Opposition of the Officers

Such was the constitution which Lucius Cornelius Sulla gave to
the commonwealth of Rome.  The senate and equestrian order, the
burgesses and proletariate, Italians and provincials, accepted it
as it was dictated to them by the regent, if not without grumbling,
at any rate without rebelling: not so the Sullan officers.  The Roman
army had totally changed its character.  It had certainly been
rendered by the Marian reform more ready for action and more
militarily useful than when it did not fight before the walls of
Numantia; but it had at the same time been converted from a burgess-
force into a set of mercenaries who showed no fidelity to the state
at all, and proved faithful to the officer only if he had the skill
personally to gain their attachment.  The civil war had given fearful
evidence of this total revolution in the spirit of the army: six
generals in command, Albinus,(45) Cato,(46) Rufus,(47) Flaccus,(48)
Cinna,(49) and Gaius Carbo,(50) had fallen during its course by the
hands of their soldiers: Sulla alone had hitherto been able to
retain the mastery of the dangerous crew, and that only, in fact,
by giving the rein to all their wild desires as no Roman general
before him had ever done.  If the blame of destroying the old
military discipline is on this account attached to him, the
censure is not exactly without ground, but yet without justice;
he was indeed the first Roman magistrate who was only enabled to
discharge his military and political task by coming forward as a
-condottiere-.  He had not however taken the military dictatorship
for the purpose of making the state subject to the soldiery, but
rather for the purpose of compelling everything in the state, and
especially the army and the officers, to submit once more to the
authority of civil order.  When this became evident, an opposition
arose against him among his own staff.  The oligarchy might play
the tyrant as respected other citizens; but that the generals also,
who with their good swords had replaced the overthrown senators in
their seats, should now be summoned to yield implicit obedience to
this very senate, seemed intolerable.  The very two officers in
whom Sulla had placed most confidence resisted the new order of
things.  When Gnaeus Pompeius, whom Sulla had entrusted with the
conquest of Sicily and Africa and had selected for his son-in-law,
after accomplishing his task received orders from the senate to
dismiss his army, he omitted to comply and fell little short
of open insurrection.

Quintus Ofella, to whose firm perseverance in front of Praeneste
the success of the last and most severe campaign was essentially
due in equally open violation of the newly issued ordinances became
a candidate for the consulship without having held the inferior
magistracies.  With Pompeius there was effected, if not a cordial
reconciliation, at any rate a compromise.  Sulla, who knew his man
sufficiently not to fear him, did not resent the impertinent remark
which Pompeius uttered to his face, that more people concerned
themselves with the rising than with the setting sun; and accorded
to the vain youth the empty marks of honour to which his heart
clung.(51)  If in this instance he appeared lenient, he showed on
the other hand in the case of Ofella that he was not disposed to
allow his marshals to take advantage of him; as soon as the latter
had appeared unconstitutionally as candidate, Sulla had him cut down
in the public market-place, and then explained to the assembled citizens
that the deed was done by his orders and the reason for doing it.
So this significant opposition of the staff to the new order of things
was no doubt silenced for the present; but it continued to subsist
and furnished the practical commentary on Sulla's saying, that what
he did on this occasion could not be done a second time.

Re-establishment of Constitutional Order

One thing still remained--perhaps the most difficult of all:
to bring the exceptional state of things into accordance with
the paths prescribed by the new or old laws.  It was facilitated
by the circumstance, that Sulla never lost sight of this as his
ultimate aim.  Although the Valerian law gave him absolute power
and gave to each of his ordinances the force of law, he had nevertheless
availed himself of this extraordinary prerogative only in the case of
measures, which were of transient importance, and to take part in
which would simply have uselessly compromised the senate and burgesses,
especially in the case of the proscriptions.

Sulla Resigns the Regency

Ordinarily he had himself observed those regulations, which he
prescribed for the future.  That the people were consulted, we read
in the law as to the quaestors which is still in part extant; and the
same is attested of other laws, e. g. the sumptuary law and those
regarding the confiscation of domains.  In like manner the senate
was previously consulted in the more important administrative acts,
such as in the sending forth and recall of the African army and in
the conferring of the charters of towns.  In the same spirit Sulla
caused consuls to be elected even for 673, through which at least
the odious custom of dating officially by the regency was avoided;
nevertheless the power still lay exclusively with the regent, and
the election was directed so as to fall on secondary personages.
But in the following year (674) Sulla revived the ordinary constitution
in full efficiency, and administered the state as consul in concert
with his comrade in arms Quintus Metellus, retaining the regency, but
allowing it for the time to lie dormant.  He saw well how dangerous
it was for his own very institutions to perpetuate the military
dictatorship.  When the new state of things seemed likely to hold
its ground and the largest and most important portion of the
new arrangements had been completed, although various matters,
particularly in colonization, still remained to be done, he allowed
the elections for 675 to have free course, declined re-election to
the consulship as incompatible with his own ordinances, and at the
beginning of 675 resigned the regency, soon after the new consuls
Publius Servilius and Appius Claudius had entered on office.  Even
callous hearts were impressed, when the man who had hitherto dealt
at his pleasure with the life and property of millions, at whose nod
so many heads had fallen, who had mortal enemies dwelling in every
street of Rome and in every town of Italy, and who without an ally
of equal standing and even, strictly speaking, without the support
of a fixed party had brought to an end his work of reorganizing
the state, a work offending a thousand interests and opinions--when
this man appeared in the market-place of the capital, voluntarily
renounced his plenitude of power, discharged his armed attendants,
dismissed his lictors, and summoned the dense throng of burgesses to
speak, if any one desired from him a reckoning.  All were silent: Sulla
descended from the rostra, and on foot, attended only by his friends,
returned to his dwelling through the midst of that very populace which
eight years before had razed his house to the ground.

Character of Sulla

Posterity has not justly appreciated either Sulla himself or his work
of reorganization, as indeed it is wont to judge unfairly of persons
who oppose themselves to the current of the times.  In fact Sulla
is one of the most marvellous characters--we may even say a unique
phenomenon--in history.  Physically and mentally of sanguine
temperament, blue-eyed, fair, of a complexion singularly white but
blushing with every passionate emotion--though otherwise a handsome
man with piercing eyes--he seemed hardly destined to be of more
moment to the state than his ancestors, who since the days of his
great-great-grandfather Publius Cornelius Rufinus (consul in 464, 477),
one of the most distinguished generals and at the same time the
most ostentatious man of the times of Pyrrhus, had remained in second-
rate positions.  He desired from life nothing but serene enjoyment.
Reared in the refinement of such cultivated luxury as was at that
time naturalized even in the less wealthy senatorial families of
Rome, he speedily and adroitly possessed himself of all the fulness of
sensuous and intellectual enjoyments which the combination of Hellenic
polish and Roman wealth could secure.  He was equally welcome as a
pleasant companion in the aristocratic saloon and as a good comrade
in the tented field; his acquaintances, high and low, found in him a
sympathizing friend and a ready helper in time of need, who gave his
gold with far more pleasure to his embarrassed comrade than to his
wealthy creditor.  Passionate was his homage to the wine-cup, still
more passionate to women; even in his later years he was no longer
the regent, when after the business of the day was finished he
took his place at table.  A vein of irony--we might perhaps say
of buffoonery--pervaded his whole nature.  Even when regent he gave
orders, while conducting the public sale of the property of the
proscribed, that a donation from the spoil should be given to the
author of a wretched panegyric which was handed to him, on condition
that the writer should promise never to sing his praises again.
When he justified before the burgesses the execution of Ofella,
he did so by relating to the people the fable of the countryman and
the lice.  He delighted to choose his companions among actors, and
was fond of sitting at wine not only with Quintus Roscius--the Roman
Talma--but also with far inferior players; indeed he was himself not
a bad singer, and even wrote farces for performance within his own
circle.  Yet amidst these jovial Bacchanalia he lost neither bodily
nor mental vigour, in the rural leisure of his last years he was
still zealously devoted to the chase, and the circumstance that he
brought the writings of Aristotle from conquered Athens to Rome
attests withal his interest in more serious reading.  The specific
type of Roman character rather repelled him.  Sulla had nothing
of the blunt hauteur which the grandees of Rome were fond of
displaying in presence of the Greeks, or of the pomposity of
narrow-minded great men; on the contrary he freely indulged his
humour, appeared, to the scandal doubtless of many of his countrymen,
in Greek towns in the Greek dress, or induced his aristocratic
companions to drive their chariots personally at the games.
He retained still less of those half-patriotic, half-selfish hopes,
which in countries of free constitution allure every youth of talent
into the political arena, and which he too like all others probably
at one time felt.  In such a life as his was, oscillating between
passionate intoxication and more than sober awaking, illusions are
speedily dissipated.  Wishing and striving probably appeared to him
folly in a world which withal was absolutely governed by chance, and
in which, if men were to strive after anything at all, this chance
could be the only aim of their efforts.  He followed the general
tendency of the age in addicting himself at once to unbelief and
to superstition.  His whimsical credulity was not the plebeian
superstition of Marius, who got a priest to prophesy to him for money
and determined his actions accordingly; still less was it the sullen
belief of the fanatic in destiny; it was that faith in the absurd,
which necessarily makes its appearance in every man who has out and
out ceased to believe in a connected order of things--the superstition
of the fortunate player, who deems himself privileged by fate to throw
on each and every occasion the right number.  In practical questions
Sulla understood very well how to satisfy ironically the demands of
religion.  When he emptied the treasuries of the Greek temples, he
declared that the man could never fail whose chest was replenished
by the gods themselves.  When the Delphic priests reported to him
that they were afraid to send the treasures which he asked, because
the harp of the god emitted a clear sound when they touched it,
he returned the reply that they might now send them all the more
readily, as the god evidently approved his design.  Nevertheless
he fondly flattered himself with the idea that he was the chosen
favourite of the gods, and in an altogether special manner of that
goddess, to whom down to his latest years he assigned the pre-
eminence, Aphrodite.  In his conversations as well as in his
autobiography he often plumed himself on the intercourse which
the immortals held with him in dreams and omens.  He had more right
than most men to be proud of his achievements he was not so, but he
was proud of his uniquely faithful fortune.  He was wont to say that
every improvised enterprise turned out better with him than those
which were systematically planned; and one of his strangest whims--
that of regularly stating the number of those who had fallen on his
side in battle as nil--was nothing but the childishness of a child of
fortune.  It was but the utterance of his natural disposition, when,
having reached the culminating point of his career and seeing all
his contemporaries at a dizzy depth beneath him, he assumed the
designation of the Fortunate--Sulla Felix--as a formal surname,
and bestowed corresponding appellations on his children,

Sulla's Political Career

Nothing lay farther from Sulla than systematic ambition.  He had too
much sense to regard, like the average aristocrats of his time, the
inscription of his name in the roll of the consuls as the aim of his
life; he was too indifferent and too little of an ideologue to be
disposed voluntarily to engage in the reform of the rotten structure
of the state.  He remained--where birth and culture placed him--in the
circle of genteel society, and passed through the usual routine of
offices; he had no occasion to exert himself, and left such exertion
to the political working bees, of whom there was in truth no lack.
Thus in 647, on the allotment of the quaestorial places, accident
brought him to Africa to the headquarters of Gaius Marius.
The untried man-of-fashion from the capital was not very well received
by the rough boorish general and his experienced staff.  Provoked
by this reception Sulla, fearless and skilful as he was, rapidly
made himself master of the profession of arms, and in his daring
expedition to Mauretania first displayed that peculiar combination
of audacity and cunning with reference to which his contemporaries
said of him that he was half lion half fox, and that the fox in him
was more dangerous than the lion.  To the young, highborn, brilliant
officer, who was confessedly the real means of ending the vexatious
Numidian war, the most splendid career now lay open; he took part
also in the Cimbrian war, and manifested his singular talent for
organization in the management of the difficult task of providing
supplies; yet even now the pleasures of life in the capital had far
more attraction for him than war or even politics.  During his
praetorship, which office he held in 661 after having failed in a
previous candidature, it once more chanced that in his province,
the least important of all, the first victory over king Mithradates
and the first treaty with the mighty Arsacids, as well as their first
humiliation, occurred.  The Civil war followed.  It was Sulla
mainly, who decided the first act of it--the Italian insurrection--
in favour of Rome, and thus won for himself the consulship by his
sword; it was he, moreover, who when consul suppressed with
energetic rapidity the Sulpician revolt.  Fortune seemed to make
it her business to eclipse the old hero Marius by means of this
younger officer.  The capture of Jugurtha, the vanquishing of
Mithradates, both of which Marius had striven for in vain, were
accomplished in subordinate positions by Sulla: in the Social war,
in which Marius lost his renown as a general and was deposed,
Sulla established his military repute and rose to the consulship;
the revolution of 666, which was at the same time and above all a
personal conflict between the two generals, ended with the outlawry
and flight of Marius.  Almost without desiring it, Sulla had
become the most famous general of his time and the shield of the
oligarchy.  New and more formidable crises ensued--the Mithradatic war,
the Cinnan revolution; the star of Sulla continued always in the
ascendant.  Like the captain who seeks not to quench the flames of
his burning ship but continues to fire on the enemy, Sulla, while
the revolution was raging in Italy, persevered unshaken in Asia
till the public foe was subdued.  So soon as he had done with that
foe, he crushed anarchy and saved the capital from the firebrands of
the desperate Samnites and revolutionists.  The moment of his return
home was for Sulla an overpowering one in joy and in pain: he himself
relates in his memoirs that during his first night in Rome he had
not been able to close an eye, and we may well believe it.
But still his task was not at an end; his star was destined to
rise still higher.  Absolute autocrat as was ever any king, and
yet constantly abiding on the ground of formal right, he bridled
the ultra-reactionary party, annihilated the Gracchan constitution
which had for forty years limited the oligarchy, and compelled first
the powers of the capitalists and of the urban proletariate which
had entered into rivalry with the oligarchy, and ultimately the
arrogance of the sword which had grown up in the bosom of his own
staff, to yield once more to the law which he strengthened afresh.
He established the oligarchy on a more independent footing than ever,
placed the magisterial power as a ministering instrument in its
hands, committed to it the legislation, the courts, the supreme
military and financial power, and furnished it with a sort of
bodyguard in the liberated slaves and with a sort of army in the
settled military colonists.  Lastly, when the work was finished,
the creator gave way to his own creation; the absolute autocrat
became of his own accord once more a simple senator.  In all this
long military and political career Sulla never lost a battle, was
never compelled to retrace a single step, and, led astray neither
by friends nor by foes, brought his work to the goal which he had
himself proposed.  He had reason, indeed, to thank his star.
The capricious goddess of fortune seemed in his case for once to
have exchanged caprice for steadfastness, and to have taken a
pleasure in loading her favourite with successes and honours--
whether he desired them or not.  But history must be more just
towards him than he was towards himself, and must place him in a
higher rank than that of the mere favourites of fortune.

Sulla and His Work

We do not mean that the Sullan constitution was a work of political
genius, such as those of Gracchus and Caesar.  There does not occur
in it--as is, indeed, implied in its very nature as a restoration--a
single new idea in statesmanship.  All its most essential features--
admission to the senate by the holding of the quaestorship, the
abolition of the censorial right to eject a senator from the senate,
the initiative of the senate in legislation, the conversion of the
tribunician office into an instrument of the senate for fettering
the -imperium-, the prolonging of the duration of the supreme
office to two years, the transference of the command from the
popularly-elected magistrate to the senatorial proconsul or
propraetor, and even the new criminal and municipal arrangements--
were not created by Sulla, but were institutions which had
previously grown out of the oligarchic government, and which he
merely regulated and fixed.  And even as to the horrors attaching
to his restoration, the proscriptions and confiscations--are they,
compared with the doings of Nasica, Popillius, Opimius, Caepio and
so on, anything else than the legal embodiment of the customary
oligarchic mode of getting rid of opponents? On the Roman
oligarchy of this period no judgment can be passed save one of
inexorable and remorseless condemnation; and, like everything, else
connected with it, the Sullan constitution is completely involved in
that condemnation.  To accord praise which the genius of a bad man
bribes us into bestowing is to sin against the sacred character of
history; but we may be allowed to bear in mind that Sulla was far
less answerable for the Sullan restoration than the body of the
Roman aristocracy, which had ruled as a clique for centuries and had
every year become more enervated and embittered by age, and that all
that was hollow and all that was nefarious therein is ultimately
traceable to that aristocracy.  Sulla reorganized the state--not,
however, as the master of the house who puts his shattered estate
and household in order according to his own discretion, but as
the temporary business-manager who faithfully complies with his
instructions; it is superficial and false in such a case to devolve
the final and essential responsibility from the master upon the
manager.  We estimate the importance of Sulla much too highly, or
rather we dispose of those terrible proscriptions, ejections, and
restorations--for which there never could be and never was any
reparation--on far too easy terms, when we regard them as the work
of a bloodthirsty tyrant whom accident had placed at the head of
the state.  These and the terrorism of the restoration were the
deeds of the aristocracy, and Sulla was nothing more in the matter
than, to use the poet's expression, the executioner's axe following
the conscious thought as its unconscious instrument.  Sulla carried
out that part with rare, in fact superhuman, perfection; but within
the limits which it laid down for him, his working was not only
grand but even useful.  Never has any aristocracy deeply decayed
and decaying still farther from day to day, such as was the Roman
aristocracy of that time, found a guardian so willing and able as
Sulla to wield for it the sword of the general and the pen of the
legislator without any regard to the gain of power for himself.
There is no doubt a difference between the case of an officer who
refuses the sceptre from public spirit and that of one who throws it
away from a cloyed appetite; but, so far as concerns the total absence
of political selfishness--although, it is true, in this one respect
only--Sulla deserves to be named side by side with Washington.

Value of the Sullan Constitution

But the whole country--and not the aristocracy merely--was more
indebted to him than posterity was willing to confess.  Sulla
definitely terminated the Italian revolution, in so far as it was
based on the disabilities of individual less privileged districts
as compared with others of better rights, and, by compelling himself
and his party to recognize the equality of the rights of all
Italians in presence of the law, he became the real and final
author of the full political unity of Italy--a gain which was
not too dearly purchased by ever so many troubles and streams
of blood.  Sulla however did more.  For more than half a century
the power of Rome had been declining, and anarchy had been her
permanent condition: for the government of the senate with the
Gracchan constitution was anarchy, and the government of Cinna and
Carbo was a yet far worse illustration of the absence of a master-
hand (the sad image of which is most clearly reflected in that
equally confused and unnatural league with the Samnites), the most
uncertain, most intolerable, and most mischievous of all
conceivable political conditions--in fact the beginning of the
end.  We do not go too far when we assert that the long-undermined
Roman commonwealth must have necessarily fallen to pieces, had not
Sulla by his intervention in Asia and Italy saved its existence.
It is true that the constitution of Sulla had as little endurance
as that of Cromwell, and it was not difficult to see that his
structure was no solid one; but it is arrant thoughtlessness to
overlook the fact that without Sulla most probably the very site of
the building would have been swept away by the waves; and even the
blame of its want of stability does not fall primarily on Sulla.
The statesman builds only so much as in the sphere assigned to him
he can build.  What a man of conservative views could do to save the
old constitution, Sulla did; and he himself had a foreboding that,
while he might doubtless erect a fortress, he would be unable to
create a garrison, and that the utter worthlessness of the oligarchs
would render any attempt to save the oligarchy vain.  His constitution
resembled a temporary dike thrown into the raging breakers; it was
no reproach to the builder, if some ten years afterwards the waves
swallowed up a structure at variance with nature and not defended
even by those whom it sheltered.  The statesman has no need to be
referred to highly commendable isolated reforms, such as those of
the Asiatic revenue-system and of criminal justice, that he may not
summarily dismiss Sulla's ephemeral restoration: he will admire it
as a reorganization of the Roman commonwealth judiciously planned
and on the whole consistently carried out under infinite difficulties,
and he will place the deliverer of Rome and the accomplisher of Italian
unity below, but yet by the side of, Cromwell.

