All the historians, from whom we have received any account of the Roman affairs, agree unanimously in fixing their conquest of Antiochus the Great, as the æra from whence we are to date the rise of luxury and corruption amongst them. Livy assures us, that luxury was first introduced into their city by the army of Manlius at their return from Asia. They, he informs us, were the first who made Rome acquainted with the finely ornamented couches, the rich carpets, the embroidered hangings, and other expensive productions of the looms of Asia, with all those elegant tables of various forms and workmanship, which were esteemed so essential a part of that magnificence which they affected in their furniture. They introduced wenches, who sung and played upon different instruments, with dancers of anticks, to heighten the mirth and indulgence of the table. To show to what height they carried the expense and luxury of the table, he adds, with indignation, that a cook, who, by their frugal and temperate ancestors, was looked upon, from his very office, as the vilest slave in the household, was now esteemed an officer of mighty consequence, and cookery was erected into an art, which before was looked upon as the most servile kind of drudgery. Yet new and strange as these first specimens might seem, Livy assures us, that they were but trifles when compared to their succeeding luxury. Before that fatal æra the Romans were poor, but they were contented and happy, because they knew no imaginary wants: and whilst their manners were virtuous, poverty itself was honourable, and added a new lustre to every other virtue. But when once they had contracted a relish for the luxury of Asia, they quickly found that the wealth of Asia was necessary to support it; and this discovery as quickly produced a total change in their manners. Before that time the love of glory, and a contempt of wealth, was the ruling passion of the Romans. Since that time money was the only object of their applause and desire. Before, ambition impelled them to war, from a thirst of dominion; now avarice, for the sake of plunder to support the expense of luxury. Before, they seemed a race of heroes; they were now a gang of insatiable robbers. Formerly, when they had reduced a people to obedience, they received them as their allies; they now made the conquered nations their slaves. They fleeced the provinces, and oppressed their friends. As the great offices, which entitled the possessors to the command of armies, and the government of provinces, were disposed of by the votes of the people, no method was left unattempted to secure a majority of suffrages. The candidates for these employments, not only exhausted their own fortunes, but strained their credit to the utmost, to bribe the people with shows and donatives. To this infamous period we must fix the rise of that torrent of corruption, which so quickly deluged the Roman republick. The successful candidates set out for their government, like hungry emaciated wolves, to fatten upon the blood of the miserable provinces. Cicero makes heavy complaints of the rapine and extortion of these rapacious oppressors; and his orations against Verres, when accused by the Sicilians, give us a complete idea of the behaviour of a Roman governour in his province. The complaints of the oppressed provincials were incessant; but every governour had his friends amongst the leading men, whom he secured by a share of the plunder, and the weight of their whole interest was applied to screen the criminal. Laws indeed were made against this crime of peculation, but they were easily eluded, because the judges, who were chosen out of the body of the people, were as corrupt as the offenders, and were frequently their associates in villany. Thus corruption made its way into the very vitals of the republick. Every thing was venal, and the venality had made so rapid a progress, even in the time of Jugurtha, which was about eighty years after the defeat of Antiochus, as to occasion the severe sarcasm of that prince, recorded by Sallust, which places the corruption of the Romans in a stronger point of view, than the most laboured and pathetick description of their historians. “That Rome had carried her venality to so great a height, as to be ready to sell herself to destruction, if she could but find a purchaser.” When the Romans had beggared the monarchs, whom they vouchsafed to style their friends, and drained the provinces until they had scarce any thing left to plunder; the same principle which had induced them to pillage the universe, impelled them now to prey upon one another.[263] Marius and Sylla were the first Romans who set the fatal precedent, and were the first who bridled Rome with a standing army. The civil power was compelled to give way to the military, and from that period we may truly date the ruin of the Roman liberty. The state continued to fluctuate between despotism and anarchy, until it terminated irretrievably under the Cæsars, in the most absolute, and most infernal tyranny that any people were ever yet cursed with. Marius opened the bloody scene, and glutted his followers with the blood and wealth of the friends of Sylla. Sylla repaid the Marian faction in the same coin with usury. Battles were fought in the very streets; and Rome, more than once, experienced all the horrors of a city taken by storm from her own citizens. Personal resentment and revenge for injuries received, were the pretence on both sides, but plunder and confiscations seem to have been the chief motives. For the rich were equally looked upon as enemies, and equally proscribed by both factions, and they alone were safe who had nothing worth taking.
