The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 05

by Unknown

CHAPTER XIV. CIVILISATION AT THE END OF THE PERIOD OF CONQUEST

ORGANISATION OF THE GOVERNMENT

Now that we have seen Rome first become mistress of Italy, and then, after a life and death struggle, rise superior to Carthage; now that we shall have to follow her in her conquest of all the countries bordering on the Mediterranean, so that this sea became what in modern phrase may be called a Roman lake, we naturally inquire, what was the form of government, what the treatment of the subject foreigners, what the condition of the people?

About the time of the Punic Wars the framework of the Roman constitution was complete. The only trace remaining of ancient severance was the regulation by which, of the two consuls and the two censors, one must be a patrician, one a plebeian. In a few years even this partition of offices fell into disuse, and no political distinction remained, save that persons of patrician pedigree were excluded from the tribunate of the plebs.[64]

In correspondence with the advance of plebeian and the decay of patrician families, a silent revolution had been wrought in most parts of the constitution. The assembly of the curies had become a mere form. They continued to meet even to Cicero’s time; but their business had dwindled away to the regulation of the religious observances proper to the patrician gentes. A few lictors, who were present as the attendants of the presiding magistrates, alone appeared to represent the descendants of the Valerii, the Claudii, and the Postumii.[65]

With regard to the executive government, the chief officers of state employed in the administration of Roman affairs remained as they had been settled after the Licinian laws. In Cicero’s time it is well known that every Roman who aspired to the highest offices was obliged to ascend through a regular scale of honours. An age was fixed before which each was unattainable. The first office so held was the quæstorship, and the earliest age at which this could then be gained appears to have been about twenty-seven. Several years were then to elapse before a Roman could hold the first curule office, that is, the ædileship. But between this and each of the highest honours, the prætorship and the consulship, only two complete years were interposed. To be chosen ædile a man must be at least thirty-seven, to be prætor at least forty, to be consul at least forty-three. But no settled regulations had yet been made. Many cases occur, both before and after the Second Punic War, in which men were elected to the consulship at a very early age, and before they had held any other curule office.

There can be little doubt that the ædileship was the least acceptable to an active and ambitious man. The chief duties of the ædiles related to the care of the public buildings (whence their name), the celebration of the games and festivals, the order of the streets, and other matters belonging to the department of police. But the quæstors were charged with business of a more important character. They were attached to the consuls and prætors as treasurers and paymasters. The tax-gatherers (publicani) paid into their hands all moneys received on account of the state, and out of these funds they disbursed all sums required for the use of the army, the fleet, or the civil administration. They were originally two in number, one for each consul; but very soon they were doubled, and at the conquest of Italy they were increased to eight. Two always remained at home to conduct the business of the treasury, the rest accompanied the consuls, and prætors, and proconsuls to the most important provinces.

The office of prætor was supplementary to that of the consuls, and was at first chiefly judicial. The original prætor was called “prætor urbanus,” or president of the city courts. A second was added about the time when Sicily became subject to Rome, and a new court was erected for the decision of cases in which foreigners were concerned: hence the new magistrate was called “prætor peregrinus.” For the government of the two first provinces, Sicily and Sardinia, two more prætors were created, and when Spain was constituted as a double province, two more, so that the whole number amounted to six. In the absence of the consuls the prætors presided in the senate and at the great assembly of the centuries. They often commanded reserve armies in the field, but they were always subordinate to the consuls; and to mark this subordinate position they were allowed only six lictors, whereas each consul was attended by twelve. Of the consuls it is needless to speak in this place. Their position as the supreme executive officers of the state is sufficiently indicated in every page of the history.

To obtain any of these high offices the Roman was obliged to seek the suffrages of his fellow-citizens. They were open to the ambition of every one whose name had been entered by the censors on the register of citizens, provided he had reached the required age. No office, except the censorship, was held for a longer period than twelve months: no officer received any pay or salary for his services. To defray expenses certain allowances were made from the treasury by order of the senate. To discharge routine duties and to conduct their correspondence, each magistrate had a certain number of clerks (scribæ) who formed what we should call the civil service.

But though the highest offices seemed thus absolutely open to every candidate, they were not so in practice. About the time of the First Punic War an alteration was made which, in effect, confined the curule offices to the wealthy families. The ædiles, for the expenses of the public games, had an allowance made them from the treasury. But at the time just mentioned this allowance was withdrawn. Yet the curule ædiles were still expected to maintain the honour of Rome by costly spectacles at the great Roman games, the Megalesian festival, and others of less consequence. Thus the choice of the people was limited to those who could buy their favour.

THE ARMY

The Romans had no standing army. Every Roman citizen between the complete ages of seventeen and forty-five, possessing property worth at least four thousand pounds of copper, was placed on the military roll. From this roll four legions, two for each consul, were enlisted every year, and in cases of necessity additional legions were raised. But at the close of the year’s campaign these legionary soldiers had a right to be relieved. Nor were there any fixed officers. Each legion had six tribunes and sixty centurions; but these were chosen, like the consuls and soldiers, fresh every year. The majority of the tribunes were elected at the comitia of the tribes, and the remainder were nominated by the consuls of the year, the only limitation to such choice being that those appointed should have served in the legions at least five campaigns. The centurions were then nominated by the tribunes, subject to the approval of the consuls.

Hence it appears that the Roman system, both in army and state, was strictly republican, that is, calculated to distribute public offices to as many citizens as possible, and to prevent power being absorbed by any single man or classes of men. There were no professed statesmen or officers, but there was a large number of men who had served for a time in each capacity. There was no standing army, but there was a good militia. There was no regularly trained soldiery, but every citizen had served in his time several campaigns, and every one was something of a soldier.

But no republic, however jealous, can rigidly carry out such a system; necessity will modify it in practice. During the Samnite Wars we find the same eminent men repeatedly elected to the consulship, notwithstanding a provision that no man should hold this high office except at intervals of ten years. Valerius Corvus was chosen consul at three-and-twenty; he held the office four times in fourteen years. So also Papirius Cursor, Fabius Maximus, and others held the same sovereign office repeatedly at short intervals. In the year 326 B.C. another plan was adopted to secure permanency. From this time it became common to continue a consul or prætor in his command for several successive years, with the title of proconsul or proprætor. The proconsul also was allowed to keep part of his old army, with his tribunes and centurions. The hope of booty and the desire to serve out his campaigns (for after a certain number of campaigns served the legionary was exempt, even though he was much under forty-five years) kept many soldiers in the field; and thus the nucleus of a regular army was formed by each commander. In the Punic Wars the ten years’ law was suspended altogether, and proconsuls were ordered to remain in office for years together.[b]

No more vivid picture of the Roman army could be given than that of Polybius, who contrasts the Greek phalanx with the Roman arrangement as follows:

POLYBIUS ON GREEK AND ROMAN BATTLE-ORDERS

Pyrrhus employed not only the arms but the troops of Italy; and ranged in alternate order a company of those troops and a cohort disposed in the manner of the phalanx, in all his battles with the Romans. And yet, even with the advantage of this precaution, he was never able to obtain any clear or decisive victory against them. It was necessary to premise these observations for the sake of preventing any objection that might be made to the truth of what we shall hereafter say.

It is easy to demonstrate, by many reasons, that while the phalanx retains its proper form and full power of action, no force is able to stand against it in front or support the violence of its attack. When the ranks are closed in order to engage, each soldier, as he stands with his arms, occupies a space of three feet. The spears, in their most ancient form, contained seventeen cubits in length. But, for the sake of rendering them more commodious in action, they have since been reduced to fourteen. Of these, four cubits are contained between the part which the soldier grasps in his hands and the lower end of the spear behind, which serves as a counterpoise to the part that is extended before him; and the length of this last part from the body of the soldier, when the spear is pushed forwards with both hands against the enemy, is, by consequence, ten cubits. From hence it follows that when the phalanx is closed in its proper form, and every soldier pressed within the necessary distance with respect to the man that is before him and upon his side, the spears of the fifth rank are extended to the length of two cubits, and those of the second, third, and fourth to a still greater length, beyond the foremost rank. The manner in which the men are crowded together in this method is marked by Homer in the following lines:

“Shield stuck to shield, to helmet helmet joined,

And man to man; and at each nod that bowed

High waving on their heads the glittering cones,

Rattled the hair-crowned casques: so thick they stood.”

This description is not less exact than beautiful. It is manifest, then, that five several spears, differing each from the other in the length of two cubits, are extended before every man in the foremost rank. And when it is considered, likewise, that the phalanx is formed by sixteen in depth, it will be easy to conceive what must be the weight and violence of the entire body, and how great the force of its attack. In the ranks, indeed, that are behind the fifth, the spears cannot reach so far as to be employed against the enemy. In these ranks, therefore, the soldiers instead of extending their spears forward, rest them upon the shoulders of the men that are before them, with their points slanting upwards; and in this manner they form a kind of rampart which covers their heads, and secures them against those darts which may be carried in their flight beyond the first ranks, and fall upon those that are behind. But when the whole body advances to charge the enemy, even these hindmost ranks are of no small use and moment. For as they press continually upon those that are before them, they add, by their weight alone, great force to the attack, and deprive also the foremost ranks of the power of drawing themselves backwards or retreating. Such then is the disposition of the phalanx, with regard both to the whole and the several parts. Let us now consider the arms, and the order of battle, of the Romans, that we may see by the comparison in what respects they are different from those of the Macedonians.