Immoral and Superficial Nature of the Sullan Restoration

It is not, however, the statesman alone who has a voice in
judging the dead; and with justice outraged human feeling will
never reconcile itself to what Sulla did or suffered others to do.
Sulla not only established his despotic power by unscrupulous violence,
but in doing so called things by their right name with a certain cynical
frankness, through which he has irreparably offended the great mass
of the weakhearted who are more revolted at the name than at the
thing, but through which, from the cool and dispassionate character
of his crimes, he certainly appears to the moral judgment more
revolting than the criminal acting from passion.  Outlawries, rewards
to executioners, confiscations of goods, summary procedure with
insubordinate officers had occurred a hundred times, and the obtuse
political morality of ancient civilization had for such things
only lukewarm censure; but it was unexampled that the names of
the outlaws should be publicly posted up and their heads publicly
exposed, that a set sum should be fixed for the bandits who slew them
and that it should be duly entered in the public account-books, that
the confiscated property should be brought to the hammer like the spoil
of an enemy in the public market, that the general should order a
refractory officer to be at once cut down and acknowledge the deed
before all the people.  This public mockery of humanity was also
a political error; it contributed not a little to envenom later
revolutionary crises beforehand, and on that account even now
a dark shadow deservedly rests on the memory of the author
of the proscriptions.

Sulla may moreover be justly blamed that, while in all important
matters he acted with remorseless vigour, in subordinate and more
especially in personal questions he very frequently yielded to
his sanguine temperament and dealt according to his likings or
dislikings.  Wherever he really felt hatred, as for instance against
the Marians, he allowed it to take its course without restraint even
against the innocent, and boasted of himself that no one had better
requited friends and foes.(52)  He did not disdain on occasion of
his plenitude of power to accumulate a colossal fortune.  The first
absolute monarch of the Roman state, he verified the maxim of
absolutism--that the laws do not bind the prince--forthwith in
the case of those laws which he himself issued as to adultery and
extravagance.  But his lenity towards his own party and his own
circle was more pernicious for the state than his indulgence towards
himself.  The laxity of his military discipline, although it was
partly enjoined by his political exigencies, may be reckoned as
coming under this category; but far more pernicious was his indulgence
towards his political adherents.  The extent of his occasional
forbearance is hardly credible: for instance Lacius Murena was not only
released from punishment for defeats which he sustained through arrant
perversity and insubordination,(53) but was even allowed a triumph;
Gnaeus Pompeius, who had behaved still worse, was still more
extravagantly honoured by Sulla.(54)  The extensive range and
the worst enormities of the proscriptions and confiscations probably
arose not so much from Sulla's own wish as from this spirit of
indifference, which in his position indeed was hardly more pardonable.
That Sulla with his intrinsically energetic and yet withal indifferent
temperament should conduct himself very variously, sometimes with
incredible indulgence, sometimes with inexorable severity, may readily
be conceived.  The saying repeated a thousand times, that he was before
his regency a good-natured, mild man, but when regent a bloodthirsty
tyrant, carries in it its own refutation; if he as regent displayed
the reverse of his earlier gentleness, it must rather be said that
he punished with the same careless nonchalance with which he
pardoned.  This half-ironical frivolity pervades his whole
political action.  It is always as if the victor, just as it
pleased him to call his merit in gaining victory good fortune,
esteemed the victory itself of no value; as if he had a partial
presentiment of the vanity and perishableness of his own work; as
if after the manner of a steward he preferred making repairs to
pulling down and rebuilding, and allowed himself in the end to
be content with a sorry plastering to conceal the flaws.

Sulla after His Retirement

But, such as he was, this Don Juan of politics was a man of one
mould.  His whole life attests the internal equilibrium of his
nature; in the most diverse situations Sulla remained unchangeably
the same.  It was the same temper, which after the brilliant
successes in Africa made him seek once more the idleness of the
capital, and after the full possession of absolute power made him
find rest and refreshment in his Cuman villa.  In his mouth the
saying, that public affairs were a burden which he threw off so
soon as he might and could, was no mere phrase.  After his resignation
he remained entirely like himself, without peevishness and without
affectation, glad to be rid of public affairs and yet interfering
now and then when opportunity offered.  Hunting and fishing and
the composition of his memoirs occupied his leisure hours; by way
of interlude he arranged, at the request of the discordant citizens,
the internal affairs of the neighbouring colony of Puteoli as
confidently and speedily as he had formerly arranged those of
the capital.  His last action on his sickbed had reference to the
collection of a contribution for the rebuilding of the Capitoline
temple, of which he was not allowed to witness the completion.

Death of Sulla

Little more than a year after his retirement, in the sixtieth year
of his life, while yet vigorous in body and mind, he was overtaken by
death; after a brief confinement to a sick-bed--he was writing at his
autobiography two days even before his death--the rupture of a blood-
vessel(55) carried him off (676).  His faithful fortune did not
desert him even in death.  He could have no wish to be drawn once
more into the disagreeable vortex of party struggles, and to be
obliged to lead his old warriors once more against a new revolution;
yet such was the state of matters at his death in Spain and in
Italy, that he could hardly have been spared this task had his life
been prolonged.  Even now when it was suggested that he should have a
public funeral in the capital, numerous voices there, which had been
silent in his lifetime, were raised against the last honour which it
was proposed to show to the tyrant.  But his memory was still too
fresh and the dread of his old soldiers too vivid: it was resolved
that the body should be conveyed to the capital and that the obsequies
should be celebrated there.

His Funeral

Italy never witnessed a grander funeral solemnity.  In every place
through which the deceased was borne in regal attire, with his well-
known standards and fasces before him, the inhabitants and above all
his old soldiers joined the mourning train: it seemed as if the whole
army would once more meet round the hero in death, who had in life
led it so often and never except to victory.  So the endless
funeral procession reached the capital, where the courts kept
holiday and all business was suspended, and two thousand golden
chaplets awaited the dead--the last honorary gifts of the faithful
legions, of the cities, and of his more intimate friends.  Sulla,
faithful to the usage of the Cornelian house, had ordered that his
body should be buried without being burnt; but others were more
mindful than he was of what past days had done and future days
might do: by command of the senate the corpse of the man who had
disturbed the bones of Marius from their rest in the grave was
committed to the flames.  Headed by all the magistrates and the
whole senate, by the priests and priestesses in their official robes
and the band of noble youths in equestrian armour, the procession
arrived at the great market-place; at this spot, filled by his
achievements and almost by the sound as yet of his dreaded words,
the funeral oration was delivered over the deceased; and thence the
bier was borne on the shoulders of senators to the Campus Martius,
where the funeral pile was erected.  While the flames were blazing,
the equites and the soldiers held their race of honour round
the corpse; the ashes of the regent were deposited in the Campus
Martius beside the tombs of the old kings, and the Roman women
mourned him for a year.




Chapter XI

The Commonwealth and Its Economy

External and Internal Bankruptcy of the Roman State

We have traversed a period of ninety years--forty years of profound
peace, fifty of an almost constant revolution.  It is the most
inglorious epoch known in Roman history.  It is true that the Alps
were crossed both in an easterly and westerly direction,(1) and the
Roman arms reached in the Spanish peninsula as far as the Atlantic
Ocean(2) and in the Macedono-Grecian peninsula as far as the
Danube;(3) but the laurels thus gained were as cheap as they were
barren.  The circle of the "extraneous peoples under the will,
sway, dominion, or friendship of the Roman burgesses,"(4) was not
materially extended; men were content to realize the gains of a
better age and to bring the communities, annexed to Rome in laxer
forms of dependence, more and more into full subjection.  Behind
the brilliant screen of provincial reunions was concealed a very
sensible decline of Roman power.  While the whole ancient civilization
was daily more and more distinctly embraced in the Roman state,
and embodied there in forms of more general validity, the nations
excluded from it began simultaneously beyond the Alps and beyond
the Euphrates to pass from defence to aggression.  On the battle-
fields of Aquae Sextiae and Vercellae, of Chaeronea and Orchomenus,
were heard the first peals of that thunderstorm, which the Germanic
tribes and the Asiatic hordes were destined to bring upon the Italo-
Grecian world, and the last dull rolling of which has reached
almost to our own times.  But in internal development also this
epoch bears the same character.  The old organization collapses
irretrievably.  The Roman commonwealth was planned as an urban
community, which through its free burgess-body gave to itself
rulers and laws; which was governed by these well-advised rulers
within these legal limits with kingly freedom; and around which
the Italian confederacy, as an aggregate of free urban communities
essentially homogeneous and cognate with the Roman, and the body
of extra-Italian allies, as an aggregate of Greek free cities and
barbaric peoples and principalities--both more superintended, than
domineered over, by the community of Rome--formed a double circle.
It was the final result of the revolution--and both parties, the
nominally conservative as well as the democratic party, had co-
operated towards it and concurred in it--that of this venerable
structure, which at the beginning of the present epoch, though full
of chinks and tottering, still stood erect, not one stone was at
its close left upon another.  The holder of sovereign power was
now either a single man, or a close oligarchy--now of rank, now
of riches.  The burgesses had lost all legitimate share in the
government.  The magistrates were instruments without independence
in the hands of the holder of power for the time being.  The urban
community of Rome had broken down by its unnatural enlargement.
The Italian confederacy had been merged in the urban community.
The body of extra-Italian allies was in full course of being
converted into a body of subjects.  The whole organic classification
of the Roman commonwealth had gone to wreck, and nothing was left
but a crude mass of more or less disparate elements.

The Prospect

The state of matters threatened to end in utter anarchy and in
the inward and outward dissolution of the state.  The political
movement tended thoroughly towards the goal of despotism; the only
point still in dispute was whether the close circle of the families
of rank, or the senate of capitalists, or a monarch was to be the
despot.  The political movement followed thoroughly the paths that
led to despotism; the fundamental principle of a free commonwealth--
that the contending powers should reciprocally confine themselves
to indirect coercion--had become effete in the eyes of all parties
alike, and on both sides the fight for power began to be carried on
first by the bludgeon, and soon by the sword.  The revolution, at
an end in so far as the old constitution was recognized by both
sides as finally set aside and the aim and method of the new
political development were clearly settled, had yet up to this
time discovered nothing but provisional solutions for this problem
of the reorganization of the state; neither the Gracchan nor the
Sullan constitution of the community bore the stamp of finality.
But the bitterest feature of this bitter time was that even hope
and effort failed the clear-seeing patriot.  The sun of freedom
with all its endless store of blessings was constantly drawing
nearer to its setting, and the twilight was settling over the
very world that was still so brilliant.  It was no accidental
catastrophe which patriotism and genius might have warded off;
it was ancient social evils--at the bottom of all, the ruin of
the middle class by the slave proletariate--that brought destruction
on the Roman commonwealth.  The most sagacious statesman was in the
plight of the physician to whom it is equally painful to prolong or
to abridge the agony of his patient.  Beyond doubt it was the
better for the interests of Rome, the more quickly and thoroughly
a despot set aside all remnants of the ancient free constitution,
and invented new forms and expressions for the moderate measure
of human prosperity for which in absolutism there is room: the
intrinsic advantage, which belonged to monarchy under the given
circumstances as compared with any oligarchy, lay mainly in the
very circumstance that such a despotism, energetic in pulling
down and energetic in building up, could never be exercised by
a collegiate board.  But such calm considerations do not mould
history; it is not reason it is passion alone, that builds for
the future.  The Romans had just to wait and to see how long their
commonwealth would continue unable to live and unable to die, and
whether it would ultimately find its master and, so far as might
be possible, its regenerator, in a man of mighty gifts, or would
collapse in misery and weakness.

Finances of the State

It remains that we should notice the economic and social relations
of the period before us, so far as we have not already done so.

Italian Revenues

The finances of the state were from the commencement of this
epoch substantially dependent on the revenues from the provinces.
In Italy the land-tax, which had always occurred there merely as
an extraordinary impost by the side of the ordinary domanial and
other revenues, had not been levied since the battle of Pydna,
so that absolute freedom from land-tax began to be regarded as a
constitutional privilege of the Roman landowner.  The royalties of
the state, such as the salt monopoly(5) and the right of coinage,
were not now at least, if ever at all, treated as sources of income.
The new tax on inheritance(6) was allowed to fall into abeyance or
was perhaps directly abolished.  Accordingly the Roman exchequer
drew from Italy including Cisalpine Gaul nothing but the produce
of the domains, particularly of the Campanian territory and of
the gold mines in the land of the Celts, and the revenue from
manumissions and from goods imported by sea into the Roman civic
territory not for the personal consumption of the importer.  Both
of these may be regarded essentially as taxes on luxury, and they
certainly must have been considerably augmented by the extension
of the field of Roman citizenship and at the same time of Roman
customs-dues to all Italy, probably including Cisalpine Gaul.

Provincial Revenues

In the provinces the Roman state claimed directly as its private
property, on the one hand, in the states annulled by martial law
the whole domain, on the other hand in those states, where the
Roman government came in room of the former rulers, the landed
property possessed by the latter.  By virtue of this right the
territories of Leontini, Carthage, and Corinth, the domanial
property of the kings of Macedonia, Pergamus, and Cyrene, the mines
in Spain and Macedonia were regarded as Roman domains; and, in like
manner with the territory of Capua, were leased by the Roman
censors to private contractors in return for the delivery of a
proportion of the produce or a fixed sum of money.  We have already
explained that Gaius Gracchus went still farther, claimed the whole
land of the provinces as domain, and in the case of the province of
Asia practically carried out this principle; inasmuch as he legally
justified the -decumae-, -scriptura-, and -vectigalia- levied there
on the ground of the Roman state's right of property in the land,
pasture, and coasts of the province, whether these had previously
belonged to the king or private persons.(7)

There do not appear to have been at this period any royalties
from which the state derived profit, as respected the provinces;
the prohibition of the culture of the vine and olive in Transalpine
Gaul did not benefit the state-chest as such.  On the other hand
direct and indirect taxes were levied to a great extent.  The client
states recognized as fully sovereign--such as the kingdoms of Numidia
and Cappadocia, the allied states (-civitates foederatae-) of Rhodes,
Messana, Tauromenium, Massilia, Gades--were legally exempt from taxation,
and merely bound by their treaties to support the Roman republic in times
of war by regularly furnishing a fixed number of ships or men at their
own expense, and, as a matter of course in case of need, by rendering
extraordinary aid of any kind.

Taxes

The rest of the provincial territory on the other hand, even
including the free cities, was throughout liable to taxation; the
only exceptions were the cities invested with the Roman franchise,
such as Narbo, and the communities on which immunity from taxation
was specially conferred (-civitates immunes-), such as Centuripa
in Sicily.  The direct taxes consisted partly--as in Sicily and
Sardinia--of a title to the tenth(8) of the sheaves and other field
produce as of grapes and olives, or, if the land lay in pasture,
to a corresponding -scriptura-; partly--as in Macedonia, Achaia,
Cyrene, the greater part of Africa, the two Spains, and by Sulla's
arrangements also in Asia--of a fixed sum of money to be paid
annually by each community to Rome (-stipendium-, -tributum-).
This amounted, e. g. for all Macedonia, to 600,000 -denarii-
(24,000 pounds), for the small island of Gyaros near Andros to 150
-denarii- (6 pounds, 10 shillings), and was apparently on the whole
low and less than the tax paid before the Roman rule.  Those
ground-tenths and pasture-moneys the state farmed out to private
contractors on condition of their paying fixed quantities of grain
or fixed sums of money; with respect to the latter money-payments
the state drew upon the respective communities, and left it to
these to assess the amount, according to the general principles
laid down by the Roman government, on the persons liable, and to
collect it from them.(9)

Customs

The indirect taxes consisted--apart from the subordinate moneys
levied from roads, bridges, and canals--mainly of customs-duties.
The customs-duties of antiquity were, if not exclusively, at any
rate principally port-dues, less frequently frontier-dues, on
imports and exports destined for sale, and were levied by each
community in its ports and its territory at discretion.  The Romans
recognized this principle generally, in so far as their original
customs-domain did not extend farther than the range of the Roman
franchise and the limit of the customs was by no means coincident
with the limits of the empire, so that a general imperial tariff
was unknown: it was only by means of state-treaty that a total
exemption from customs-dues in the client communities was secured
for the Roman state, and in various cases at least favourable
term for the Roman burgess.  But in those districts, which had
not been admitted to alliance with Rome but were in the condition
of subjects proper and had not acquired immunity, the customs fell
as a matter of course to the proper sovereign, that is, to the Roman
community; and in consequence of this several larger regions within
the empire were constituted as separate Roman customs-districts, in
which the several communities allied or privileged with immunity
were marked off as exempt from Roman customs.  Thus Sicily even
from the Carthaginian period formed a closed customs-district, on
the frontier of which a tax of 5 per cent on the value was levied
from all imports or exports; thus on the frontiers of Asia there
was levied in consequence of the Sempronian law(10) a similar tax
of 21 per cent; in like manner the province of Narbo, exclusively
the domain of the Roman colony, was organized as a Roman customs-
district This arrangement, besides its fiscal objects, may have
been partly due to the commendable purpose of checking the
confusion inevitably arising out of a variety of communal tolls by
a uniform regulation of frontier-dues.  The levying of the customs,
like that of the tenths, was without exception leased to middlemen.

Costs of Collection

The ordinary burdens of Roman taxpayers were limited to these
imposts; but we may not overlook the fact, that the expenses of
collection were very considerable, and the contributors paid an
amount disproportionately great as compared with what the Roman
government received.  For, while the system of collecting taxes
by middlemen, and especially by general lessees, is in itself
the most expensive of all, in Rome effective competition was
rendered extremely difficult in consequence of the slight
extent to which the lettings were subdivided and the immense
association of capital.

Requisitions

To these ordinary burdens, however, fell to be added in the first
place the requisitions which were made.  The costs of military
administration were in law defrayed by the Roman community.
It provided the commandants of every province with the means of
transport and all other requisites; it paid and provisioned the
Roman soldiers in the province.  The provincial communities had to
furnish merely shelter, wood, hay, and similar articles free of
cost to the magistrates and soldiers; in fact the free towns were
even ordinarily exempted from the winter quartering of the troops--
permanent camps were not yet known.  If the governor therefore
needed grain, ships, slaves to man them, linen, leather, money,
or aught else, he was no doubt absolutely at liberty in time
of war--nor was it far otherwise in time of peace--to demand such
supplies according to his discretion and exigencies from the subject-
communities or the sovereign protected states; but these supplies
were, like the Roman land-tax, treated legally as purchases or
advances, and the value was immediately or afterwards made good by
the Roman exchequer.  Nevertheless these requisitions became, if
not in the theory of state-law, at any rate practically, one of the
most oppressive burdens of the provincials; and the more so, that
the amount of compensation was ordinarily settled by the government
or even by the governor after a one-sided fashion.  We meet indeed
with several legislative restrictions on this dangerous right of
requisition of the Roman superior magistrates: for instance, the
rule already mentioned, that in Spain there should not be taken
from the country people by requisitions for grain more than the
twentieth sheaf, and that the price even of this should be equitably
ascertained;(11) the fixing of a maximum quantity of grain to be
demanded by the governor for the wants of himself and his retinue;
the previous adjustment of a definite and high rate of compensation
for the grain which was frequently demanded, at least from Sicily,
for the wants of the capital.  But, while by fixing such rules
the pressure of those requisitions on the economy of the communities
and of individuals in the province was doubtless mitigated here
and there, it was by no means removed.  In extraordinary crises
this pressure unavoidably increased and often went beyond all bounds,
for then in fact the requisitions not unfrequently assumed the form
of a punishment imposed or that of voluntary contributions enforced,
and compensation was thus wholly withheld.  Thus Sulla in 670-671
compelled the provincials of Asia Minor, who certainly had very
gravely offended against Rome, to furnish to every common soldier
quartered among them forty-fold pay (per day 16 -denarii- = 11 shillings),
to every centurion seventy-five-fold pay, in addition to clothing
and meals along with the right to invite guests at pleasure; thus
the same Sulla soon afterwards imposed a general contribution on
the client and subject communities,(12) in which case nothing,
of course, was said of repayment.