If we connect the various strokes, interspersed through what we have remaining of the writings of Sallust, which he levelled at the vices of his countrymen, we shall be able to form a just idea of the manners of the Romans in the time of that historian. From the picture, thus faithfully exhibited, we must be convinced, that not only those shocking calamities, which the republick suffered during the contest between Marius and Sylla, but those subsequent, and more fatal evils, which brought on the utter extinction of the Roman liberty and constitution, were the natural effects of that foreign luxury, which first introduced venality and corruption. Though the introduction of luxury from Asia preceded the ruin of Carthage in point of time, yet, as Sallust informs us, the dread of that dangerous rival restrained the Romans within the bounds of decency and order.[264] But as soon as ever that obstacle was removed,[265] they gave a full scope to their ungoverned passions. The change in their manners was not gradual, and by little and little, as before, but rapid and instantaneous. Religion, justice, modesty, decency, all regard for divine or human laws, were swept away at once by the irresistible torrent of corruption. The nobility strained the privileges annexed to their dignity,[266] and the people their liberty, alike into the most unbounded licentiousness. Every one made the dictates of his own lawless will his only rule of action. Publick virtue, and the love of their country, which had raised the Romans to the empire of the universe, were extinct. Money,[267] which alone could enable them to gratify their darling luxury, was substituted in their place. Power, which alone could enable them to gratify their darling dominion, honours, and universal respect, were annexed to the possession of money. Contempt, and whatever was most reproachful, was the bitter portion of poverty; and to be poor, grew to be the greatest of all crimes in the estimation of the Romans. Thus wealth and poverty contributed alike to the ruin of the republick. The rich employed their wealth in the acquisition of power,[268] and their power in every kind of oppression and rapine, for the acquisition of more wealth. The poor,[269] now dissolute and desperate, were ready to engage in every seditious insurrection, which promised them the plunder of the rich, and set up both their liberty and their country to sale to the best bidder. The republick,[270] which was the common prey to both, was thus rent to pieces between the contending parties. As an universal selfishness is the genuine effect of universal luxury, so the natural effect of selfishness is to break through every tie, both divine and human, and to stick at no kind of excesses in the pursuit of wealth, its favourite object. Thus the effects of selfishness will naturally appear in irreligion,[271] breach of faith, perjury, a contempt of all the social duties, extortion, frauds in our dealings, pride, cruelty, universal venality and corruption. From selfishness arises that vicious ambition (if I may be allowed the term) which Sallust rightly defines, “the lust of domination.”[272] Ambition as a passion, precedes avarice; for the seeds of ambition seem almost to be innate. The desire of pre-eminence, the fondness for being distinguished above the rest of our fellow-creatures, attends us from the cradle to the grave. Though as it takes its complexion, so it receives its denomination from the different objects it pursues, which in all are but the different means of attaining the same end. But the lust of domination, here mentioned by Sallust, though generally confounded with ambition, is in reality a different passion, and is, strictly speaking, only a different mode of selfishness. For the chief end which we propose, by the lust of domination, is to draw every thing to centre in ourselves, which we think will enable us to gratify every other passion. I confess it may be alleged, that self-love and selfishness both arise from the general law of self-preservation, and are but different modes of the same principle. I acknowledge, that if we examine strictly all those heroick instances of love, friendship, or patriotism, which seem to be carried to the most exalted degree of disinterestedness, we shall probably find the principle of self-love lurking at the bottom of many of them. But, if we rightly define these two principles, we shall find an essential difference between our ideas of self-love, and selfishness. Self-love, within its due bounds, is the practice of the great duty of self-preservation, regulated by that law which the great author of our being has given for that very end. Self-love therefore is not only compatible with the most rigid practice of the social duties, but is in fact a great motive and incentive to the practice of all moral virtue. Whereas selfishness, by reducing every thing to the single point of private interest, a point which it never loses sight of, banishes all the social virtues, and is the first spring of action, which impels to all those disorders, which are so fatal to mixed government in particular, and to society in general. From this poisonous source Sallust deduces all those evils,[273] which spread the pestilence of corruption over the whole face of the republick, and changed the mildest and most upright government in the universe into the most inhuman, and most insupportable tyranny. For as the lust of domination can never possibly attain