Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius

by Samuel Dill

The ideal of the Cynic life has been painted with gentle enthusiasm by Epictetus.[1904] The true Cynic is a messenger from Zeus, to tell men that they have wandered far from the right way, that they are seeking happiness in regions where happiness is not to be found. It is not to be found in the glory of consulships, or in the Golden House of Nero.[1905] It lies close to us, yet in the last place where we ever seek it, in ourselves, in the clear vision of the ruling faculty, in freedom from the bondage to imagined good, to the things of sense.[1906] This preaching was also to be preaching by example. [pg 360]The gospel of renunciation has been discredited from age to age when it has come from the lips of a man lapped in downy comfort, who never gave up anything in his life, and who indolently points his flock to the steep road which he never means to tread with his own feet. But the Cynic of Epictetus, with a true vocation, could point to himself, without home or wife or children, without a city, without possessions, having forsaken all for moral freedom.[1907] He has done it at the call of God, not from mere caprice, or a fancy to wander lawlessly on the outskirts of society.[1908] He has done it because the condition of the world demands such stern self-restraint in the chief who would save the discipline of an army engaged in desperate battle. It is a combat like the Olympian strife which he has to face, and woe to him who enters the lists untrained and unprepared.[1909] The care of wife and children is not for one who has laid upon him the care of the family of man, who has to console and admonish, and guide them into the right way.[1910] All worldly loves and entanglements must be put aside by one who claims to be the “spy and herald of God.” The Cynic is the father of all men; the men are his sons, the women his daughters.[1911] When he rebukes them, it is as a father in God, a minister of Zeus. Nor may he take a part in the government of any earthly state, which is a petty affair in comparison with the ministry with which he is charged. How should he meddle with the administration of Athens or Corinth, who has to deal with the moral fortunes of the whole commonwealth of man.[1912] Possessing in himself the secret of happiness and woe, he never descends into the vulgar contest, where he may be overcome by the vilest and poorest spirits, for objects which he has trained himself to regard as absolutely indifferent or worthless. And so, he is proof against the spitefulness of fortune and the baseness or violence of man. He will calmly suffer blows or insults as sent by Zeus, just as Heracles bore cheerfully and triumphantly the toils which were laid on him by Eurystheus. The true Cynic will even love those who buffet and insult him.[1913] He will also resemble his patron hero [pg 361]in the fresh comely strength of his body, which is the gift of temperance and long days passed under the open sky.[1914] Above all, he will have a conscience clearer than the sun, so that, at peace with himself and having assurance of the friendship of the gods, he may be able to speak with all boldness to his brothers and his children.[1915] This was the kind of moral ministry which was needed by the age, and, in spite of both undeserved calumny, and the real shame of many corrupt impostors in its ranks, the missionary movement of Cynicism was one of undoubted power and range. The resemblance, in many points, of the Cynics to the early Christian monks and ascetics has been often noticed, and men sometimes passed from the one camp to the other without any violent wrench.[1916] The rhetor Aristides, in a fierce attack on the Cynic sect, makes it a reproach that they have much in common with “the impious in Palestine.” Tatian, and others of the Gnostic ascetics, were in close connection with leading Cynics.[1917] How easily they were absorbed into the bosom of the Church we can see from the tale of Maximus, an Egyptian Cynic of the fourth century, who continued to wear the distinctive marks of the philosophic brotherhood, till he was installed as bishop of Constantinople.[1918] And the contemporary eulogies of Cynic virtue by John Chrysostom and Themistius testify at once to the importance of a movement the strength of which was not spent till after the fall of the Western Empire, and to its affinities for the kindred movement of Christian asceticism.