To each of the Roman soldiers, as he stands in arms, is allotted the same space, likewise, of three feet. But as every soldier in the time of action is constantly in motion, being forced to shift his shield continually that he may cover any part of his body against which a stroke is aimed; and to vary the position of his sword, so as either to push, or to make a falling stroke; there must also be a distance of three feet, the least that can be allowed for performing these motions to advantage, between each soldier and the man that stands next to him, both upon his side and behind him. In charging, therefore, against the phalanx, every single Roman, as he has two Macedonians opposite to him, has also ten spears, which he is forced to encounter. But it is not possible for a single man to cut down these spears with his sword, before they can take their effect against him. Nor is it easy, on the other hand, to force his way through them. For the men that are behind add no weight to the pressure, nor any strength to the swords, of those that are in the foremost rank. It will be easy, therefore, to conceive that while the phalanx retains its own proper position and strength, no troops, as I before observed, can ever support the attack of it in front. To what cause, then, is it to be ascribed, that the Roman armies are victorious, and those defeated that employ the phalanx? The cause is this. In war, the times and the places of action are various and indefinite. But there is only one time and place, one fixed and determinate manner of action, that is suited to the phalanx. In the case, then, of a general action, if an enemy be forced to encounter with the phalanx in the very time and place which the latter requires, it is probable, in the highest degree, from the reasons that have been mentioned, that the phalanx always must obtain the victory. But if it be possible to avoid an engagement in such circumstances, and indeed it is easy to do it, there is then nothing to be dreaded from this order of battle. It is a well-known and acknowledged truth, that the phalanx requires a ground that is plain and naked, and free likewise from obstacles of every kind, such as trenches, breaks, obliquities, the brows of hills, or the channels of rivers; and that any of these are sufficient to impede it, and to dissolve the order in which it is formed. On the other hand again, it must be as readily allowed that, if it be not altogether impossible, it is at least extremely rare, to find a ground containing twenty stadia, or more, in its extent, and free from all these obstacles. But let it, however, be supposed that such a ground may perhaps be found. If the enemy, instead of coming down upon it, should lead their army through the country, plundering the cities, and ravaging the lands, of what use then will be the phalanx? As long as it remains in this convenient post, it not only has no power to succour its friends, but cannot even preserve itself from ruin. For the troops that are masters of the whole country without resistance will cut off from it all supplies. And if, on the other hand, it should relinquish its own proper ground, and endeavour to engage in action, the advantage is then so great against it that it soon becomes an easy prey to the enemy.

But, further, let it be supposed that the enemy will come down into this plain. Yet, if he brings not his whole army at once to receive the attack of the phalanx; or if, in the instant of the charge, he withdraws himself a little from the action, it is easy to determine what will be the consequence from the present practice of the Romans. For we now draw not our discourse from bare reasoning only, but from facts which have lately happened. When the Romans attack the phalanx in front, they never employ all their forces, so as to make their line equal to that of the enemy; but lead on a part only of their troops, and keep the rest of the army in reserve. Now, whether the troops of the phalanx break the line that is opposed to them, or whether themselves are broken, the order peculiar to the phalanx is alike dissolved. For if they pursue the fugitives, or if, on the other hand, they retreat and are pursued, in either case they are separated from the rest of their own body. And thus there is left some interval or space, which the reserve of the Roman army takes care to seize, and then charges the remaining part of the phalanx, not in front, but in flank, or in the rear. As it is easy then to avoid the times and circumstances that are advantageous to the phalanx, and as those, on the contrary, that are disadvantageous to it can never be avoided, it is certain that this difference alone must carry with it a decisive weight in the time of action.

To this it may be added, that the troops of the phalanx also are, like others, forced to march and to encamp in every kind of place; to be the first to seize the advantageous posts; to invest an enemy, or be invested; and to engage also in sudden actions, without knowing that the enemy was near. These things all happen in war, and either tend greatly to promote, or sometimes wholly determine the victory. But, at all such times, the Macedonian order of battle either cannot be employed, or is employed in a manner that is altogether useless.

For the troops of the phalanx, as must be evident, lose their strength when they engage in separate companies, or man with man. The Roman order, on the contrary, is never attended, even upon such occasions, with any disadvantage. Among the Romans every single soldier, when he is once armed and ready for service, is alike fitted to engage in any time and place, or upon any appearance of the enemy; and preserves always the same power, and the same capacity of action, whether he engages with the whole of the army, or only with a part; whether in separate companies, or singly man against man. As the parts, therefore, in the Roman order of battle, are so much better contrived for use than those in the other, so the success also in action must be greater in the one than the other.

If I have been rather long in examining this subject, it was because many of the Greeks, at the time when the Macedonians were defeated, regarded that event as a thing surpassing all belief; and because many others also may hereafter wish to know in what particular respects the order of phalanx is excelled by the arms and the order of battle of the Romans.[f]

Roman Trophies

THE SENATE

The chief officers both in state and army were continually liable to change, but there was a mighty power behind them, which did not change. This was the senate. The importance of this body can hardly be overstated. All the acts of the Roman republic ran in the name of the senate and people, as if the senate were half the state, though its number was but three hundred.

The senate of Rome was perhaps the most remarkable assembly that the world has ever seen. Its members held their seats for life; once senators always senators, unless they were degraded for some dishonourable cause. But the senatorial peerage was not hereditary. No father could transmit the honour to his son. Each man must win it for himself.[66]

The manner in which seats in the senate were obtained is tolerably well ascertained. The members of this august body, all—or nearly all—owed their places to the votes of the people. In theory, indeed, the censors still possessed the power really exercised by the kings and early consuls, of choosing the senators at their own will and pleasure. But official powers, however arbitrary, are always limited in practice. The censors followed rules established by ancient precedent, and chose the senate from those who had held the quæstorship and higher magistracies. In the interval between two censorships, that is in the course of five years, the number of exquæstors alone must have amounted to at least forty, and this was more than sufficient to fill the number of vacancies which would have occurred in ordinary times. The first qualification then for a seat in the senate was that of office. It is probable that to the qualification of office there was added a second, of property. Such was certainly the case in later times. A third limitation, that of age, followed from the rule that the senate was recruited from the lists of official persons. No one could be a senator till he was about thirty.

Such was the composition of this great council during the best times of the republic. It formed a true aristocracy. Its members, almost all, possessed the knowledge derived from the discharge of public office and from mature age. They were recommended to their places by popular election, and yet secured from subserviency to popular will by the amount of their property. It was not by a mere figure of speech that the minister of Pyrrhus called the Roman senate “an assembly of kings.” Many of its members had exercised what was in effect sovereign power; many were preparing to exercise it. The power of the senate was equal to its dignity.

In regard to legislation, it exercised an absolute control over the centuriate assembly, because no law could be submitted to its votes which had not originated in the senate; and thus the vote of the centuries could not do more than place a veto on a senatorial decree.[67]

In respect to foreign affairs, the power of the senate was absolute, except in declaring war or concluding treaties of peace,—matters which were submitted to the votes of the people. They assigned to the consuls and prætors their respective provinces of administration and command; they fixed the amount of the troops to be levied every year from the list of Roman citizens, and of the contingents to be furnished by the Italian allies. They prolonged the command of a general or superseded him at pleasure. They estimated the sums necessary for the military chest; nor could a sesterce be paid to the general without their order. If a consul proved refractory, they could transfer his power for the time to a dictator; even if his success had been great, they could refuse him the honour of a triumph. Ambassadors to foreign states were chosen by them and from them; all disputes in Italy or beyond seas were referred to their sovereign arbitrament.

In the administration of home affairs the regulation of religious matters was in their hands; they exercised superintendence over the pontiffs and other ministers of public worship. They appointed days for extraordinary festivals, for thanksgiving after victory, for humiliation after defeat. But, which was of highest importance, all the financial arrangements of the state were left to their discretion. The censors, at periods usually not exceeding five years in duration, formed estimates of annual outlay, and provided ways and means for meeting these estimates; but always under the direction of the senators. In all these matters, both of home and foreign administration, their decrees had the power of law. In times of difficulty they had the power of suspending all rules of law, by the appointment of a dictator.

Besides these administrative functions, they might resolve themselves into a high court of justice for the trial of extraordinary offences. But in this matter they obtained far more definite authority by the Calpurnian law, which about fifty years later established high courts of justice, in which prætors acted as presiding judges, and senators were jurymen.

THE CENTURIATE ASSEMBLY

At some time between the decemvirate and the Second Punic War, a complete reform had been made in the centuriate assembly, as organised by Servius. When this was we know not. Nor do we know the precise nature of the reform. This only is certain, that the distribution of the whole people into tribes was taken as the basis of division in the centuriate assembly as well as in the assembly of the tribes, and yet that the division into classes and centuries was retained, as well as into seniores and juniores.

It may be assumed that the whole people was convened according to its division into thirty-five tribes; that in each tribe account was taken of the five classes, arranged according to an ascending scale of property, which, however, had been greatly altered from that attributed to Servius; and that in each tribe each of the five classes was subdivided into two centuries, one of seniores, or men between forty-five and sixty, one of juniores, or men between eighteen and forty-five. On the whole, then, with the addition of eighteen centuries of knights, there would be 368 centuries. This plan, though it allowed far less influence to wealth than the plan of Servius, would yet leave a considerable advantage to the richer classes. For it is plain that the two centuries of the first class in each tribe would contain far fewer members than the two centuries of the second class, those of the second fewer than those of the third, and all those of the first four together, probably, fewer than those of the fifth. Yet these four classes, having in all 280 or (with the knights) 298 centuries, would command an absolute majority; for the question was still decided by the majority of centuries.

THE ASSEMBLY OF THE TRIBES

While the centuriate assembly was becoming more popular in its constitution, a still more democratic body had come into existence.[68]

There can be no doubt that when the centuriate assembly was restored by the patricians after the expulsion of Tarquinius,[69] it was intended to be the sole legislative body. The more recent legislative assembly of the tribes was a spontaneous growth of popular will, not contemplated by statesmen. The tribe assembly, originally intended to conduct the business of the plebeian order, gradually extended its power over the whole body politic; and its ordinances (plebiscita) became laws.

The tribunes were originally invested with political authority for the purpose of protecting the persons of the plebeians from the arbitrary punishments inflicted by the patrician magistrates. It was no doubt intended that this authority should be only suspensive, so as to prevent sudden acts of violence. But the tribunes soon assumed the license of standing between plebeians and the law. Thus they established the celebrated right of intercession, which in course of time they extended to all matters. They forbade trials, stopped elections, put a veto on the passing of laws. So far, however, their power was only negative. But when the tribe assembly obtained legislative rights, the tribunes obtained a positive authority. The power of the tribunes and of the tribes implied each other. The plebeian assembly was dead without able and resolute tribunes; the tribunes were impotent without the democracy.

Roman Statesman

This relation was at once established when the election of the tribunes was committed to the tribes themselves. The tribunes soon began to summon the tribes to discuss political questions; and the formidable authority which they now wielded appeared in the overthrow of the decemvirate and the recognition of the tribe assembly as a legislative body. The political powers then gained by the Valerio-Horatian laws were confirmed and extended by the popular dictators, Q. Publilius Philo and Q. Hortensius.