Local Burdens

Further the local public burdens are not to be left out of view.
They must have been, comparatively, very considerable;(13) for the
costs of administration, the keeping of the public buildings in
repair, and generally all civil expenses were borne by the local
budget, and the Roman government simply undertook to defray the
military expenses from their coffers.  But even of this military
budget considerable items were devolved on the communities--such as
the expense of making and maintaining the non-Italian military
roads, the costs of the fleets in the non-Italian seas, nay even
in great part the outlays for the army, inasmuch as the forces of
the client-states as well as those of the subjects were regularly
liable to serve at the expense of their communities within their
province, and began to be employed with increasing frequency even
beyond it--Thracians in Africa, Africans in Italy, arid so on--at
the discretion of the Romans.(14)  If the provinces only and not
Italy paid direct taxes to the government, this was equitable in
a financial, if not in a political, aspect so long as Italy alone
bore the burdens and expense of the military system; but from the
time that this system was abandoned, the provincials were, in a
financial point of view, decidedly overburdened.

Extortions

Lastly we must not forget the great chapter of injustice by which
in manifold ways the Roman magistrates and farmers of the revenue
augmented the burden of taxation on the provinces.  Although every
present which the governor took might be treated legally as an
exaction, and even his right of purchase might be restricted by
law, yet the exercise of his public functions offered to him, if he
was disposed to do wrong, pretexts more than enough for doing so.
The quartering of the troops; the free lodging of the magistrates
and of the host of adjutants of senatorial or equestrian rank, of
clerks, lictors, heralds, physicians, and priests; the right which
the messengers of the state had to be forwarded free of cost; the
approval of, and providing transport for, the contributions payable
in kind; above all the forced sales and the requisitions--gave all
magistrates opportunity to bring home princely fortunes from the
provinces.  And the plundering became daily more general, the more
that the control of the government appeared to be worthless and
that of the capitalist-courts to be in reality dangerous to the
upright magistrate alone.  The institution of a standing commission
regarding the exactions of magistrates in the provinces, occasioned
by the frequency of complaints as to such cases, in 605,(15) and
the laws as to extortion following each other so rapidly and
constantly augmenting its penalties, show the daily increasing
height of the evil, as the Nilometer shows the rise of the flood.

Under all these circumstances even a taxation moderate in theory
might become extremely oppressive in its actual operation; and that
it was so is beyond doubt, although the financial oppression, which
the Italian merchants and bankers exercised over the provinces, was
probably felt as a far heavier burden than the taxation with all
the abuses that attached to it.

Aggregate Financial Result

If we sum up, the income which Rome drew from the provinces was
not properly a taxation of the subjects in the sense which we now
attach to that expression, but rather in the main a revenue that
may be compared with the Attic tributes, by means of which the
leading state defrayed the expense of the military system which
it maintained.  This explains the surprisingly small amount of the
gross as well as of the net proceeds.  There exists a statement,
according to which the income of Rome, exclusive, it may be
presumed, of the Italian revenues and of the grain delivered in
kind to Italy by the -decumani- up to 691 amounted to not more
than 200 millions of sesterces (2,000,000 pounds); that is, but
two-thirds of the sum which the king of Egypt drew from his country
annually.  The proportion can only seem strange at the first
glance.  The Ptolemies turned to account the valley of the Nile as
great, plantation-owners, and drew immense sums from their monopoly
of the commercial intercourse with the east; the Roman treasury was
not much more than the joint military chest of the communities
united under Rome's protection.  The net produce was probably still
less in proportion.  The only provinces yielding a considerable
surplus were perhaps Sicily, where the Carthaginian system of
taxation prevailed, and more especially Asia from the time that
Gaius Gracchus, in order to provide for his largesses of corn, had
carried out the confiscation of the soil and a general domanial
taxation there.  According to manifold testimonies the finances of
the Roman state were essentially dependent on the revenues of Asia.
The assertion sounds quite credible that the other provinces on an
average cost nearly as much as they brought in; in fact those which
required a considerable garrison, such as the two Spains,
Transalpine Gaul, and Macedonia, probably often cost more than they
yielded.  On the whole certainly the Roman treasury in ordinary
times possessed a surplus, which enabled them amply to defray the
expense of the buildings of the state and city, and to accumulate a
reserve-fund; but even the figures appearing for these objects,
when compared with the wide domain of the Roman rule, attest the
small amount of the net proceeds of the Roman taxes.  In a certain
sense therefore the old principle equally honourable and judicious--
that the political hegemony should not be treated as a privilege
yielding profit--still governed the financial administration of the
provinces as it had governed that of Rome in Italy.  What the Roman
community levied from its transmarine subjects was, as a rule, re-
expended for the military security of the transmarine possessions;
and if these Roman imposts fell more heavily on those who paid them
than the earlier taxation, in so far as they were in great part
expended abroad, the substitution, on the other hand, of a single
ruler and a centralized military administration for the many petty
rulers and armies involved a very considerable financial saving.
It is true, however, that this principle of a previous better age
came from the very first to be infringed and mutilated by the
numerous exceptions which were allowed to prevail.  The ground-
tenth levied by Hiero and Carthage in Sicily went far beyond the
amount of an annual war-contributioa With justice moreover Scipio
Aemilianus says in Cicero, that it was unbecoming for the Roman
burgess-body to be at the same time the ruler and the tax-gatherer
of the nations.  The appropriation of the customs-dues was not
compatible with the principle of disinterested hegemony, and the
high rates of the customs as well as the vexatious mode of levying
them were not fitted to allay the sense of the injustice thereby
inflicted.  Even as early probably as this period the name of
publican became synonymous among the eastern peoples with that of
rogue and robber: no burden contributed so much as this to make the
Roman name offensive and odious especially in the east.  But when
Gaius Gracchus and those who called themselves the "popular party"
in Rome came to the helm, political sovereignty was declared in
plain terms to be a right which entitled every one who shared in
it to a number of bushels of corn, the hegemony was converted into
a direct ownership of the soil, and the most complete system of
making the most of that ownership was not only introduced but
with shameless candour legally justified and proclaimed.  It was
certainly not a mere accident, that the hardest lot in this respect
fell precisely to the two least warlike provinces, Sicily and Asia.

The Finances and Public Buildings

An approximate measure of the condition of Roman finance at this
period is furnished, in the absence of definite statements, first
of all by the public buildings.  In the first decades of this epoch
these were prosecuted on the greatest scale, and the construction
of roads in particular had at no time been so energetically
pursued.  In Italy the great southern highway of presumably earlier
origin, which as a prolongation of the Appian road ran from Rome by
way of Capua, Beneventum, and Venusia to the ports of Tarentum and
Brundisium, had attached to it a branch-road from Capua to the
Sicilian straits, a work of Publius Popillius, consul in 622.
On the east coast, where hitherto only the section from Fanum to
Ariminum had been constructed as part of the Flaminian highway (ii.
229), the coast road was prolonged southward as far as Brundisium,
northward by way of Atria on the Po as far as Aquileia, and the
portion at least from Ariminum to Atria was formed by the Popillius
just mentioned in the same year.  The two great Etruscan highways--
the coast or Aurelian road from Rome to Pisa and Luna, which was in
course of formation in 631, and the Cassian road leading by way of
Sutrium and Clusium to Arretium and Florentia, which seems not to
have been constructed before 583--may as Roman public highways
belong only to this age.  About Rome itself new projects were
not required; but the Mulvian bridge (Ponte Molle), by which
the Flaminian road crossed the Tiber not far from Rome, was in 645
reconstructed of stone.  Lastly in Northern Italy, which hitherto
had possessed no other artificial road than the Flaminio-Aemilian
terminating at Placentia, the great Postumian road was constructed
in 606, which led from Genua by way of Dertona, where probably
a colony was founded at the same time, and onward by way of
Placentia, where it joined the Flaminio-Aemilian road, and of
Cremona and Verona to Aquileia, and thus connected the Tyrrhenian
and Adriatic seas; to which was added the communication established
in 645 by Marcus Aemilius Scaurus between Luna and Genua, which
connected the Postumian road directly with Rome.  Gaius Gracchus
exerted himself in another way for the improvement of the Italian
roads.  He secured the due repair of the great rural roads by
assigning, on occasion of his distribution of lands, pieces of
ground alongside of the roads, to which was attached the obligation
of keeping them in repair as an heritable burden.  To him,
moreover, or at any rate to the allotment-commission, the custom
of erecting milestones appears to be traceable, as well as that
of marking the limits of fields by regular boundary-stones.  Lastly
he provided for good -viae vicinales-, with the view of thereby
promoting agriculture.  But of still greater moment was the
construction of the imperial highways in the provinces, which
beyond doubt began in this epoch.  The Domitian highway after long
preparations(16) furnished a secure land-route from Italy to Spain,
and was closely connected with the founding of Aquae Sextiae and
Narbo;(17) the Gabinian(18) and the Egnatian (19) led from the
principal places on the east coast of the Adriatic sea--the former
from Salona, the latter from Apollonia and Dyrrhachium--into
the interior; the network of roads laid out by Manius Aquillius
immediately after the erection of the Asiatic province in 625
led from the capital Ephesus in different directions towards the
frontier.  Of the origin of these works no mention is to be found
in the fragmentary tradition of this epoch, but they were
nevertheless undoubtedly connected with the consolidation
of the Roman rule in Gaul, Dalmatia, Macedonia, and Asia Minor,
and came to be of the greatest importance for the centralization of
the state and the civilizing of the subjugated barbarian districts.

In Italy at least great works of drainage were prosecuted as well
as the formation of roads.  In 594 the drying of the Pomptine
marshes--a vital matter for Central Italy--was set about with great
energy and at least temporary success; in 645 the draining of the
low-lying lands between Parma and Placentia was effected in
connection with the construction of the north Italian highway.
Moreover, the government did much for the Roman aqueducts, as
indispensable for the health and comfort of the capital as they
were costly.  Not only were the two that had been in existence
since the years 442 and 492--the Appian and the Anio aqueducts--
thoroughly repaired in 610, but two new ones were formed; the
Marcian in 610, which remained afterwards unsurpassed for the
excellence and abundance of the water, and the Tepula as it was
called, nineteen years later.  The power of the Roman exchequer to
execute great operations by means of payments in pure cash without
making use of the system of credit, is very clearly shown by the
way in which the Marcian aqueduct was created: the sum required for
it of 180,000,000 sesterces (in gold nearly 2,000,000 pounds) was
raised and applied within three years.  This leads us to infer a
very considerable reserve in the treasury: in fact at the very
beginning of this period it amounted to almost 860,000 pounds,(20)
and was doubtless constantly on the increase.

All these facts taken together certainly lead to the inference that
the position of the Roman finances at this epoch was on the whole
favourable.  Only we may not in a financial point of view overlook
the fact that, while the government during the two earlier thirds
of this period executed splendid and magnificent buildings, it
neglected to make other outlays at least as necessary.  We have
already indicated how unsatisfactory were its military provisions;
the frontier countries and even the valley of the Po(21) were
pillaged by barbarians, and bands of robbers made havoc in the
interior even of Asia Minor, Sicily, and Italy.  The fleet even was
totally neglected; there was hardly any longer a Roman vessel of
war; and the war-vessels, which the subject cities were required to
build and maintain, were not sufficient, so that Rome was not only
absolutely unable to carry on a naval war, but was not even in a
position to check the trade of piracy.  In Rome itself a number of
the most necessary improvements were left untouched, and the river-
buildings in particular were singularly neglected.  The capital
still possessed no other bridge over the Tiber than the primitive
wooden gangway, which led over the Tiber island to the Janiculum;
the Tiber was still allowed to lay the streets every year under
water, and to demolish houses and in fact not unfrequently whole
districts, without anything being done to strengthen the banks;
mighty as was the growth of transmarine commerce, the roadstead
of Ostia--already by nature bad--was allowed to become more and
more sanded up.  A government, which under the most favourable
circumstances and in an epoch of forty years of peace abroad and
at home neglected such duties, might easily allow taxes to fall
into abeyance and yet obtain an annual surplus of income over
expenditure and a considerable reserve; but such a financial
administration by no means deserves commendation for its mere
semblance of brilliant results, but rather merits the same censure--
in respect of laxity, want of unity in management, mistaken
flattery of the people--as falls to be brought in every other
sphere of political life against the senatorial government
of this epoch.

The Finances in the Revolution

The financial condition of Rome of course assumed a far worse
aspect, when the storms of revolution set in.  The new and, even in
a mere financial point of view, extremely oppressive burden imposed
upon the state by the obligation under which Gaius Gracchus placed
it to furnish corn at nominal rates to the burgesses of the
capital, was certainly counterbalanced at first by the newly-opened
sources of income in the province of Asia.  Nevertheless the public
buildings seem from that time to have almost come to a standstill.
While the public works which can be shown to have been constructed
from the battle of Pydna down to the time of Gaius Gracchus were
numerous, from the period after 632 there is scarcely mention of
any other than the projects of bridges, roads, and drainage which
Marcus Aemilius Scaurus organized as censor in 645.  It must remain
a moot point whether this was the effect of the largesses of grain
or, as is perhaps more probable, the consequence of the system of
increased savings, such as befitted a government which became daily
more and more a rigid oligarchy, and such as is indicated by the
statement that the Roman reserve reached its highest point in 663.
The terrible storm of insurrection and revolution, in combination
with the five years' deficit of the revenues of Asia Minor, was the
first serious trial to which the Roman finances were subjected
after the Hannibalic war: they failed to sustain it.  Nothing
perhaps so clearly marks the difference of the times as the
circumstance that in the Hannibalic war it was not till the tenth
year of the struggle, when the burgesses were almost sinking under
taxation, that the reserve was touched;(22) whereas the Social war
was from the first supported by the balance in hand, and when this
was expended after two campaigns to the last penny, they preferred
to sell by auction the public sites in the capital(23) and to seize
the treasures of the temples(24) rather than levy a tax on the
burgesses.  The storm however, severe as it was, passed over;
Sulla, at the expense doubtless of enormous economic sacrifices
imposed on the subjects and Italian revolutionists in particular,
restored order to the finances and, by abolishing the largesses of
corn and retaining although in a reduced form the Asiatic revenues,
secured for the commonwealth a satisfactory economic condition, at
least in the sense of the ordinary expenditure remaining far below
the ordinary income.

Private Economics
Agriculture

In the private economics of this period hardly any new feature
emerges; the advantages and disadvantages formerly set forth as
incident to the social circumstances of Italy(25) were not altered,
but merely farther and more distinctly developed.  In agriculture
we have already seen that the growing power of Roman capital was
gradually absorbing the intermediate and small landed estates in
Italy as well as in the provinces, as the sun sucks up the drops of
rain.  The government not only looked on without preventing, but
even promoted this injurious division of the soil by particular
measures, especially by prohibiting the production of wine and oil
beyond the Alps with a view to favour the great Italian landlords
and merchants.(26)  It is true that both the opposition and the
section of the conservatives that entered into ideas of reform
worked energetically to counteract the evil; the two Gracchi, by
carrying out the distribution of almost the whole domain land, gave
to the state 80,000 new Italian farmers; Sulla, by settling 120,000
colonists in Italy, filled up at least in part the gaps which the
revolution and he himself had made in the ranks of the Italian
yeomen.  But, when a vessel is emptying itself by constant efflux,
the evil is to be remedied not by pouring in even considerable
quantities, but only by the establishment of a constant influx--
a remedy which was on various occasions attempted, but not with
success.  In the provinces, not even the smallest effort was made
to save the farmer class there from being bought out by the Roman
speculators; the provincials, forsooth, were merely men, and not a
party.  The consequence was, that even the rents of the soil beyond
Italy flowed more and more to Rome.  Moreover the plantation-
system, which about the middle of this epoch had already gained
the ascendant even in particular districts of Italy, such as Etruria,
had, through the co-operation of an energetic and methodical
management and abundant pecuniary resources, attained to a state
of high prosperity after its kind.  The production of Italian wine
in particular, which was artificially promoted partly by the opening
of forced markets in a portion of the provinces, partly by the
prohibition of foreign wines in Italy as expressed for instance
in the sumptuary law of 593, attained very considerable results:
the Aminean and Falernian wine began to be named by the side of the
Thasian and Chian, and the "Opimian wine" of 633, the Roman vintage
"Eleven," was long remembered after the last jar was exhausted.

Trades

Of trades and manufactur es there is nothing to be said, except
that the Italian nation in this respect persevered in an inaction
bordering on barbarism.  They destroyed the Corinthian factories,
the depositories of so many valuable industrial traditions--not
however that they might establish similar factories for themselves,
but that they might buy up at extravagant prices such Corinthian
vases of earthenware or copper and similar "antique works" as were
preserved in Greek houses.  The trades that were still somewhat
prosperous, such as those connected with building, were productive
of hardly any benefit for the commonwealth, because here too the
system of employing slaves in every more considerable undertaking
intervened: in the construction of the Marcian aqueduct, for
instance, the government concluded contracts for building and
materials simultaneously with 3000 master-tradesmen, each of whom
then performed the work contracted for with his band of slaves.

Money-Dealing and Commerce

The most brilliant, or rather the only brilliant, side of Roman
private economics was money-dealing and commerce.  First of all
stood the leasing of the domains and of the taxes, through which a
large, perhaps the larger, part of the income of the Roman state
flowed into the pockets of the Roman capitalists.  The money-
dealings, moreover, throughout the range of the Roman state were
monopolized by the Romans; every penny circulated in Gaul, it is
said in a writing issued soon after the end of this period, passes
through the books of the Roman merchants, and so it was doubtless
everywhere.  The co-operation of rude economic conditions and of
the unscrupulous employment of Rome's political ascendency for the
benefit of the private interests of every wealthy Roman rendered a
usurious system of interest universal, as is shown for example by
the treatment of the war-tax imposed by Sulla on the province of
Asia in 670, which the Roman capitalists advanced; it swelled with
paid and unpaid interest within fourteen years to sixfold its
original amount.  The communities had to sell their public buildings,
their works of art and jewels, parents had to sell their grown-up
children, in order to meet the claims of the Roman creditor: it
was no rare occurrence for the debtor to be not merely subjected
to moral torture, but directly placed upon the rack.  To these
sources of gain fell to be added the wholesale traffic.  The exports
and imports of Italy were very considerable.  The former consisted
chiefly of wine and oil, with which Italy and Greece almost
exclusively--for the production of wine in the Massiliot and
Turdetanian territories can at that time have been but small--
supplied the whole region of the Mediterranean; Italian wine was
sent in considerable quantities to the Balearic islands and
Celtiberia, to Africa, which was merely a corn and pasture country,
to Narbo and into the interior of Gaul.  Still more considerable
was the import to Italy, where at that time all luxury was
concentrated, and whither most articles of luxury for food, drink,
or clothing, ornaments, books, household furniture, works of art
were imported by sea.  The traffic in slaves, above all, received
through the ever-increasing demand of the Roman merchants an
impetus to which no parallel had been known in the region of the
Mediterranean, and which stood in the closest connection with the
flourishing of piracy.  All lands and all nations were laid under
contribution for slaves, but the places where they were chiefly
captured were Syria and the interior of Asia Minor.(27)

Ostia
Puteoli

In Italy the transmarine imports were chiefly concentrated in
the two great emporia on the Tyrrhene sea, Ostia and Puteoli.
The grain destined for the capital was brought to Ostia, which
was far from having a good roadstead, but, as being the nearest
port to Rome, was the most appropriate mart for less valuable wares;
whereas the traffic in luxuries with the east was directed mainly
to Puteoli, which recommended itself by its good harbour for ships
with valuable cargoes, and presented to merchants a market in its
immediate neighbourhood little inferior to that of the capital--
the district of Baiae, which came to be more and more filled with
villas.  For a long time this latter traffic was conducted through
Corinth and after its destruction through Delos, and in this sense
accordingly Puteoli is called by Lucilius the Italian "Little Delos";
but after the catastrophe which befel Delos in the Mithradatic war,(28)
and from which it never recovered, the Puteolans entered into direct
commercial connections with Syria and Alexandria, and their city became
more and more decidedly the first seat of transmarine commerce in Italy.
But it was not merely the gain which was made by the Italian exports
and imports, that fell mainly to the Italians; at Narbo they competed
in the Celtic trade with the Massiliots, and in general it admits of
no doubt that the Roman merchants to be met with everywhere, floating
or settled, took to themselves the best share of all speculations.

