CONTENTS
BOOK I
CHAPTER I
THE ARISTOCRACY UNDER THE TERROR
How far the Antonine age is marked by a moral and spiritual revolution—Light which Seneca throws on the moral condition of his class in Nero’s reign—Value of his testimony—His pessimism—Human degeneracy the result of selfish greed and luxury—Picture of contemporary society—Cruel selfishness and the taedium vitae—The Ardelio—The terror under which Seneca lived—Seneca’s ideal of the principate expounded to Nero in the De Clementia—The character of Nero—Taint in the blood of the Domitii—Nero at first showed glimpses of some better qualities—How he was injured by the ambition to be an artist—False aestheticism and insane profusion—Feeling of Tacitus as to his time—His career—Views as to his impartiality as a historian—He was under complex influences—His chief motive as a historian—He is not a political doctrinaire—He is avenging a moral, not a political ideal—His pessimism—His prejudices and limitations—His ideal of education and character—His hesitating religious faith—His credulity and his scepticism—His view of the corrupting influence of despotic power—The influence of imperial example—Profusion of the early Caesars, leading to murder and confiscation in order to replenish their treasury—Dangers of life about the court from espionage—Causes of delation—Its temptations and its great rewards—The secret of the imperial terror—Various theories of it—Was the Senate a real danger?—Its impotence in spite of its prestige and claims—The philosophic opposition—Was it really revolutionary?—“Scelera sceleribus tuenda”—The undefined position of the principate—Its working depended greatly on the character of the Emperor for the time—Pliny’s ideal of the principate—The danger from pretenders—Evil effects of astrology—The degradation of the aristocracy under Nero and Domitian illustrated from the Pisonian conspiracy—and the Year of the Four Emperors—The reign of Domitian—Its puzzling character—Its strange contrasts—The terrors of its close—Confiscation and massacre—The funereal banquet
Pages [1]-57
CHAPTER II
THE WORLD OF THE SATIRIST
Juvenal and Tacitus compared—Social position and experience of Juvenal—Juvenal and Martial deal with the same features of society—Their motives compared—Character of Martial—The moral standard of Juvenal—His humanity and his old Roman prejudices—He unites the spirit of two different ages—His rhetorical pessimism—His sweeping generalisations—Abnormal specimens become types—Roman luxury at its height—Yet similar extravagance is denounced for five centuries—Such judgments need qualification—The great social changes depicted by Juvenal, some of which he misunderstands—Roman respect for birth—The decay of the aristocracy and its causes—Aristocratic poverty and servility—How the early Emperors lowered senatorial dignity—Aristocratic gladiators and actors—Nero made bohemianism the fashion—“The Legend of Bad Women”—Its untrustworthiness and defects of treatment—High ideals of womanhood among contemporaries of Juvenal—He is influenced by old Roman prejudice—Juvenal hates the “new woman” as much as the vicious woman—The emancipation of women began in the second century B.C.—Higher culture of women and their growing influence on public affairs—Juvenal’s dislike of the oriental worships and their female devotees—This is another old movement—The influence of Judaism at Rome, even in the Imperial household—Women in Juvenal’s day were exposed to serious dangers—The corruptions of the theatre and the circus—Intrigues with actors and slaves—The invasion of Hellenism—Its history—The Hellenism of the Emperors—The lower Hellenism which Juvenal attacks—Social and economic causes of the movement—Greek tutors and professors—The medical profession chiefly recruited from foreigners—The character of the profession in those days—The astrologer and the parasite—The client of the early Empire—His degradation and his hardships—General poverty—The contempt for trade and industry—The growth of captation—The worship of wealth—The cry of the poor
Pages [58]-99