Probably no people abandoned themselves to pleasures more universally than the Romans, after war had ceased to be their master passion. All classes alike pursued them with restless eagerness. Amusements were the fashion and the business of life. At the theatre, at the great gladiatorial shows, at the chariot races, emperors and senators and generals were always present in conspicuous and reserved seats of honor; behind them were the patricians, and then the ordinary citizens, and in the rear of these the people fed at the public expense. The Circus Maximus, the Theatre of Pompey, the Amphitheatre of Titus, would collectively accommodate over four hundred thousand spectators. We may presume that over five hundred thousand persons were in the habit of constant attendance on these demoralizing sports; and the fashion spread throughout all the great cities of the empire, so that there was scarcely a city of twenty thousand inhabitants which had not its theatres, amphitheatres, or circus. And when we remember the heavy bets on favorite horses, and the universal passion for gambling in every shape, we can form some idea of the effect of these amusements on the common mind,--destroying the taste for home pleasures, and for all that was intellectual and simple.
What are we to think of a state of society where all classes had continual leisure for these sports! Habits of industry were destroyed, and all respect for employments that required labor. The rich were supported by contributions from the provinces, since they were the great proprietors of conquered lands; the poor had no solicitude for a living, since they were supported at the public expense. All therefore gave themselves up to pleasure. Even the baths, designed for sanatory purposes, became places of resort and idleness, and ultimately of intrigue and vice. In the time of Julius Caesar we find no less a personage than the mother of Augustus making use of the public establishments; and in process of time the Emperors themselves bathed in public with the meanest of their subjects. The baths in the time of Alexander Severus were not only kept open from sunrise to sunset, but even during the whole night. The luxurious classes almost lived in the baths. Commodus took his meals in the bath. Gordian bathed seven times in the day, and Gallienus as often. They bathed before they took their meals, and after meals to provoke a new appetite; they did not content themselves with a single bath, but went through a course of baths in succession, in which the agency of air as well as of water was applied; and the bathers were attended by an army of slaves given over to every sort of roguery and theft. Nor were water and air baths alone used; the people made use of scented oils to anoint their persons, and perfumed the water itself with the most precious essences. Bodily health and cleanliness were only secondary considerations; voluptuous pleasure was the main object. The ruins of the baths of Titus, Caracalla, and Diocletian in Rome show that they were decorated with prodigal magnificence, and with everything that could excite the passions,--pictures, statues, ornaments, and mirrors. The baths were scenes of orgies consecrated to Bacchus, and the frescos on the excavated baths of Pompeii still raise a blush on the face of every spectator who visits them. I speak not of the elaborate ornaments, the Numidian marbles, the precious stones, the exquisite sculptures that formed part of the decorations of the Roman baths, but of the demoralizing pleasures with which they were connected, and which they tended to promote. The baths ultimately became, according to the ancient writers, places of excessive and degrading debauchery.
"Balnea, vina, Venus corrumpunt corpora nostra."
If it were possible to allude to an evil more revolting than the sports of the amphitheatre and circus, or the extravagant luxuries of the table, I would say that the universal abandonment to money-making, for the enjoyment of the factitious pleasures it purchased, was even still more melancholy, since it struck deeper into the foundations which supported society. The leading spring of life was money. Boys were bred from early youth to all the mysteries of unscrupulous gains. Usury was practised to such an incredible extent that the interest on loans in some instances equalled, in a few months, the whole capital; this was the more aristocratic mode of making money, which not even senators disdained. The pages of the poets show how profoundly money was prized, and how miserable were people without it. Rich old bachelors, without heirs, were held in the supremest honor. Money was the first object in all matrimonial alliances; and provided that women were only wealthy, neither bridegroom nor parent was fastidious as to age, or deformity, or meanness of family, or vulgarity of person. The needy descendants of the old patricians yoked themselves with fortunate plebeians, and the blooming maidens of a comfortable obscurity sold themselves, without shame or reluctance, to the bloated sensualists who could give them what they supremely valued,--chariots and diamonds. The giddy women in love with ornaments and dress, and the godless men seeking what they should eat, could only be satisfied with what purchased their pleasures. The haughtiest aristocracy ever known on earth, tracing their lineage to the times of Cato and boasting of their descent from the Scipios and the Pompeys, accustomed themselves at last to regard money as the only test of their own social position. The great Augustine found himself utterly neglected at Rome because of his poverty,--being dependent on his pupils, and they being mean enough to run away without paying him. Literature languished and died, since it brought neither honor nor emolument. No dignitary was respected for his office, only for his gains; nor was any office prized which did not bring rich emoluments. Corruption was so universal that an official in an important post was sure of making a fortune in a short time. With such an idolatry of money, all trades and professions which were not favorable to its accumulation fell into disrepute, while those who administered to the pleasures of a rich man were held in honor. Cooks, buffoons, and dancers received the consideration which artists and philosophers enjoyed at Athens in the days of Pericles. But artists and scholars were very few indeed in the more degenerate days of the empire; nor would they have had influence. The wit of a Petronius, the ridicule of a Martial, the bitter sarcasm of a Juvenal were lost on a people abandoned to frivolous gossip and demoralizing excesses. The haughty scorn with which a sensual beauty, living on the smiles and purse of a fortunate glutton, would pass in her gilded chariot some of the impoverished descendants of the great Camillus might have provoked a smile, had any one been found, even a neglected poet, to give them countenance and sympathy. But, alas! everybody worshipped at the shrine of Mammon; everybody was valued for what he had, rather than for what he was; and life was prized, not for those pleasures which are cheap and free as heaven, not for quiet tastes and rich affections and generous sympathies,--the glorious certitudes of love, esteem, and friendship, which, "be they what they may, are yet the fountain-life of all our day,"--but for the gratification of depraved and expensive tastes, of those short-lived enjoyments which ended with the decay of appetite and the ennui of realized expectation,--all of the earth, earthy; making a wreck of the divine image which was made for God and heaven, preparing the way for a most fearful retribution, and producing on contemplative minds a sadness allied with despair, driving them to caves and solitudes, and making death the relief from sorrow.