Capitalist Oligarchy

Putting together these phenomena, we recognize as the most prominent
feature in the private economy of this epoch the financial oligarchy
of Roman capitalists standing alongside of, and on a par with,
the political oligarchy.  In their hands were united the rents
of the soil of almost all Italy and of the best portions of
the provincial territory, the proceeds at usury of the capital
monopolized by them, the commercial gain from the whole empire,
and lastly, a very considerable part of the Roman state-revenue
in the form of profits accruing from the lease of that revenue.
The daily-increasing accumulation of capital is evident in the rise
of the average rate of wealth: 3,000,000 sesterces (30,000 pounds)
was now a moderate senatorial, 2,000,000 (20,000 pounds) was a decent
equestrian fortune; the property of the wealthiest man of the
Gracchan age, Publius Crassus consul in 623 was estimated at
100,000,000 sesterces (1,000,000 pounds).  It is no wonder,
that this capitalist order exercised a preponderant influence
on external policy; that it destroyed out of commercial rivalry
Carthage and Corinth(29) as the Etruscans had formerly destroyed
Alalia and the Syracusans Caere; that it in spite of the senate
upheld the colony of Narbo.(30)  It is likewise no wonder, that
this capitalist oligarchy engaged in earnest and often victorious
competition with the oligarchy of the nobles in internal politics.
But it is also no wonder, that ruined men of wealth put themselves
at the head of bands of revolted slaves,(31) and rudely reminded
the public that the transition is easy from the haunts of
fashionable debauchery to the robber's cave.  It is no wonder,
that that financial tower of Babel, with its foundation not purely
economic but borrowed from the political ascendency of Rome,
tottered at every serious political crisis nearly in the same
way as our very similar fabric of a paper currency.  The great
financial crisis, which in consequence of the Italo-Asiatic
commotions of 664 f.  set in upon the Roman capitalist-class,
the bankruptcy of the state and of private persons, the general
depreciation of landed property and of partnership-shares, can no
longer be traced out in detail; but their general nature and their
importance are placed beyond doubt by their results--the murder of
the praetor by a band of creditors,(32) the attempt to eject from
the senate all the senators not free of debt,(33) the renewal of
the maximum of interest by Sulla,(34) the cancelling of 75 per cent
of all debts by the revolutionary party.(35)  The consequence of
this system was naturally general impoverishment and depopulation
in the provinces, whereas the parasitic population of migratory
or temporarily settled Italians was everywhere on the increase.
In Asia Minor 80,000 men of Italian origin are said to have perished
in one day.(36)  How numerous they were in Delos, is evident from
the tombstones still extant on the island and from the statement
that 20,000 foreigners, mostly Italian merchants, were put to death
there by command of Mithradates.(37)  In Africa the Italians were
so many, that even the Numidian town of Cirta could be defended
mainly by them against Jugurtha.(38)  Gaul too, it is said, was
filled with Roman merchants; in the case of Spain alone--perhaps
not accidentally--no statements of this sort are found.  In Italy
itself, on the other hand, the condition of the free population
at this epoch had on the whole beyond doubt retrograded.  To this
result certainly the civil wars essentially contributed, which,
according to statements of a general kind and but littletrustworthy,
are alleged to have swept away from 100,000 to 150,000 of the Roman
burgesses and 300,000 of the Italian population generally; but still
worse was the effect of the economic ruin of the middle class, and of
the boundless extent of the mercantile emigration which induced a great
portion of the Italian youth to spend their most vigorous years abroad.

A compensation of very dubious value was afforded by the free
parasitic Helleno-Oriental population, which sojourned in the
capital as diplomatic agents for kings or communities, as physicians,
schoolmasters, priests, servants, parasites, and in the myriad
employments of sharpers and swindlers, or, as traders and
mariners, frequented especially Ostia, Puteoli, and Brundisium.
Still more hazardous was the disproportionate increase of the
multitude of slaves in the peninsula.  The Italian burgesses by
the census of 684 numbered 910,000 men capable of bearing arms, to
which number, in order to obtain the amount of the free population
in the peninsula, those accidentally passed over in the census,
the Latins in the district between the Alps and the Po, and the
foreigners domiciled in Italy, have to be added, while the Roman
burgesses domiciled abroad are to be deducted.  It will therefore
be scarcely possible to estimate the free population of the
peninsula at more than from 6 to 7 millions.  If its whole
population at this time was equal to that of the present day, we
should have to assume accordingly a mass of slaves amounting to 13
or 14 millions.  It needs however no such fallacious calculations
to render the dangerous tension of this state of things apparent;
this is loudly enough attested by the partial servile insurrections,
and by the appeal which from the beginning of the revolutions was
at the close of every outbreak addressed to the slaves to take
up arms against their masters and to fight out their liberty.
If we conceive of England with its lords, its squires, and
above all its City, but with its freeholders and lessees converted
into proletarians, and its labourers and sailors converted into slaves,
we shall gain an approximate image of the population of the Italian
peninsula in those days.

The economic relations of this epoch are clearly mirrored to
us even now in the Roman monetary system.  Its treatment shows
throughout the sagacious merchant.  For long gold and silver stood
side by side as general means of payment on such a footing that,
while for the purpose of general cash-balances a fixed ratio of
value was legally laid down between the two metals,(39) the giving
one metal for the other was not, as a rule, optional, but payment
was to be in gold or silver according to the tenor of the bond.
In this way the great evils were avoided, that are otherwise
inevitably associated with the setting up of two precious metals;
the severe gold crises--as about 600, for instance, when in
consequence of the discovery of the Tauriscan gold-seams(40) gold
as compared with silver fell at once in Italy about 33 1/3 per
cent--exercised at least no direct influence on the silver money
and retail transactions.  The nature of the case implied that,
the more transmarine traffic extended, gold the more decidedly
rose from the second place to the first; and that it did so, is
confirmed by the statements as to the balances in the treasury and
as to its transactions; but the government was not thereby induced
to introduce gold into the coinage.  The coining of gold attempted
in the exigency of the Hannibalic war(41) had been long allowed
to fall into abeyance; the few gold pieces which Sulla struck as
regent were scarcely more than pieces coined for the occasion
of his triumphal presents.  Silver still as before circulated
exclusively as actual money; gold, whether it, as was usual,
circulated in bars or bore the stamp of a foreign or possibly even
of an inland mint, was taken solely by weight.  Nevertheless gold
and silver were on a par as means of exchange, and the fraudulent
alloying of gold was treated in law, like the issuing of spurious
silver money, as a monetary offence.  They thus obtained the
immense advantage of precluding, in the case of the most important
medium of payment, even the possibility of monetary fraud and
monetary adulteration.  Otherwise the coinage was as copious as it
was of exemplary purity.  After the silver piece had been reduced
in the Hannibalic war from 1/72 (42) to 1/84 of a pound,(43) it
retained for more than three centuries quite the same weight
and the same quality; no alloying took place.  The copper money
became about the beginning of this period quite restricted to
small change, and ceased to be employed as formerly in large
transactions; for this reason the -as- was no longer coined after
perhaps the beginning of the seventh century, and the copper
coinage was confined to the smaller values of a -semis- (1/4 pence)
and under, which could not well be represented in silver.
The sorts of coins were arranged according to a simple principle,
and in the then smallest coin of the ordinary issue--the -quadrans-
(1/8 pence)--carried down to the limit of appreciable value.
It was a monetary system, which, for the judicious principles
on which it was based and for the iron rigour with which they
were applied, stands alone in antiquity and has been but rarely
paralleled even in modern times.

Yet it had also its weak point.  According to a custom, common
in all antiquity, but which reached its highest development at
Carthage,(44) the Roman government issued along with the good
silver -denarii- also -denarii- of copper plated with silver, which
had to be accepted like the former and were just a token-money
analogous to our paper currency, with compulsory circulation and
recourse on the public chest, inasmuch as it also was not entitled
to reject the plated pieces.  This was no more an official
adulteration of the coinage than our manufacture of paper-money,
for they practised the thing quite openly; Marcus Drusus proposed
in 663, with the view of gaining the means for his largesses of
grain, the sending forth of one plated -denarius- for every seven
silver ones issuing fresh from the mint; nevertheless this measure
not only offered a dangerous handle to private forgery, but
designedly left the public uncertain whether it was receiving
silver or token money, and to what total amount the latter was
in circulation.  In the embarrassed period of the civil war and
of the great financial crisis they seem to have so unduly availed
themselves of plating, that a monetary crisis accompanied the
financial one, and the quantity of spurious and really worthless
pieces rendered dealings extremely insecure.  Accordingly during
the Cinnan government an enactment was passed by the praetors and
tribunes, primarily by Marcus Marius Gratidianus,(45) for redeeming
all the token-money by silver, and for that purpose an assay-office
was established.  How far the calling-in was accomplished,
tradition has not told us; the coining of token-money itself
continued to subsist.

As to the provinces, in accordance with the setting aside of gold
money on principle, the coining of gold was nowhere permitted, not
even in the client-states; so that a gold coinage at this period
occurs only where Rome had nothing at all to say, especially among
the Celts to the north of the Cevennes and among the states in
revolt against Rome; the Italians, for instance, as well as
Mithradates Eupator struck gold coins.  The government seems to
have made efforts to bring the coinage of silver also more and more
into its hands, particularly in the west.  In Africa and Sardinia
the Carthaginian gold and silver money may have remained in
circulation even after the fall of the Carthaginian state; but
no coinage of precious metals took place there after either the
Carthaginian or the Roman standard, and certainly very soon after
the Romans took possession, the -denarius- introduced from Italy
acquired the predominance in the transactions of the two countries.
In Spain and Sicily, which came earlier to the Romans and
experienced altogether a milder treatment, silver was no doubt
coined under the Roman rule, and indeed in the former country the
silver coinage was first called into existence by the Romans and
based on the Roman standard;(46) but there exist good grounds for
the supposition, that even in these two countries, at least from
the beginning of the seventh century, the provincial and urban
mints were obliged to restrict their issues to copper small money.
Only in Narbonese Gaul the right of coining silver could not be
withdrawn from the old-allied and considerable free city of
Massilia; and the same was presumably true of the Greek cities in
Illyria, Apollonia and Dyrrhachium.  But the privilege of these
communities to coin money was restricted indirectly by the fact,
that the three-quarter -denarius-, which by ordinance of the Roman
government was coined both at Massilia and in Illyria, and which
had been under the name of -victoriatus- received into the Roman
monetary system,(47) was about the middle of the seventh century
set aside in the latter; the effect of which necessarily was, that
the Massiliot and Illyrian currency was driven out of Upper Italy
and only remained in circulation, over and above its native field,
perhaps in the regions of the Alps and the Danube.  Such progress
had thus been made already in this epoch, that the standard of the
-denarius- exclusively prevailed in the whole western division of
the Roman state; for Italy, Sicily--of which it is as respects the
beginning of the next period expressly attested, that no other
silver money circulated there but the -denarius---Sardinia, Africa,
used exclusively Roman silver money, and the provincial silver
still current in Spain as well as the silver money of the Massiliots
and Illyrians were at least struck after the standard of the -denarius-.

It was otherwise in the east.  Here, where the number of the states
coining money from olden times and the quantity of native coin in
circulation were very considerable, the -denarius- did not make its
way into wider acceptance, although it was perhaps declared a legal
tender.  On the contrary either the previous monetary standard
continued in use, as in Macedonia for instance, which still as
a province--although partially adding the names of the Roman
magistrates to that of the country--struck its Attic -tetradrachmae-
and certainly employed in substance no other money; or a peculiar
money-standard corresponding to the circumstances was introduced
under Roman authority, as on the institution of the province of Asia,
when a new -stater-, the -cistophorus- as it was called, was prescribed
by the Roman government and was thenceforth struck by the district-
capitals there under Roman superintendence.  This essential diversity
between the Occidental and Oriental systems of currency came to be
of the greatest historical importance: the Romanizing of the subject
lands found one of its mightiest levers in the adoption of Roman money,
and it was not through mere accident that what we have designated at
this epoch as the field of the -denarius- became afterwards the Latin,
while the field of the -drachma- became afterwards the Greek, half
of the empire.  Still at the present day the former field substantially
represents the sum of Romanic culture, whereas the latter has
severed itself from European civilization.

It is easy to form a general conception of the aspect which under
such economic conditions the social relations must have assumed;
but to follow out in detail the increase of luxury, of prices, of
fastidiousness and frivolity is neither pleasant nor instructive.
Extravagance and sensuous enjoyment formed the main object with
all, among the parvenus as well as among the Licinii and Metelli;
not the polished luxury which is the acme of civilization, but
that sort of luxury which had developed itself amidst the decaying
Hellenic civilization of Asia Minor and Alexandria, which degraded
everything beautiful and significant to the purpose of decoration
and studied enjoyment with a laborious pedantry, a precise
punctiliousness, rendering it equally nauseous to the man of fresh
feeling as to the man of fresh intellect.  As to the popular
festivals, the importation of transmarine wild beasts prohibited
in the time of Cato(48) was, apparently about the middle of this
century, formally permitted anew by a decree of the burgesses
proposed by Gnaeus Aufidius; the effect of which was, that animal-
hunts came into enthusiastic favour and formed a chief feature of
the burgess-festivals.  Several lions first appeared in the Roman
arena about 651, the first elephants about 655; Sulla when praetor
exhibited a hundred lions in 661.  The same holds true of
gladiatorial games.  If the forefathers had publicly exhibited
representations of great battles, their grandchildren began to
do the same with their gladiatorial games, and by means of such
leading or state performances of the age to make themselves a
laughing-stock to their descendants.  What sums were spent on these
and on funeral solemnities generally, may be inferred from the
testament of Marcus Aemilius Lepidus (consul in 567, 579; 602);
he gave orders to his children, forasmuch as the true last honours
consisted not in empty pomp but in the remembrance of personal
and ancestral services, to expend on his funeral not more than
1,000,000 -asses- (4000 pounds).  Luxury was on the increase also
as respected buildings and gardens; the splendid town house of the
orator Crassus (663), famous especially for the old trees of its
garden, was valued with the trees at 6,000,000 sesterces (60,000
pounds), without them at the half; while the value of an ordinary
dwelling-house in Rome may be estimated perhaps at 60,000 sesterces
(600 pounds).(49)  How quickly the prices of ornamental estates
increased, is shown by the instance of the Misenian villa, for
which Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, paid 75,000 sesterces
(750 pounds), and Lucius Lucullus, consul in 680, thirty-three
times that price.  The villas and the luxurious rural and sea-
bathing life rendered Baiae and generally the district around the
Bay of Naples the El Dorado of noble idleness.  Games of hazard,
in which the stake was no longer as in the Italian dice-playing a
trifle, became common, and as early as 639 a censorial edict was
issued against them.  Gauze fabrics, which displayed rather than
concealed the figure, and silken clothing began to displace the old
woollen dresses among women and even among men.  Against the insane
extravagance in the employment of foreign perfumery the sumptuary
laws interfered in vain.

But the real focus in which the brilliance of this genteel life was
concentrated was the table.  Extravagant prices--as much as 100,000
sesterces (1000 pounds)--were paid for an exquisite cook.  Houses
were constructed with special reference to this object, and the
villas in particular along the coast were provided with salt-water
tanks of their own, in order that they might furnish marine fishes
and oysters at any time fresh to the table.  A dinner was already
described as poor, at which the fowls were served up to the guests
entire and not merely the choice portions, and at which the guests
were expected to eat of the several dishes and not simply to taste
them.  They procured at a great expense foreign delicacies and
Greek wine, which had to be sent round at least once at every
respectable repast.  At banquets above all the Romans displayed
their hosts of slaves ministering to luxury, their bands of
musicians, their dancing-girls, their elegant furniture, their
carpets glittering with gold or pictorially embroidered, their
purple hangings, their antique bronzes, their rich silver plate.
Against such displays the sumptuary laws were primarily directed,
which were issued more frequently (593, 639, 665, 673) and in
greater detail than ever; a number of delicacies and wines were
therein totally prohibited, for others a maximum in weight and
price was fixed; the quantity of silver plate was likewise
restricted by law, and lastly general maximum rates were prescribed
for the expenses of ordinary and festal meals; these, for example,
were fixed in 593 at 10 and 100 sesterces (2 shillings and 1 pound)
in 673 at 30 and 300 sesterces (6 shillings and 3 pounds)
respectively.  Unfortunately truth requires us to add that, of all
the Romans of rank, not more than three--and these not including
the legislators themselves--are said to have complied with these
imposing laws; and in the case of these three it was the law of the
Stoa, and not that of the state, that curtailed the bill of fare.

It is worth while to dwell for a moment on the luxury that went
on increasing in defiance of these laws, as respects silver plate.
In the sixth century silver plate for the table was, with the
exception of the traditionary silver salt-dish, a rarity; the
Carthaginian ambassadors jested over the circumstance, that at
every house to which they were invited they had encountered the
same silver plate.(50)  Scipio Aemilianus possessed not more than
32 pounds (120 pounds) in wrought silver; his nephew Quintus Fabius
(consul in 633) first brought his plate up to 1000 pounds (4000
pounds), Marcus Drusus (tribune of the people in 663) reached
10,000 pounds (40,000 pounds); in Sulla's time there were already
counted in the capital about 150 silver state-dishes weighing 100
pounds each, several of which brought their possessors into the
lists of proscription.  To judge of the sums expended on these,
we must recollect that the workmanship also was paid for at enormous
rates; for instance Gaius Gracchus paid for choice articles of
silver fifteen times, and Lucius Crassus, consul in 659, eighteen
times the value of the metal, and the latter gave for a pair of
cups by a noted silversmith 100,000 sesterces (1000 pounds).
So it was in proportion everywhere.