Thus the Roman constitution presents us with the apparent anomaly of two distinct legislative assemblies, each independent of the other. Nor were any distinct provinces of action assigned to each. This being so, we should expect to find the one clashing with the other; to hear of popular laws emanating from the one body met with a counter-project from the other. But no such struggles are recorded. The only way in which it can be known that a particular law is due to the more popular or to the more aristocratic assembly is by looking to the name of the mover, by which every law was designated. If the name be that of a tribune, the law must be referred to the tribe assembly. If the name be that of a consul, prætor, or dictator, the law must be referred to the centuriate assembly.[70] What, then, were the causes which prevented collisions which appear inevitable?

First, it must be remembered that, though the centuriate assembly had been made more democratic, yet the tribe assembly was very far indeed from a purely democratic body. In the latter, the suffrages were taken by the head in each of the thirty-five tribes, and if eighteen tribes voted one way, and seventeen another, the question was decided by the votes of the eighteen. But the eighteen rarely, if ever, contained an absolute majority of citizens. For the whole population of Rome, with all the freedmen, were thrown into four tribes only, and if these four tribes were in the minority, there can be no doubt that the minority of tribes represented a majority of voters. Thus, even in the more popular assembly, there was not wanting a counterpoise to the will of the mere majority.

A still more effective check to collision is to be found in the fact that all measures proposed to the tribe assembly by the tribunes, as well as the centuriate laws proposed by the consuls or other ministers of the senate, must first receive the sanction of the senate itself. The few exceptions which occur are where tribunes propose a resolution granting to a popular consul the triumph refused by the senate. But these exceptions only serve to prove the rule.[71]

Our surprise that no collision is heard of between the two assemblies now takes another form, and we are led to ask how it came that, if all measures must be first approved by the senate, any substantial power at all could belong to the tribes? It would seem that they also, like the centuriate assembly, could at most exercise only a veto on measures emanating from the great council.

That this result did not follow, is due to the rude but formidable counter-check provided by the tribunate. The persons of the tribunes were inviolable; but the tribunes had power to place even consuls under arrest. By the advance of their intercessory prerogative they gradually built up an authority capable of over-riding all other powers in the state.

We are now better able to appreciate the position of the two assemblies as legislative bodies. The tribe assembly was presided over by officers of its own choice, invested with authority generally sufficient to extort from the senate leave to bring in laws of a popular character. No such power resided in the presidents of the centuriate assembly; for the consuls were little more than ministers of the senate. The centuriate assembly more and more became a passive instrument in the hands of the senate. The tribe assembly rose to be the organ of popular opinion.

In elections, the centuriate assembly always retained the right of choosing the chief officers of state, the consuls, prætors, and censors. The tribe assembly, originally, elected only their own tribunes and the plebeian ædiles. But in no long time they obtained the right of choosing also the curule ædiles, the quæstors, the great majority of the legionary tribunes, and all inferior officers of state. But as the centuries were, generally, obliged to elect their prætors and consuls out of those who had already been elected quæstors and ædiles by the tribes, it is manifest that the elective power of the former was controlled and overridden by the latter. In conferring extraordinary commands, such as that of Scipio in Spain, the tribes were always consulted, not the centuries.

JUSTICE

In regard to jurisdiction, it has before been noticed that Rome was tender of the personal liberties of her citizens. Various laws of appeal provided for an open trial before his peers of anyone charged with grave offences, such as would subject him to stripes, imprisonment, or death. Now the centuries alone formed a high court of justice for the trial of citizens; the tribe assembly never achieved this dangerous privilege. But the tribunician power offered to the chief officers of the tribes a ready means of interference; for they could use their right of intercession to prevent a trial, and thus screen real offenders from justice. But more frequently they acted on the offensive. There was a merciful provision of the law of Rome, by which a person liable to a state prosecution might withdraw from Italian soil at any time before his trial, and become the citizen of some allied city, such as Syracuse or Pergamus. But the tribunes sometimes threw culprits into prison before trial, as in the case of App. Claudius the decemvir and his father. Or, after a culprit had sought safety in voluntary exile, they proposed a bill of outlawry, by which he was “interdicted from fire and water” on Italian soil, and all his goods were confiscated. Offending magistrates were also fined heavily, without trial, by special plebiscita, which resembled the bills of attainder familiar to the reader of English history.

These encroachments of the tribunes were met by other unconstitutional measures on the part of the senate. To bar the action of the tribunes and to suspend the laws of appeal, they at one time had constant recourse to dictatorial appointments. These appointments ceased after the Second Punic War; but after this, in critical times, the senate assumed the right of investing the consuls with dictatorial power.

It must not here be forgotten that of late years circumstances had greatly exalted the power of the senate and proportionally diminished the power of the tribunes. In great wars, especially such as threaten the existence of a community, the voice of popular leaders is little heard. Reforms are forgotten. Agitation ceases. Each man applies his energies to avert present danger, rather than to achieve future improvements. The senate under the leading of old Fabius Cunctator ruled absolutely for several years. Even elections to the consulate, which he deemed inopportune, were set aside—a thing almost without example, before and after, in Roman constitutional history. Fabius was at length superseded by young Scipio, who in his turn became absolute, and at the close of the war might have made himself dictator, had he been so pleased. At present, popular spirit had fallen asleep. Constitutional opposition there was none. The senate seemed likely to retain in peace the power which war had necessarily thrown into their hands.

PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT

At the close of the Hannibalic War, Rome was in possession, nominally, of five provinces, which were Sicily, Sardinia, the Gallic coast of Umbria, with Hither and Farther Spain. But of these provincial possessions Sardinia and the Spains were almost to be conquered again; and Gallic Umbria was shortly after absorbed into Italy, while the magnificent district between the Alps and the Gulf of Genoa became the province of Gaul. Sicily was the only province as yet constituted on a solid foundation. To Sicily, therefore, we will confine our remarks; a course which is further recommended by the fact that we are better informed with regard to Sicily than with regard to any other of the foreign possessions of the republic.

We must call to mind that, in speaking of Sicily as of Italy, we are not to think of the country as a whole, but as broken up into a number of civic communities, each being more or less isolated from the rest. At the close of the First Punic War, when the Romans had expelled the Carthaginians from the island, the greater part of it was formed into a province; while the kingdom of Hiero, consisting of Syracuse with six dependent communities, was received into free alliance with Rome. But in the Second Punic War, Syracuse and all Sicily were reconquered by Marcellus and Lævinus, and the form of the provincial communities was altered. The cities of Sicily were now divided into three classes. First, there were those cities which had been taken by siege: these, twenty-six in number, were mulcted of their territory, which became part of the public land of Rome; their former citizens had perished in war, or had been sold as slaves, or were living as serfs on the soil which they had formerly owned. Secondly, there was a large number of communities, thirty-four in all, which retained the fee-simple of their land, but were burdened with payment of a tithe of corn, wine, oil, and other produce, according to a rule established by Hiero, in the district subject to Syracuse. Thirdly, there were eight communities left independent, which were, like the Italians, free from all imposts.

These states were all left in possession of municipal institutions; they had the right of self-government in all local matters, with popular assemblies and councils, such as were common in Greek communities. But all were subject to the authority of a governor, sent from Rome, with the title of prætor, whose business it was to adjudicate in all matters where the interests of Rome or of Roman citizens were concerned, and, above all, to provide for the regular payment of the imposts. In Sicily, which in those days was a well-cultivated and productive country, this department was so important that the prætor was assisted by two quæstors, one stationed at Syracuse, the other at Lilybæum.

Communities which, during the wars of conquest, had joined the invaders at once or at a critical point in the war, were left free from all ordinary and annual imposts. Cities that were taken by force became, with their territory, the absolute property of Rome. Between these extremes there was a large class, which retained full possession of their lands, and complete local independence, but were subject to the payment of yearly imposts to the imperial treasury, which were levied on the produce of their land. All alike were obliged to contribute towards the expenses of the prætor’s court and government.

TAXATION

The most important distinction between the Italian and provincial dominions of Rome consisted in taxation. It was a general rule that all Italian land was tax-free; and that all provincial land, except such as was specified in treaties or in decrees of the senate, was subject to tax. Hence the exemption of land from taxation was known by the technical name of Jus Italicum or the Right of Italy.

This last distinction implies that the imperial revenues were raised chiefly from the provinces. We will take this opportunity of giving a brief account of the different sources from which the revenues of Rome were raised in the early period.

The imperial treasury was in the ancient temple of Saturn, situated at the end of the Forum beneath the Capitol. Here the two quæstors of the city deposited all the moneys received on account of the state, and no disbursements could be made without an order from an officer authorised by the senate. The sources of receipt were twofold, ordinary and extraordinary.

The ordinary revenues consisted of the proceeds and rent of public property, custom duties, tolls, and the like, and the tax levied on provincial lands.

The property of the state was, as has often been noticed, very large. Much of the public land, however, had been distributed to colonies, and the rent received for the rest seems to have been small. Yet the quantity of undistributed land in Italy and Sicily was so great that it must have yielded a considerable revenue. Besides this, the fisheries, with all mines and quarries, were considered public property. Even the manufacture of salt was a state monopoly from the censorship of M. Livius, who thenceforth bore the name of Salinator, or the salt-maker.

Besides these rents and monopolies, custom duties were levied on certain kinds of goods, both exports and imports, and tolls (called portoria) were demanded for passengers and goods carried by canals or across bridges and ferries.

There was also an ad valorem duty of five per cent imposed on the manumission of slaves. This was not carried to the account of the year, but laid by as a reserve fund, not to be used except in great emergencies.

The revenue derived from the provincial land tax was only beginning to be productive, but in a few years it formed the chief income of the republic.

It appears that for the civil government of the republic the ordinary revenues were found sufficient. The current expenses, indeed, were small. The Italian and provincial communities defrayed the expenses of their own administration. Rome herself, as we have said, claimed the services of her statesmen and administrators without paying them any public salaries.

In time of war, however, the ordinary revenues failed, and to meet the expenses of each year’s campaign an extraordinary tax was levied as required. This was the tributum, or property tax. Its mode of assessment marks its close association with war expenses. We have seen above that the whole arrangement of the centuriate assembly was military. Not the least important of these was the census or register of all citizens, arranged according to their age and property. It was made out by the censors at intervals of five years, and served during the succeeding period as the basis of taxation. The necessities of each year determined the amount to be levied. It was usually one in a thousand, or one-tenth per cent; but once, in the Second Punic War, the rate was doubled. The senate had the power of calling for this payment.