The fourteenth satire of Juvenal is directed mainly to the universal passion for gain and the demoralizing vices it brings in its train, which made Rome a Vanity Fair and even a Pandemonium.
The old Greek philosophers gloried in their poverty; but poverty was the greatest reproach to a Roman. "In exact proportion to the sum of money a man keeps in his chest," says Juvenal, "is the credit given to his oath. And the first question ever asked of a man is in reference to his income, rather than his character. How many slaves does he keep; how many acres does he own; what dishes are his table spread with?--these are the universal inquiries. Poverty, bitter though it be, has no sharper sting than this,--that it makes men ridiculous. Who was ever allowed at Borne to become a son-in-law, if his estate was inferior? What poor man's name appears in any will?"
And with this reproach of poverty there were no means to escape from it. Nor was there alleviation. A man was regarded as a fool who gave anything except to the rich. Charity and benevolence were unknown virtues. The sick and the miserable were left to die unlamented and unknown. Prosperity and success, no matter by what means they were purchased, secured reverence and influence.
Such was imperial Rome, in all the internal relations of life, and amid all the trophies and praises which resulted from universal conquest,--a sad, gloomy, dismal picture, which fills us with disgust as well as melancholy. If any one deems it an exaggeration, he has only to read Saint Paul's first chapter in his epistle to the Romans. I cannot understand the enthusiasm of Gibbon for such a people, or for such an empire,--a grinding and resistless imperial despotism, a sensual and proud aristocracy, a debased and ignorant populace, enormously disproportionate conditions of fortune, slavery flourishing to a state unprecedented in the world's history, women the victims and the toys of men, lax sentiments of public and private morality, a whole people given over to demoralizing sports and spectacles, pleasure the master passion of the people, money the mainspring of society, a universal indulgence in all the vices which lead to violence and prepare the way for the total eclipse of the glory of man. Of what value was the cultivation of Nature, or a splendid material civilization, or great armies, or an unrivalled jurisprudence, or the triumph of energy and skill, when the moral health was completely undermined? A world therefore as fair and glorious as our own must needs crumble away. There were no powerful conservative forces; the poison had descended to the extremities of the social system. A corrupt body must die when vitality has fled. The soul was gone; principle, patriotism, virtue, had all passed away. The barbarians were advancing to conquer and desolate; there was no power to resist them but enervated and timid legions, with the accumulated vices of all the nations of the earth, which they had been learning for four hundred years. Society must needs resolve itself into its original elements when men would not make sacrifices, and so few belonged to their country. The machine was sure to break up at the first great shock. No State could stand with such an accumulation of wrongs, with such complicated and fatal diseases eating out the vitals of the empire. No form of civilization, however brilliant and lauded, could arrest decay and ruin when public and private virtue had fled. The house was built upon the sand.
The army might rally under able generals, in view of the approaching catastrophe; philosophy might console the days of a few indignant citizens; good Emperors might attempt to raise barriers against corruption,--still, nothing, according to natural laws, could save the empire. Even Christianity could not arrest the ruin. It had converted thousands, and had sowed the seeds of future and better civilizations. It was sent, however, not to save a decayed and demoralized empire, but the world itself. Not until the Germanic barbarians, with their nobler elements of character, had taken possession of the seats of the old civilization, were the real triumphs of Christianity seen. Had the Roman empire continued longer, Christianity might have become still more corrupted; in the prevailing degeneracy it certainly could not save what was not worth preserving. The strong grasp which Rome had laid upon the splendors of all the ancient Pagan Civilizations was to be relaxed. Antiquity had lived out its life. The empire of the Caesars was doomed. Retributive justice must march on in its majestic course. The empire had accomplished its mission; the time came for it to die. The Sibylline oracle must needs be fulfilled: "O haughty Rome, the divine chastisement shall come upon thee; fire shall consume thee; thy wealth shall perish; foxes and wolves shall dwell among thy ruins: and then what land that thou hast enslaved shall be thy ally, and which of thy gods shall save thee? For there shall be confusion over the face of the whole earth, and the fall of cities shall come."