How it fared with marriage and the rearing of children, is shown
by the Gracchan agrarian laws, which first placed a premium on
these.(51)  Divorce, formerly in Rome almost unheard of, was now an
everyday occurrence; while in the oldest Roman marriage the husband
had purchased his wife, it might have been proposed to the Romans
of quality in the present times that, with the view of bringing
the name into accordance with the reality, they should introduce
marriage for hire.  Even a man like Metellus Macedonicus, who for
his honourable domestic life and his numerous host of children was
the admiration of his contemporaries, when censor in 623 enforced
the obligation of the burgesses to live in a state of matrimony by
describing it as an oppressive public burden, which patriots ought
nevertheless to undertake from a sense of duty.(52)

There were, certainly, exceptions.  The circles of the rural towns,
and particularly those of the larger landholders, had preserved
more faithfully the old honourable habits of the Latin nation.
In the capital, however, the Catonian opposition had become a mere
form of words; the modern tendency bore sovereign sway, and though
individuals of firm and refined organization, such as Scipio
Aemilianus, knew the art of combining Roman manners with Attic
culture, Hellenism was among the great multitude synonymous with
intellectual and moral corruption.  We must never lose sight of
the reaction exercised by these social evils on political life,
if we would understand the Roman revolution.  It was no matter
of indifference, that of the two men of rank, who in 662 acted
as supreme masters of morals to the community, the one publicly
reproached the other with having shed tears over the death of a
-muraena- the pride of his fishpond, and the latter retaliated on
the former that he had buried three wives and had shed tears over
none of them.  It was no matter of indifference, that in 593 an
orator could make sport in the open Forum with the following
description of a senatorial civil juryman, whom the time fixed
for the cause finds amidst the circle of his boon-companions.
"They play at hazard, delicately perfumed, surrounded by their
mistresses.  As the afternoon advances, they summon the servant
and bid him make enquiries on the Comitium, as to what has occurred
in the Forum, who has spoken in favour of or against the new project
of law, what tribes have voted for and what against it. At length
they go themselves to the judgment-seat, just early enough not to
bring the process down on their own neck.  On the way there is no
opportunity in any retired alley which they do not avail themselves
of, for they have gorged themselves with wine.  Reluctantly they
come to the tribunal and give audience to the parties.  Those who
are concerned bring forward their cause.  The juryman orders the
witnesses to come forward; he himself steps aside.  When he returns,
he declares that he has heard everything, and asks for the documents.
He looks into the writings; he can hardly keep his eyes open for wine.
When he thereupon withdraws to consider his sentence, he says to his
boon-companions, 'What concern have I with these tiresome people?
why should we not rather go to drink a cup of mulse mixed with Greek wine,
and accompany it with a fat fieldfare and a good fish, a veritable pike
from the Tiber island?'  Those who heard the orator laughed; but was it
not a very serious matter, that such things were subjects for laughter?"




Chapter XII

Nationality, Religion, and Education

Paramount Ascendency of Latinism and Hellenism

In the great struggle of the nationalities within the wide circuit
of the Roman empire, the secondary nations seem at this period on
the wane or disappearing.  The most important of them all, the
Phoenician, received through the destruction of Carthage a mortal
wound from which it slowly bled to death.  The districts of Italy
which had hitherto preserved their old language and manners,
Etruria and Samnium, were not only visited by the heaviest blows
of the Sullan reaction, but were compelled also by the political
levelling of Italy to adopt the Latin language and customs in
public intercourse, so that the old native languages were reduced
to popular dialects rapidly decaying.  There no longer appears
throughout the bounds of the Roman state any nationality entitled
even to compete with the Roman and the Greek.

Latinism

On the other hand the Latin nationality was, as respected both
the extent of its diffusion and the depth of its hold, in the most
decided ascendant.  As after the Social war any portion of Italian
soil might belong to any Italian in full Roman ownership, and any
god of an Italian temple might receive Roman gifts; as in all
Italy, with the exception of the region beyond the Po, the Roman
law thenceforth had exclusive authority, superseding all other
civic and local laws; so the Roman language at that time became
the universal language of business, and soon likewise the universal
language of cultivated intercourse, in the whole peninsula from the
Alps to the Sicilian Straits.  But it no longer restricted itself
to these natural limits.  The mass of capital accumulating in
Italy, the riches of its products, the intelligence of its
agriculturists, the versatility of its merchants, found no adequate
scope in the peninsula; these circumstances and the public service
carried the Italians in great numbers to the provinces.(1)  Their
privileged position there rendered the Roman language and the Roman
law privileged also, even where Romans were not merely transacting
business with each other.(2)  Everywhere the Italians kept together
as compact and organized masses, the soldiers in their legions, the
merchants of every larger town as special corporations, the Roman
burgesses domiciled or sojourning in the particular provincial
court-district as "circuits" (-conventus civium Romanorum-) with
their own list of jurymen and in some measure with a communal
constitution; and, though these provincial Romans ordinarily
returned sooner or later to Italy, they nevertheless gradually
laid the foundations of a fixed population in the provinces,
partly Roman, partly mixed, attaching itself to the Roman settlers.
We have already mentioned that it was in Spain, where the Roman army
first became a standing one, that distinct provincial towns with
Italian constitution were first organized--Carteia in 583,(3)
Valentia in 616,(4) and at a later date Palma and Pollentia.(5)
Although the interior was still far from civilized,--the territory
of the Vaccaeans, for instance, being still mentioned long after
this time as one of the rudest and most repulsive places of abode
for the cultivated Italian--authors and inscriptions attest that as
early as the middle of the seventh century the Latin language was
in common use around New Carthage and elsewhere along the coast.
Gracchus first distinctly developed the idea of colonizing, or in
other words of Romanizing, the provinces of the Roman state by
Italian emigration, and endeavoured to carry it out; and, although
the conservative opposition resisted the bold project, destroyed
for the most part its attempted beginnings, and prevented its
continuation, yet the colony of Narbo was preserved, important even
of itself as extending the domain of the Latin tongue, and far more
important still as the landmark of a great idea, the foundation-
stone of a mighty structure to come.  The ancient Gallic, and in
fact the modern French, type of character, sprang out of that
settlement, and are in their ultimate origin creations of Gaius
Gracchus.  But the Latin nationality not only filled the bounds
of Italy and began to pass beyond them; it came also to acquire
intrinsically a deeper intellectual basis.  We find it in the
course of creating a classical literature, and a higher instruction
of its own; and, though in comparison with the Hellenic classics
and Hellenic culture we may feel ourselves tempted to attach little
value to the feeble hothouse products of Italy, yet, so far as its
historical development was primarily concerned, the quality of
the Latin classical literature and the Latin culture was of far
less moment than the fact that they subsisted side by side with
the Greek; and, sunken as were the contemporary Hellenes in a
literary point of view, one might well apply in this case also
the saying of the poet, that the living day-labourer is better
than the dead Achilles.

Hellenism

But, however rapidly and vigorously the Latin language and
nationality gain ground, they at the same time recognize the
Hellenic nationality as having an entirely equal, indeed an earlier
and better title, and enter everywhere into the closest alliance
with it or become intermingled with it in a joint development.
The Italian revolution, which otherwise levelled all the non-Latin
nationalities in the peninsula, did not disturb the Greek cities of
Tarentum, Rhegium, Neapolis, Locri.(6)  In like manner Massilia,
although now enclosed by Roman territory, remained continuously
a Greek city and, just as such, firmly connected with Rome.  With
the complete Latinizing of Italy the growth of Hellenizing went hand
in hand.  In the higher circles of Italian society Greek training
became an integral element of their native culture.  The consul of 623,
the -pontifex maximus- Publius Crassus, excited the astonishment even
of the native Greeks, when as governor of Asia he delivered his judicial
decisions, as the case required, sometimes in ordinary Greek, sometimes
in one of the four dialects which had become written languages.  And if
the Italian literature and art for long looked steadily towards the east,
Hellenic literature and art now began to look towards the west.  Not only
did the Greek cities in Italy continue to maintain an active intellectual
intercourse with Greece, Asia Minor, and Egypt, and confer on the
Greek poets and actors who had acquired celebrity there the like
recognition and the like honours among themselves; in Rome also,
after the example set by the destroyer of Corinth at his triumph
in 608, the gymnastic and aesthetic recreations of the Greeks--
competitions in wrestling as well as in music, acting, reciting,
and declaiming--came into vogue.(7)  Greek men of letters even thus
early struck root in the noble society of Rome, especially in the
Scipionic circle, the most prominent Greek members of which--the
historian Polybius and the philosopher Panaetius--belong rather to
the history of Roman than of Greek development.  But even in other
less illustrious circles similar relations occur; we may mention
another contemporary of Scipio, the philosopher Clitomachus,
because his life at the same time presents a vivid view of the
great intermingling of nations at this epoch.  A native of
Carthage, then a disciple of Carneades at Athens, and afterwards
his successor in his professorship, Clitomachus held intercourse
from Athens with the most cultivated men of Italy, the historian
Aulus Albinus and the poet Lucilius, and dedicated on the one hand
a scientific work to Lucius Censorinus the Roman consul who opened
the siege of Carthage, and on the other hand a philosophic
consolatory treatise to his fellow-citizens who were conveyed to
Italy as slaves.  While Greek literary men of note had hitherto
taken up their abode temporarily in Rome as ambassadors, exiles,
or otherwise, they now began to settle there; for instance, the
already-mentioned Panaetius lived in the house of Scipio, and
the hexameter-maker Archias of Antioch settled at Rome in 652 and
supported himself respectably by the art of improvising and by epic
poems on Roman consulars.  Even Gaius Marius, who hardly understood
a line of his -carmen- and was altogether as ill adapted as
possible for a Maecenas, could not avoid patronizing the artist
in verse.  While intellectual and literary life thus brought the
more genteel, if not the purer, elements of the two nations into
connection with each other, on the other hand the arrival of troops
of slaves from Asia Minor and Syria and the mercantile immigration
from the Greek and half-Greek east brought the coarsest strata of
Hellenism--largely alloyed with Oriental and generally barbaric
ingredients--into contact with the Italian proletariate, and gave
to that also a Hellenic colouring.  The remark of Cicero, that new
phrases and new fashions first make their appearance in maritime
towns, probably had a primary reference to the semi-Hellenic
character of Ostia, Puteoli, and Brundisium, where with foreign
wares foreign manners also first found admission and became thence
more widely diffused.

Mixture of Peoples

The immediate result of this complete revolution in the relations
of nationality was certainly far from pleasing.  Italy swarmed with
Greeks, Syrians, Phoenicians, Jews, Egyptians, while the provinces
swarmed with Romans; sharply defined national peculiarities
everywhere came into mutual contact, and were visibly worn off; it
seemed as if nothing was to be left behind but the general impress
of utilitarianism.  What the Latin character gained in diffusion
it lost in freshness; especially in Rome itself, where the middle
class disappeared the soonest and most entirely, and nothing was
left but the grandees and the beggars, both in like measure
cosmopolitan.  Cicero assures us that about 660 the general culture
in the Latin towns stood higher than in Rome; and this is confirmed
by the literature of this period, whose most pleasing, healthiest,
and most characteristic products, such as the national comedy and
the Lucilian satire, are with greater justice described as Latin,
than as Roman.  That the Italian Hellenism of the lower orders was
in reality nothing but a repulsive cosmopolitanism tainted at once
with all the extravagances of culture and with a superficially
whitewashed barbarism, is self-evident; but even in the case of
the better society the fine taste of the Scipionic circle did not
remain the permanent standard.  The more the mass of society began
to take interest in Greek life, the more decidedly it resorted not
to the classical literature, but to the most modern and frivolous
productions of the Greek mind; instead of moulding the Roman
character in the Hellenic spirit, they contented themselves with
borrowing that sort of pastime which set their own intellect to
work as little as possible.  In this sense the Arpinate landlord
Marcus Cicero, the father of the orator, said that among the
Romans, just as among Syrian slaves, each was the less worth,
the more he understood Greek.

National Decomposition

This national decomposition is, like the whole age, far from
pleasing, but also like that age significant and momentous.
The circle of peoples, which we are accustomed to call the ancient
world, advances from an outward union under the authority of Rome
to an inward union under the sway of the modern culture resting
essentially on Hellenic elements.  Over the ruins of peoples of the
second rank the great historical compromise between the two ruling
nations is silently completed; the Greek and Latin nationalities
conclude mutual peace.  The Greeks renounce exclusive claims for
their language in the field of culture, as do the Romans for theirs
in the field of politics; in instruction Latin is allowed to stand
on a footing of equality--restricted, it is true, and imperfect--
with Greek; on the other hand Sulla first allows foreign ambassadors
to speak Greek before the Roman senate without an interpreter.
The time heralds its approach, when the Roman commonwealth will
pass into a bilingual state and the true heir of the throne and
the ideas of Alexander the Great will arise in the west, at once
a Roman and a Greek.

The suppression of the secondary, and the mutual interpenetration
of the two primary nationalities, which are thus apparent on a
general survey of national relations, now fall to be more precisely
exhibited in detail in the several fields of religion, national
education, literature, and art.

Religion

The Roman religion was so intimately interwoven with the Roman
commonwealth and the Roman household--so thoroughly in fact the
pious reflection of the Roman burgess-world--that the political
and social revolution necessarily overturned also the fabric of
religion.  The ancient Italian popular faith fell to the ground;
over its ruins rose--like the oligarchy and the -tyrannis- rising
over the ruins of the political commonwealth--on the one side
unbelief, state-religion, Hellenism, and on the other side
superstition, sectarianism, the religion of the Orientals, The
germs certainly of both, as indeed the germs of the politico-social
revolution also, may be traced back to the previous epoch (iii.
109-117).  Even then the Hellenic culture of the higher circles was
secretly undermining their ancestral faith; Ennius introduced the
allegorizing and historical versions of the Hellenic religion into
Italy; the senate, which subdued Hannibal, had to sanction the
transference of the worship of Cybele from Asia Minor to Rome,
and to take the most serious steps against other still worse
superstitions, particularly the Bacchanalian scandal.  But, as
during the preceding period the revolution generally was rather
preparing its way in men's minds than assuming outward shape, so
the religious revolution was in substance, at any rate, the work
only of the Gracchan and Sullan age.

Greek Philosophy

Let us endeavour first to trace the tendency associating itself
with Hellenism.  The Hellenic nation, which bloomed and faded far
earlier than the Italian, had long ago passed the epoch of faith
and thenceforth moved exclusively in the sphere of speculation and
reflection; for long there had been no religion there--nothing but
philosophy.  But even the philosophic activity of the Hellenic mind
had, when it began to exert influence on Rome, already left the
epoch of productive speculation far behind it, and had arrived at
the stage at which there is not only no origination of truly new
systems, but even the power of apprehending the more perfect of
the older systems begins to wane and men restrict themselves to the
repetition, soon passing into the scholastic tradition, of the less
complete dogmas of their predecessors; at that stage, accordingly,
when philosophy, instead of giving greater depth and freedom to
the mind, rather renders it shallow and imposes on it the worst of
all chains--chains of its own forging.  The enchanted draught of
speculation, always dangerous, is, when diluted and stale, certain
poison.  The contemporary Greeks presented it thus flat and diluted
to the Romans, and these had not the judgment either to refuse it
or to go back from the living schoolmasters to the dead masters.
Plato and Aristotle, to say nothing of the sages before Socrates,
remained without material influence on the Roman culture, although
their illustrious names were freely used, and their more easily
understood writings were probably read and translated.  Accordingly
the Romans became in philosophy simply inferior scholars of bad
teachers.

Leading Schools
Newer Academy
Epicurus and Zeno

Besides the historico-rationalistic conception of religion, which
resolved the myths into biographies of various benefactors of the
human race living in the grey dawn of early times whom superstition
had transformed into gods, or Euhemerism as it was called,(8) there
were chiefly three philosophical schools that came to be of
importance for Italy; viz. the two dogmatic schools of Epicurus
(484) and Zeno (491) and the sceptical school of Arcesilaus (513)
and Carneades (541-625), or, to use the school-names, Epicureanism,
the Stoa, and the newer Academy.  The last of these schools, which
started from the impossibility of assured knowledge and in its
stead conceded as possible only a provisional opinion sufficient
for practical needs, presented mainly a polemical aspect, seeing
that it caught every proposition of positive faith or of
philosophic dogmatism in the meshes of its dilemmas.  So far it
stands nearly on a parallel with the older method of the sophists;
except that, as may be conceived, the sophists made war more
against the popular faith, Carneades and his disciples more against
their philosophical colleagues.  On the other hand Epicurus and
Zeno agreed both in their aim of rationally explaining the nature
of things, and in their physiological method, which set out from
the conception of matter.  They diverged, in so far as Epicurus,
following the atomic theory of Democritus, conceived the first
principle as rigid matter, and evolved the manifoldness of things
out of this matter merely by mechanical variations; whereas Zeno,
forming his views after the Ephesian Heraclitus, introduces even
into his primordial matter a dynamic antagonism and a movement
of fluctuation up and down.  From this are derived the further
distinctions--that in the Epicurean system the gods as it were did
not exist or were at the most a dream of dreams, while the Stoical
gods formed the ever-active soul of the world, and were as spirit,
as sun, as God powerful over the body, the earth, and nature; that
Epicurus did not, while Zeno did, recognize a government of the
world and a personal immortality of the soul; that the proper
object of human aspiration was according to Epicurus an absolute
equilibrium disturbed neither by bodily desire nor by mental
conflict, while it was according to Zeno a manly activity always
increased by the constant antagonistic efforts of the mind and
body, and striving after a harmony with nature perpetually in
conflict and perpetually at peace.  But in one point all these
schools were agreed with reference to religion, that faith as such
was nothing, and had necessarily to be supplemented by reflection--
whether this reflection might consciously despair of attaining any
result, as did the Academy; or might reject the conceptions of
the popular faith, as did the school of Epicurus; or might partly
retain them with explanation of the reasons for doing so, and
partly modify them, as did the Stoics.

Carneades at Rome

It was accordingly only a natural result, that the first contact of
Hellenic philosophy with the Roman nation equally firm in faith and
adverse to speculation should be of a thoroughly hostile character.
The Roman religion was entirely right in disdaining alike the
assaults and the reasoned support of these philosophical systems,
both of which did away with its proper character.  The Roman state,
which instinctively felt itself assailed when religion was
attacked, reasonably assumed towards the philosophers the attitude
which a fortress assumes towards the spies of the army advancing
to besiege it, and as early as 593 dismissed the Greek philosophers
along with the rhetoricians from Rome.  In fact the very first
debut of philosophy on a great scale in Rome was a formal
declaration of war against faith and morals.  It was occasioned
by the occupation of Oropus by the Athenians, a step which they
commissioned three of the most esteemed professors of philosophy,
including Carneades the master of the modern sophistical school,
to justify before the senate (599).  The selection was so far
appropriate, as the utterly scandalous transaction defied any
justification in common sense; whereas it was quite in keeping with
the circumstances of the case, when Carneades proved by thesis and
counter-thesis that exactly as many and as cogent reasons might be
adduced in praise of injustice as in praise of justice, and when
he showed in the best logical form that with equal propriety the
Athenians might be required to surrender Oropus and the Romans
to confine themselves once more to their old straw huts on the
Palatine.  The young men who were masters of the Greek language
were attracted in crowds by the scandal as well as by the rapid and
emphatic delivery of the celebrated man; but on this occasion at
least Cato could not be found fault with, when he not only bluntly
enough compared the dialectic arguments of the philosophers to
the tedious dirges of the wailing-women, but also insisted on the
senate dismissing a man who understood the art of making right
wrong and wrong right, and whose defence was in fact nothing but
a shameless and almost insulting confession of wrong.  But such
dismissals had no great effect, more especially as the Roman youth
could not be prevented from hearing philosophic discourses at
Rhodes and Athens.  Men became accustomed first to tolerate
philosophy at least as a necessary evil, and ere long to seek for
the Roman religion, which in its simplicity was no longer tenable,
a support in foreign philosophy--a support which no doubt ruined
it as faith, but in return at any rate allowed the man of culture
decorously to retain in some measure the names and forms of the
popular creed.  But this support could neither be Euhemerism, nor
the system of Carneades or of Epicurus.