its end without the assistance of others, the man, who is actuated by that destructive passion, must, of necessity, strive to attach to himself a set of men of similar principles, for the subordinate instruments. This is the origin of all those iniquitous combinations, which we call factions. To accomplish this,[274] he must put on as many shapes as Proteus; he must ever wear the mask of dissimulation, and live a perpetual lie. He will court the friendship of every man, who is capable of promoting, and endeavour to crush every man, who is capable of defeating his ambitious views. Thus his friendship and his enmity will be alike unreal, and easily convertible, if the change will serve his interest. As private interest is the only tie which can ever connect a faction,[275] the lust of wealth, which was the cause of the lust of domination, will now become the effect, and must be proportional to the sum total of the demands of the whole faction; and, as the latter know no bounds, so the former, will be alike insatiable. For when once a man is inured to bribes in the service of faction,[276] he will expect to be paid as well for acting for, as for acting against the dictates of his conscience. A truth, which every minister must have experienced, who has been supported by a faction, and which a late great minister (as he frankly confessed) found to be the case with him during his long administration. But how deeply soever a state may be immersed in luxury and corruption, yet the man who aims at being the head of a faction for the end of domination,[277] will at first cloak his real design under an affected zeal for the service of the government. When he has established himself in power, and formed his party, all who support his measures will be rewarded as the friends; all who oppose him will be treated as enemies to the government. The honest and uncorrupt citizen will be hunted down as disaffected, and all his remonstrances, against mal-administration, will be represented as proceeding from that principle. The cant term, disaffection, will be the watch-word of the faction; and the charge of disaffection, that constant resource of iniquitous ministers, that infallible sign that a cause will not stand the test of a fair inquiry, will be perpetually employed by the tools of power to silence those objections which they want argument to answer. The faction will estimate the worth of their leader,[278] not by his services to his country, for the good of the publick will be looked upon as obsolete and chimerical; but his ability to gratify, or screen his friends, and crush his opponents. The leader will fix the implicit obedience to his will, as the test of merit to his faction: consequently all the dignities, and lucrative posts will be conferred upon persons of that stamp only, whilst honesty and publick virtue will be standing marks of political reprobation. Common justice will be denied to the latter in all controverted elections, whilst the laws will be strained, or over-ruled in favour of the former. Luxury is the certain forerunner of corruption, because it is the certain parent of indigence: consequently a state so circumstanced will always furnish an ample supply of proper instruments for faction. For as luxury consists in an inordinate gratification of the sensual passions,[279] the more the passions are indulged they grow the more importunately craving, until the greatest fortune must sink under their insatiable demands. Thus luxury necessarily produces corruption. For as wealth is essentially necessary to the support of luxury, wealth will be the universal object of desire in every state where luxury prevails: consequently all those who have dissipated their private fortunes in the purchase of pleasure, will be ever ready to enlist in the cause of faction for the wages of corruption. A taste for pleasure immoderately indulged, quickly strengthens into habit, eradicates every principle of honour and virtue, and gets possession of the whole man. And the more expensive such a man is in his pleasures, the greater lengths he will run for the acquisition of wealth for the end of profusion. Thus the contagion will become so universal, that nothing but an uncommon share of virtue can preserve the possessor from infection. For when once the idea of respect and homage is annexed to the possession of wealth alone,[280] honour, probity, every virtue and every amiable quality will be held cheap in comparison, and looked upon as awkward and quite unfashionable. But as the spirit of liberty will yet exist in some degree in a state which retains the name of freedom, even though the manners of that state should be generally depraved, an opposition will arise from those virtuous citizens, who know the value of their birthright, liberty, and will never submit tamely to the chains of faction. Force then will be called in to the aid of corruption,[281] and a standing army will be introduced. A military government will be established upon the ruins of the civil, and all commands and employments will be disposed of at the arbitrary will of lawless power. The people will be fleeced to pay for their own fetters, and doomed, like the cattle, to unremitting toil and drudgery for the support of their tyrannical masters. Or, if the outward form of civil government should be permitted to remain, the people will be compelled to give a sanction to tyranny by their own suffrages, and to elect oppressors instead of protectors.