At length it became necessary to call on wealthy individuals to furnish seamen, and to advance money by way of loan; and contracts were formed with commercial companies to furnish stores and clothing for the army, in return for which they received orders on the treasury payable at some future time. The obligations thus contracted were not left as a national debt. The first instalment of repayment was made in the year 204 B.C., immediately after the submission of Carthage; the second and third at successive intervals of four years.

At length, in the year 167 B.C., the payments exacted from the provincials became so large that the senate was enabled to dispense with extraordinary taxes altogether; and thus the ordinary revenues sufficed for the expenses of all future wars, as well as for the civil administration.

The allied communities of Italy, the municipia and colonies, were free from all direct burdens, except in time of war. Then each community was required, according to a scale furnished by its own censor, to supply contingents of soldiery to the Roman army, such contingents bearing a proportion to the number of legions levied by the Romans themselves in any given year. The Italian soldiery were fed by Rome; but their equipments and pay were provided at the expense of their own states; and therefore it is plain that every Italian community was indirectly subject to a war tax. But though these communities suffered the burdens of war like Rome, they did not like Rome profit by war. The Roman treasury repaid taxes raised for the conduct of war. But such repayment was confined to Romans. The soldiers of the Latin and Italian towns obtained their share of booty; but their citizens at home had no hope of repayment. Moneys paid into the Roman treasury were applicable to Roman purposes only. The Italians, though they shared the danger and the expense, were not allowed to share the profit. Here was a fertile field for discontent, which afterwards bore fatal fruits.

In the provinces, on the other hand, little military service was required, but direct imposts were levied instead.

This system was itself galling and onerous. It was as if England were to defray the expenses of her own administration from the proceeds of a tax levied upon her Indian empire. But the system was made much worse by the way in which the taxes were collected. This was done by contract. Every five years the taxes of the provinces were put up to public auction; and that company of contractors which outbid the rest would receive the contract. The farmers of the taxes, therefore, offered to pay a certain sum to the imperial treasury for the right of collecting the taxes and imposts of Sicily, gave security for payment, and then made what profit they could out of the taxes collected. The members of these companies were called publicani, and the farmers-general, or chiefs of the companies, bore the name of mancipes. It is manifest that this system offered a premium on extortion: for the more the tax collectors could wring from the provincials, the more they would have for themselves. The extortions incident to this system form a principal topic in the provincial history of Rome.[b]

SOCIAL CONDITIONS: THE ARISTOCRACY AND THE PEOPLE

Since the year 366 distinctions between the patricians and plebeians had been legally waived, but the importance of the patrician class still continued. The victory of the plebeians led to no democracy. The patrician families who had stood alone in the highest dignities in the state retained their prominent position; but a number of plebeian families came forward who shared with them the state offices and joined in their labours for the greatness of the country. Thus in the course of years a new aristocracy was evolved, a kind of official nobility (nobilitas) of the families whose forefathers had occupied such high positions in the state as those of curule magistrates, ædiles, prætors, and consuls, and whose distinctions descended from father to son.

For a long time there had been this sort of aristocracy of merit; elevation being due to neither birth nor name, but to the merits and brilliant achievements of ancestors, the sons zealously treading in the footprints of their fathers.

In Rome the power of the family life was great. It exercised the same potent influence upon the young men as public life did in Greece. The sons conformed to the standard furnished by the life and teaching of their fathers and elder relatives, and in their life at home and abroad they acquired the knowledge and capacity which fitted them for the government of the state and the leadership of armies. A youth of moderate gifts could thus make himself a capable statesman and general, and could easily attain to the same official rank as his father. But a man of the lower class seldom succeeded. It was only by the greatest talent that a new man (homo novus) could rise to any high office, unless his rise was due to the democratic opposition, which from a feeling of spite to the upper class insisted on seeing equality of power prevail.

It was under the government of this new aristocracy that Rome laid the foundation of her new world-wide power. The subjection of Italy was completed and the Roman dominion had been extended over the majority of the countries of the Mediterranean Sea. But it was just this ever increasing extension of the empire which forcibly impelled the nobilitas to unite themselves in an exclusive community and so to get the reins of government into their own hands. Continual wars gave rise to the necessity of having a group of men of more than ordinary reliability who could devote themselves exclusively to state affairs.

Before the Punic Wars the aristocracy had to a certain extent formed itself into a party against which the people soon gathered in opposition.

A Roman Noble

The nobility used their influential position to appropriate the whole administration of the state. In the senate the exclusive circle of noble families ruled, and the highest official positions were given only to men of their party. The censorship, a position of the greatest power and consideration, was an important office in their hands; it was regarded as the chief of all state dignities. Hence the aristocracy used every means to prevent a man of the plebeian order from acquiring that position. The duty of the censors was to keep the senate as free as possible from all unaristocratic elements, for they were empowered to nominate the members of the senate and to disqualify for admission to it. There was another way of entering the senate besides that of nomination by the censor; anyone who had occupied a curule chair was entitled to a seat and a voice in the senate. But the choice of the higher officials was in a certain degree in the hands of the consul, who generally belonged to the aristocracy; and as president of the centuriate assembly he could reject any candidate of whom he did not approve.

The censors also appointed the knights and therefore formed them into a purely aristocratic body. As long as they cast the earliest vote in the centuriate assembly, the nobility had a considerable advantage there. Even after this ceased, the knights formed in the assembly a distinct and distinguished party, and as the flower of the nobility they likewise formed in the army a brilliant cavalry corps. As in this corporation the nobility regarded itself as something quite distinct from the rest of the people, the ruling class tried by other external signs to distinguish themselves from the masses and to represent themselves as a superior caste.

So from the year 194 the seats of the senatorial class were kept separate from those of other people at the public festivals.

When the nobility got the government into their hands, they moulded it in conformity with their own interests. In order to raise the position of the officials as high as possible they only increased the number when absolutely necessary, and never in proportion to the increase of business consequent on the extension of the territories of the republic. It was only from the most pressing necessity that in the year 242 the work of a single prætor, the director of judicial business, was divided between two, so that the town prætor (prætor urbanus) had the judicial business of the Roman citizens, and the foreign prætor (prætor peregrinus) settled questions between aliens or between aliens and Roman citizens. After the conquest of Sicily, Sardinia, and the two Spains, four more prætors were added for the management of those provinces.

But after the year 149 they remained as a rule in Rome during their year of office to preside at the commission of inquiry respecting criminal matters introduced during that time, and then they went in the following year as pro-prætors to the provinces.

The choice of officials was, moreover, limited by the avoidance as much as possible of the re-election to the consulate. From 265 the censor was never twice the same, and the custom was made a law whereby the curule (lex annalis of year 180) officials were appointed in a certain degree by grade and after a certain interval.

An ædile, as we have seen, must be at least thirty-seven, a prætor forty, a consul forty-three. The right was therefore withdrawn from the voters, in case of need, to take the most competent and serviceable man without regard to seniority. The measure of worth for the selection of officials was no longer competence but birth and seigniority, and the nobility regarded office as its due right, not disdaining, however, to get from the people all they could by the arts of flattery.

The government of this official nobility exhibited in foreign policy all its time-worn energy, which was only too often united with unworthy cunning and untrustworthiness, but the administration of internal affairs became torpid and bad. The majority belied the claims of their office, mostly careful on the one hand not to forfeit by any inconsiderate or stern measure the favour of the people to whom they were indebted for their posts and from whom they expected future favours, while on the other hand they did not hesitate to run counter to such of their colleagues as might occasionally wish to render the people reciprocal service.

The late wars had shown the weakness of the generals and the consequent lack of military discipline. In the wars of this period so much leave and furlough had been granted for money that the forces were not ready for any undertaking. Instead of fighting the enemy, generals and soldiers laid their allies and friends under contribution.

When Scipio Africanus took the command against Numantia he sent away from the camp not less than two thousand women, a number of sorcerers and priests, and a whole tribe of traders, cooks, and other servants, so sunk was the army in debauchery and effeminacy. Cowardice and idleness were so deep-seated that it required many months and the most stringent measures to make the army fit to take the field. The change in the spirit of the government was also evident in the treatment of the Roman subjects in Italy and beyond Italy. The Italian communities which had not the full rights of Roman citizens—and they were the majority—were in a bad plight. The communities which had joined Hannibal were almost all condemned to slavery, and the rest were forced to render military service whilst the Roman citizens profited by their labours and kept themselves as distinct from them as the nobility did from the citizens and the rest of the people. The Italian allies were almost excluded from the rights of Roman citizens.

The foreign provinces which at first were treated with a certain consideration were soon in a worse position than the Italians. The governors, who had a royal position in their provinces, and were almost uncontrolled by the senate, allowed themselves the greatest licence, and used the short time of their office to enrich themselves. They indemnified themselves for the expense they had been put to in Rome in order to obtain their posts, and amassed the means for life-long enjoyment.

As the governors were not paid, they had a claim upon all kinds of services and supplies from the provinces, and this they abused in every way. They robbed shamelessly when there was anything to get, and what the governors did on a large scale their numberless subordinates did on a small one. When a province had to support an army it had much to suffer. Requisitions and levies were endless, and the people were often attacked and plundered by the general and soldiers as if they had been the enemy. To these evils were added the tax collectors and money changers who came like a plague into the country, and plied their bloodsucking callings at will under the protection of the governor. But the persecuted districts revenged themselves on their oppressors. The great wealth taken by the nobility from the provinces to Rome, the luxury and immorality of the officials and the armies, which had such a pernicious influence on the morality of high and low, became known in the uncivilised lands of the East, in Greece, and in Asia. The rich nobility was steeped in debauchery and love of pleasure, and displayed a boundless luxury against which the laws repeatedly enacted strove in vain. And the people also, since there was no country of which Rome stood in awe, began to lose its old energy and to be gradually depraved by the love of enjoyment, recklessness, and idleness.

