Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius

by Samuel Dill

The faith of Aristides must have been very robust. His tortures lasted for nearly thirteen years, during which the divine prescriptions only seemed to add to their poignancy. But he was upheld by the belief that he was a special object of the Divine favour, and he persistently followed Divine recipes, which ordinary human skill and prudence would have rejected. No doubts, such as troubled his attendants, ever crossed his mind. How far his illness was prolonged by this obstinate adherence to the illusions of sleep and superstition,[2411] in the face of expert advice, is a matter on which it would be useless to speculate. It is probable that the imagination and exuberant vanity of Aristides made him a more difficult patient than the ordinary people who frequented these shrines of healing. It is also evident that there was a body of more or less skilled medical opinion connected with the cult of Asclepius. Practical physicians came to the temples,[2412] with the benevolence and the curiosity of their craft in all ages, to observe and study, or to advise a cautious interpretation of the revelations of the night. Aristides has preserved the names of some—Theodotus, Asclepiacus, and Satyrus. Long observation of the freaks of individual temperament and constitution must have suggested to thoughtful minds, with some instincts of scientific method, that the supernatural vision should be interpreted in the light of experience. An awful dream of Aristides that all his bones [pg 466]and sinews must be excised, turned, in the hands of a faithful attendant, into a prediction of renewed vitality.[2413] And although some of the nurses, to whom he is so grateful, confirmed his visions by precisely similar revelations of their own,[2414] others, of the more skilled physicians, openly blamed his too confident reliance on his dreams, and his unwillingness to try the effect of more scientific treatment.[2415] Their proposals, however, were sometimes so severe and heroic that we may excuse him for preferring on the whole the more patient and gentle methods of the god. The sufferer was sometimes favoured with epiphanies of Athene, Apollo, Serapis, and other great divinities, exalting him far above the rank of common votaries.[2416] And Asclepius himself, to whom his special devotion was given, not only lightened his physical tortures, although after long years, but endowed him with hitherto unknown powers of rhetorical skill and readiness. The god became the patron of his whole professional life.[2417] And Aristides regarded him as the source of fresh inspiration, in the exercise of that wordcraft of which he was the greatest master in his time. It is not hard to discern the meaning of this self-deception. Before Aristides began to visit the temples of the god, he was already a finished rhetor, possessed of all the skill which the Greek schools could impart.[2418] Prostrated by bodily suffering for years, cut off from that life of brilliant display, which was so lavishly rewarded by applauding crowds, the vain and ambitious declaimer had lost not only his bodily health, but all the joy and excitement of rhetorical triumph. Suddenly he found his balance restored; the tide of energy returned to its old channels. He could once more draw music from the almost forgotten instrument. He had once more the full lecture-hall under his spell. What wonder that he should feel his powers redoubled when they were recovered, and that he should regard the god who had healed his bodily ailments as the author of a fresh literary inspiration?

The debt was repaid in these Sacred Orations.[2419] Some treat them as the expression of a genuine mystical piety, others are inclined to think that the incorrigible rhetorician is quite as evident as the pious votary.[2420] It would be an excess of scepticism to doubt that Aristides believed in his visions, and in the beneficent power of the god, for which he was full of pious gratitude. Yet the rhetorical spirit of that age was an influence of singular intensity. It mastered not only the faculty of utterance, but the whole mind and life of the rhetorician. The passion to produce a startling or seductive effect on the audience had become a second nature. Truth was a secondary matter, not from any moral obliquity, but from the influence of prolonged training. And so, we may retain a belief in the genuine piety or superstition of Aristides, while we may distrust his narrative. The piety or the mystic superstition may not have been less sincere, although it was mingled with egregious vanity, and expressed itself in the carefully moulded and highly coloured phrases of the schools. Nor should we doubt the piety of Aristides because he deemed himself the special object of Divine favour. On such a principle all prayer for personal benefits would become profane egotism. And although Aristides was profoundly conscious that he was the first of Greek orators,[2421] he was also profoundly grateful for the Divine grace which had renewed his powers for the glory of God and the delight and profit of mankind. Whether he would have been content to enjoy his mystic raptures without publishing them to the world, is a question which will be variously answered according to the charity and spiritual experience of the inquirer.

