busy streets of Rome might be seen adventurers from all parts of the world, disgraced by all the various vices of their respective countries.

They had no education, and but little of religious advantages. They were held in terror by both priests and n.o.bles. The priest terrified them with Egyptian sorceries, the n.o.ble crushed them by iron weight. Like Iazzaroni, they lived in the streets, or were crowded into filthy apartments. Several families tenanted the same house. A gladiatorial show delighted them, but the circus was their peculiar joy. Here they sought to drown the consciousness of their squalid degradation. They were sold into slavery for trifling debts. They had no home. The poor man had no ambition or hope. His wife was a slave; his children were precocious demons, whose prattle was the cry for bread, whose laughter was the howl of pandemonium, whose sports were the tricks of premature iniquity, whose beauty was the squalor of disease and filth. He fled from a wife in whom he had no trust, from children in whom he had no hope, from brothers for whom he felt no sympathy, from parents for whom he felt no reverence. The circus was _his_ home, the wild beast _his_ consolation. The future was a blank. Death was the release from suffering. Historians and poets say but little of his degraded existence; but from the few hints we have, we infer depravity and brutal tastes. If degraded at all, they must have been very degraded, since the Romans had but little sentiment, and no ideality. They were sunk in vice, for they had no sense of responsibility. They never emerged from their wretched condition. The philosophers, poets, scholars, and lawyers of Rome, sprang uniformly from the aristocratic cla.s.ses. In the provinces, the poor sometimes rose, but very seldom. The whole aspect of society was a fearful inequality--disproportionate fortunes, slavery, and beggary. There was no middle cla.s.s, of any influence or consideration. It was for the interest of people without means to enroll themselves in the service of the rich. Hence the immense numbers employed in the palaces in menial work. They would have been enrolled in the armies, but for their inefficiency. The army was recruited from the provinces--the rural population--and even from the barbarians themselves. There were no hospitals for the sick and the old, except one on an island in the Tiber. The old and helpless were left to die, unpitied and unconsoled. Suicide was so common that it attracted no attention, but infanticide was not so marked, since there was so little feeling of compa.s.sion for the future fate of the miserable children.

Superst.i.tion culminated at Rome, for there were seen the priests and devotees of all the countries which it governed--"the dark-skinned daughters of Isis, with drum and timbrel and wanton mien; devotees of the Persian Mithras, imported by the Pompeians from Cilicia; emasculated Asiatics, priests of Berecynthian Cybele, with their wild dances and discordant cries; wors.h.i.+pers of the great G.o.ddess Diana; barbarian captives with the rites of Teuton priests; Syrians, Jews, Chaldean astrologers, and Thessalian sorcerers." Oh, what scenes of sin and misery did that imperial capital witness in the third and fourth centuries--sensualism and superst.i.tion, fears and tribulations, pestilence and famine, even amid the pomps of senatorial families, and the grandeur of palaces and temples. "The crowds which flocked to Rome from the eastern sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean, brought with them practices extremely demoralizing. The awful rites of initiation, the tricks of magicians, the pretended virtues of amulets and charms, the riddles of emblematical idolatry, with which the superst.i.tion of the East abounded, amused the languid voluptuaries who neither had the energy for a moral belief, nor the boldness requisite for logical skepticism." They were brutal, bloodthirsty, callous to the sight of suffering, and familiar with cruelties and crimes. They were superst.i.tious, without religious faith, without hope, and without G.o.d in the world.

[Sidenote: The slaves.]

[Sidenote: Slavery.]