Certainly there was always a party of honourable, independent citizens; but a sunken, impoverished populace who pandered to the nobility gradually gathered about them. The nobles took care to gain the favour of the mob by flattery, festivities, donations of corn, and even by general bribery, so as to rule in the comitium through them, and secure the official posts. It was almost impossible now for a man who was not rich to obtain office.[c]

SLAVES AND FREEMEN

The age of which we have been treating, from the Samnite War to the close of the Punic Wars, was always considered by the Romans, and is still considered by their admirers, to have been the golden age of the republic. A people which handed down the legends of Cincinnatus, Curius, Fabricius, Regulus, can hardly have failed to practise the thrift and honesty which they admired. The characters are no doubt idealised; but they may be taken as types of their times. In the Roman country districts, and still more in the Apennine valleys, the habits of life were no doubt simple, honest, and perhaps rude, of Sabine rather than of Hellenic character, the life of countrymen rather than of dwellers in the town.

It has been remarked that the Italians, like the Greeks, must be regarded as members of cities or civic communities. But the walled towns which were the centres of each community were mostly the residence of the chief men and their dependents and slaves, while the mass of the free citizens were dispersed over the adjoining country district, dwelling on their own farms, and resorting to the town only to bring their produce to market or to take their part in the political business transacted at the general assemblies. Such was the case at Rome in early times. The great patrician lords with their families dwelt in strong houses or castles on the Capitoline, Palatine, and Quirinal hills, while their clients thronged the lower parts adjacent. As the plebeians increased in wealth and power, their great men established themselves at first upon the Cælian and Aventine, and afterwards indiscriminately on all the hills.

In the country districts of Rome the greater part of the land was still in the hands of small proprietors, who tilled their own lands by the aid of their sons and sons-in-law. In the earliest times the dimensions of these plebeian holdings were incredibly small, an allotment being computed at not more than two jugera (about 1¼ acres). Even with very fertile soil and unremitting labour, such a piece of land could barely maintain a family. But to eke out the produce of their tilled lands, every free citizen had a right to feed a certain number of cattle on the common pastures at the expense of a small payment to the state; and in this way even a large family might live in rude abundance. In no long time, however, the plebeian allotments were increased to seven jugera (about 4½ acres); and this increase of tilled lands indicates a corresponding improvement in the habits and comforts of the people—an improvement attributed, as all benefits conferred on the plebeians in early times were attributed, to King Servius. And this long remained the normal size of the small properties then so common in the Roman district. The farm and public pasture produced all that the family required—not only food, but flax and wool, which the matron and her daughters dressed and spun and wove, wood and stone for building and farm implements, everything except metals and salt, which were (as we have seen) state monopolies.

But a golden age generally comes to an end with increase of population. Mouths to be fed multiply; the yeomen sell their little farms and emigrate, or become satisfied with a lower scale of living as hired labourers. The Romans had a remedy for these evils in a home colonisation. The immense quantity of public land in the hands of the state, with the necessity of securing newly-conquered districts of Italy, led to the foundation of numerous colonies between the Samnite and Punic wars, and extended the means of material well-being to every one who was willing and able to work; and this not only for Romans, but for Latins and others, who were invited to become citizens of the colony.

If, however, the superfluous sons of families settled on lands in Samnium, or Apulia, or Cisalpine Gaul, others must have lost these lands; and the question naturally occurs: What had become of these people? This question brings us to the worst point in ancient society—that is, slavery.

It was the practice of ancient nations to regard all conquered persons as completely in the light of booty, as cattle or lifeless goods. If indeed the enemy surrendered without a blow, they became subjects. But those who were taken after a struggle were for the most part sold into slavery. In early times this evil was small. Nor was it to be expected that the small proprietors could afford either to buy or to maintain slaves. They were acquired by the rich patricians and plebeians, who held large tracts of public land, or who had acquired large estates of their own. Before the decemvirate, their debtors were their slaves. But this custom had been long abolished, and it was conquest which supplied slaves to the rich. After the conquest of Samnium, thirty-six thousand persons are said to have been sold. After the reduction of Cisalpine Gaul and Sicily, still larger numbers were brought to the hammer. These were the wretches on whose lands the poorer sort of Roman citizens settled. The slaves may generally be divided into two great classes, the urban or city slaves, and those of the country. They had no civil rights; they could not contract legal marriage; they had no power over their children; they could hold no property in their own name; their very savings were not their own, but held by consent of their master; all law proceedings ran in the name of their masters. For crimes committed, they were tried by the public courts; and the masters were held liable for the damage done, but only to the extent of the slave’s value. To kill, maim, or maltreat a slave was considered as damage to his master, and could only be treated as such. No pain or suffering inflicted on a slave was punishable, unless loss had thereby accrued to the owner.

But human nature is too strong always to fulfil conditions so cruel. There is no doubt that the slaves of the household were often treated with kindness; often they became the confidential advisers of their masters. The steward or bailiff of a rich man’s estate, his villicus, was a person of considerable power. Still the mass of the slaves, especially the agricultural slaves, were treated as mere cattle. Some poor drudges were the slaves of other slaves, such ownership being allowed by the masters. Cato recommends to sell off old and infirm slaves, so as to save the expense of keeping live lumber. Englishmen feel a pang at seeing a fine horse consigned in his old age to the drivers of public carriages; but Romans wasted no such sympathy on slaves who had spent their lives and strength in cultivating their lands. Notwithstanding the better treatment of the house slaves, the humane Cicero reproached himself with feeling too much sorrow for one who had been for years his tried and faithful servant. It was in the next half-century, however, that slaves increased so much in Italy as to produce great effect upon the social condition of the people. At present the evil was only in its beginning.

Here it must be remarked that the practice of giving liberty to slaves was very common. The prospect of freedom as a reward for good conduct must have done much to prevent Roman bondsmen from sinking into that state of animal contentment and listless indifference which marked the negro slaves of later times.

The freedmen filled no mean space in Roman society. Among them were to be found able and well-educated men, who had held a high station in their native country, and often obtained great influence over the minds of their masters. Freedmen exercised most branches of retail trade, and formed the shopkeepers and petty traders and artisans of Rome; for Roman citizens, however poor, could in early times condescend to no business except that of agriculture. Rich men carried on trades by means of their slaves and freedmen; in later times freedmen often worked as artists under some patrician roof, and many of the early poets were freedmen.

Here, then, we trace the beginning of a great distinction, that afterwards was more strongly marked, between the population of the city and the population of the country—between the rustic and the civic tribes.[b]

THE ROMAN FAMILY: WOMEN AND MARRIAGE

The Roman woman independent of the marriage tie was placed under the authority of her father or of a guardian.

The father’s authority was absolute. All the members of an ancient Roman family—father, mother, children, and daughters-in-law—made up a close association under one ruler or head. All the wealth which came to a family was thrown into a kind of common stock and formed but one patrimony. The sole head of this association, the one master of the common resources, was the father. Until now we have seen no difference made between the children of the two sexes; paternal power presses with equal weight on the son and on the daughter, and holds them both down to the same level. Besides, the daughter like the son can sign a legal contract; like him she has her share of the family patrimony, a guaranteed share that only a formal disinheritance can take from her. More liberal than the oriental or Greek law, Roman law granted equal rights in the paternal inheritance.

But as soon as the paternal power has disappeared, the legal differences between the two sexes begin to show themselves; the son, if he is of age, becomes independent and master of his actions, the daughter, on the contrary, whatever her age, remains under the power of a guardian.

A Roman Woman

(From a Statue)

What was that perpetual guardianship of women which the Romans themselves considered as one of the most fundamental institutions of their law? Was it a protecting guardianship like that of minors? Was it a despotic power like that of the father of a family? Neither one nor the other. To grasp its real character, we must go back to the causes which led to its establishment.

In the almost patriarchal constitution of ancient Rome, the preservation of families was of great public importance and the laws were always made to benefit it. The domestic ties, always so close whilst the head of the family lived, were not broken at his death; the hereditary possessions, whilst they were divided amongst the children, did not the less remain the patrimony of the family; the perpetual worship due to the spirit of the ancestors and to the household gods remained a common debt. But supposing that amongst the children there was a daughter, the hereditary share she was to receive would not be safe in her hands; it was to be feared that one day she would try to enrich the family she had entered at the expense of her own. It was to guard against this danger, it was to perpetuate in each family, together with the preservation of hereditary possessions, the memory of its ancestors and the glory or dignity of the house, that the Romans deprived woman of the free possession of her property and placed her under the perpetual guardianship of her agnates. This guardianship was not, then, established in the interest of woman, on account of her weakness and natural incapacity; it was established against her and in the interests of the guardians themselves.

This view, we must admit, has received many contradictions even in antiquity. Cicero, Ulpian, Isidorus de Sevilla, are unanimous in saying if the law has placed women under guardianship, it is on account of the weakness of their sex, their ignorance, their inexperience, their frivolity.

But listen to Gaius, the only writer amongst the ancients who discusses and sifts the question: “The vulgar opinion,” he says, “is that women must be directed by guardians, because their minds are too shallow to govern themselves. This guardianship has been established in the interest of the guardians, so that the women, whose presumptive heirs they are, can neither deprive them of their inheritance by a will, nor cripple it by gifts or by debts.”

Is it necessary to add another proof to the authority of Gaius? Here is one which seems irrefutable. Woman was placed under the paternal power, and, as has been already said, could make a legal contract. Once placed under a guardian, on the contrary, she can no longer contract debts without her guardian’s permission. Why this strange contradiction? Why should woman, capable of acting whilst she is under a father’s authority, become incapable as soon as she is freed from that authority? In the two cases, her frivolity, her weakness are evidently the same; here is the only difference: the daughter under paternal authority has no wants, and in indulging herself she only pledges herself; but the orphan or emancipated girl has a patrimony; if she pleased herself she would engage her patrimony and in this way compromise the inheritance of her family, of her future heirs. This reveals to us the spirit of the law. Woman is placed under a guardian because she has a fortune to leave behind her; it is done to protect her heirs and not to insure her own protection.

It will now be guessed to whom the law gave the guardianship; perhaps only to her next heirs, that is to say to her agnates, her nearest relatives; if she were a freed slave, to her masters. For natural guardians it was not an office, but a right—a family possession. They had no accounts to render; if they were infirm, in a state of infancy, idiocy, or insanity, they would still retain their rights to this guardianship, except that in that case it would be executed by deputy. But if they could not be deprived of this right they could resign it, and give it to some one in their place; the legitimate guardian could dispose of his ward by an in jure cessio, as he could dispose of his house or field.

