History of European Morals From Augustus to Charlemagne Volume I Part 24

578 Spartia.n.u.s, _Hadria.n.u.s_.

579 Compare Wallon, tome ii. p. 186; tome iii. pp. 65-66. Slaves were only to be called as witnesses in cases of incest, adultery, murder, and high treason, and where it was impossible to establish the crime without their evidence. Hadrian considered that the reality of the crime must have already acquired a strong probability, and the jurisconsult Paul laid down that at least two free witnesses should be heard before slaves were submitted to torture, and that the offer of an accused person to have his slaves tortured that they might attest his innocence should not be accepted.

580 Numerous and very n.o.ble instances of slave fidelity are given by Seneca, _De Benefic._ iii. 19-27; Val. Max. vi. 8; and in Appian's _History of the Civil Wars_. See, too, Tacit. _Hist._ i. 3.

581 Aristotle had, it is true, declared slavery to be part of the law of nature-an opinion which, he said, was rejected by some of his contemporaries; but he advocated humanity to slaves quite as emphatically as the other philosophers (_Economics_, i. 5). Epicurus was conspicuous even among Greek philosophers for his kindness to slaves, and he a.s.sociated some of his own with his philosophical labours. (Diog. Laert. _Epicurus_.)

_ 582 De Benef._ iii. 18-28; _De Vita Beata_, xxiv.; _De Clem._ i. 18, and especially _Ep._ xlvii. Epictetus, as might be expected from his history, frequently recurs to the duty. Plutarch writes very beautifully upon it in his treatise _De Cohibenda Ira_.

583 Diog. Laert. _Zeno_.

584 Bodin thinks it was promulgated by Nero, and he has been followed by Troplong and Mr. Merivale. Champagny (_Les Antonins_, tome ii. p.

115) thinks that no law after Tiberius was called _lex_.

585 Sueton. _Claud._ xxv.; Dion Ca.s.s. lx. 29.

586 See Dumas, _Secours publics chez les Anciens_ (Paris, 1813), pp.

125-130.

587 Senec. _De Clem._ i. 18.

588 Senec. _De Benef._ iii. 22.

589 Spartian. _Hadria.n.u.s._ Hadrian exiled a Roman lady for five years for treating her slaves with atrocious cruelty. (_Digest._ lib. i.

t.i.t. 6, -- 2.)

590 See these laws fully examined by Wallon, tome iii. pp. 51-92, and also Laferriere, _Sur l'Influence du Stocisme sur le Droit_. The jurisconsults gave a very wide scope to their definitions of cruelty. A master who degraded a literary slave, or a slave musician, to some coa.r.s.e manual employment, such as a porter, was decided to have ill-treated him. (Wallon, tome iii. p. 62.)

591 Thus, e.g., Livia called in the Stoic Areus to console her after the death of Drusus (Senec. _Ad Marc._). Many of the letters of Seneca and Plutarch are written to console the suffering. Cato, Thrasea, and many others appear to have fortified their last hours by conversation with philosophers. The whole of this aspect of Stoicism has been admirably treated by M. Martha (_Les Moralistes de l'Empire Romain_).

592 We have a pleasing picture of the affection philosophers and their disciples sometimes bore to one another in the lines of Persius (_Sat._ v.) to his master Cornutus.

593 Grant's _Aristotle_, vol. i. pp. 277-278.

594 Champagny, _Les Antonins_, tome i. p. 405.

595 Arrian, iii. 22. Julian has also painted the character of the true Cynic, and contrasted it with that of the impostors who a.s.sumed the garb. See Neander's _Life of Julian_ (London, 1850), p. 94.

596 Seneca the rhetorician (father of the philosopher) collected many of the sayings of the rhetoricians of his time. At a later period, Philostratus wrote the lives of eminent rhetoricians, Quintilian discussed their rules of oratory, and Aulus Gellius painted the whole society in which they moved. On their injurious influence upon eloquence, see Petronius, _Satyricon_, i. 2. Much curious information about the rhetoricians is collected in Martha, _Moralistes de l'Empire Romain_, and in Nisard, _Etudes sur les Poetes Latins de la Decadence_, art. Juvenal.