These “ambassadors of God,” as they claimed to be, cared little, like S. Paul, for “the wisdom of the world,” or for the figments of the poets, and those great cosmic theories which enabled Seneca to sustain or rekindle his moral faith. With rare exceptions, such as Oenomaus of Gadara, they seldom committed their ideas to writing.[1919] For the serried dialectic of the Stoics they substituted the sharp biting epigram and lively repartee, in which even the gentle Demonax indulged.[1920] Demetrius, who saw the reigns of both Caligula and Domitian,[1921] was a man of real power and distinction. He was revered by [pg 362]Seneca as a moral teacher of remarkable influence, “a great man even if compared with the greatest,”[1922] who lived up to the severest counsels which he addressed to others. He would bear cold and nakedness and hard lodging with cheerful fortitude, he was a man whom not even the age of Nero could corrupt. His poverty was genuine, and he would never beg.[1923] He set little store by philosophical theory, in comparison with diligent application of a few tried and well-conned precepts.[1924] Yet he had the brand of culture, and once, when his taste was offended by a bad, tactless reader, who was ruining a passage in the Bacchae, he snatched the book from his hands and tore it in pieces.[1925] Although he disdained the trimmed, artificial eloquence of the schools, he had the fire and impetus of the true orator.[1926] With little taste for abstract musings, he consoled the last hours of Thrasea in prison with a discourse on the nature of the soul and the mystery of its severance from the body at death.[1927] He formed a close alliance for a time with that roaming hierophant of philosophy, Apollonius of Tyana, the bond between them being probably a common asceticism and a common hatred of the imperial tyranny.[1928] For Demetrius, if not a revolutionary, was a leader of the philosophic opposition, which assailed the emperors, not so much in their political capacity, as because they too often represented and stimulated the moral lawlessness and materialism of the age. Our sympathies must be with Demetrius when he boldly faced the dangerous scowl of Nero with the mot, “You threaten me with death, but nature threatens you.”[1929] But our sympathies will be rather with Vespasian, the plain old soldier, who, when Demetrius openly insulted him, treated the “Cynic bark” with quiet contempt.[1930] In truth, the Flavian emperors, till the expulsion of the philosophers by Domitian, seem to have been on the whole indulgent to the outspoken freedom of the Cynics.[1931] Occasionally, however, the daring censor had, in the interests of [pg 363]authority, to be restrained. Once, when Titus was in the theatre, with the Jewess Berenice by his side, a Cynic, bearing the name of the founder of the sect, gave voice in a long bitter oration to popular feeling against what was regarded as a shameful union. This Cynic John the Baptist, got off with a scourging.[1932] A comrade named Heros, however, repeated the offensive expostulation, and lost his head. Peregrinus, for a similar attack on Antoninus Pius, was quietly warned by the prefect to leave the precincts of Rome. In the third century there was a great change in the political fortunes and attitude of the sect; Cynics are even found basking in imperial favour, and lending their support to the imperial power.[1933]

The Cynics, from the days of Antisthenes, had poured contempt on the popular religion and the worship of material images of the Divine. They were probably the purest monotheists that classical antiquity produced.[1934] Demetrius is almost Epicurean in his belief in eternal Fate, and his contempt for the wavering wills and caprices which mythological fancy ascribed to the Olympian gods.[1935] Demonax, the mildest and most humane member of the school in imperial times, refused to offer sacrifices or even to seek initiation in the Mysteries of Eleusis.[1936] When he was impeached for impiety before the Athenian courts, he replied that, as for sacrifices, the Deity had no need of them, and that touching the Mysteries, he was in this dilemma: if they contained a revelation of what was good for men, he must in duty publish it; if they were bad and worthless, he would feel equally bound to warn the people against the deception. But the most fearless and trenchant assailant of the popular theology among the Cynics was Oenomaus of Gadara, in the reign of Hadrian.[1937] Oenomaus rejected, with the frankest scorn, the anthropomorphic fables of heathenism. In particular, he directed his fiercest attacks against the revival of that faith in oracles and divination which was a marked characteristic of the Antonine age. Plutarch, in a charming walk [pg 364]round the sights of Delphi, in which he acts as cicerone, describes a Cynic named Didymus as assailing the influence of oracles on human character.[1938] But Oenomaus, as we know him from Eusebius, was a far more formidable and more pitiless iconoclast than Didymus. He constructed an elaborate historical demonstration to show that the oracles were inspired neither by the gods nor by daemons, but were a very human contrivance to dupe the credulous. And in connection with the subject of oracles, he dealt with the question of free-will, and asserted man’s inalienable liberty, and the responsibility for all his actions which is the necessary concomitant of freedom. Oenomaus treated Dodona and Delphi with such jaunty disrespect that, at the distance of a century and a half, his memory aroused the anger of Julian to such a degree, that the imperial champion of paganism could hardly find words strong enough to express his feelings.[1939] Oenomaus is a wretch who is cutting at the roots, not only of all reverence for divine things, but of all those moral instincts implanted in our souls by God, which are the foundation of all right conduct and justice. For such fellows no punishment could be too severe; they are worse than brigands and wreckers.[1940]