The guardian’s authority was not quite similar to the parental authority. Its limits were rigorously determined by the very purpose of guardianship. The guardian had all the power necessary to safeguard the woman’s patrimony, nothing less—but nothing more.

Thus in the first case, his authority only extends to the fortune of the woman, not to her person. He has no control over the conduct of his ward, nor is it his prerogative to watch over her behaviour, or inquire into those of her acts which only affect her personally, and do not touch her fortune. For example, in the matter of marriage, all the pecuniary agreements which so often accompany it have to be authorised by the guardian; his consent is necessary, either to fix the dowry, or for the conventio in manum, which involves, as will be seen, a kind of general community of interest. But as for the marriage itself, how can it concern or prejudice the interests of the guardian, since the agnates, and not the children of the marriage, will inherit at the woman’s death? Thus the guardian’s authority is not necessary, either for the celebration of the marriage or in the choice of a husband. The woman herself chooses her husband, assisted sometimes, according to her age, by the advice of her mother and of her near relatives. Nor do all pecuniary transactions need the intervention of the guardian. Ulpian has given us the list, and we can separate the different proceedings that he enumerates, into two classes, the informal and the formal. In the first class we only find the alienations of res mancipi, either by direct or indirect covenants. Res mancipi were houses, lands, rustic servitude, slaves, beasts of burden—in a word, the soil and what was necessary to cultivate it; these were patrimonial property, and as the mainstay of the family, were placed under the vigilance and care of the guardian, so that their preservation was guaranteed. But besides this inalienable patrimony which she could not touch, the woman still had a large field of administration; she could acquire all sorts of property, dispose of the products of her fields and farm them out, dispose of her money—and thus pay her debts, recover her credit, lend, sell, bargain, and make free gifts.

For the formal proceedings, on the contrary, the law makes no distinctions and the guardian’s authority is always necessary. This will, at first sight, seem so little in harmony with the preceding that an explanation has been sought in considerations foreign to the principles of wardship. It has been said that the formal proceedings which usually took place before the magistrate, or before the witnesses who represented the Roman people, had too much resemblance to political proceedings to be permitted to others than citizens, and since woman was excluded from the comitia, she ought to be excluded from the Forum as well. But it is not true that the law courts were always closed to women, even at the time when all processes were under the form of a legis-actio; not only could she appear before the judges accompanied by her guardian, but she could even appear alone, either as a witness or as a representative of some one else—that is to say, whenever her personal interest was not at stake. She could also execute certain formal acts alone, as, for instance, emancipation, when she was under paternal authority; here again, the act could not touch her patrimony, as she had none. These are the cases in which the guardian’s authority was not necessary, although the proceeding was formal and these acts are just those which cannot touch or diminish the patrimony. Is it not, then, permissible to conclude that where the guardian can intervene in such cases, it is not on account of the formalities which surround them, it is because of the alienation they involve?

So far we have only spoken of natural guardians. But there are other kinds of guardians, and the Roman lawyers place the testamentary guardians first.

The father of the family, supreme in his own household, could, as we have already seen, dispose as he liked of the domestic patrimony; a strong reason, if he left a son and a daughter, for depriving the son of all rights of control and of the care of his sister’s hereditary portion, by taking the daughter away from his guardianship. How was this to be accomplished? By making over in his will the guardianship of his daughter to a stranger; this is testamentary guardianship. This guardianship almost amounted to independence for the woman, the testamentary guardian being a stranger to the family and having no right of succession to his ward’s property. What interest would he have in preventing her from disposing of her fortune as she pleased? To allow the father to choose a guardian for his daughter was really to allow his daughter to be free of all real and efficacious tutelage. We stop here, and will not tell how testamentary guardianship served as a model to the other kinds of wardships, how by the usurpation of these different nominal guardians the real guardianship, that of the family, was little by little restricted and undermined. We should be no longer describing this institution—we should be telling of its decay and downfall.

No legislators have better defined marriage than have those of ancient Rome. “It is the union of two lives, the blending of two inheritances, a common interest in everything religious and temporal.” In this ancient notion of marriage we find the two principles which are the foundation of Christian and modern marriage—the indissolubility of the bond and monogamy.

We found in Greece something of oriental polygamy. In Italy, on the contrary, monogamy is as ancient as the foundation of Rome. It entered so deeply into the habits of the Romans that when later they introduced into the constitution a freer form of conjugal union, concubinage, they considered it, like legitimate marriage, under the law of monogamy. And this law could not be eluded, as at Athens, by the legitimisation of natural children. The ancient Roman law always excluded the natural children from the family circle. It admitted no legitimisation nor recognition; and that illegitimacy might not be hidden under the mask of adoption, such adoption was itself subject to an investigation by the pontiffs and the ratification of the entire people.

The principle of monogamy had its natural complement in the indissolubility of marriage, for marriage with a possible divorce is, as has been said, but a progressive polygamy. Marriage in ancient Rome was indissoluble. Doubtless this indissolubility is not written in the law. Roman legislation would not, as we have seen, touch family independence, nor tighten by legal constraint ties that natural affection had formed. But if divorce is authorised by the law, it is forbidden by religion and custom; the man who repudiates his wife is branded by the censor, he is excommunicated by the priest, and can only atone for his fault by sacrificing a portion of his worldly wealth at the altar of the divinities that presided at his union. This moral sanction was much more efficacious than the laws ever were. Divorce was not illegal, but morally it was impossible; and all the writers of antiquity agree in saying that they have only heard of one during five centuries.

It is sufficient to remember these two fundamental principles, which are as old as Rome—namely, monogamy and the indissolubility of marriage—to show the value of the vulgar opinion which represents marital power in ancient Rome as the most odious of all tyrannies. It is difficult to believe that the husband was a despot and the wife a slave, where an inviolable fidelity was the reciprocal duty of the two; and a closer study will convince us that a Roman marriage was a real union in which the husband’s authority did not exclude the independence of the wife. But to be certain in what this independence consisted, two kinds of marriage must be distinguished. Sometimes the wife, though married, lived at home under the authority of her father, or the guardianship of her agnates; sometimes these ties were broken by marriage and the wife went, according to the technical expression, in manum mariti, and had no other family than her husband’s. This last kind of marriage is without doubt the more ancient. The antiquity of its origin is revealed in the particular customs that went with it, and which are found, almost identically the same, in the most ancient legislations. It is then most probable that during the first centuries of Rome, the manus mariti was the inevitable result of marriage. From the day the newly married couple had offered a joint sacrifice to the divinities in the nuptial chamber, the wife had no other family agnates or heirs than her husband and his relatives. What became of the wife’s former family ties, the rights of the agnates to her guardianship and to her inheritance? Marriage had destroyed them forever. But in this there was a danger to which the legislators had soon to give their attention. The guardians of the wife cannot have been very ready to consent to a marriage which deprived them of all their rights, and without their consent marriage was impossible. Could they have been compelled to give up their rights? But these rights were sacred to the guardians of the family interest; for them it was a duty to prevent the patrimony of their ancestors from passing into the hands of strangers. To satisfy all conflicting claims, the ancient principle had to be entirely altered. Two things had to be separated which until then had seemed inseparable—marriage and the manus, that is to say, the change of family. Side by side with the ancient marriage accompanied by the regular formalities, a new marriage was devised which was contracted simply by consent and left the wife in her family under the guardianship of her agnates. The consent of the guardians was always necessary for the ancient marriage with manus; but it was not required for the marriage pure and simple, which left the rights of the agnates intact. This revolution in the family usage was already accomplished, or nearly so, at the time of the laws of the Twelve Tables.

For the rest, the introduction of a new form of marriage did not insure the abandonment of the old, for both could in diverse cases in turn satisfy the same need. If the wife, at the time of her marriage, was not under a guardian, but under the parental authority, that is to say without patrimony, the conventio in manum could only benefit the agnates; for it was equivalent to the compact of renunciation, which, in ancient French law, so often accompanied marriage contracts. Thus, the same interest, that of preserving the patrimonial wealth, caused the introduction for the heiress of the marriage without manus, and maintained the marriage with manus for the daughter who had not already inherited.[d]

RELIGION

The religion of Rome was, as the legends show, of Sabine origin. Much of its ceremonial, the names of many of its gods, were Etruscan; and Hellenic mythology began, at an early time, to mingle itself in the simple religious faith of the Sabine countrymen. The important question in the history of all religions is, how far they exert power over the lives of their professors. That the old faith of Rome was not without such power in the times of which we speak is unquestionable. The simple Roman husbandman lived and died, like his Sabine ancestors, in the fear of the gods; he believed that there was something in the universe higher and better than himself; that by these higher powers his life and actions were watched; that to these powers good deeds and an honest life were pleasing, evil deeds and bad faith hateful. The principles thus established remained, as is confirmed by the weighty testimony of Polybius, delivered in a later and more corrupt age. “If,” says he, “you lend a single talent to a Greek, binding him by all possible securities, yet he will break faith. But Roman magistrates, accustomed to have immense sums of money pass through their hands, are restrained from fraud simply by respect for the sanctity of an oath.”[b]

The primitive religion of the Italians, in its essential or fundamental beliefs resembled that of other Indo-European nations. They adored the forces of nature, favourable or otherwise, and imagined them animated living beings, of different sexes, their rivality producing the struggles of the elements, and their union explaining the external fecundity of the world. This was also the basis of the Greek religion, but the Italian religion bore the impression of the nations who had made it. These nations were as a rule grave, sensible, prudent, and much absorbed by the miseries of this life and the dangers of the future. As they were inclined rather more towards fear than hope, they respected their gods a great deal, but feared them more, and their worship consisted more especially of humble petitions and rigorous mortifications.

Their imaginations wanted in richness and brilliance, they never therefore created anything like the rich development of the poetic legends so much admired in the Greeks. Their legends are poor and simple; springing from the hard life of agricultural labour, their character is often strangely prosaic; they are especially wanting in variety; in different times the same stories are found applied to different gods. The hero who founded or was the benefactor of the town was as a rule a child of marvellous birth, son of the god Lar, and begotten near the family hearth, sometimes by a spark from the fire. When he is young a miracle reveals his future greatness. This miracle is everywhere the same; it is a flame which burns around his head without consuming him. During his life he is wise, pious, and good; he makes good laws and teaches men to respect the gods and justice. After a few useful deeds he disappears suddenly, “he ceases to be seen,” without it being possible to say how he vanished. Doubtless he has gone to lose himself in the bosom of the great divinity from which everything emanates here below, he becomes part of this divinity, he loses his mortal name and from henceforth takes the one of the god with which he is absorbed. Thus Æneas, after his disappearance, was honoured under the name of Jupiter Indiges and Latinus as Jupiter Latinus.