Euhemerism Not an Adequate Support

The historical version of the myths came far too rudely into
collision with the popular faith, when it declared the gods
directly to be men; Carneades called even their existence in
question, and Epicurus denied to them at least any influence on
the destinies of men.  Between these systems and the Roman religion
no alliance was possible; they were proscribed and remained so.
Even in the writings of Cicero it is declared the duty of a citizen
to resist Euhemerism as prejudicial to religious worship; and if the
Academic and the Epicurean appear in his dialogues, the former has
to plead the excuse that, while as a philosopher he is a disciple
of Carneades, as a citizen and -pontifex- he is an orthodox
confessor of the Capitoline Jupiter, and the Epicurean has even
ultimately to surrender and be converted.  No one of these three
systems became in any proper sense popular.  The plain intelligible
character of Euhemerism exerted doubtless a certain power of
attraction over the Romans, and in particular produced only too
deep an effect on the conventional history of Rome with its at
once childish and senile conversion of fable into history; but it
remained without material influence on the Roman religion, because
the latter from the first dealt only in allegory and not in fable,
and it was not possible in Rome as in Hellas to write biographies
of Zeus the first, second, and third.  The modern sophistry could
only succeed where, as in Athens, clever volubility was indigenous,
and where, moreover, the long series of philosophical systems that
had come and gone had accumulated huge piles of intellectual
rubbish.  Against the Epicurean quietism, in fine, everything
revolted that was sound and honest in the Roman character so
thoroughly addressing itself to action.  Yet it found more
partisans than Euhemerism and the sophistic school, and this was
probably the reason why the police continued to wage war against
it longest and most seriously.  But this Roman Epicureanism was not
so much a philosophic system as a sort of philosophic mask, under
which--very much against the design of its strictly moral founder--
thoughtless sensual enjoyment disguised itself for good society;
one of the earliest adherents of this sect, for instance, Titus
Albucius, figures in the poems of Lucilius as the prototype of
a Roman Hellenizing to bad purpose.

Roman Stoa

Far different were the position and influence of the Stoic
philosophy in Italy.  In direct contrast to these schools it
attached itself to the religion of the land as closely as science
can at all accommodate itself to faith.  To the popular faith with
its gods and oracles the Stoic adhered on principle, in so far as
he recognized in it an instinctive knowledge, to which scientific
knowledge was bound to have regard and even in doubtful cases
to subordinate itself.  He believed in a different way from
the people rather than in different objects; the essentially true
and supreme God was in his view doubtless the world-soul, but every
manifestation of the primitive God was in its turn divine, the
stars above all, but also the earth, the vine, the soul of the
illustrious mortal whom the people honoured as a hero, and in fact
every departed spirit of a former man.  This philosophy was really
better adapted for Rome than for the land where it first arose.
The objection of the pious believer, that the god of the Stoic had
neither sex nor age nor corporeality and was converted from a
person into a conception, had a meaning in Greece, but not in
Rome.  The coarse allegorizing and moral purification, which were
characteristic of the Stoical doctrine of the gods, destroyed the
very marrow of the Hellenic mythology; but the plastic power of the
Romans, scanty even in their epoch of simplicity, had produced no
more than a light veil enveloping the original intuition or the
original conception, out of which the divinity had arisen--a veil
that might be stripped off without special damage.  Pallas Athene
might be indignant, when she found herself suddenly transmuted into
the conception of memory: Minerva had hitherto been in reality not
much more.  The supernatural Stoic, and the allegoric Roman,
theology coincided on the whole in their result.  But, even if
the philosopher was obliged to designate individual propositions
of the priestly lore as doubtful or as erroneous--as when the Stoics,
for example, rejecting the doctrine of apotheosis, saw in Hercules,
Castor, and Pollux nothing but the spirits of distinguished men, or
as when they could not allow the images of the gods to be regarded
as representations of divinity--it was at least not the habit of
the adherents of Zeno to make war on these erroneous doctrines
and to overthrow the false gods; on the contrary, they everywhere
evinced respect and reverence for the religion of the land even
in its weaknesses.  The inclination also of the Stoa towards a
casuistic morality and towards a systematic treatment of the
professional sciences was quite to the mind of the Romans,
especially of the Romans of this period, who no longer like their
fathers practised in unsophisticated fashion self-government and
good morals, but resolved the simple morality of their ancestors
into a catechism of allowable and non-allowable actions; whose
grammar and jurisprudence, moreover, urgently demanded a methodical
treatment, without possessing the ability to develop such a
treatment of themselves.

Wide Influence of Stoicism
Panaetius

So this philosophy thoroughly incorporated itself, as a plant
borrowed no doubt from abroad but acclimatized on Italian soil,
with the Roman national economy, and we meet its traces in the
most diversified spheres of action.  Its earliest appearance beyond
doubt goes further back; but the Stoa was first raised to full
influence in the higher ranks of Roman society by means of the
group which gathered round Scipio Aemilianus.  Panaetius of Rhodes,
the instructor of Scipio and of all Scipio's intimate friends in
the Stoic philosophy, who was constantly in his train and usually
attended him even on journeys, knew how to adapt the system to
clever men of the world, to keep its speculative side in the
background, and to modify in some measure the dryness of the
terminology and the insipidity of its moral catechism, more
particularly by calling in the aid of the earlier philosophers,
among whom Scipio himself had an especial predilection for the
Socrates of Xenophon.  Thenceforth the most noted statesmen and
scholars professed the Stoic philosophy--among others Stilo and
Quintus Scaevola, the founders of scientific philology and of
scientific jurisprudence.  The scholastic formality of system,
which thenceforth prevails at least externally in these
professional sciences and is especially associated with a fanciful,
charade-like, insipid method of etymologizing, descends from the
Stoa.  But infinitely more important was the new state-philosophy
and state-religion, which emanated from the blending of the Stoic
philosophy and the Roman religion.  The speculative element, from
the first impressed with but little energy on the system of Zeno,
and still further weakened when that system found admission to
Rome--after the Greek schoolmasters had already for a century been
busied in driving this philosophy into boys' heads and thereby
driving the spirit out of it--fell completely into the shade in
Rome, where nobody speculated but the money-changers; little more
was said as to the ideal development of the God ruling in the soul
of man, or of the divine world-law.  The Stoic philosophers showed
themselves not insensible to the very lucrative distinction of
seeing their system raised into the semi-official Roman state-
philosophy, and proved altogether more pliant than from their
rigorous principles we should have expected.  Their doctrine as to
the gods and the state soon exhibited a singular family resemblance
to the actual institutions of those who gave them bread; instead of
illustrating the cosmopolitan state of the philosopher, they made
their meditations turn on the wise arrangement of the Roman
magistracies; and while the more refined Stoics such as Panaetius
had left the question of divine revelation by wonders and signs
open as a thing conceivable but uncertain, and had decidedly
rejected astrology, his immediate successors contended for that
doctrine of revelation or, in other words, for the Roman augural
discipline as rigidly and firmly as for any other maxim of the
school, and made extremely unphilosophical concessions even to
astrology.  The leading feature of the system came more and more
to be its casuistic doctrine of duties.  It suited itself to the
hollow pride of virtue, in which the Romans of this period sought
their compensation amidst the various humbling circumstances of
their contact with the Greeks; and it put into formal shape a
befitting dogmatism of morality, which, like every well-bred system
of morals, combined with the most rigid precision as a whole the
most complaisant indulgence in the details.(9)  Its practical
results can hardly be estimated as much more than that, as
we have said, two or three families of rank ate poor fare
to please the Stoa.

State-Religion

Closely allied to this new state-philosophy--or, strictly speaking,
its other side--was the new state-religion; the essential
characteristic of which was the conscious retention, for reasons of
outward convenience, of the principles of the popular faith, which
were recognized as irrational.  One of the most prominent men of
the Scipionic circle, the Greek Polybius, candidly declares that
the strange and ponderous ceremonial of Roman religion was invented
solely on account of the multitude, which, as reason had no power
over it, required to be ruled by signs and wonders, while people of
intelligence had certainly no need of religion.  Beyond doubt the
Roman friends of Polybius substantially shared these sentiments,
although they did not oppose science and religion to each other
in so gross and downright a fashion.  Neither Laelius nor Scipio
Aemilianus can have looked on the augural discipline, which
Polybius has primarily in view, as anything else than a political
institution; yet the national spirit in them was too strong and
their sense of decorum too delicate to have permitted their coming
forward in public with such hazardous explanations.  But even in
the following generation the -pontifex maximus- Quintus Scaevola
(consul in 659;(10)) set forth at least in his oral instructions in
law without hesitation the propositions, that there were two sorts
of religion--one philosophic, adapted to the intellect, and one
traditional, not so adapted; that the former was not fitted for
the religion of the state, as it contained various things which
it was useless or even injurious for the people to know; and that
accordingly the traditional religion of the state ought to remain
as it stood.  The theology of Varro, in which the Roman religion
is treated throughout as a state institution, is merely a further
development of the same principle.  The state, according to his
teaching, was older than the gods of the state as the painter is
older than the picture; if the question related to making the gods
anew, it would certainly be well to make and to name them after a
manner more befitting and more in theoretic accordance with the
parts of the world-soul, and to lay aside the images of the gods
which only excited erroneous ideas,(11) and the mistaken system of
sacrifice; but, since these institutions had been once established,
every good citizen ought to own and follow them and do his part,
that the "common man" might learn rather to set a higher value on,
than to contemn, the gods.  That the common man, for whose benefit
the grandees thus surrendered their judgment, now despised this
faith and sought his remedy elsewhere, was a matter of course and
will be seen in the sequel.  Thus then the Roman "high church"
was ready, a sanctimonious body of priests and Levites, and an
unbelieving people.  The more openly the religion of the land was
declared a political institution, the more decidedly the political
parties regarded the field of the state-church as an arena for
attack and defence; which was especially, in a daily-increasing
measure, the case with augural science and with the elections to
the priestly colleges.  The old and natural practice of dismissing
the burgess-assembly, when a thunderstorm came on, had in the hands
of the Roman augurs grown into a prolix system of various celestial
omens and rules of conduct associated therewith; in the earlier
portion of this period it was even directly enacted by the Aelian
and Fufian law, that every popular assembly should be compelled
to disperse if it should occur to any of the higher magistrates
to look for signs of a thunderstorm in the sky; and the Roman
oligarchy was proud of the cunning device which enabled them
thenceforth by a single pious fraud to impress the stamp of
invalidity on any decree of the people.

Priestly Colleges

Conversely, the Roman opposition rebelled against the ancient
practice under which the four principal colleges of priests filled
up their own ranks when vacancies arose, and demanded the extension
of popular election to the stalls themselves, as it had been
previously introduced with reference to the presidents, of these
colleges.(12)  This was certainly inconsistent with the spirit of
these corporations; but they had no right to complain of it, after
they had become themselves untrue to their spirit, and had played
into the hands of the government at its request by furnishing
religious pretexts for the annulling of political proceedings.
This affair became an apple of contention between the parties:
the senate beat off the first attack in 609, on which occasion the
Scipionic circle especially turned the scale for the rejection of
the proposal; on the other hand the project passed in 650 with the
proviso already made in reference to the election of the presidents
for the benefit of scrupulous consciences, that not the whole
burgesses but only the lesser half of the tribes should make
the election;(13) finally Sulla restored the right of co-optation
in its full extent.(14)

Practical Use Made of Religion

With this care on the part of the conservatives for the pure
national religion, it was of course quite compatible that the
circles of the highest rank should openly make a jest of it.
The practical side of the Roman priesthood was the priestly cuisine;
the augural and pontifical banquets were as it were the official
gala-days in the life of a Roman epicure, and several of them
formed epochs in the history of gastronomy: the banquet on the
accession of the augur Quintus Hortensius for instance brought
roast peacocks into vogue.  Religion was also found very useful
in giving greater zest to scandal.  It was a favourite recreation
of the youth of quality to disfigure or mutilate the images of the
gods in the streets by night.(15)  Ordinary love affairs had for
long been common, and intrigues with married women began to become
so; but an amour with a Vestal virgin was as piquant as the
intrigues with nuns and the cloister-adventures in the world of
the Decamerone.  The scandalous affair of 640 seq. is well known,
in which three Vestals, daughters of the noblest families, and their
paramours, young men likewise of the best houses, were brought to
trial for unchastity first before the pontifical college, and then,
when it sought to hush up the matter, before an extraordinary court
instituted by special decree of the people, and were all condemned
to death.  Such scandals, it is true, sedate people could not
approve; but there was no objection to men finding positive
religion to be a folly in their familiar circle; the augurs might,
when one saw another performing his functions, smile in each
other's face without detriment to their religious duties.  We learn
to look favourably on the modest hypocrisy of kindred tendencies,
when we compare with it the coarse shamelessness of the Roman
priests and Levites.  The official religion was quite candidly
treated as a hollow framework, now serviceable only for political
machinists; in this respect with its numerous recesses and trapdoors
it might and did serve either party, as it happened.  Most of
all certainly the oligarchy recognized its palladium in the state-
religion, and particularly in the augural discipline; but the
opposite party also made no resistance in point of principle to
an institute, which had now merely a semblance of life; they rather
regarded it, on the whole, as a bulwark which might pass from the
possession of the enemy into their own.

Oriental Religions in Italy

In sharp contrast to this ghost of religion which we have just
described stand the different foreign worships, which this epoch
cherished and fostered, and which were at least undeniably
possessed of a very decided vitality.  They meet us everywhere,
among genteel ladies and lords as well as among the circles of
the slaves, in the general as in the trooper, in Italy as in the
provinces.  It is incredible to what a height this superstition
already reached.  When in the Cimbrian war a Syrian prophetess,
Martha, offered to furnish the senate with ways and means for the
vanquishing of the Germans, the senate dismissed her with contempt;
nevertheless the Roman matrons and Marius' own wife in particular
despatched her to his head-quarters, where the general readily
received her and carried her about with him till the Teutones were
defeated.  The leaders of very different parties in the civil war,
Marius, Octavius, Sulla, coincided in believing omens and oracles.
During its course even the senate was under the necessity, in the
troubles of 667, of consenting to issue directions in accordance
with the fancies of a crazy prophetess.  It is significant of
the ossification of the Romano-Hellenic religion as well as of
the increased craving of the multitude after stronger religious
stimulants, that superstition no longer, as in the Bacchic
mysteries, associates itself with the national religion; even
the Etruscan mysticism is already left behind; the worships matured
in the sultry regions of the east appear throughout in the foremost
rank.  The copious introduction of elements from Asia Minor and
Syria into the population, partly by the import of slaves, partly
by the augmented traffic of Italy with the east, contributed very
greatly to this result.

The power of these foreign religions is very distinctly apparent
in the revolts of the Sicilian slaves, who for the most part were
natives of Syria.  Eunus vomited fire, Athenion read the stars;
the plummets thrown by the slaves in these wars bear in great part
the names of gods, those of Zeus and Artemis, and especially that
of the mysterious Mother who had migrated from Crete to Sicily and
was zealously worshipped there.  A similar effect was produced by
commercial intercourse, particularly after the wares of Berytus and
Alexandria were conveyed directly to the Italian ports; Ostia and
Puteoli became the great marts not only for Syrian unguents and
Egyptian linen, but also for the faith of the east.  Everywhere
the mingling of religions was constantly on the increase along with
the mingling of nations.  Of all allowed worships the most popular
was that of the Pessinuntine Mother of the Gods, which made a deep
impression on the multitude by its eunuch-celibacy, its banquets,
its music, its begging processions, and all its sensuous pomp; the
collections from house to house were already felt as an economic
burden.  In the most dangerous time of the Cimbrian war Battaces
the high-priest of Pessinus appeared in person at Rome, in order
to defend the interests of the temple of his goddess there which
was alleged to have been profaned, addressed the Roman people by
the special orders of the Mother of the Gods, and performed also
various miracles.  Men of sense were scandalized, but the women
and the great multitude were not to be debarred from escorting
the prophet at his departure in great crowds.  Vows of pilgrimage
to the east were already no longer uncommon; Marius himself, for
instance, thus undertook a pilgrimage to Pessinus; in fact even
thus early (first in 653) Roman burgesses devoted themselves
to the eunuch-priesthood.

Secret Worships

But the unallowed and secret worships were naturally still more
popular.  As early as Cato's time the Chaldean horoscope-caster had
begun to come into competition with the Etruscan -haruspex- and the
Marsian bird-seer;(16) star-gazing and astrology were soon as much
at home in Italy as in their dreamy native land.  In 615 the Roman
-praetor peregrinus- directed all the Chaldeans to evacuate Rome
and Italy within ten days.  The same fate at the same time befel
the Jews, who had admitted Italian proselytes to their sabbath.
In like manner Scipio had to clear the camp before Numantia from
soothsayers and pious impostors of every sort.  Some forty years
afterwards (657) it was even found necessary to prohibit human
sacrifices.  The wild worship of the Cappadocian Ma, or, as the
Romans called her, Bellona, to whom the priests in their festal
processions shed their own blood as a sacrifice, and the gloomy
Egyptian worships began to make their appearance; the former
Cappadocian goddess appeared in a dream to Sulla, and of the later
Roman communities of Isis and Osiris the oldest traced their origin
to the Sullan period.  Men had become perplexed not merely as to
the old faith, but as to their very selves; the fearful crises of a
fifty years' revolution, the instinctive feeling that the civil war
was still far from being at an end, increased the anxious suspense,
the gloomy perplexity of the multitude.  Restlessly the wandering
imagination climbed every height and fathomed every abyss, where it
fancied that it might discover new prospects or new light amidst
the fatalities impending, might gain fresh hopes in the desperate
struggle against destiny, or perhaps might find merely fresh
alarms.  A portentous mysticism found in the general distraction--
political, economic, moral, religious--the soil which was adapted
for it, and grew with alarming rapidity; it was as if gigantic
trees had grown by night out of the earth, none knew whence
or whither, and this very marvellous rapidity of growth
worked new wonders and seized like an epidemic on all minds
not thoroughly fortified.

Education

Just as in the sphere of religion, the revolution begun in the
previous epoch was now completed also in the sphere of education
and culture.  We have already shown how the fundamental idea of
the Roman system--civil equality--had already during the sixth
century begun to be undermined in this field also.  Even in the
time of Pictor and Cato Greek culture was widely diffused in Rome,
and there was a native Roman culture; but neither of them had then
got beyond the initial stage.  Cato's encyclopaedia shows tolerably
what was understood at this period by a Romano-Greek model
training;(16) it was little more than an embodiment of the
knowledge of the old Roman householder, and truly, when compared
with the Hellenic culture of the period, scanty enough.  At how
low a stage the average instruction of youth in Rome still stood
at the beginning of the seventh century, may be inferred from
the expressions of Polybius, who in this one respect prominently
censures the criminal indifference of the Romans as compared
with the intelligent private and public care of his countrymen;
no Hellene, not even Polybius himself, could rightly enter
into the deeper idea of civil equality that lay at the root
of this indifference.

Now the case was altered.  Just as the naive popular faith was
superseded by an enlightened Stoic supernaturalism, so in education
alongside of the simple popular instruction a special training, an
exclusive -humanitas-, developed itself and eradicated the last
remnants of the old social equality.  It will not be superfluous
to cast a glance at the aspect assumed by the new instruction of
the young, both the Greek and the higher Latin.