From this genuine portrait of the Roman manners, it is evident to a demonstration, that the fatal catastrophe of that republick (of which Sallust himself was an eye witness) was the natural effect of the corruption of their manners. It is equally as evident from our author, and the rest of the Roman historians, that the corruption of their manners was the natural effect of foreign luxury, introduced and supported by foreign wealth. The fatal tendency of these evils, was too obvious to escape the notice of every sensible Roman, who had any regard for liberty, and their ancient constitution. Many sumptuary laws were made to restrain the various excesses of luxury; but these efforts were too feeble to check the over-bearing violence of the torrent. Cato proposed a severe law, enforced by the sanction of an oath, against bribery and corruption at elections; where the scandalous traffick of votes was established by custom as at a publick market. But, as Plutarch observes,[282] he incurred the resentment of both parties by that salutary measure. The rich were his enemies, because they found themselves precluded from all pretensions to the highest dignities; as they had no other merit to plead but what arose from their superior wealth. The electors abused, cursed, and even pelted him as the author of a law which deprived them of the wages of corruption, and reduced them to the necessity of subsisting by labour.[283] But this law, if it really passed, had as little effect as any of the former; and like the same laws in our own country, upon the same occasion, was either evaded by chicane, or over-ruled by power. Our own septennial scenes of drunkenness, riot, bribery, and abandoned perjury, may serve to give us an idea of the annual elections of the Romans in those abominable times.[284] Corruption was arrived at its last stage, and the depravity was universal. The whole body of the unhappy republick was infected, and the distemper was utterly incurable. For those excesses which formerly were esteemed the vices of the people,[285] were now, by the force of custom fixed into habit, become the manners of the people. A most infallible criterion, by which we may ascertain the very point of time, when the ruin of the any free state, which labours under these evils, may be naturally expected.
The conspiracies of Catiline and Cæsar against the liberty of their country, were but genuine effects of that corruption, which Sallust has marked out to us, as the immediate cause of the destruction of the republick. The end proposed by each of these bad men, and the means employed for that end, were the same in both. The difference in their success arose only from the difference of address and abilities in the respective leaders. The followers of Catiline, as Sallust informs us, were the most dissolute, the most profligate, and the most abandoned wretches, which could be culled out of the most populous and most corrupt city of the universe.[286] Cæsar, upon the same plan, formed his party, as we learn from Plutarch out of the most infected, and most corrupt members of the very same state.[287] The vices of the times easily furnished a supply of proper instruments. To pilfer the publick money,[288] and to plunder the provinces by violence, though state-crimes of the most heinous nature, were grown so familiar by custom, that they were looked upon as no more than mere office-perquisites. The younger people, who are ever most ripe for sedition and insurrection, were so corrupted by luxury,[289] that they might be deservedly termed, “an abandoned race, whose dissipation made it impracticable for them to keep their own private fortunes; and whose avarice would not suffer their fellow-citizens to enjoy the quiet possession of theirs.”