Many another less famous shrine than that of Epidaurus offered this kind of revelation. The gods were liberal in their prophetic gifts in that age, and dreams were as freely sent as they were generally expected. There is no more striking example of the superstition of the age than the treatise of Artemidorus on the interpretation of dreams. Artemidorus lived towards the end of the second century. He was a native of Ephesus, but he called himself Daldianus, in order to share his distinction with an obscure little town in Lydia, [pg 468]which was the birthplace of his mother.[2422] The treatise is in five books, three of which are dedicated to Cassius Maximus, a Roman of rank, who was an adept in this pretended science; the others are inscribed to the son of the author. In spite of absurd credulity, wild and perverted ingenuity and a cold, quasi-scientific tolerance of some of the worst moral enormities of antiquity, Artemidorus seems to have been an earnest and industrious man, who wrote with the mistaken object of doing a service both to his own age and to posterity.[2423] Like other pious men of the time, he was afflicted by the profane attitude of the sceptics,[2424] and determined to refute them by the solid proofs of a sifted experience. He also wished to furnish guidance to the crowd, who believed in their visions, but were bewildered from the want of clear canons of interpretation. There was evidently afloat a voluminous oneirocritic literature. But it was, according to Artemidorus, frequently wanting in depth and system,[2425] and random guesses had too often been the substitute for minute, exhaustive observation and a clear scientific method. Artemidorus was inspired to supply the want by a vision from Apollo, his ancestral patron.[2426] He procured every known treatise on dreams.[2427] He travelled all over Asia, Greece, and Italy, and the larger islands, visiting the great festivals and centres of population, and consulting with all the seers and diviners, even those of the lowest repute. He took the greatest pains to ascertain the facts of the reported fulfilment of dreams, and to compare and sift the facts of his own observation. No austere scientific student of nature in our day ever took himself more seriously than this collector of the wildest and foulest hallucinations of pagan imagination. Artemidorus really believed that he was founding an enduring science for the guidance of all coming generations.

Yet the foundation of it all is essentially unscientific. To Artemidorus dreams are not the result of natural causes, of physical states, or of the suggestions of memory and [pg 469]association. They are sent directly by some god, as a promise or warning of the future. Nor should any apparent failure of the prediction tempt us to impeach the truthfulness of the Divine author. Artemidorus affirms as emphatically as Plato, that the gods can never lie.[2428] But although they sometimes express themselves plainly, they also frequently veil their meaning in shadowy, enigmatic form, in order to test men’s faith and patience.[2429] Hence there is need of skilled interpretation, which demands the widest observation, acute criticism combined with reverent faith, and deference to ancient custom and traditional lore. It is curious to see how this apostle of what, to our minds, is a pestilent superstition, pours his scorn on the newer or lower forms of divination.[2430] The Pythagorean dream-readers, the interpreters from hand and face and form, the interpreters of sieve and dish and dice, are all deceivers and charlatans. The old formulated and accredited lore of birds and sacrificial entrails, of dreams and stars and heavenly portents, should alone be accepted by an orthodox faith. It is needless to say that Artemidorus believed in astrology as he believed in oneiromancy. Both beliefs go back to the infancy of the race, and both extended their dominion far into the Middle Ages.[2431]

It would be impossible, in our space, to give any detailed conception of the treatment of dreams by Artemidorus. Nor would the attempt reward the pains; the curious specialist must read the treatise for himself. He will find in it one of the most astonishing efforts of besotted credulity to disguise itself under the forms of scientific inquiry. He will find an apparently genuine piety united with an unprotesting record of the most revolting prurience of the lawless fancy. He will find a subtlety and formalism of system and distinction worthy of a finished schoolman of the fourteenth century, and all employed to give order and meaning to the wildest vagaries of vulgar fancy. The classification of dreams by Artemidorus is a great effort, and is followed out in an exhaustive order. Every possible subject, and many that seem to a modern almost inconceivable, are catalogued, each in its proper place, with the appropriate principles of explanation. The hierarchy [pg 470]of gods and heroes in their various grades, the orbs of the sky, the various parts of the bodily frame, from the hair of the head to the toes and nails, the various occupations and multiform incidents in the life of man from the cradle to the grave,[2432] the whole list of animals, plants, and drugs which serve his uses,—all these things, and many others which might conceivably, or inconceivably, enter into the fabric of a dream, are painfully collected and arranged for the guidance of the future inquirer. And this demands not only an effort of logical classification, but also an immense knowledge of the customs and peculiarities of different races,[2433] the special attributes of each of the gods, and a minute acquaintance with the natural history of the time. For, special circumstances and details cannot be safely neglected in the interpretation of dreams. It may make the greatest difference whether the same dream comes to a rich man or a poor man,[2434] to a man or a woman, to a married woman or a virgin, to old or young, to king or subject. To one it may mean the greatest of blessings, to another calamity or death. For instance, for a priest of Isis to dream of a shaven head is of good omen; to any other person it is ominous of evil.[2435] To dream that you have the head of a lion or elephant is a prediction of a rise above your natural estate; but to dream that you have the horns of an ox portends violent death.[2436] To dream of shoemaking and carpentry foretells happy marriage and friendship, but the vision of a tanner’s yard, from its connection with foul odours and death, may foreshadow disgrace and disaster.[2437] To dream of drinking cold water is a wholesome sign; but a fancied draught of hot fluid, as being unnatural, may forbode disease or failure.[2438] A man dreamt that his mother was bearing him a second time; the issue was that he returned from exile to his motherland, found his mother ill, and inherited her property. Another had a vision of an olive shooting from his head; he developed a vigour and clearness of thought and language worthy of the goddess to whom the olive is sacred.[2439] It would be wearisome, and even disgusting, to give other examples of this futile and almost [pg 471]idiotic superstition, masquerading as a science. A painstaking student might easily classify the modes of interpretation. They are tolerably uniform, and rest on fanciful but obvious conceits, superficial analogies, mere play upon words and impossible etymologies. The interpretations are as dull and monotonous as the dreams are various and fantastic. Many of these visions seem like the wildest hallucinations of prurient lunacy. It is difficult to conceive what was the ordinary state of mind and the habits of a people whose sleep was haunted by visions so lawless. It is perhaps even harder to imagine a father, with the infinite industry of which he is so proud, compiling such a catalogue for the study of his son.[2440]