Greek Instruction

It was a singular circumstance that the same man, who in a
political point of view definitively vanquished the Hellenic
nation, Lucius Aemilius Paullus, was at the same time the first or
one of the first who fully recognized the Hellenic civilization as--
what it has thenceforth continued to be beyond dispute--the
civilization of the ancient world.  He was himself indeed an old
man before it was granted to him, with the Homeric poems in his
mind, to stand before the Zeus of Phidias; but his heart was young
enough to carry home the full sunshine of Hellenic beauty and the
unconquerable longing after the golden apples of the Hesperides
in his soul; poets and artists had found in the foreigner a more
earnest and cordial devotee than was any of the wise men of the
Greece of those days.  He made no epigram on Homer or Phidias,
but he had his children introduced into the realms of intellect.
Without neglecting their national education, so far as there
was such, he made provision like the Greeks for the physical
development of his boys, not indeed by gymnastic exercises which
were according to Roman notions inadmissible, but by instruction in
the chase, which was among the Greeks developed almost like an art;
and he elevated their Greek instruction in such a way that the
language was no longer merely learned and practised for the sake
of speaking, but after the Greek fashion the whole subject-matter
of general higher culture was associated with the language and
developed out of it--embracing, first of all, the knowledge of
Greek literature with the mythological and historical information
necessary for understanding it, and then rhetoric and philosophy.
The library of king Perseus was the only portion of the Macedonian
spoil that Paullus took for himself, with the view of presenting it
to his sons.  Even Greek painters and sculptors were found in his
train and completed the aesthetic training of his children.  That
the time was past when men could in this field preserve a merely
repellent attitude as regarded Hellenism, had been felt even by
Cato; the better classes had probably now a presentiment that the
noble substance of Roman character was less endangered by Hellenism
as a whole, than by Hellenism mutilated and misshapen: the mass of
the upper society of Rome and Italy went along with the new mode.
There had been for long no want of Greek schoolmasters in Rome; now
they arrived in troops--and as teachers not merely of the language
but of literature and culture in general--at the newly-opened
lucrative market for the sale of their wisdom.  Greek tutors and
teachers of philosophy, who, even if they were not slaves, were
as a rule accounted as servants,(17) were now permanent inmates
in the palaces of Rome; people speculated in them, and there is
a statement that 200,000 sesterces (2000 pounds) were paid for
a Greek literary slave of the first rank.  As early as 593 there
existed in the capital a number of special establishments for
the practice of Greek declamation.  Several distinguished names
already occur among these Roman teachers; the philosopher Panaetius
has been already mentioned;(18) the esteemed grammarian Crates of
Mallus in Cilicia, the contemporary and equal rival of Aristarchus,
found about 585 at Rome an audience for the recitation and
illustration, language, and matter of the Homeric poems.  It is
true that this new mode of juvenile instruction, revolutionary
and anti-national as it was, encountered partially the resistance
of the government; but the edict of dismissal, which the authorities
in 593 fulminated against rhetoricians and philosophers, remained
(chiefly owing to the constant change of the Roman chief
magistrates) like all similar commands without any result worth
mentioning, and after the death of old Cato there were still
doubtless frequent complaints in accordance with his views, but
there was no further action.  The higher instruction in Greek and
in the sciences of Greek culture remained thenceforth recognized
as an essential part of Italian training.

Latin Instruction
Public Readings of Classical Works

But by its side there sprang up also a higher Latin instruction.
We have shown in the previous epoch how Latin elementary instruction
raised its character; how the place of the Twelve Tables was taken
by the Latin Odyssey as a sort of improved primer, and the Roman
boy was now trained to the knowledge and delivery of his mother-tongue
by means of this translation, as the Greek by means of the original:
how noted teachers of the Greek language and literature, Andronicus,
Ennius, and others, who already probably taught not children properly
so called, but boys growing up to maturity and young men, did not
disdain to give instruction in the mother-tongue along with the Greek.
These were the first steps towards a higher Latin instruction, but
they did not as yet form such an instruction itself.  Instruction
in a language cannot go beyond the elementary stage, so long as it
lacks a literature.  It was not until there were not merely Latin
schoolbooks but a Latin literature, and this literature already
somewhat rounded-off in the works of the classics of the sixth century,
that the mother-tongue and the native literature truly entered into
the circle of the elements of higher culture; and the emancipation
from the Greek schoolmasters was now not slow to follow.  Stirred up
by the Homeric prelections of Crates, cultivated Romans began to read
the recitative works of their own literature, the Punic War of Naevius,
the Annals of Ennius, and subsequently also the Poems of Lucilius first
to a select circle, and then in public on set days and in presence of
a great concourse, and occasionally also to treat them critically after
the precedent of the Homeric grammarians.  These literary prelections,
which cultivated -dilettanti- (-litterati-) held gratuitously, were not
formally a part of juvenile instruction, but were yet an essential means
of introducing the youth to the understanding and the discussion of
the classic Latin literature.

Rhetorical Exercises

The formation of Latin oratory took place in a similar way.
The Roman youth of rank, who were even at an early age incited
to come forward in public with panegyrics and forensic speeches,
can never have lacked exercises in oratory; but it was only at this
epoch, and in consequence of the new exclusive culture, that there
arose a rhetoric properly so called.  Marcus Lepidus Porcina (consul
in 617) is mentioned as the first Roman advocate who technically
handled the language and subject-matter; the two famous advocates
of the Marian age, the masculine and vigorous Marcus Antonius (611-
667) and the polished and chaste orator Lucius Crassus (614-663)
were already complete rhetoricians.  The exercises of the young men
in speaking increased naturally in extent and importance, but still
remained, just like the exercises in Latin literature, essentially
limited to the personal attendance of the beginner on the master of
the art so as to be trained by his example and his instructions.

Formal instruction both in Latin literature and in Latin rhetoric
was given first about 650 by Lucius Aelius Praeconinus of Lanuvium,
called the "penman" (-Stilo-), a distinguished Roman knight of
strict conservative views, who read Plautus and similar works with
a select circle of younger men--including Varro and Cicero--and
sometimes also went over outlines of speeches with the authors,
or put similar outlines into the hands of his friends.  This was
instruction, but Stilo was not a professional schoolmaster; he
taught literature and rhetoric, just as jurisprudence was taught
at Rome, in the character of a senior friend of aspiring young men,
not of a man hired and holding himself at every one's command.

Course of Literature and Rhetoric

But about his time began also the scholastic higher instruction
in Latin, separated as well from elementary Latin as from Greek
instruction, and imparted in special establishments by paid
masters, ordinarily manumitted slaves.  That its spirit and method
were throughout borrowed from the exercises in the Greek literature
and language, was a matter of course; and the scholars also consisted,
as at these exercises, of youths, and not of boys.  This Latin
instruction was soon divided like the Greek into two courses;
in so far as the Latin literature was first the subject of
scientific lectures, and then a technical introduction was given
to the preparation of panegyrics, public, and forensic orations.
The first Roman school of literature was opened about Stilo's time
by Marcus Saevius Nicanor Postumus, the first separate school for
Latin rhetoric about 660 by Lucius Plotius Gallus; but ordinarily
instructions in rhetoric were also given in the Latin schools of
literature.  This new Latin school-instruction was of the most
comprehensive importance.  The introduction to the knowledge of
Latin literature and Latin oratory, such as had formerly been
imparted by connoisseurs and masters of high position, had
preserved a certain independence in relation to the Greeks.
The judges of language and the masters of oratory were doubtless
under the influence of Hellenism, but not absolutely under that of
the Greek school-grammar and school-rhetoric; the latter in particular
was decidedly an object of dread.  The pride as well as the sound
common sense of the Romans demurred to the Greek assertion that
the ability to speak of things, which the orator understood and felt,
intelligibly and attractively to his peers in the mother-tongue
could be learned in the school by school-rules.  To the solid
practical advocate the procedure of the Greek rhetoricians, so
totally estranged from life, could not but appear worse for the
beginner than no preparation at all; to the man of thorough culture
and matured by the experience of life, the Greek rhetoric seemed
shallow and repulsive; while the man of serious conservative views
did not fail to observe the close affinity between a professionally
developed rhetoric and the trade of the demagogue.  Accordingly
the Scipionic circle had shown the most bitter hostility to the
rhetoricians, and, if Greek declamations before paid masters were
tolerated doubtless primarily as exercises in speaking Greek, Greek
rhetoric did not thereby find its way either into Latin oratory or
into Latin oratorical instruction.  But in the new Latin rhetorical
schools the Roman youths were trained as men and public orators by
discussing in pairs rhetorical themes; they accused Ulysses, who
was found beside the corpse of Ajax with the latter's bloody sword,
of the murder of his comrade in arms, or upheld his innocence; they
charged Orestes with the murder of his mother, or undertook to
defend him; or perhaps they helped Hannibal with a supplementary
good advice as to the question whether he would do better to comply
with the invitation to Rome, or to remain in Carthage, or to take
flight.  It was natural that the Catonian opposition should once
more bestir itself against these offensive and pernicious conflicts
of words.  The censors of 662 issued a warning to teachers and
parents not to allow the young men to spend the whole day in
exercises, whereof their ancestors had known nothing; and the man,
from whom this warning came, was no less than the first forensic
orator of his age, Lucius Licinius Crassus.  Of course the
Cassandra spoke in vain; declamatory exercises in Latin on the
current themes of the Greek schools became a permanent ingredient
in the education of Roman youth, and contributed their part to
educate the very boys as forensic and political players and to
stifle in the bud all earnest and true eloquence.

As the aggregate result of this modern Roman education there sprang
up the new idea of "humanity," as it was called, which consisted
partly of a more or less superficial appropriation of the aesthetic
culture of the Hellenes, partly of a privileged Latin culture as
an imitation or mutilated copy of the Greek.  This new humanity,
as the very name indicates, renounced the specific characteristics
of Roman life, nay even came forward in opposition to them, and
combined in itself, just like our closely kindred "general
culture," a nationally cosmopolitan and socially exclusive
character.  Here too we trace the revolution, which separated
classes and blended nations.




Chapter XIII

Literature and Art

Literary Reaction

The sixth century was, both in a political and a literary point of
view, a vigorous and great age.  It is true that we do not find in
the field of authorship any more than in that of politics a man of
the first rank; Naevius, Ennius, Plautus, Cato, gifted and lively
authors of distinctly-marked individuality, were not in the highest
sense men of creative talent; nevertheless we perceive in the
soaring, stirring, bold strain of their dramatic, epic, and
historic attempts, that these rest on the gigantic struggles of
the Punic wars.  Much is only artificially transplanted, there
are various faults in delineation and colouring, the form of art
and the language are deficient in purity of treatment, Greek and
national elements are quaintly conjoined; the whole performance
betrays the stamp of its scholastic origin and lacks independence
and completeness; yet there exists in the poets and authors of that
age, if not the full power to reach their high aim, at any rate
the courage to compete with and the hope of rivalling the Greeks.
It is otherwise in the epoch before us.  The morning mists fell;
what had been begun in the fresh feeling of the national strength
hardened amidst war, with youthful want of insight into the
difficulty of the undertaking and into the measure of their own
talent, but also with youthful delight in and love to the work,
could not be carried farther now, when on the one hand the dull
sultriness of the approaching revolutionary storm began to fill
the air, and on the other hand the eyes of the more intelligent
were gradually opened to the incomparable glory of Greek poetry and
art and to the very modest artistic endowments of their own nation.
The literature of the sixth century had arisen from the influence
of Greek art on half-cultivated, but excited and susceptible minds.
The increased Hellenic culture of the seventh called forth a literary
reaction, which destroyed the germs of promise contained in those
simple imitative attempts by the winter-frost of reflection, and rooted
up the wheat and the tares of the older type of literature together.

Scipionic Circle

This reaction proceeded primarily and chiefly from the circle
which assembled around Scipio Aemilianus, and whose most prominent
members among the Roman world of quality were, in addition to
Scipio himself, his elder friend and counsellor Gaius Laelius
(consul in 614) and Scipio's younger companions, Lucius Furius
Philus (consul in 618) and Spurius Mummius, the brother of the
destroyer of Corinth, among the Roman and Greek literati the
comedian Terence, the satirist Lucilius, the historian Polybius,
and the philosopher Panaetius.  Those who were familiar with the
Iliad, with Xenophon, and with Menander, could not be greatly
impressed by the Roman Homer, and still less by the bad
translations of the tragedies of Euripides which Ennius had
furnished and Pacuvius continued to furnish.  While patriotic
considerations might set bounds to criticism in reference to the
native chronicles, Lucilius at any rate directed very pointed
shafts against "the dismal figures from the complicated expositions
of Pacuvius"; and similar severe, but not unjust criticisms of
Ennius, Plautus, Pacuvius--all those poets "who appeared to have a
licence to talk pompously and to reason illogically"--are found in
the polished author of the Rhetoric dedicated to Herennius, written
at the close of this period.  People shrugged their shoulders at
the interpolations, with which the homely popular wit of Rome
had garnished the elegant comedies of Philemon and Diphilus.
Half smiling, half envious, they turned away from the inadequate
attempts of a dull age, which that circle probably regarded
somewhat as a mature man regards the poetical effusions of his
youth; despairing of the transplantation of the marvellous tree,
they allowed the higher species of art in poetry and prose
substantially to fall into abeyance, and restricted themselves
in these departments to an intelligent enjoyment of foreign
masterpieces.  The productiveness of this epoch displayed itself
chiefly in the subordinate fields of the lighter comedy, the
poetical miscellany, the political pamphlet, and the professional
sciences.  The literary cue was correctness, in the style of art
and especially in the language, which, as a more limited circle of
persons of culture became separated from the body of the people,
was in its turn divided into the classical Latin of higher society
and the vulgar Latin of the common people.  The prologues of
Terence promise "pure Latin"; warfare against faults of language
forms a chief element of the Lucilian satire; and with this
circumstance is connected the fact, that composition in Greek among
the Romans now falls decidedly into the shade.  In so far certainly
there is an improvement; inadequate efforts occur in this epoch far
less frequently; performances in their kind complete and thoroughly
pleasing occur far oftener than before or afterwards; in a
linguistic point of view Cicero calls the age of Laelius and Scipio
the golden age of pure unadulterated Latin.  In like manner
literary activity gradually rises in public opinion from a trade
to an art.  At the beginning of this period the preparation of
theatrical pieces at any rate, if not the publication of recitative
poems, was still regarded as not becoming for the Roman of quality;
Pacuvius and Terence lived by their pieces; the writing of dramas
was entirely a trade, and not one of golden produce.  About the time
of Sulla the state of matters had entirely changed. The remuneration
given to actors at this time proves that even the favourite dramatic
poet might then lay claim to a payment, the high amount of which
removed the stigma.  By this means composing for the stage was raised
into a liberal art; and we accordingly find men of the highest
aristocratic circles, such as Lucius Caesar (aedile in 664, 667),
engaged in writing for the Roman stage and proud of sitting in the Roman
"poet's club" by the side of the ancestorless Accius.  Art gains in
sympathy and honour; but the enthusiasm has departed in life and in
literature.  The fearless self-confidence, which makes the poet a poet,
and which is very decidedly apparent in Plautus especially, is found
in none of those that follow; the Epigoni of the men that fought with
Hannibal are correct, but feeble.

Tragedy
Pacuvius

Let us first glance at the Roman dramatic literature and the stage
itself.  Tragedy has now for the first time her specialists; the
tragic poets of this epoch do not, like those of the preceding,
cultivate comedy and epos side by side.  The appreciation of this
branch of art among the writing and reading circles was evidently
on the increase, but tragic poetry itself hardly improved.  We now
meet with the national tragedy (-praetexta-), the creation of
Naevius, only in the hands of Pacuvius to be mentioned immediately--
an after-growth of the Ennian epoch.  Among the probably numerous
poets who imitated Greek tragedies two alone acquired a
considerable name.  Marcus Pacuvius from Brundisium (535-c. 625)
who in his earlier years earned his livelihood in Rome by painting
and only composed tragedies when advanced in life, belongs as
respects both his years and his style to the sixth rather than
the seventh century, although his poetical activity falls within
the latter.  He composed on the whole after the manner of his
countryman, uncle, and master Ennius.  Polishing more carefully and
aspiring to a higher strain than his predecessor, he was regarded
by favourable critics of art afterwards as a model of artistic
poetry and of rich style: in the fragments, however, that have
reached us proofs are not wanting to justify the censure of the
poet's language by Cicero and the censure of his taste by Lucilius;
his language appears more rugged than that of his predecessor, his
style of composition pompous and punctilious.(1)  There are traces
that he like Ennius attached more value to philosophy than to
religion; but he did not at any rate, like the latter, prefer
dramas chiming in with neological views and preaching sensuous
passion or modern enlightenment, and drew without distinction from
Sophocles or from Euripides--of that poetry with a decided special
aim, which almost stamps Ennius with genius, there can have been
no vein in the younger poet.

Accius

More readable and adroit imitations of Greek tragedy were furnished
by Pacuvius' younger contemporary, Lucius Accius, son of a freedman
of Pisaurum (584-after 651), with the exception of Pacuvius the
only notable tragic poet of the seventh century.  An active author
also in the field of literary history and grammar, he doubtless
laboured to introduce instead of the crude manner of his
predecessors greater purity of language and style into Latin
tragedy; yet even his inequality and incorrectness were
emphatically censured by men of strict observance like Lucilius.