The resolute rejection of the forms of popular worship, and of the claims of divination, is hardly less marked in the mild and tolerant Demonax.[1941] Demonax, whose life extended probably from 50 to 150 A.D.,[1942] sprang from a family in Cyprus of some wealth and distinction, and had a finished literary culture.[1943] But he had conceived from childhood a passion for the philosophic life, according to the ideal of that age. His teachers were Cynics or Stoics, but in speculative opinion he was broadly Eclectic. In his long life he had associated with Demetrius and Epictetus, Apollonius and Herodes Atticus.[1944] When asked once who was his favourite philosopher, he replied that he reverenced Socrates, admired Diogenes, and loved Aristippus.[1945] His tone had perhaps the greatest affinity for the simplicity of [pg 365]the Socratic teaching. But he did not adopt the irony of the master, which, if it was a potent arm of dialectic, often left the subject of it in an irritated and humiliated mood. Demonax was a true Cynic in his contempt for ordinary objects of greed and ambition,[1946] in the simple, austere fashion of his daily life, and in the keen epigrammatic point, often, to our taste, verging on rudeness, with which he would expose pretence and rebuke any kind of extravagance.[1947] But although he cultivated a severe bodily discipline, so as to limit to the utmost his external wants, he carefully avoided any ostentatious singularity of manner to win a vulgar notoriety. He had an infinite charity for all sorts of men, excepting only those who seemed beyond the hope of amendment.[1948] His counsels were given with an Attic grace and brightness which sent people away from his company cheered and improved, and hopeful for the future. Treating error as a disease incident to human nature, he attacked the sin, but was gentle to the sinner.[1949] He made it his task to compose the feuds of cities and to stimulate unselfish patriotism; he reconciled the quarrels of kinsmen; he would, on occasion, chasten the prosperous, and comfort the failing and unfortunate, by reminding both alike of the brief span allotted to either joy or sorrow, and the long repose of oblivion which would soon set a term to all the agitations of sorrow or of joy.[1950]

But there was another side to his teaching. Demonax was no supple, easy-going conformist to usages which his reason rejected. Early in his career, as has been said, he had to face a prosecution before the tribunals of Athens, because he was never seen to sacrifice to the gods, and declined initiation at Eleusis. In each case, he defended his nonconformity in the boldest tone.[1951] To a prophet whom he saw plying his trade for hire, he put the dilemma: “If you can alter the course of destiny, why do you not demand higher fees? If everything happens by the decree of God, where is the value of your art?”[1952] When asked if he believed the soul to be immortal, he answered, “It is as immortal as everything else.”[1953] He derided, in almost brutal style, the effeminacy of the sophist Favorinus, and the extravagant grief of Herodes Atticus for his son.[1954] He ruth[pg 366]lessly exposed the pretences of sham philosophy wherever he met it. When a youthful Eclectic professed his readiness to obey any philosophic call, from the Academy, the Porch, or the Pythagorean discipline of silence, Demonax cried out, “Pythagoras calls you.”[1955] He rebuked the pedantic archaism of his day by telling an affected stylist that he spoke in the fashion of Agamemnon’s time.[1956] When Epictetus advised him to marry and become the father of a line of philosophers, he asked the celibate preacher to give him one of his daughters.[1957] The Athenians, from a vulgar jealousy of Corinth, proposed to defile their ancient memories by establishing gladiatorial shows under the shadow of the Acropolis. Demonax, in the true spirit of Athens from the time of Theseus, advised them first to sweep away the altar of Pity.[1958]