It is not at all strange that Rome thus circumstanced should fall a victim to the corruption of her own citizens: nor that the empire of the universe, the toil and labour of ages, to which the Romans had waded through seas of blood, should be destined to feed the detestable vices of a few monsters, who were a disgrace even to human nature. The total change of the Roman constitution, the unlimited tyranny of the emperors, and the abject slavery of the people, were all effects of the same cause, extended in degree by a natural progression. The Romans in fact were no more; the name indeed subsisted, but the idea affixed to that name, was as totally changed as their ancient constitution. In the time of Pyrrhus the Roman senate appeared an assembly of kings to his ambassadour Cyneas. When the east had felt the force of the Roman arms, the most despotick princes received the orders of a Roman senate, and executed them with as prompt obedience, as a slave would do the commands of his master. A deputy from the Roman senate made a haughty monarch tremble at the head of a victorious army, compelled him to resign all his conquests, and return ingloriously home, by a single motion of his walking-stick.[290]
What an elevated idea must this give us of the Roman manners, whilst that haughty people retained their freedom! Nothing is more grand; nothing more striking. Shift but the scene, and view the manners of the Romans when enslaved. Nothing is so abjectly servile, nothing so despicable. We see the Roman senate deifying the worst of mankind; wretches, who had sunk even below humanity, and offering the adoration of incense to these idols of their own making, who were more contemptible than the very stone and wooden representatives of their deities. Instead of giving law to monarchs, and deciding the fate of nations, we see the august Roman senate run trembling like slaves at the summons of their master Domitian,[291] to debate in form about the important business of dressing a turbot!! The majesty of the Roman people, which received the tributary homage of the universe, expired together with their liberty. That people, who disposed of the highest offices in the government, the command of armies, provinces and kingdoms, were sunk into a herd of dispirited slaves. Their total insignificancy screened them from the fatal effects of the caprices of their tyrants. They dragged on a wretched being in a state of idleness and poverty in the midst of slavery, and the utmost extent of their wishes amounted to no more, than bread for their daily subsistence, and diversions for their amusement.[292] The emperors supplied the one by their frequent largesses of corn, and gratified the other by their numerous publick shows. Hence historians observe, that the most infamous of their tyrants were as fond of rareeshows, as the mob themselves, and as they were by much the most profuse of all their emperors, their deaths were always most regretted by the people. So striking is the contrast between a state when blessed with liberty, and the same state when reduced to slavery by the corruption of its people!
As I have already made some reflections upon that passion for theatrical entertainments, which prevailed at Athens, I cannot help observing, that after the introduction of luxury, the fondness for that kind of diversion amongst the Romans, was at least equal to that of the Athenians. The Romans seem to have been strangers to every kind of stage-plays for the first four hundred years. Their first attempts of that kind were rude and simple, and not unlike the ancient mummery at our country wakes, or Christmas gambols. The regular drama was imported together with the luxury of Greece, but every species of this kind of entertainment, whether tragedy, comedy, farce, or pantomime, was comprehended under the general denomination of stage-plays,[293] and the different performers alike ranged under the general term of players.[294] The profession itself was reckoned scandalous, and proper only for slaves, and if once a Roman citizen appeared upon the stage, he immediately forfeited his right of voting, and every other privilege of a free man. Upon this account Cicero seems to lament the fate of his friend Roscius, when he tells us, “that he was so superior to all, as a player,[295] that he alone seemed worthy of appearing upon the stage: but of so exalted a character, as a man, that of all men he deserved least to be doomed to so scandalous a profession.” Suetonius, speaking of the licentiousness and insolence of the players, takes notice of an ancient law, which empowered the prætors and œdiles to whip those players publickly, who gave the least offence, or did not perform to the satisfaction of the people. Though Augustus[296] as the same historian informs us, exempted players from the ignominy of that law, yet he took care to restrain them within the bounds of decency and good manners.