Lucian, through the mouth of Momus, pours his scorn on the new oracles which were chanting from every rock, vending their lies at two obols apiece, and overshadowing the ancient glories of the more ancient shrines.[2441] In the last century of the Republic, and in the first century of the Empire, the faith in oracles had suffered a portentous decay. The exultation of the Christian Fathers at the desertion of the ancient seats of prophecy seems to find an echo in the record of heathen authors. Cicero speaks as if Delphi were almost silent.[2442] Strabo tells us that Delphi, Dodona, and Ammon had shared in the general contempt which had fallen on oracular divination.[2443] From Plutarch we have seen that in Boeotia, the most famous home of the art, all the oracular shrines were silent and deserted, except that of Trophonius at Lebadea.[2444] And curious inquirers gave various explanations of this waning faith. Strabo thought that, with the spread of Roman power, the Sibylline prophecies and the Etruscan augury eclipsed the Greek and Eastern oracles. The explanation in Plutarch, as we have seen, is involved in an interesting discussion of the various sources of inspiration, and, in particular, of the office of daemons. One theorist of the positive type attributes the failure of the Greek oracles to the growing depopulation of Greece. It is a question of demand and supply. Others find [pg 472]the explanation in physical changes, which have extinguished or diverted the exhalation that used to excite the prophetic powers of the Pythia. Another falls back on the theory of daemonic inspiration, which, mysteriously vouchsafed, may be as mysteriously withdrawn.[2445]

The eclipse of the oracles was really a phase of that pagan unbelief or indifference which tended to disappear towards the end of the first century A.D. And the eclipse perhaps was not so complete as it is represented. Cicero himself consulted the Pythia about his future fame, and received an answer which revealed insight into his character.[2446] Germanicus in the reign of Tiberius visited the shrine of the Clarian Apollo, and that of Apis at Memphis;[2447] Tiberius tried the sacred lottery at Padua,[2448] Caligula that of Fortune at Antium.[2449] Nero, although he is said to have choked the sacred chasm at Delphi with corpses, had previously sought light from the god on his perilous future.[2450] Before the altar of the unseen God on Mount Carmel, Vespasian received an impressive prophecy of his coming greatness.[2451] Titus had his hopes confirmed in the shrine of the Paphian Venus.[2452] When these lords of the world, some of whom were notorious sceptics, thus paid deference to the ancient homes of prophecy, it may be doubted whether their prestige had been seriously shaken.

Although Delphi had not for many ages wielded the enormous political, and even international, power which it enjoyed before the Persian wars, still, even in the days of its greatest obscurity, it was the resort of many who came to consult it in the ordinary cares of life. Apollonius of Tyana, in the reign of Nero, visited the old oracular centres, Delphi, Dodona, Abae, and the shrines of Amphiaraus and Trophonius.[2453] They seem to be still active, although the sage had, in fulfilment of his mission, to correct their ritual. The newer foundations, like that at Abonoteichos, found it politic to defer to the authority of oracles, such as those of Clarus and Didyma, with a great past.[2454] If the conquests of Rome for a time obscured their fame, the ease and rapidity of com[pg 473]munication along the Roman roads, and the safety of the seas, must have swelled the number of their votaries from all parts of the world. It is a revelation to find a Tungrian cohort at a remote station in Britain setting up a votive inscription in obedience to the voice of the Clarian Apollo.[2455] If new oracles were springing up in the Antonine age, the old were certainly not quite neglected. In the reign of Trajan the shrine of Delphi recovered from its degradation by the violence of Nero.[2456] And Hadrian, as we have seen, tested the inspiration of the Pythia by a question as to the birthplace of Homer, which was answered by a verse tracing his ancestry to Pylos and Ithaca.[2457] The ancient oracles were in full vigour under the emperors of the third century. Some of the greatest and most venerable—Delphi, Didyma, Mallus, and Dodona—were not reduced to silence till the reign of Constantine.[2458]

But the old oracles could not satisfy the omnivorous superstition of the time. The outburst of new oracles may be compared, perhaps, to the fissiparous tendencies of Protestantism in some countries, at each fresh revival of religious excitement. Any fresh avenue to the “Great Mystery” was at once eagerly crowded. And the most recent claimant to inspiration sometimes threatened to overshadow the tradition of a thousand years, and to assert an oecumenical power.

One such case has been recorded and exposed with the graphic skill and penetrating observation of the greatest genius of the age. Lucian’s description of the foundation of the new oracle of Asclepius at Abonoteichos in Paphlagonia, if it is wanting in the sympathetic handling which modern criticism has attained or can affect, is an unrivalled revelation of the superstition of the time. And a brief narrative of the imposture will probably give a more vivid idea of it than any abstract dissertation.