Demonax lived to nearly a hundred years. He is said never to have had an enemy. He was the object of universal deference whenever he appeared in public. In his old age he might enter any Athenian house uninvited, and they welcomed him as their good genius. The children brought him their little presents of fruit and called him father, and as he passed through the market, the baker-women contended for the honour of giving him their loaves. He died a voluntary death, and wished for no tomb save what nature would give him. But the Athenians were aware that they had seen in him a rare apparition of goodness; they honoured him with a splendid and imposing burial and mourned long for him. And the bench on which he used to sit when he was weary they deemed a sacred stone, and decked it with garlands long after his death.[1959]

Demonax, by a strange personal charm, attained to an extraordinary popularity and reverence. But the great mass of philosophic preachers had to face a great deal of obloquy and vulgar contempt. Apart from the coarseness, arrogance, and inconsistency of many of them, which gave just offence, their very profession was an irritating challenge to a pleasure-loving and worldly age. Men who gloried in the splendour of their civic life, and were completely absorbed in it, who [pg 367]were flattered and cajoled by their magistrates and popular leaders, could hardly like to be told by the vagrant, homeless teacher, in beggar’s garb, that they were ignorant and perverted and lost in a maze of deception. They would hardly be pleased to hear that their civilisation was an empty show, without a solid core of character, that their hopes of happiness from a round of games and festivals, from the splendour of art in temples and statues, were the merest mirage. The message Beati pauperes spiritu—Beati qui lugent, will never be a popular one. That was the message to his age of the itinerant Cynic preacher, and his unkempt beard and ragged cloak and the fashion of his life made him the mark of cheap and abundant ridicule. Sometimes the contempt was deserved; no great movement for the elevation of humanity has been free from impostors. Yet the severe judgment of the Cynic missionaries on their age is that of the polished orator, who had as great a scorn as Lucian for the sensual or mercenary Cynic, and yet took up the scrip and staff himself, to propagate the same gospel as the Cynics.[1960]

Dion Chrysostom was certainly not a Cynic in the academic sense, but he belonged to the same great movement. He sprang from a good family at Prusa in Bithynia.[1961] He was trained in all the arts of rhetoric, and taught and practised them in the early part of his life. A suspected friendship led to his banishment in the reign of Domitian, and in his exile, with the Phaedo and the De Falsa Legatione as his companions, he wandered over many lands, supporting himself often by menial service.[1962] He at last found himself in his wanderings in regions where wild tribes of the Getae for a century and a half had been harrying the distant outposts of Hellenic civilisation on the northern shores of the Euxine.[1963] The news of the death of Domitian reached a camp on the Danube when Dion was there. The soldiery, faithful to their emperor, were excited and indignant, but, under the spell of Dion’s eloquence, they were brought to acquiesce in the accession of the blameless Nerva. Dion at length returned to Rome, and rose to high favour at court. Trajan often [pg 368]invited him to his table, and used to take him as companion in his state carriage, although the honest soldier did not pretend to appreciate Dion’s rhetoric.[1964]

