THE FINDING OF ROMULUS AND REMUS
Around billboards (programmata) announcing new plays or exhibitions, crowds gathered while other groups watched acrobats, who beat themselves for the comic effects produced; dancers, jugglers, snake charmers, and performers of every kind and nation abounded. Heavily loaded wagons rumbled noisily along while their drivers cursed and lashed the tired beasts of burden, or the appearance of a tamed bear threw an entire street into wild and joyous confusion. Or perhaps a new troupe of gladiators entered town, to the complete cessation of all business and pastimes.[339] Here and there in the streets, money-changers and others set up tables in convenient places where they were least apt to be driven away, and hawked loudly the bargains that they offered. Money from all the world was then flowing Romeward, and in nothing was this shown more than in expensive funerals, with their hired and vociferous mourners, blocking the streets and putting an end for the time being, to other business—and amusements.[340] Narrow as were the streets, they were made more so by the tabernæ, built up against the houses, this practice becoming so much of a nuisance (as in modern times) that the Emperor Domitian caused a decree to be issued against them, forcing the owners to remove the encroachments and confine themselves to the area of the house.[341]
A drunken man taking the entire via in his navigation—to the amusement of the crowd; a member of the city guard hurrying some offender to the court; or, reclining in his lectica, a noble, carried by six uniformed slaves, his other numerous attendants clearing the way for him—all these added to the noise and confusion—while through it all children crowded the curb with their games.
Such was the Rome that Augustus found, its proud citizens masters of the world, luxurious, sensual, disdainful of the very idea of duty, idling days away while they scoffed at marriage. But the foreigners, the freedmen, and the slaves married, and when the burden of a new child was too much for the small income made by amusing or serving some Roman citizen, the little newcomer was thrown into the Tiber or left unmarked on a busy thoroughfare. One of the first undertakings of Augustus was to try to remedy these evil conditions by laws and fiscal measures, his principal endeavour being to put an end to the corruption of morals and the exhaustion of the legitimate population.
From the day of the battle of Actium (B. C. 31) when the Roman world practically lay at his feet, Octavius, or Augustus as he was afterward called, while gratifying his ambition in adding to his power, studiously and ostentatiously observed the forms of popular government. In this he was paying heed to the fate of his uncle and also conciliating the people, though with every ingratiating move he increased his power.
One of the first laws he proposed was the lex Julia (de maritandis ordinibus) which was rejected by the comitia tributa, B. C. 18, but was adopted in A. D. 4. To this was added as a supplement the lex Papia Poppæa, the two being known as the lex Julia et Papia or as novæ leges, or simply leges, the latter reference indicating that they were referred to as the laws par excellence. Not only marriage, but everything connected with it was treated in these two laws, which really constituted a code, the most extensive after the laws of the Twelve Tables.
These laws made a great impression on Roman society. How completely customs had swung to extremes since the days of Romulus is shown in this lex Papia, as Gaius calls it. Instead of securing the father in his right over the life of children, as the stern head of the house who might decide at will whether he should let his offspring live, the law now decreed that it was through the children that he gained a status in the community. Persons who were not married and had no children were unable to inherit; the unmarried person not being able to take any part of what had been left to him, and the married person without children (orbus) being able to take only one half.[342] Among the provisions of the lex Julia, or the leges, were those entitling that candidate for office who had the greatest number of children to preference. Of the two consuls it was decreed that he should be the senior whose children were the most numerous; a relief from all personal taxes and burdens was granted to citizens who had three children if they lived in Rome, four if they lived in Italy, and five if they lived in the provinces.
With the establishment of the caduca, by which there was instituted a punishment for sterility and a reward for legitimate procreation, it can be seen that there would follow some diminution in the number of children exposed, though according to Tacitus,[343] “marriages and the rearing of children did not become more frequent, so powerful are the attractions of the childless state.”
By giving the people, or the common treasury, the benefit of the clause forfeiting the inheritance on account of sterility, the law was recognizing the populus as the common father, a legal concept that is becoming more and more the attitude of the twentieth century, and was then first trenchantly expressed.