[297] For he ordered Stephanio, a celebrated comedian, to be whipped publickly through all the theatres, and afterwards banished him, for presuming privately to keep a Roman matron disguised under the habit of his boy. Upon a complaint from the prætor he made Hylas the pantomime be lashed openly in the court of his own palace, to which place the offender had fled for refuge; and banished Pylades, one of the most eminent players, not only from Rome but even from Italy, for affronting one of the audience who had hissed him upon the stage. But these restraints seem to have expired with Augustus. For we find the pride and insolence of the players carried to so great a height in the reign of his successor Tiberius, as to occasion their total banishment. The fondness of the populace for the entertainments of the theatre, and the folly of the degenerate nobility, were the causes of this alteration. For both Pliny and Seneca assure us, that persons of the very first rank and fashion were so scandalously mean, as to pay the most obsequious court to the players, to dangle at their levees, to attend them openly in the streets like their slaves; and treat them like the masters, instead of the servants of the publick.[298] Every eminent player had his party, and these ridiculous factions interested themselves so warmly in the cause of their respective favourites, that the theatres became a perpetual scene of riot and disorder. The nobility mingled with the mob in these absurd conflicts;[299] which always ended in bloodshed, and frequently in murder. The remonstrances and authority of the magistrates had so little effect, that they were obliged to have recourse to the emperor. Bad as Tiberius was, yet he was too wise to tolerate such shameful licentiousness. He laid the case before the senate, and informed them, that the players were the cause of those scandalous riots which disturbed the repose of the publick: that they spread lewdness and debauchery through all the chief families; that they were arrived to such a height of profligacy and insolence, through the protection of their factions, that the authority of the senate itself was requisite to restrain them within proper bounds. Upon this remonstrance they were driven out of Italy as a publick nuisance;[300] and Suetonius informs us, that all the frequent and united petitions of the people could never prevail upon Tiberius to recall them.
Augustus affected an extreme fondness for all kinds of diversion; he invited the most celebrated players of every denomination into Italy, and treated the people, at an immense expense, with every kind of entertainment, which the theatre or circus could furnish. This is remarked as an instance of that refined policy of which he was so thorough a master. For that artful prince was not yet firmly settled in his newly usurped power. He well knew, that if he gave the people time to cool and reflect, they might possibly thwart the execution of his ambitious schemes. He therefore judged that the best expedient to prepare them for the yoke of slavery would be, to keep them constantly intoxicated by one perpetual round of jollity and diversions. That this was the opinion of thinking people, at that time, is evident from that remarkably pertinent answer of Pylades the player to Augustus, transmitted to us by Dion Cassius. Pylades, as I have already observed, had been banished by Augustus for a misdemeanor, but pardoned and recalled to gratify the humour of the people. At his return, when Augustus reproved him for quarrelling with one Bathyllus, a person of the same profession, but protected by his favourite Mæcenas; Pylades is reported to have made this bold and sensible answer. “It is your true interest, Cæsar, that the people should idle away that time upon us and our affairs, which they might otherwise employ in prying too narrowly into your government.”[301]
I am far from being an enemy to the stage. On the contrary, I think the stage under proper regulations might be rendered highly useful. For of all our publick diversions, the stage, if purged from the obscenity of farce, and the low buffoonery of pantomime, is certainly capable of affording infinitely the most rational, and the most manly entertainment. But when I see the same disorders in our own theatres, which were so loudly complained of in the time of Tiberius; when the ridiculous contests between contending players are judged to be of such mighty importance, as to split the publick into the same kind of factions; when these factions interest themselves so warmly in the support of the supposed merit of their respective favourites, as to proceed to riots, blows, and the most extravagant indecencies; I cannot help wishing for the interposition of the reforming spirit of Augustus. And when I see the same insatiable fondness for diversions, the same unmeaning taste (so justly ridiculed by Horace in his countrymen) prevail in our own nation,[302] which mark the most degenerate times of Greece and Rome, I cannot but look upon them as a certain indication of the frivolous and effeminate manners of the present age.