We cannot pa.s.s by, in this enumeration of the different cla.s.ses of Roman society, the number and condition of slaves. A large part of the population belonged to this servile cla.s.s. Originally introduced by foreign conquest, it was increased by those who could not pay their debts. The single campaign of Regulus introduced as many as a fifth part of the whole population. Four hundred were maintained in a single palace, at a comparatively early period. A freedman in the time of Augustus left behind him four thousand one hundred and sixteen. Horace regarded two hundred as the suitable establishment for a gentleman. Some senators owned twenty thousand. Gibbon estimates the number at about sixty millions, one half of the whole population. One hundred thousand captives were taken in the Jewish war, who were sold as slaves, and sold as cheap as horses. [Footnote: Wm. Blair, _On Roman Slavery_, Edinburgh, 1833; Robertson, _On the State of the World at the Introduction of Christ_.] Blair supposes that there were three slaves to one freeman, from the conquest of Greece to the reign of Alexander Severus. Slaves often cost two hundred thousand sesterces. [Footnote: Martial, xii. 62.] Every body was eager to possess a slave. At one time his life was at the absolute control of his master. He could be treated at all times with brutal severity. Fettered and branded he toiled to cultivate the lands of an imperious master, and at night he was shut up in subterranean cells. The laws did not recognize his claim to be considered scarcely as a moral agent. He was _secundum hominum genus_. He could acquire no rights, social or political. He was incapable of inheriting property, or making a will, or contracting a legal marriage. His value was estimated like that of a brute. He was a thing and not a person--"a piece of furniture possessed of life." He was his master's property, to be scourged, or tortured, or crucified. If a wealthy proprietor died, under circ.u.mstances which excited suspicion of foul play, his whole household was put to the torture. It is recorded, that, on the murder of a man of consular dignity by a slave, every slave in his possession was condemned to death. Slaves swelled the useless rabbles of the cities, and devoured the revenues of the state. All manual labor was done by slaves, in towns as well as the country. Even the mechanical arts were cultivated by the slaves. And more, slaves were schoolmasters, secretaries, actors, musicians, and physicians. In intelligence, they were on an equality with their masters. They came from Greece and Asia Minor and Syria, as well as from Gaul and the African deserts. They were white as well as black. All captives in war were made slaves, and unfortunate debtors. Sometimes they could regain their freedom; but, generally, their condition became more and more deplorable. What a state of society when a refined and cultivated Greek could be made to obey the most offensive orders of a capricious and sensual Roman, without remuneration, without thanks, without favor, without redress. [Footnote: Says Juvenal, _Sat._ vi., "Crucify that slave. What is the charge to call for such a punishment? What witness can you present? Who gave the information? Listen! Idiot! So a slave is a man then! Granted he has done nothing. I _will_ it. I insist upon it. Let my will stand instead of reason." Read Martial, Juvenal, and Plautus.] What was to be expected of a cla.s.s who had no object to live for. They became the most degraded of mortals, ready for pillage, and justly to be feared in the hour of danger. Slavery undoubtedly proved the most destructive canker of the Roman state. It destroyed its vitality. It was this social evil, more than political misrule, which undermined the empire. Slavery proved at Rome a monstrous curse, destroying all manliness of character, creating contempt of honest labor, making men timorous yet cruel, idle, frivolous, weak, dependent, powerless. The empire might have lasted centuries longer but for this incubus, the standing disgrace of the pagan world. Paganism never recognized what is most n.o.ble and glorious in man; never recognized his equality, his common brotherhood, his natural rights. There was no compunction, no remorse in depriving human beings of their highest privileges. Its whole tendency was to degrade the soul, and cause forgetfulness of immortality. Slavery thrives best, when the generous instincts are suppressed, and egotism and sensuality and pride are the dominant springs of human action.

[Sidenote: Degradation of woman.]

The same influences which tended to rob man of the rights which G.o.d has given him, and produce cruelty and heartlessness in the general intercourse of life, also tended to degrade the female s.e.x. In the earlier age of the republic, when the people were poor, and life was simple and primitive, and heroism and patriotism were characteristic, woman was comparatively virtuous and respected. She a.s.serted her natural equality, and led a life of domestic tranquillity, employed upon the training of her children, and inspiring her husband to n.o.ble deeds. But, under the emperors, these virtues had fled. Woman was miserably educated, being taught by a slave, or some Greek chambermaid, accustomed to ribald conversation, and fed with idle tales and silly superst.i.tions.

She was regarded as more vicious in natural inclination than man, and was chiefly valued for household labors. She was reduced to dependence; she saw but little of her brothers or relatives; she was confined to her home as if it were a prison; she was guarded by eunuchs and female slaves; she was given in marriage without her consent; she could be easily divorced; she was valued only as a domestic servant, or as an animal to prevent the extinction of families; she was regarded as the inferior of her husband, to whom she was a victim, a toy, or a slave.

Love after marriage was not frequent, since she did not s.h.i.+ne in the virtues by which love is kept alive. She became timorous, or frivolous, without dignity or public esteem. Her happiness was in extravagant attire, in elaborate hair-dressings, in rings and bracelets, in a retinue of servants, in gilded apartments, in luxurious couches, in voluptuous dances, in exciting banquets, in demoralizing spectacles, in frivolous gossip, in inglorious idleness. If virtuous, it was not so much from principle as from fear. Hence she resorted to all sorts of arts to deceive her husband. Her genius was sharpened by perpetual devices, and cunning was her great resource. She cultivated no lofty friends.h.i.+ps; she engaged in no philanthropic mission; she cherished no enn.o.bling sentiments; she kindled no chivalrous admiration. Her amus.e.m.e.nts were frivolous, her taste vitiated, her education neglected, her rights violated, her sympathy despised, her aspirations scorned. And here I do not allude to great and infamous examples which history has handed down in the sober pages of Suetonius and Tacitus, or that unblus.h.i.+ng depravity which stands out in the bitter satires of the times. I speak not of the adultery, the poisoning, the infanticide, the debauchery, the cruelty of which history accuses the Messalinas and Agrippinas of imperial Rome. I allude not to the orgies of the Palatine Hill, or the abominations which are inferred from the paintings of Pompeii. But there was a general frivolity and extravagance among women which rendered marriage inexpedient, unless large dowries were brought to the husband. Numerous were the efforts of emperors to promote honorable marriages, but the relation was shunned. Courtesans usurped the privilege of wives, and with unblus.h.i.+ng effrontery. A man was derided who contemplated matrimony, for there was but little confidence in female virtue or capacity. And woman lost all her fascination when age had destroyed her beauty. Even her very virtues were distasteful to her self-indulgent husband. And whenever she gained the ascendency by her charms, she was tyrannical. Her relations incited her to despoil her husband. She lived amid incessant broils. She had no care for the future, and exceeded men in prodigality. "The government of her house is no more merciful," says Juvenal, "than the court of a Sicilian tyrant."