Italy was thus not very rich in religious stories; the mixture of Italian races, that gave birth to Rome, was poorer still. Rome was content to accept the beliefs of the different nations which composed her by trying to unite them and making them agree; it did not seem necessary to create new ones. The only innovation which was made was inscribing on kinds of registers, called Indigitamenta, the list of gods that are affected by each event in a man’s life, from his conception until his death, and those that look after his most indispensable needs, such as food, dwelling, and clothing. They were placed in regular order, with a few explanations as to their names and the prayers which had to be offered up to them. The gods of the Indigitamenta have an exclusive and entire Roman character. Without doubt in other countries the need has been felt of placing the principal acts of life under divine protection, but as a rule gods are chosen for this purpose who are known, powerful, and tried, in order to be sure that their help will be efficacious. In Greece, the great Athene, or the wise Hermes, is invoked in order that a child may be clever and learned. In Rome, special gods were preferred, created for that purpose and for no other use; there is one who makes a child utter his first cry, and one who makes him speak his first word, neither have another use, and are only invoked for this occasion. They seldom have another name but the one their special functions give them, as if to show that they had no real existence besides the act over which they preside.

Their competency is very limited; the simplest action gives birth to several divinities. When a child is weaned there is one who teaches him how to eat, another to teach him to drink, a third makes him lie still in his little bed. When he commences to walk, four goddesses protect his first steps, two accompany him when he leaves his home, and two bring him back when he returns. The lists were thus endless and the names became indefinitely multiplied.

The fathers of the Catholic Church were much amused at “this population of little gods condemned to such small uses,” and compare them to workmen who divide the work amongst themselves in order that it may be more quickly done. For all this it is curious to study them; they are, after all, the original gods of Rome. Rome had not yet undergone the sovereign influence of Greece when the pontiffs drew up the Indigitamenta, and the remains that are left to us of the sacred registers can alone teach us what idea the Romans had of divinity and how they understood religious sentiment.

What is most striking at first is how all these gods seem without life. They have no history attached to them and not even a legend has been given them. All that is known of them is that at a certain crisis they must be prayed to and they can then render service. Once that moment passes, they are forgotten. They do not possess real names; those given to them do not distinguish them individually, but only indicate the function they fulfil. As a rule this name is in the form of an epithet; from this it is probable that it was not always employed alone, and that at first it was a simple emblem. It can be concluded with a great deal of apparent truth that originally the name described a powerful divinity, or even the divinity in general, the father all-powerful, as he was called so long as he limited his action to a special purpose. Thus the two gods Vaticanus and Fabulinas would be no other than the divinity itself, even when it watches over the first cries and first steps of the child.

The gods were not quite so numerous in the first ages, and it was then necessary to give each of them many more functions. These attributes were expressed, as in Christian litanies, by epithets, the list of which, more or less lengthy according to the importance of the god, followed after his name. As each invocation appealed to one of the faculties, and not to the power of the god, the epithet was practically much more important than the name and was employed alone. Soon the relationship between the name and the qualifications which existed primitively was forgotten or lost and then the epithets became divine. Thus the different functions of one god ended by being attached to independent gods. It was at the time of these changes that the Indigitamenta were drawn up. They are interesting to us, as they make us grasp Roman polytheism just when it is being formed, but they also show us that it is an unfinished polytheism. After creating all these gods, Rome did not know how to make them life-like. They remained vague, undecided, floating; they never attained, as the Greek gods, precise forms with distinct features. This, besides, is the general character of the Roman religion, and the gods of Rome always resembled those of the Indigitamenta.

The Italian religion was always more respectful and timid than the Greek. The Roman remained at a farther distance from his gods, he dared not approach them, he would have been afraid to look at them. If the Roman veiled his face when accomplishing religious duties, it was not, as Virgil says, because he was afraid of having his attention taken off what he was doing, but in order not to risk seeing the god he is praying to. He solicits his presence, he likes to know that he is near him, listening to his vows in order to grant them, but he would have been frightened if he had seen him. “Deliver us,” says Ovid in his prayer to Pallas, “from seeing the dryads or Diana’s bath, or Faunus when he runs across the fields in the daytime”; and until the end of paganism the Roman peasant was very afraid, when returning home in the evening, of meeting a Faun in his path. The result of this timidity of the Italians, who did not dare look at the gods in the face, is that they saw them vaguely. They have not got clear outlines, and are represented rather by symbols than by images; here Mars is adored under the form of a lance struck in the ground, in another place a simple stone represents the great Jupiter.

According to Varro, Rome remained 170 years without statues; the idea of placing them in the temples came from abroad. It was to imitate Etruria that a painted wooden Jupiter was placed in the Capitol; on the eve of festivals they gave him a coat of paint for him to appear in all his glory. These ancient customs were never quite lost, they were preserved in the country, where the peasants honoured the gods by covering old trunks of trees with bands, and in piously pouring oil on blocks of stone. At Rome, even whilst all the temples were being filled by Grecian masterpieces the antique Vesta would not allow a single statue in her sanctuary; she was only represented by the sacred flame which was never put out.

It is probable, then, that if Rome had not known Greece, anthropomorphism would have stopped short. The Roman has an instinctive repugnance to making his gods beings too much like us; to him they are not real persons, having an individual existence, but only divine manifestations, numina; and this name by which he calls them indicates perfectly the idea he has of them. Every time the divinity seems to reveal itself to the world in some manner (and as he is very religious, he believes he sees him everywhere), he notes with care this new revelation, gives it a name and worships it. These gods he creates every minute are nothing else but divine acts, and that is why they are so numerous.

No other nation has ever possessed such a vast Pantheon; and these words can be applied to the whole of Italy, that a writer of the imperial epoch lends to a woman of the Campania: “Our country is so peopled with divinities that it is much easier to meet a god than a man.” This is also the reason why the Romans more than any other nation had a taste for divinised abstractions. As in reality all their gods, even the greatest, are only divine qualities or attributes and as they always preserve to some extent their abstract character, it is not surprising that the habit was soon formed of introducing simple abstractions in their company. This is a custom as a rule only introduced into religions when they become old, but in Rome we notice it from the most ancient times. Tullus Hostilius built a temple to Fear and to Pallidness; and Salvation or Prosperity of the Roman nation was early a divinity much worshipped.

Later many exaggerations were made in this manner. During the empire all the ventures of the emperors were worshipped and statues were raised to the Security of the Century and to the Indulgence of the Master. These strange personifications, which would never have entered the mind of a Greek, were the result of the manner in which the Romans of all times conceived divinity. Polytheism was formed by them by way of an abstract analysis and not, as in Greece, by a kind of outburst of imagination and enthusiasm. They always remained faithful to this method, and to the end placed in the sky abstractions rather than living beings.

This nation, so timid, scrupulous, scared, that to protect a man one felt the need of surrounding him by gods from his birth to his death, that had such a deep respect for divinity, thinking to meet it everywhere, seemed to be the prey of every superstition.

The fathers of the Catholic Church have compared the institutions of Numa, with their minute and multiplied proscriptions, to Mosaic law. The Romans, who prided themselves on following them to the letter, could be exposed to becoming absolutely like the Jews; and one asks how it is that, amongst such a devoted people, religious authority did not end by dominating over all others. What preserved them from this fate was their great political instinct.

No other nation has ever been so taken up as have the Romans with the importance of the rights of the state, and everything was sacrificed to that—their oldest customs and their dearest prejudices. It was a general belief amongst them that dead persons became gods and protected those nearest to them, and were as close as possible to those they should save; they were buried in the house and thus became good spirits. One day, however, the law ordained, by reason of hygiene, that nobody should be buried within the precincts of the towns, and everybody obeyed this law. This example shows that in Rome nothing could resist civil power; paternal authority, in spite of the extent of its rights, gave way before it.

The father of the family is the absolute master of his children; he can sell or kill his child, but if his son is in public office the father has to obey him like the others, and when he meets him on his path he must get off his horse to let him pass.

Roman religion, so powerful, so respected as it was, had to submit to the same yoke. It was thus subject to the state, or rather was blended to it. What most aided religion to attain this result was the manner in which it recruited its priests. “Our ancestors,” says Cicero, “were never wiser nor more surprised by the gods than when they decided that the same persons would preside over religion and govern the republic. It was by this means that the magistrates and pontiffs fulfilling their duties with wisdom, agreed together to save the state.” In Rome, religious functions were not separated from political ones, and there was nothing incompatible between them.

Any one could act as pontiff in the same time as consul and for the same motives. Those who wished to become such were never required to possess any special knowledge; it was sufficient for attaining these duties to have served his country in the deliberating assemblies or the battle-field. Those that obtained them did not, whilst exercising them, take a narrow and exclusive attitude, so common to sacerdotal castes; they continued to mix with the world, they sat in the senate in the same time as in the great colleges of priests of which they formed a member; their new functions, far from taking them away from the government of their countries, gave them more right to take part in it.

These soldiers, politicians, men of business in Rome, gave to religious things that cold, practical sense which they gave to everything else. It is thanks to them that a laic undercurrent always circulated in Roman religion, that during the whole duration of the republic and of the empire no conflict ever broke out between it and the state; and that the government of Rome, in spite of all the demonstrations of piety which it lavished, never threatened to become a theocracy.[g]

TREATMENT OF OTHER NATIONS

But while morality, good faith, and self-denial prevailed among themselves, it is clear that the Romans laid no such restrictions upon their dealings with other nations. This great defect is common to Rome with all antiquity. The calmest Greek philosopher, Aristotle, regarded barbarians as naturally the slaves of the Greeks. International law was unknown, except in certain formalities observed in declaring war and making peace, and in the respect paid to the persons of ambassadors. This absence of common humanity and generosity to foreigners appears in many pages of this history, in none more strongly than in that which records the treatment of the Samnite leader C. Pontius. Gleams of better feeling appear in the war with Pyrrhus; the chivalric character of the king awakened something of a kindred spirit in the stern and rigid Romans. But nothing could be more ungenerous than the conduct of Rome to Carthage, after the Mercenary War; and still baser pieces of diplomacy occur in the subsequent dealings of the senate with the Achæans and with Carthage.

