“On the hills ... together careless of mankind.”
“ego deum genus esse dixi et dicam semper cælitum,
sed eos non curare opinor quid agat humanum genus,
nam si curent, bene bonis sit, male malis, quod nunc abest.”
At the age of fifty Ennius set himself to relate the whole of Roman history in eighteen books of epic verse. No one claims for him the rank of a great poet, but he shaped for Vergil’s hand that magnificent instrument the Latin hexameter, and many scholars believe that he vitally affected the literary language of Rome by preserving the terminal inflexions which were dropping out of current speech. All the fragments of Ennius that have survived, though often rough and ugly, yet possess a massive dignity of their own, and often a most solemn majesty of cadence, as in the lines with which I have headed this chapter. But here again we must notice that the rugged father of Latin poetry had already taken over the scepticism of the declining religion of Greece.
For many generations now Roman religion had been losing its native character and becoming cosmopolitan and denationalised. As we have seen, its genuinely native elements were mainly rural and now the Roman was a townsman with a townsman’s light scepticism and craving for novelty and sensation. Jupiter and Minerva and the other high gods had from the first been largely foreigners; at any rate few discernibly Latin ideas appear in the cults or personalities. As early as 204 B.C., that is, in the throes of the Great Punic War, the worship of Cybele—the Great Mother of Phrygian ritual—had been introduced along with its begging eunuch priests. Apollo with appropriate athletic games had arrived a few years earlier. New gods multiplied, old gods became hellenised, Roman priesthoods became more and more political, being simply obtained by popular election like any other public office, or crack dining-clubs for the aristocracy. As the gods multiplied faith declined. In 186 B.C. the Senate discovered a whole system of secret nocturnal orgies which under the name of Bacchic mysteries had spread with extraordinary rapidity throughout Italy. Ten thousand men were arrested and condemned, mostly to death, but the associations flourished unchecked.
Morality, public and private, was equally unsound. Publicly we have sufficient stories of bribery by candidates for office—not to mention the systematic corruption of the electorate by corn-doles and shows—to prove that political uncleanness was of very old standing in Rome. As for private virtue it may be that the world of pimps and prostitutes which flits across the Plautine stage is borrowed from Athens, but it was certainly familiar at Rome and rapidly domesticated itself. Slavery had always existed there, and immorality is inseparable from slavery. Now with a mob of retired soldiers gathered promiscuously and without employment in the capital immorality was multiplied in every class. As early as 234 B.C. there was public complaint of the unwillingness of the Roman men of good family to face the responsibilities of marriage. Already, as in the case of C. Calpurnius Piso, there were horrible domestic tragedies in great houses. Divorce was already common. As usual the Pharisees of the day strove to combat immorality with prudishness. Cato the Censor punished a Roman senator for kissing his wife in the presence of their daughter.
Now, let it be remembered that this very age of which we are speaking, the age of conquest in the Punic and Greek wars, is the heroic age of Roman history, the age to which poets and historians of the empire looked back as golden. We do not rely upon satirists or gossip-dealers for this gloomy picture of Rome in her palmy days. The facts upon which it is based are beyond dispute. What inference are we to draw? Reviewing those facts and especially noticing the dates, we see that all the vicious features of Roman society, the cruelty, the idleness, the debauchery, the political corruption, the lack of artistic taste, the immorality and crime in the noble houses, the injustice and oppression of the poor and helpless, are no products of the Empire, but deeply engrained in the Roman character and entwined about the roots of her history. In our pursuit of old Roman virtue we may go to the furthest bounds of historical record in vain. No doubt, before Rome began to be a city and long before she began to have a history, there were simple laborious rustics on the Latin plains, who possessed, for want of opportunity, the virtuous abstinences of the poor. But it is manifestly false to ascribe degeneration either to the fall of the Republican system of government or to the introduction of civilisation. If one cause more than another is to be assigned for the rapid growth of evil tendencies it is the exhaustion consequent upon incessant warfare and the brutality engendered by continual life in camp. The only thing that could mitigate the latter was surely education and culture. Instead, then, of Greek civilisation being the cause of degeneracy at Rome we may more truthfully assert that it came to save her from ruin at a time when she was threatened with internal decay. Had it come earlier or been accepted more willingly it might have done more to brighten the darker pages of Roman history. It was their starved souls, empty of ideals, devoid even of reasonable occupation for their leisure or harmless use for their wealth, which rendered the aristocracy of Rome so utterly vulgar and debased.
III
THE LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC
urbem uenalem et mature perituram si emptorem inuenerit.
Jugurtha in Sallust
HERE is no doubt that many of the disquieting symptoms which we have just noted as afflicting Roman society in the second century B.C. might have been allayed, and possibly even the causes removed, by a wise and foreseeing government. In dealing with the allies and subjects who formed her vast and growing empire any modern politician could have told the senate that they had to choose one of two courses—either centralisation or devolution of power, either a just and firm system of control or a liberal grant of autonomous rights. But the senate had no policy. It left things to shape themselves. Again, the agrarian difficulty of a deserted countryside and an idle, disorderly city proletariat could easily have been solved if it had been taken early, before the habit of city-life grew upon the discharged warriors. Again the senate did nothing till it was too late. Then, having acquired an overseas empire all over the Mediterranean, the senate, if it had not been blind, should have seen that it was necessary to maintain a strong navy and police the seas in the interests of commerce. But again the government neglected its duty. For these and many other sins of negligence there was a heavy reckoning to be paid. It required no oracle to foretell disaster.