SCENE FROM A TRAGEDY
Terra-cotta relief
[VIII]
The New Rome
With the death of Sulla a new period of Roman history begins, a brief and in many ways brilliant half-century, about which we know far more than we do of any earlier time, since we possess the works, in writing, architecture, sculpture, of the men, or of some of them, who helped to make it. Roman life in these fifty years is, in many respects, startlingly like that of our own day. True, the great discoveries of science had not been achieved; there were no motors, telephones or lifts, no railways, no electric light or power, no illustrated papers—indeed the first newspaper of any kind was a small sheet issued by Caesar. But in the things they did and said and thought about, and in the way they acted and spoke and thought about them, the Romans who lived in the sixty odd years before the birth of Christ were very much like the Englishmen of our own day. The comfort of the lives of the well-to-do, with their elegant town houses and charming country villas, furnished with beautiful things brought from all parts of the world, depended on the labour of innumerable slaves. In many ways, however, these slaves were not worse off than the poor factory workers of our great towns; in some they were more fortunate. The lot of those who were being trained to fight in the games was certainly dreadful; but those owned by private persons were for the most part kindly treated and could and often did buy their freedom. The class of freedmen was a large and growing one in Rome.
CUTLER’S FORGE
The revolutionary wars had brought ruin to many. Large tracts of Italy had been laid waste. But though the wounds that had been dealt at the life of the country bled for long, prosperity returned surprisingly quickly. If some families had lost everything, others had profited by their losses. And from abroad wealth poured into Italy in ever-increasing streams. A new class of rich men grew up, whose wealth came from business of all sorts—tax-farming in the provinces, house building, ship construction, agriculture on a large scale. Side by side with them were the lawyers, an increasingly important body. As to-day, a great many young men, when they had completed their education by spending some time abroad, in Greece by preference, became barristers. Success in the courts, the power of public speaking, opened the way to success in politics, though it was long before any one could go far along that road who had not won distinction as a soldier.