597 "Cependant ces orateurs n'etaient jamais plus admires que lorsqu'ils avaient le bonheur de trouver un sujet ou la louange fut un tour de force.... Lucien a fait l'eloge de la mouche; Fronton de la poussiere, de la fumee, de la negligence; Dion Chrysostome de la chevelure, du perroquet, etc. Au cinquieme siecle, Synesius, qui fut un grand eveque, fera le panegyrique de la calvitie, long ouvrage ou toutes les sciences sont mises a contribution pour apprendre aux hommes ce qu'il y a non-seulement de bonheur mais aussi de merite a etre chauve."-Martha, _Moralistes de l'Empire Romain_ (ed. 1865), p.

275.

598 There is a good review of the teaching of Maximus in Champagny, _Les Antonins_, tome ii. pp. 207-215.

_ 599 Orat._ xv.; _De Servitute_.

600 See the singularly charming essay on Dion Chrysostom, in M. Martha's book.

601 Mr. Buckle, in his admirable chapter on the "Proximate Causes of the French Revolution" (_Hist. of Civilisation_, vol. i.), has painted this fas.h.i.+onable enthusiasm for knowledge with great power, and ill.u.s.trated it with ample learning.

602 The saying of Mme. Dudeffand about Helvetius is well known: "C'est un homme qui a dit le secret de tout le monde." How truly Helvetius represented this fas.h.i.+onable society appears very plainly from the vivid portrait of it in the _Nouvelle Helose_, part ii. letter xvii., a masterpiece of its kind.

603 Musonius tried to stop this custom of applauding the lecturer. (Aul.

Gell. _Noct._ v. i.) The habits that were formed in the schools of the rhetoricians were sometimes carried into the churches, and we have notices of preachers (especially St. Chrysostom) being vociferously applauded.

604 Thus Gellius himself consulted Favorinus about a perplexing case which he had, in his capacity of magistrate, to determine, and received from his master a long dissertation on the duties of a judge (xiv. 2).

605 i. 10.

_ 606 Noct. Att._ vi. 13. They called these questions _symposiacae_, as being well fitted to stimulate minds already mellowed by wine.

607 xviii. 2.

608 We have a curious example of this in a letter of Marcus Aurelius preserved by Gallica.n.u.s in his _Life of Avidius Ca.s.sius_.

609 "Senserunt hoc Stoici qui servis et mulieribus philosophandum esse dixerunt."-Lact. _Nat. Div._ iii. 25. Zeno was often reproached for gathering the poorest and most sordid around him when he lectured.

(Diog. Laert. _Zeno_.)

610 This decadence was noticed and rebuked by some of the leading philosophers. See the language of Epictetus in Arrian, ii. 19, iv.

8, and of Herod Atticus in Aul. Gell. i. 2, ix. 2. St. Augustine speaks of the Cynics as having in his time sunk into universal contempt. See much evidence on this subject in Friedlaender, _Hist.

des Murs Romaines_, tome iv. 378-385.

611 This movement is well treated by Vacherot, _Hist. de l'ecole d'Alexandrie_.

_ 612 De Superst.i.tione._

_ 613 Dissertations_, x. -- 8 (ed. Davis, London, 1740). In some editions this is _Diss._ xxix.

_ 614 Dissert._ x.x.xviii.

_ 615 De Daemone Socratis._

_ 616 De Daemone Socratis._ See, on the office of daemons or genii, Arrian i. 14, and a curious chapter in Ammia.n.u.s Marcell. xxi. 14. See, too, Plotinus, 3rd _Enn._ lib. iv.

_ 617 De Daemone Socratis._

618 I should except Plotinus, however, who was faithful in this point to Plato, and was in consequence much praised by the Christian Fathers.

619 "Omnium malorum maximum voluptas, qua tanquam clavo et fibula anima corpori nect.i.tur; putatque vera quae et corpus suadet, et ita spoliatur rerum divinarum aspectu."-Iamblichus, _De Secta Pythagor._ (Romae, 1556), p. 38. Plotinus, 1st _Enn._ vi. 6.

_ 620 De Sect. Pyth._ pp. 36, 37.

621 Porphyry, _Life of Plotinus_.

622 Iamblichus, _De Mysteriis._ 1.

623 See, on this doctrine of ecstasy, Vacherot, _Hist. de l'ecole d'Alexandrie_, tome i. p. 576, &c.