In order to render herself attractive, she exhausted all the arts of cosmetics and elaborate hair-dressing. She delighted in magical incantations and love-potions. In the bitter satire of Juvenal, we get an impression most melancholy and loathsome:--

"'T were long to tell what philters they provide, What drugs to set a son-in-law aside.

Women, in judgment weak, in feeling strong, By every gust of pa.s.sion borne along.

To a fond spouse a wife no mercy shows; Though warmed with equal fires, she mocks his woes, And triumphs in his spoils; her wayward will Defeats his bliss and turns his good to ill.

Women support the _bar_; they love the law, And raise litigious questions for a straw; Nay, more, they fence! who has not marked their oil, Their purple rigs, for this preposterous toil!

A woman stops at nothing, when she wears Rich emeralds round her neck, and in her ears Pearls of enormous size; these justify Her faults, and make all lawful in her eye.

More shame to Rome! in every street are found The essenced Lypanti, with roses crowned, The gay Miletan, and the Tarentine, Lewd, petulant, and reeling ripe with wine!"

[Sidenote: Condition of woman.]

In the sixth satire of Juvenal is found the most severe delineation of woman that ever mortal penned. Doubtless he is libellous and extravagant, for only infamous women can stoop to such arts and degradations, which would seem to be common in his time. But, with all his exaggeration, we are forced to feel that but few women, even in the highest cla.s.s, except those converted to Christianity, showed the virtues of a Lucretia, a Volumnia, a Cornelia, or an Octavia. There was but a universal corruption. The great virtues of a Perpetua, a Felicitas, an Agnes, a Paula, a Blessilla, a Fabiola, would have adorned any civilization. But the great ma.s.s were, what they were in Greece, even in the days of Pericles, what they have ever been under the influence of Paganism, what they ever will be without Christianity to guide them, victims or slaves of man, revenging themselves by squandering his wealth, stealing his secrets, betraying his interests, and deserting his home.

[Sidenote: Games and festivals.]

Another essential but demoralizing feature of Roman society, were the games and festivals and gladiatorial shows, which accustomed the people to unnatural excitements, and familiarity with cruelty and suffering.

They made all ordinary pleasures insipid. They ended in making homicide an inst.i.tution. The butcheries of the amphitheatre exerted a fascination which diverted the mind from literature, art, and the enjoyments of domestic life. Very early it was the favorite sport of the Romans.

Marcus and Decimus Brutus employed gladiators in celebrating the obsequies of their fathers, nearly three centuries before Christ. "The wealth and ingenuity of the aristocracy were taxed to the utmost, to content the populace and provide food for the indiscriminate slaughter of the circus, where brute fought with brute, and man again with man, or where the skill and weapons of the latter were matched against the strength and ferocity of the first." Pompey let loose six hundred lions in the arena in one day. Augustus delighted the people with four hundred and twenty panthers. The games of Trajan lasted one hundred and twenty days, when ten thousand gladiators fought, and ten thousand beasts were slain. t.i.tus slaughtered five thousand animals at a time. Twenty elephants contended, according, to Pliny, against a band of six hundred captives. Probus reserved six hundred gladiators for one of his festivals, and ma.s.sacred, on another, two hundred lions, twenty leopards, and three hundred bears. Gordian let loose three hundred African hyenas and ten Indian tigers in the arena. Every corner of the earth was ransacked for these wild animals, which were so highly valued that, in the time of Theodosius, it was forbidden by law to destroy a Getulian lion. No one can contemplate the statue of the Dying Gladiator which now ornaments the capitol at Rome, without emotions of pity and admiration. If a marble statue can thus move us, what was it to see the Christian gladiators contending with the fierce lions of Africa. The "Christians to the lions," was the watchword of the brutal populace.

What a sight was the old amphitheatre of t.i.tus, five hundred and sixty feet long, and four hundred and seventy feet wide, built on eighty arches, and rising one hundred and forty feet into the air, with its four successive orders of architecture, and inclosing its eighty thousand seated spectators, arranged according to rank, from the emperor to the lowest of the populace, all seated on marble benches, covered with cus.h.i.+ons, and protected from the sun and rain by ample canopies!

What an excitement when men strove not with wild beasts alone, but with one another, and when all that human skill and strength, increased by elaborate treatment, and taxed to the uttermost, were put forth in the needless homicide, and until the thirsty soil was wet and matted with human gore! Familiarity with such sights must have hardened the heart and rendered the mind insensible to refined pleasures. What theatres are to the French, what bull-fights are to the Spaniards, what horse-races are to the English, these gladiatorial shows were to the ancient Romans.

The ruins of hundreds of amphitheatres attest the universality of the custom, not in Rome alone, but in the provinces.

[Sidenote: The circus.]