THE FINE ARTS

If Hellenic forms of thought and speech invaded the domain of literature, much more was this the case with the arts of design. There are not wanting examples to show that before this time sculpture and painting were held in honour at Rome. The consul Carvilius (in 293 B.C.) employed part of the spoils taken from the Samnites in setting up a colossal bronze statue on the Capitoline. A quadriga, executed in terra-cotta by an Etruscan artist, is ascribed to the same date. Statues were erected in the Forum to honour divers great men of olden time. Many temples were built in thanksgiving for victories, most of which were adorned by Etruscan or Greek artists. The temple of Salus was ornamented about 305 B.C. by paintings from the hand of that C. Fabius who adopted the name of Pictor and transmitted it as an honour to his family. The Ogulnii, in their ædileship (296 B.C.), set up in the Capitol a bronze group representing the wolf suckling the twins. A painting of the battle in which the Romans defeated Hiero in 263 adorned the walls of the senate house.

Of these works, and others not recorded by history, no trace remains except the famous wolf now preserved in the Capitoline Museum. The twins are a later addition, but the animal is probably the original work noticed by Cicero and Livy. It bears the well-known marks of the archaic Greek art in the sharp, rigid forms of the limbs and muscles, the peculiar expression of the face, and the regular knots of hair about the neck and head. Here, then, we trace Hellenic artists at Rome. Others of the works mentioned are expressly assigned to Etruscan artists; and it may be remarked that Fabius, the only native artist of whom we hear, belonged to a family always associated in history with Etruscans.

But when Rome had conquered southern Italy, she was brought at once in contact with works of the finest Greek art. No coins of old Greece are so beautiful as those of her colonial settlements in the west; and it is in the coins of Rome, strange to remark, that we first trace the indisputable effect of Greek art.

Up to the time when Italy was conquered, the Romans had used only copper money of a most clumsy and inconvenient kind. A pound of this metal by weight was stamped with the rude effigy of a ship’s prow, and this was the original as or libra. Gradually the as was reduced in weight till, in the necessities of the Second Punic War, it became only one-sixth of the libra by weight; yet it retained its ancient name, just as the pound sterling of silver, originally equivalent to a pound Troy-weight, is now not more than one-third, or as the French livre is a much smaller fraction of that weight.[72] But even this diminished coin was clumsy for use, as trade increased with increasing empire. After the conquest of southern Italy the precious metals became more plentiful, and the coinage of the conquered cities supplied beautiful models. The first denarius, or silver piece of ten asses, was struck in the year 269 B.C., and is evidently imitated from the coins of Magna Græcia. The Roman generals who commanded in these districts stamped money for the use of their armies with the old insignia of the conquered cities. The workmanship is, indeed, inferior to the best specimens of Hellenic coins, but far superior to anything Roman, before or after. Gold coins of similar model were not struck till near the close of the Hannibalic War (205 B.C.). The great mass of Roman coins which we possess belongs to the last century of the republic. They usually bear the family emblems of the person who presided over the mint, or of the consuls for whose use they were struck; but the execution always remained rude and unattractive.

A Roman Orator

(After Hope)

Afterwards, Roman conquest gave the means of supplying works of art by the easier mode of appropriation. In the conquest of Etruria, years before, the practice had been begun; from Volsinii alone we read that two thousand statues were brought to Rome. In following years Agrigentum, Syracuse, Corinth, and other famous cities, sent the finest works of Hellenic art to decorate the public buildings and public places of the barbarous city of the Tiber, or in many cases to ornament the villas of the rapacious generals.

In the more intellectual even of the useful arts the Romans made no great progress. The contrivances of Archimedes for the defence of Syracuse struck them with amazement. In Cicero’s time they usually carried the sciences of quantity and magnitude no further than was necessary for practical arithmetic and mensuration. In 293 B.C. L. Papirius Cursor the younger set up a sun-dial at Rome, and thirty years later another was brought from Sicily by the consul M. Valerius Messalla; but no one knew how to place them, so as to make the shadow of the gnomon an index of time. A water-clock, resembling our sand-glass, was not introduced till 159 B.C.

Nor were the common conveniences of life in an advanced state. Up to the year 264 the houses were commonly roofed with shingles of wood, like the Alpine cottages of our days; then first earthen tiles began to supersede this rude material. Agriculture must have been roughly carried on by men who were as much soldiers as countrymen. The wine of Latium was so bad that Cineas, when he tasted it, said—and the witticism was remembered—“he did not wonder that the mother of such wine was hung so high”; alluding to the Italian custom, still retained, of training the vine up elms and poplars, while in Greece it was trained (as in France and Germany) on short poles and exposed to all the heat of the sun.

A form of architecture called the Tuscan was mostly used, which bore an imperfect resemblance to that early Greek style usually called the Doric. But the existing remains of the republican period are too scanty to allow of any precise statements. The true arts of Rome were, then and always, the arts of the builder and engineer. It would not be wrong to call the Romans the greatest builders in the world. Some of their mighty works, works combining solidity of structure with beauty of form and utility of purpose, still remain for our admiration, having survived the decay of ages and the more destructive hands of barbarian conquerors. In every country subject to their sway, roads and bridges and aqueducts remain in sufficient number and perfection to justify all praise. We class the roads among the buildings, according to their own phraseology,[73] and their construction deserves the name as justly as the works upon our own railways. The first great military road and the first aqueduct are due to the old censor Appius Cæcus, and they both remain to preserve the memory of the man, often self-willed and presumptuous, but resolute, firm of purpose, noble in conception, and audacious in execution. Other aqueducts and other roads rapidly followed; the spade and trowel were as much the instruments of Roman dominion as the sword and spear. By the close of the Punic Wars solid roads, carried by the engineer’s art over broad and rapid streams, through difficult mountain passes, across quaking morasses, had already linked Rome with Capua in the south, with Placentia and Cremona in the north. Such were the proud monuments of the Appii, the Æmilii, the Flaminii.

It may be said that these magnificent works, as well as the vast amphitheatres and baths which afterwards decorated Rome and every petty city in her provinces, were due to the invention of the arch. This simple piece of mechanism, so wonderful in its results, first appears in the Great Cloaca. It was unknown to the Greeks, or at least not used by them. It may be that the Romans borrowed it from the Etruscans; the Cloaca is attributed to an Etruscan king, and similar works are discovered in ruined cities of Etruria. But if they borrowed the principle they used it nobly, as witness the noble bridges still remaining, the copious streams carried over the plain for miles at the height of sixty or seventy feet from the level of the soil. If they had little feeling for beauty and delicacy in the use of the pencil or the chisel, their buildings are stamped with a greatness which exalted the power of the state while it disregarded the pleasure of the individual.

Their attention to practical utility in draining and watering their city is especially noted by Strabo in contrast with the indifference shown by the Greeks to these matters. To the facts already stated may be added their rule, established so early as the year 260 B.C., that no one should be buried within the city—a rule scarcely yet adopted in London. From this time dates the beginning of those rows of sepulchral monuments which the traveller beheld on either side of the road as he entered the Eternal City. It was a gloomy custom, but better at least than leaving graveyards in the heart of crowded cities.

A striking proof of engineering skill is shown in the tunnels cut through solid rock for the purpose of draining off volcanic lakes; this art we may also believe to have been originally borrowed from the Etruscans. The first tunnel of which we hear was that by which the Alban Lake was partially let off during the siege of Veii, a work which was suggested by an Etruscan soothsayer. Other works of like kind still remain, though the time of their execution is not always known. Here shall be added the notice of one work of kindred sort, which happens by a rare coincidence to combine great utility with rarest beauty. The famous M. Curius Dentatus, when censor in 272, cut a passage through the rock, by which the waters of Lake Velinus were precipitated into the Nar. By this means he recovered for his newly conquered Sabine clients a large portion of fertile land, and left behind the most lovely, if not the most sublime, of all waterfalls. The Falls of Terni, such is the famous name they now bear, were wrought by the hand of man. “Thousands of travellers visit them,” says Niebuhr; “how few know that they are not the work of Nature!”[b]

LITERATURE

Rome during this period began to form the literature which has come down to us; but unfortunately, instead of being national and original, it was imitative and borrowed, consisting chiefly of translations from the Greek. In the year after the end of the First Punic War (240), L. Livius Andronicus, an Italian Greek by birth, represented his first play at Rome. His pieces were taken from the Greek; and he also translated the Odyssey out of that language into Latin. Cn. Nævius, a native of Campania, also made plays from the Greek, and he wrote an original poem on the First Punic War, in which he had himself borne arms. These poets used the Latin measures in their verse; but Q. Ennius, from Rudiæ in Calabria, who is usually called the father of Roman poetry, was the first who introduced the Greek metres into the Latin language. His works were numerous tragedies and comedies from the Greek, satires, and his celebrated Annals, or poetic history of Rome, in hexameters, the loss of which (at least of the early books) is much to be lamented. Maccius Plautus, an Umbrian, and Cæcilius Statius, an Insubrian Gaul, composed numerous comedies, freely imitated from the Greek. M. Pacuvius of Brundusium, the nephew of Ennius, made tragedies from the Greek; L. Afranius was regarded as the Menander of Rome; and P. Terentius (Terence), a Carthaginian by birth, gave some beautiful translations (as we may perhaps best term his pieces) of the comedies of Menander and Apollodorus. None of these poets but Plautus and Terence has reached us, except in fragments; the former amuses us with his humour, and gives us occasional views of Roman manners, while we are charmed with the graceful elegance of the latter. It is remarkable that not one of these poets was a Roman. In fact Rome has never produced a poet.

Q. Fabius Pictor, L. Cincius Alimentus, A. Postumius Albinus, M. Porcius Cato, and L. Cassius Hemina wrote histories (the first three in Greek) in a brief, dry, unattractive style. Cincius also wrote on constitutional antiquities, and seems to have been a man of research; and a work of Cato’s on husbandry has come down to us which we could well spare for his Origines, or early history of Italy.[e]