The institutions for public relief, founded on the principle that the state has paternal duties towards its subjects, only developed to any great degree from the time of Nerva and Trajan onwards. A few instances of it are however found during the first century. There already existed asylums for children, organised distributions of food to the needy, fixed prices for bread with indemnities to the bakers, precautions for provisioning, premiums and insurance for ship-owners, bread bonuses, which permitted the purchase of corn at a reduced rate. All the emperors, without exception, showed the greatest solicitude for these questions, minor ones, perhaps, but such as at certain epochs took precedence of all others. In remote antiquity, it might be said, the world needed no charity. The world was then young and vigorous, almshouses were useless. The good and simple Homeric ethics, according to which the guest and the beggar come from Jupiter, are the ethics of a robust and gay adolescence.
Greece, in her classical age, enunciated the most exquisite maxims of pity, of beneficence, of humanity, without a latent thought of social anxiety or of melancholy. Man in that epoch was still healthy and happy, evil could not be realised. With respect to mutual assistance the Greeks were far in advance of the Romans. No liberal and benevolent disposition came from that cruel aristocracy which exercised such oppressive sway during the republic. At the time of which we are writing the colossal fortunes of the aristocracy, luxury, the concentration of population in certain places, and especially the hardness of heart peculiar to the Roman and his aversion to pity, resulted in the birth of “pauperism.” The kindness shown by certain emperors towards the riff-raff of Rome only aggravated the danger. Bribery and the tesseræ frumentariæ not only encouraged the vice of idleness, but brought no remedy to misery. In this particular, as in many others, the East was really superior to the Western world. The Jews had true charitable institutions. The temple of Egypt seemed to have possessed alms-boxes. The college of monks and nuns of the Serapeum of Memphis was also, in a manner, a charitable institution. The terrible crisis through which mankind was passing in the capital of Europe was little felt in remote lands, where everyday life had remained more simple. The reproach of having poisoned the earth, the comparison of Rome to a courtesan who has poured out to the world the wine of her immorality, was true in many ways. The provinces were better than Rome, or rather the impure elements from all parts, accumulating in Rome as in a sink, had formed an infectious spot where the old Roman virtues were stifled and where good seed germinated slowly.[b]
MANNERS AND CUSTOMS
But it is the life of the capital itself that must chiefly claim our attention here. Let us turn from the glowing generalities of Renan to a more specific consideration of some important phases of the everyday life of the people in the great centre to which all roads were said to lead.
In the early days of the empire, Rome was in the crisis of that transitional state which most great capitals have experienced, when a rapid increase in their population and in the transactions of daily life has begun to outstrip the extension of their means of accommodation. The increase of numbers must necessarily multiply the operations of industry, which cross and recross each other in the streets of a great city; and though neither the commerce nor manufactures of Rome were conducted on the scale to which our ideas are accustomed, the retail traffic which passed from hand to hand, and the ordinary affairs of business and pleasure, must have caused an ever increasing stir and circulation among the vast assemblage of human beings collected within its walls. The uninterrupted progress of building operations, and the extension of the suburbs simultaneously with the restoration of the city, must have kept every avenue constantly thronged with wagons and vehicles of all sorts, engaged in the transport of the cumbrous materials employed therein; the crush of these heavy-laden machines, and the portentous swinging of the long beams they carried round the corners of the narrow streets, are mentioned among the worst nuisances and even terrors of the citizen’s daily walk.
Neither of the rival institutions of the shop and the bazaar had been developed to any great extent in ancient Rome. A vast number of trades was exercised there by itinerant vendors. The street cries, which have almost ceased within our own memory in London, were rife in the city of the cæsars. The incessant din of these discordant sounds is complained of as making existence intolerable to the poor gentleman who is compelled to reside in the midst of them. The streets were not contrived, nor was it possible generally to adapt them, for the passage of the well-attended litters and cumbrous carriages of the wealthy, which began to traverse them with the pomp and circumstance of our own aristocratic vehicles of a century since;[37] while the police of the city seems never to have contemplated the removal of the most obvious causes of crowd and obstruction, in the exhibition of gymnastic and gladiatorial spectacles, of conjurors’ tricks and the buffoonery of the lowest class of stage-players, in the centre of the most frequented thoroughfares.