During his exile, as he tells us, Dion had been converted to more serious views of life. The triumphs of conventional declamation before fashionable audiences lost their glamour. Dion became conscious of a loftier mission to the dim masses of that far-spreading empire through whose cities and wildernesses he was wandering.[1965] As to the eyes of Seneca, men seemed to Dion, amid all their fair, cheerful life, to be holding out their hands for help. Wherever he went, he found that, in his beggar’s dress, he was surrounded by crowds of people eager to hear any word of comfort or counsel in the doubts and troubles of their lives. They assumed that the poor wanderer was a philosopher. They plied him with questions on the great problem, How to live; and the elegant sophist was thus compelled to find an answer for them and for himself.[1966]

Dion never quite shook off the traditions and tone of the rhetorical school. The ambition to say things in the most elegant and attractive style, the love of amplifying, in leisurely and elaborate development, a commonplace and hackneyed theme still clings to him. His eighty orations are many of them rather essays than popular harangues. They range over all sorts of subjects, literary, mythological, and artistic, political and social, as well as purely ethical or religious. But, after all, Dion is unmistakably the preacher of a great moral revival and reform. He cannot be classed definitely with any particular school of philosophy. He is the apostle of Greek culture, yet he admires Diogenes, the founder of the Cynics.[1967] If he had any philosophic ancestry, he would probably have traced himself to the Xenophontic Socrates.[1968] But he is really the rhetorical apostle [pg 369]of the few great moral principles which were in the air, the common stock of Platonist, Stoic, Cynic, even the Epicurean. Philosophy to him is really a religion, the science of right living in conformity to the will of the Heavenly Power. But it is also the practice of right living. No Christian preacher has probably ever insisted more strongly on the gulf which separates the commonplace life of the senses from the life devoted to a moral ideal.[1969] The only philosophy worth the name is the earnest quest of the path to true nobility and virtue, in obedience to the good genius, the unerring monitor within the breast of each of us, in whose counsels lies the secret of happiness properly so called.[1970] Hence Dion speaks with the utmost scorn alike of the coarse Cynic impostor, who disgraces his calling by buffoonery and debauchery,[1971] and the philosophic exquisite who tickles the ears of a fashionable audience with delicacies of phrase, but never thinks of trying to make them better men. He feels a sincere indignation at this dilettante trifling, in view of a world which is in urgent need of practical guidance.[1972] For Dion, after all his wanderings through the Roman world, has no illusions as to its moral condition. He is almost as great a pessimist as Seneca or Juvenal. In spite of all its splendour and outward prosperity, society in the reign of Trajan seemed to Dion to be in a perilous state. Along with his own conversion came the revelation of the hopeless bewilderment of men in the search for happiness. Dimly conscious of their evil plight, they are yet utterly ignorant of the way to escape from it. They are swept hither and thither in a vortex of confused passions and longings for material pleasures.[1973] Material civilisation, without any accompanying moral discipline, has produced the familiar and inevitable result, in an ever-increasing appetite for wealth and enjoyment and showy distinction, which ends in perpetual disillusionment. Dion warns the people of Tarsus that they are all [pg 370]sunk in a deep sensual slumber, and living in a world of mere dreams, in which the reality of things is absolutely inverted. Their famous river, their stately buildings, their wealth, even their religious festivals, on which they plume themselves, are the merest show of happiness.[1974] Its real secret, which lies in temperance, justice, and true piety, is quite hidden from their eyes. When that secret is learnt, their buildings may be less stately, gold and silver will perhaps not be so abundant, there will be less soft and delicate living, there may be even fewer costly sacrifices as piety increases; but there will be a clearer perception of the true values of things, and a chastened temperance of spirit, which are the only security for the permanence of society. And the moralist points his audience to the splendid civilisations of the past that have perished because they were without a soul. Assyria and Lydia, the great cities of Magna Graecia which lived in a dream of luxury, what are they now? And, latest example of all, Macedon, who pushed her conquests to the gates of India, and came into possession of the hoarded treasures of the great Eastern Empires, is gone, and royal Pella, the home of the race, is now a heap of bricks.[1975]