Rome

by W. Warde Fowler

If we cross the sea from Africa to Gaul or Spain we shall find the same process going on. Spain we must pass by; but in Gaul we land at the ancient Greek city of Massilia, which, as Marseilles, is still the great port of southern France. A little to the north, Nismes (Nemausus) was formed into a city by Augustus out of a rural population; its vast Roman amphitheatre and an exquisitely beautiful temple belong to the second century, and still stand in the middle of the modern city. Lyons was also founded by Augustus, as we saw in the last chapter, with a special purpose. Farther north the cities on the great roads were gradually formed, out of tribal populations living in villages, and many of them still bear the names of those tribes: Paris is the town-centre of the Parisii, Rheims of the Remisii, Soissons of the Suessiones, Trier of the Treveri. This last city, on the Moselle, now a German one, can boast of more imposing Roman work than any north of Italy, and is within comparatively easy reach of visitors from our shores.

Britain, which was invaded and made a province in the reign of Claudius, was never so fully Romanised as other provinces, partly owing to the wild and stubborn nature of its inhabitants; but even in our midst the Roman has left obvious traces of his belief in town life. London was a trading centre before the coming of the Romans, and they maintained it as such; but nearly all their other towns had a more directly military origin and object. The oldest of them is Colchester, a military colony, which still has its Roman walls. Then came St. Albans (Verulamium), Gloucester, Chester, Lincoln and York, strategical points of importance, where populous cities still stand. In a few cases towns have disappeared, and have only been recovered by excavation, e.g. Calleva (Silchester, near Basingstoke), the town-centre of the Atrebates; but many of our country towns, besides those just mentioned, still stand on ancient Roman sites, and even without much excavation have yielded traces of their Roman inhabitants. One, and one only, Dorchester, still boasts of a complete little amphitheatre, which stands just outside the town between the Great Western and South Western railways, and has been used by Mr. Thomas Hardy for a scene in one of his novels. All our towns and villages of which the names contain the word chester or cester are Roman in origin, though they may not have been large cities like Gloucester (Glevum); for chester is only our English form of castra, the Latin for a military encampment.

If it is now quite clear that the town is the unit of civilisation in the Empire, what was the social and political life of the town? Of this we know now much more than we used to do, for it is mirrored in the many thousands of inscriptions from every Roman province, which have now at last been collected and correctly published under the direction of the famous Theodor Mommsen, whose name cannot be omitted entirely, even in such an unpretending book about Rome as this. In records on stone there is, indeed, something lacking that can only be supplied by literature, which reports more elaborately and earnestly the thoughts and feelings of men; and in the Empire, apart from Italy and Rome, there is but little literature to help us out. But the inscriptions supply us with the necessary facts.

First, of the political condition of these innumerable towns we may say that it shows diversity in unity. There were several grades of privilege among them. Some were nominally independent of the Roman government, and in alliance with it, but these were few; Athens is the most famous example. Others were communities of Roman citizens; and many had the Latin right, i.e. inferior privilege. Lastly, there were great numbers of cities—a majority of the whole number—whose inhabitants were not Roman citizens at all, but directly under the control of the governor of their province, who was limited in his authority over the more privileged and independent towns. So much for diversity.

But all the cities were in reality governed and organised in much the same way. In each there was a constitution closely resembling that of Rome, and in most instances modelled directly upon it. As at Rome, they had yearly elected magistrates, who, after holding office, passed into a senate of advisers and councillors; and these magistrates were elected by the populus, or the whole body of citizens. Here was plenty of useful work to do, as we can guess from our own experience of local self-government. Plutarch, writing in this period of his own little town of Chæronea in Greece, realises this to the full, and urges that the work of the magistrate is honourable work, and the more so as it is combined with the sense of citizenship in a great empire.

There was, however, a tendency in these provincial towns, as in the city of Rome itself, for the magistrate, who must be a man of substance, to undertake the expense of amusing the people; a tendency to make the people dependent on the rich for their comforts rather than on their own industry and exertion. The magistrate, besides paying a large fee on his accession to office, was expected to give public games, to feast the people, or to give them a present of money all round. And he would wish, too, to distinguish his magistracy by erecting some public buildings—a bath, aqueduct, or theatre; or to endow a school. So it came to pass in course of time that his burdens were heavier than he could bear, and that the whole class to which he belonged, the senatorial one, was involved in the same difficulties. This class could not be recruited from the common people, who rarely had the means, or, indeed, the energy, to rise to affluence; and the tendency as time went on was to draw the line ever more sharply between the dignity of the various classes. But the ruin of the senatorial class, or curiales, lies outside our limits.

The lower class was engaged in industry, either on the land, or in the town itself. This industry was not to any large extent employed by capital, nor was it in competition with slave-labour, of which in provincial towns we do not hear much. The members of the various trades and callings worked on their own account, but were almost invariably grouped together in gilds or associations, and these are one of the most interesting features in the life of this period. Each of these gilds was licensed, or should have been licensed, by the central government at Rome—a good example of the way in which the long arm of that government reached to every provincial town through the agency of the provincial governor and his officials. Illegal association was a serious crime, and this was one of the reasons why the small Christian communities were looked on with suspicion by the government.

What was the object of these associations? The question has often been asked whether they were in any sense provident societies like our friendly societies, and, on the whole, the conclusion of investigators has been that they were not. If we had more literature dealing with provincial life, or such a correspondence as that of Cicero and his friends, we could give a more certain answer.

But in one sense at least they may be called provident societies. All, or nearly all, of them had as one main object the assurance of a proper tomb and decent funeral for the members. This object can only be fully appreciated after some real study of the social life and religion of that and the preceding age, but when it is understood it is inexpressibly touching. It would seem that the life of the working man of that day was by no means an unhappy one, that he was not driven or enslaved by an employer nor forced to live in grimy and unwholesome surroundings. So far as we can tell he had little anxiety in this life, and worshipped his gods, and performed his vows to them, with genuine gratitude. But that he should be utterly neglected and forgotten after death, thrown into some common grave to moulder away unnoticed, “where no hand would bring the annual offering of wine and flowers”—this seems to have been the shadow ever hanging over his life. We may doubt whether the hope of immortality had, as a rule, anything to do with this anxiety. It was rather an inherited instinct than a faith or creed that moved these poor people. Originally it had been the desire not to have to wander as a ghost for want of due burial; now it is rather the fear that they might be forgotten by those left behind, or, indeed, by future generations.

The instinct of association is common to man, and in a vast empire, where the tendency was, and long had been, to obliterate the old social grouping of kinship, real or supposed, it would be some consolation to belong to a club of friends with common interests, accustomed to share the joys and perils of life, and bent on decent burial when death should overtake them. Even in this life they would meet from time to time to eat, drink and enjoy themselves.