The noble never crossed his threshold without a numerous train of clients and retainers; the lower people congregated at the corners of the streets to hear the gossip of the day and discuss the merits of racers and dancers; the slaves hovered over the steam of the open cookshops, or loitered, on their masters’ errands, to gaze on the rude drawings or pore over the placards on the walls. The last century had filled the imperial capital with multitudes of foreigners, attracted from curiosity as much as from motives of business to the renowned emporium of the wonders of the world, who added to the number of idlers and loungers in the streets of Rome; men of strange costumes and figures and, when they spoke, of speech still stranger, who, while they gazed around them with awe and admiration, became themselves each a centre of remark to a crowd of wondering citizens. The marked though casual manner in which the throng of the streets is noticed by the Roman writers, shows, in the strongest way, how ordinary a feature it was of life in the city.
The streets, or rather the narrow and winding alleys, of Rome were miserably inadequate to the circulation of the people who thus moved along or thronged them; for the vici were no better than lanes or alleys, and there were only two viæ, or paved ways, fit for the transport of heavy carriages, the Sacra and the Nova, in the central parts of the city. The three interior hills, the Palatine, the Aventine, and the Capitoline, were sore impediments to traffic; for no carriages could pass over them, and it may be doubted whether they were even thoroughfares for foot passengers. The occurrence, not unusual, of a fire or an inundation, or the casual fall of a house, must have choked the circulation of the life-blood of the city. The first, indeed, and the last of these, were accidents to which every place of human resort is liable; but the inundations of Rome were a marked and peculiar feature of her ancient existence.
Augustus, with far-seeing economic sagacity, was anxious to employ all men of rank and breeding in practical business, while at the same time he proposed to them his own example as a follower both of the Muses and the Graces. The Roman noble rose ordinarily at daybreak, and received at his levée the crowd of clients and retainers who had thronged the steps before his yet closed door from the hours of darkness. A few words of greeting were expected on either side, and then, as the sun mounted the eastern sky, he descended from his elevated mansion into the Forum. He might walk surrounded by the still lingering crowd, or he might be carried in a litter; but to ride in a wheeled vehicle on such occasions was no Roman fashion.[38] Once arrived in the Forum, he was quickly immersed in the business of the day. He presided as a judge in one of the basilicas, or he appeared himself before the judges as an advocate, a witness, or a suitor. He transacted his private affairs with his banker or notary; he perused the public journal of yesterday, and inquired how his friend’s cause had sped before the tribunal of the prætor. At every step he crossed the path of some of the notables of his own class, and the news of the day and interests of the hour were discussed between them with dignified politeness.
Such were the morning occupations of a dies fastus, or working day: the holy day had its appropriate occupation in attendance upon the temple services, in offering a prayer for the safety of the emperor and people, in sprinkling frankincense on the altar, and, on occasions of special devotion, appeasing the gods with a sacrifice. But all transactions of business, secular or divine, ceased at once when the voice of the herald on the steps of the Hostilian Curia proclaimed that the shadow of the sun had passed the line on the pavement before him, which marked the hour of midday. Every door was now closed; every citizen, at least in summer, plunged into the dark recesses of his sleeping chamber for the enjoyment of his meridian slumber. The midday siesta terminated, generally speaking, the affairs of the day, and every man was now released from duty and free to devote himself, on rising again, to relaxation or amusement till the return of night. If the senate had been used sometimes to prolong or renew its sittings, there was a rule that after the tenth hour, or four o’clock, no new business could be brought under its notice, and we are told of Asinius Pollio that he would not even open a letter after that hour.