Greek Comedy
Terence

Far greater activity and far more important results are apparent
in the field of comedy.  At the very commencement of this period
a remarkable reaction set in against the sort of comedy hitherto
prevalent and popular.  Its representative Terentius (558-595) is
one of the most interesting phenomena, in a historical point of
view, in Roman literature.  Born in Phoenician Africa, brought in
early youth as a slave to Rome and there introduced to the Greek
culture of the day, he seemed from the very first destined for the
vocation of giving back to the new Attic comedy that cosmopolitan
character, which in its adaptation to the Roman public under the
rough hands of Naevius, Plautus, and their associates it had in
some measure lost.  Even in the selection and employment of models
the contrast is apparent between him and that predecessor whom
alone we can now compare with him.  Plautus chooses his pieces from
the whole range of the newer Attic comedy, and by no means disdains
the livelier and more popular comedians, such as Philemon; Terence
keeps almost exclusively to Menander, the most elegant, polished,
and chaste of all the poets of the newer comedy.  The method of
working up several Greek pieces into one Latin is retained by
Terence, because in fact from the state of the case it could not be
avoided by the Roman editors; but it is handled with incomparably
more skill and carefulness.  The Plautine dialogue beyond doubt
departed very frequently from its models; Terence boasts of the
verbal adherence of his imitations to the originals, by which
however we are not to understand a verbal translation in our sense.
The not unfrequently coarse, but always effective laying on of
Roman local tints over the Greek ground-work, which Plautus was
fond of, is completely and designedly banished from Terence;
not an allusion puts one in mind of Rome, not a proverb, hardly
a reminiscence;(2) even the Latin titles are replaced by Greek.
The same distinction shows itself in the artistic treatment.  First
of all the players receive back their appropriate masks, and greater
care is observed as to the scenic arrangements, so that it is no
longer the case, as with Plautus, that everything needs to take
place on the street, whether belonging to it or not.  Plautus ties
and unties the dramatic knot carelessly and loosely, but his plot
is droll and often striking; Terence, far less effective, keeps
everywhere account of probability, not unfrequently at the cost of
suspense, and wages emphatic war against the certainly somewhat
flat and insipid standing expedients of his predecessors, e. g.
against allegoric dreams.(3)  Plautus paints his characters with
broad strokes, often after a stock-model, always with a view to
the gross effect from a distance and on the whole; Terence handles
the psychological development with a careful and often excellent
miniature-painting, as in the -Adelphi- for instance, where the
two old men--the easy bachelor enjoying life in town, and the sadly
harassed not at all refined country-landlord--form a masterly
contrast.  The springs of action and the language of Plautus are
drawn from the tavern, those of Terence from the household of the
good citizen.  The lazy Plautine hostelry, the very unconstrained
but very charming damsels with the hosts duly corresponding,
the sabre-rattling troopers, the menial world painted with an
altogether peculiar humour, whose heaven is the cellar, and whose
fate is the lash, have disappeared in Terence or at any rate
undergone improvement.  In Plautus we find ourselves, on the whole,
among incipient or thorough rogues, in Terence again, as a rule,
among none but honest men; if occasionally a -leno- is plundered or
a young man taken to the brothel, it is done with a moral intent,
possibly out of brotherly love or to deter the boy from frequenting
improper haunts.  The Plautine pieces are pervaded by the significant
antagonism of the tavern to the house; everywhere wives are
visited with abuse, to the delight of all husbands temporarily
emancipated and not quite sure of an amiable salutation at home.
The comedies of Terence are pervaded by a conception not more
moral, but doubtless more becoming, of the feminine nature and of
married life.  As a rule, they end with a virtuous marriage, or,
if possible, with two--just as it was the glory of Menander that
he compensated for every seduction by a marriage.  The eulogies of
a bachelor life, which are so frequent in Menander, are repeated by
his Roman remodeller only with characteristic shyness,(4) whereas
the lover in his agony, the tender husband at the -accouchement-,
the loving sister by the death-bed in the -Eunuchus- and the
-Andria- are very gracefully delineated; in the -Hecyra- there even
appears at the close as a delivering angel a virtuous courtesan,
likewise a genuine Menandrian figure, which the Roman public, it is
true, very properly hissed.  In Plautus the fathers throughout only
exist for the purpose of being jeered and swindled by their sons;
with Terence in the -Heauton Timorumenos- the lost son is reformed
by his father's wisdom, and, as in general he is full of excellent
instructions as to education, so the point of the best of his
pieces, the -Adelphi-, turns on finding the right mean between the
too liberal training of the uncle and the too rigid training of the
father.  Plautus writes for the great multitude and gives utterance
to profane and sarcastic speeches, so far as the censorship of the
stage at all allowed; Terence on the contrary describes it as his
aim to please the good and, like Menander, to offend nobody.
Plautus is fond of vigorous, often noisy dialogue, and his pieces
require a lively play of gesture in the actors; Terence confines
himself to "quiet conversation." The language of Plautus abounds in
burlesque turns and verbal witticisms, in alliterations, in comic
coinages of new terms, Aristophanic combinations of words, pithy
expressions of the day jestingly borrowed from the Greek.  Terence
knows nothing of such caprices; his dialogue moves on with the
purest symmetry, and its points are elegant epigrammatic and
sententious turns.  The comedy of Terence is not to be called an
improvement, as compared with that of Plautus, either in a poetical
or in a moral point of view.  Originality cannot be affirmed of
either, but, if possible, there is less of it in Terence; and
the dubious praise of more correct copying is at least outweighed
by the circumstance that, while the younger poet reproduced the
agreeableness, he knew not how to reproduce the merriment of
Menander, so that the comedies of Plautus imitated from Menander,
such as the -Stichus-, the -Cistellaria-, the -Bacchides-, probably
preserve far more of the flowing charm of the original than the
comedies of the "-dimidiatus Menander-." And, while the aesthetic
critic cannot recognize an improvement in the transition from the
coarse to the dull, as little can the moralist in the transition
from the obscenity and indifference of Plautus to the accommodating
morality of Terence.  But in point of language an improvement
certainly took place.  Elegance of language was the pride of the
poet, and it was owing above all to its inimitable charm that the
most refined judges of art in aftertimes, such as Cicero, Caesar,
and Quinctilian, assigned the palm to him among all the Roman poets
of the republican age.  In so far it is perhaps justifiable to date
a new era in Roman literature--the real essence of which lay not
in the development of Latin poetry, but in the development of
the Latin language--from the comedies of Terence as the first
artistically pure imitation of Hellenic works of art.  The modern
comedy made its way amidst the most determined literary warfare.
The Plautine style of composing had taken root among the Roman
bourgeoisie; the comedies of Terence encountered the liveliest
opposition from the public, which found their "insipid language,"
their "feeble style," intolerable.  The, apparently, pretty
sensitive poet replied in his prologues--which properly were not
intended for any such purpose--with counter-criticisms full of
defensive and offensive polemics; and appealed from the multitude,
which had twice run off from his -Hecyra- to witness a band of
gladiators and rope-dancers, to the cultivated circles of the
genteel world.  He declared that he only aspired to the approval
of the "good"; in which doubtless there was not wanting a hint,
that it was not at all seemly to undervalue works of art which
had obtained the approval of the "few." He acquiesced in or even
favoured the report, that persons of quality aided him in composing
with their counsel or even with their cooperation.(5)  In reality
he carried his point; even in literature the oligarchy prevailed,
and the artistic comedy of the exclusives supplanted the comedy
of the people: we find that about 620 the pieces of Plautus
disappeared from the set of stock plays.  This is the more
significant, because after the early death of Terence no man of
conspicuous talent at all further occupied this field.  Respecting
the comedies of Turpilius (651 at an advanced age) and other stop-
gaps wholly or almost wholly forgotten, a connoisseur already at
the close of this period gave it as his opinion, that the new
comedies were even much worse than the bad new pennies.(6)

National Comedy
Afranius

We have formerly shown(7) that in all probability already in the
course of the sixth century a national Roman comedy (-togata-) was
added to the Graeco-Roman (-palliata-), as a portraiture not of the
distinctive life of the capital, but of the ways and doings of the
Latin land.  Of course the Terentian school rapidly took possession
of this species of comedy also; it was quite in accordance with
its spirit to naturalise Greek comedy in Italy on the one hand
by faithful translation, and on the other hand by pure Roman
imitation.  The chief representative of this school was Lucius
Afranius (who flourished about 66).  The fragments of his comedies
remaining give no distinct impression, but they are not
inconsistent with what the Roman critics of art remark regarding
him.  His numerous national comedies were in their construction
thoroughly formed on the model of the Greek intrigue-piece; only,
as was natural in imitation, they were simpler and shorter.  In the
details also he borrowed what pleased him partly from Menander,
partly from the older national literature.  But of the Latin local
tints, which are so distinctly marked in Titinius the creator of
this species of art, we find not much in Afranius;(8) his subjects
retain a very general character, and may well have been throughout
imitations of particular Greek comedies with merely an alteration
of costume.  A polished eclecticism and adroitness in composition--
literary allusions not unfrequently occur--are characteristic of
him as of Terence: the moral tendency too, in which his pieces
approximated to the drama, their inoffensive tenor in a police
point of view, their purity of language are common to him with the
latter.  Afranius is sufficiently indicated as of a kindred spirit
with Menander and Terence by the judgment of posterity that he wore
the -toga- as Menander would have worn it had he been an Italian,
and by his own expression that to his mind Terence surpassed
all other poets.

Atellanae

The farce appeared afresh at this period in the field of Roman
literature.  It was in itself very old:(9) long before Rome arose,
the merry youths of Latium may have improvised on festal occasions
in the masks once for all established for particular characters.
These pastimes obtained a fixed local background in the Latin
"asylum of fools," for which they selected the formerly Oscan
town of Atella, which was destroyed in the Hannibalic war and
was thereby handed over to comic use; thenceforth the name of
"Oscan plays" or "plays of Atella" was commonly used for these
exhibitions.(10)  But these pleasantries had nothing to do with
the stage(11) and with literature; they were performed by amateurs
where and when they pleased, and the text was not written or at any
rate was not published.  It was not until the present period that
the Atellan piece was handed over to actors properly so called,(12)
and was employed, like the Greek satyric drama, as an afterpiece
particularly after tragedies; a change which naturally suggested
the extension of literary activity to that field.  Whether this
authorship developed itself altogether independently, or whether
possibly the art-farce of Lower Italy, in various respects of
kindred character, gave the impulse to this Roman farce,(13) can
no longer be determined; that the several pieces were uniformly
original works, is certain.  The founder of this new species of
literature, Lucius Pomponius from the Latin colony of Bononia,
appeared in the first half of the seventh century;(14) and along
with his pieces those of another poet Novius soon became
favourites.  So far as the few remains and the reports of the old
-litteratores- allow us to form an opinion, they were short farces,
ordinarily perhaps of one act, the charm of which depended less on
the preposterous and loosely constructed plot than on the drastic
portraiture of particular classes and situations.  Festal days and
public acts were favourite subjects of comic delineation, such as
the "Marriage," the "First of March," "Harlequin Candidate";
so were also foreign nationalities--the Transalpine Gauls,
the Syrians; above all, the various trades frequently appear
on the boards.  The sacristan, the soothsayer, the bird-seer,
the physician, the publican, the painter, fisherman, baker, pass
across the stage; the public criers were severely assailed and still
more the fullers, who seem to have played in the Roman fool-world
the part of our tailors.  While the varied life of the city thus
received its due attention, the farmer with his joys and sorrows
was also represented in all aspects.  The copiousness of this rural
repertory may be guessed from the numerous titles of that nature,
such as "the Cow," "the Ass," "the Kid," "the Sow," "the Swine,"
"the Sick Boar," "the Farmer," "the Countryman," "Harlequin
Countryman," "the Cattle-herd," "the Vinedresser," "the Fig-
gatherer," "Woodcutting," "Pruning," "the Poultry-yard." In these
pieces it was always the standing figures of the stupid and the
artful servant, the good old man, the wise man, that delighted
the public; the first in particular might never be wanting--
the -Pulcinello- of this farce--the gluttonous filthy -Maccus-,
hideously ugly and yet eternally in love, always on the point
of stumbling across his own path, set upon by all with jeers
and with blows and eventually at the close the regular scapegoat.
The titles "-Maccus Miles-," "-Maccus Copo-," "-Maccus Virgo-,"
"-Maccus Exul-," "-Macci Gemini-" may furnish the good-humoured
reader with some conception of the variety of entertainment in the
Roman masquerade.  Although these farces, at least after they came
to be written, accommodated themselves to the general laws of
literature, and in their metres for instance followed the Greek
stage, they yet naturally retained a far more Latin and more
popular stamp than even the national comedy.  The farce resorted
to the Greek world only under the form of travestied tragedy;(15)
and this style appears to have been cultivated first by Novius,
and not very frequently in any case.  The farce of this poet moreover
ventured, if not to trespass on Olympus, at least to touch the most
human of the gods, Hercules: he wrote a -Hercules Auctionator-.
The tone, as a matter of course, was not the most refined; very
unambiguous ambiguities, coarse rustic obscenities, ghosts
frightening and occasionally devouring children, formed part of
the entertainment, and offensive personalities, even with the mention
of names, not unfrequently crept in.  But there was no want also of
vivid delineation, of grotesque incidents, of telling jokes, and of
pithy sayings; and the harlequinade rapidly won for itself no
inconsiderable position in the theatrical life of the capital
and even in literature.

Dramatic Arrangements

Lastly as regards the development of dramatic arrangements we are
not in a position to set forth in detail--what is clear on the
whole--that the general interest in dramatic performances was
constantly on the increase, and that they became more and more
frequent and magnificent.  Not only was there hardly any ordinary
or extraordinary popular festival that was now celebrated without
dramatic exhibitions; even in the country-towns and in private
houses representations by companies of hired actors were common.
It is true that, while probably various municipal towns already at
this time possessed theatres built of stone, the capital was still
without one; the building of a theatre, already contracted for,
had been again prohibited by the senate in 599 on the suggestion
of Publius Scipio Nasica.  It was quite in the spirit of the
sanctimonious policy of this age, that the building of a permanent
theatre was prohibited out of respect for the customs of their
ancestors, but nevertheless theatrical entertainments were allowed
rapidly to increase, and enormous sums were expended annually
in erecting and decorating structures of boards for them.
The arrangements of the stage became visibly better.  The improved
scenic arrangements and the reintroduction of masks about the time
of Terence are doubtless connected with the fact, that the erection
and maintenance of the stage and stage-apparatus were charged
in 580 on the public chest.(16) The plays which Lucius Mummius
produced after the capture of Corinth (609) formed an epoch in
the history of the theatre.  It was probably then that a theatre
acoustically constructed after the Greek fashion and provided with
seats was first erected, and more care generally was expended on
the exhibitions.(17)  Now also there is frequent mention of the
bestowal of a prize of victory--which implies the competition of
several pieces--of the audience taking a lively part for or against
the leading actors, of cliques and -claqueurs-.  The decorations
and machinery were improved; moveable scenery artfully painted
and audible theatrical thunder made their appearance under the
aedileship of Gaius Claudius Pulcher in 655;(18) and twenty years
later (675) under the aedileship of the brothers Lucius and Marcus
Lucullus came the changing of the decorations by shifting the
scenes.  To the close of this epoch belongs the greatest of Roman
actors, the freedman Quintus Roscius (d. about 692 at a great age),
throughout several generations the ornament and pride of the Roman
stage,(19) the friend and welcome boon-companion of Sulla--to whom
we shall have to recur in the sequel.

Satura

In recitative poetry the most surprising circumstance is the
insignificance of the Epos, which during the sixth century had
occupied decidedly the first place in the literature destined for
reading; it had numerous representatives in the seventh, but not a
single one who had even temporary success.  From the present epoch
there is hardly anything to be reported save a number of rude
attempts to translate Homer, and some continuations of the Ennian
Annals, such as the "Istrian War" of Hostius and the "Annals
(perhaps) of the Gallic War" by Aulus Furius (about 650), which to
all appearance took up the narrative at the very point where Ennius
had broken off--the description of the Istrian war of 576 and 577.
In didactic and elegiac poetry no prominent name appears.  The only
successes which the recitative poetry of this period has to show,
belong to the domain of what was called -Satura---a species of art,
which like the letter or the pamphlet allowed of any form and
admitted any sort of contents, and accordingly in default of all
proper generic characters derived its individual shape wholly from
the individuality of each poet, and occupied a position not merely
on the boundary between poetry and prose, but even more than half
beyond the bounds of literature proper.  The humorous poetical
epistles, which one of the younger men of the Scipionic circle,
Spurius Mummius, the brother of the destroyer of Corinth, sent home
from the camp of Corinth to his friends, were still read with
pleasure a century afterwards; and numerous poetical pleasantries
of that sort not destined for publication probably proceeded at
that time from the rich social and intellectual life of the
better circles of Rome.

Lucilius

Its representative in literature is Gaius Lucilius (606-651) sprung
of a respectable family in the Latin colony of Suessa, and likewise
a member of the Scipionic circle.  His poems are, as it were, open
letters to the public.  Their contents, as a clever successor
gracefully says, embrace the whole life of a cultivated man of
independence, who looks upon the events passing on the political
stage from the pit and occasionally from the side-scenes; who
converses with the best of his epoch as his equals; who follows
literature and science with sympathy and intelligence without
wishing personally to pass for a poet or scholar; and who, in fine,
makes his pocket-book the confidential receptacle for everything
good and bad that he meets with, for his political experiences and
expectations, for grammatical remarks and criticisms on art, for
incidents of his own life, visits, dinners, journeys, as well as
for anecdotes which he has heard.  Caustic, capricious, thoroughly
individual, the Lucilian poetry has yet the distinct stamp of an
oppositional and, so far, didactic aim in literature as well as in
morals and politics; there is in it something of the revolt of the
country against the capital; the Suessan's sense of his own purity
of speech and honesty of life asserts itself in antagonism to the
great Babel of mingled tongues and corrupt morals.  The aspiration
of the Scipionic circle after literary correctness, especially in
point of language, finds critically its most finished and most
clever representative in Lucilius.  He dedicated his very first
book to Lucius Stilo, the founder of Roman philology,(20) and
designated as the public for which he wrote not the cultivated
circles of pure and classical speech, but the Tarentines, the
Bruttians, the Siculi, or in other words the half-Greeks of Italy,
whose Latin certainly might well require a corrective.  Whole books
of his poems are occupied with the settlement of Latin orthography
and prosody, with the combating of Praenestine, Sabine, Etruscan
provincialisms, with the exposure of current solecisms; along with
which, however, the poet by no means forgets to ridicule the
insipidly systematic Isocratean purism of words and phrases,(21)
and even to reproach his friend Scipio in right earnest jest
with the exclusive fineness of his language.(22)  But the poet
inculcates purity of morals in public and private life far more
earnestly than he preaches pure and simple Latinity.  For this
his position gave him peculiar advantages.  Although by descent,
estate, and culture on a level with the genteel Romans of his time
and possessor of a handsome house in the capital, he was yet not a
Roman burgess, but a Latin; even his position towards Scipio, under
whom he had served in his early youth during the Numantine war, and
in whose house he was a frequent visitor, may be connected with the
fact, that Scipio stood in varied relations to the Latins and was
their patron in the political feuds of the time.(23)  He was thus
precluded from a public life, and he disdained the career of a
speculator--he had no desire, as he once said, to "cease to be
Lucilius in order to become an Asiatic revenue-farmer." So he lived
in the sultry age of the Gracchan reforms and the agitations preceding
the Social war, frequenting the palaces and villas of the Roman
grandees and yet not exactly their client, at once in the midst
of the strife of political coteries and parties and yet not directly
taking part with one or another; in a way similar to Beranger,
of whom there is much that reminds us in the political and poetical
position of Lucilius.  From this position he uttered his comments
on public life with a sound common sense that was not to be
shaken, with a good humour that was inexhaustible, and with
a wit perpetually gushing:

-Nunc vero a mane ad noctem, festo atque profesto
Toto itidem pariterque die populusque patresque
Iactare indu foro se omnes, decedere nusquam.
Uni se atque eidem studio omnes dedere et arti;
Verba dare ut caute possint, pugnare dolose,
Blanditia certare, bonum simulare virum se,
Insidias facere ut si hostes sint omnibus omnes-.

The illustrations of this inexhaustible text remorselessly, without
omitting his friends or even the poet himself, assailed the evils
of the age, the coterie-system, the endless Spanish war-service,
and the like; the very commencement of his Satires was a great
debate in the senate of the Olympian gods on the question, whether
Rome deserved to enjoy the continued protection of the celestials.
Corporations, classes, individuals, were everywhere severally
mentioned by name; the poetry of political polemics, shut out
from the Roman stage, was the true element and life-breath of
the Lucilian poems, which by the power of the most pungent wit
illustrated with the richest imagery--a power which still entrances
us even in the remains that survive--pierce and crush their
adversary "as by a drawn sword." In this--in the moral ascendency
and the proud sense of freedom of the poet of Suessa--lies the
reason why the refined Venusian, who in the Alexandrian age of
Roman poetry revived the Lucilian satire, in spite of all his
superiority in formal skill with true modesty yields to the earlier
poet as "his better." The language is that of a man of thorough
culture, Greek and Latin, who freely indulges his humour; a poet
like Lucilius, who is alleged to have made two hundred hexameters
before dinner and as many after it, is in far too great a hurry to
be nice; useless prolixity, slovenly repetition of the same turn,
culpable instances of carelessness frequently occur: the first
word, Latin or Greek, is always the best.  The metres are similarly
treated, particularly the very predominant hexameter: if we transpose
the words--his clever imitator says--no man would observe that
he had anything else before him than simple prose; in point of
effect they can only be compared to our doggerel verses.(24)
The poems of Terence and those of Lucilius stand on the same level
of culture, and have the same relation to each other as a carefully
prepared and polished literary work has to a letter written on the
spur of the moment.  But the incomparably higher intellectual gifts
and the freer view of life, which mark the knight of Suessa as
compared with the African slave, rendered his success as rapid
and brilliant as that of Terence had been laborious and doubtful;
Lucilius became immediately the favourite of the nation, and he
like Beranger could say of his poems that "they alone of all were
read by the people." The uncommon popularity of the Lucilian poem
is, in a historical point of view, a remarkable event; we see from
it that literature was already a power, and beyond doubt we should
fall in with various traces of its influence, if a thorough history
of this period had been preserved.  Posterity has only confirmed
the judgment of contemporaries; the Roman judges of art who were
opposed to the Alexandrian school assigned to Lucilius the first
rank among all the Latin poets.  So far as satire can be regarded
as a distinct form of art at all, Lucilius created it; and in it
created the only species of art which was peculiar to the Romans
and was bequeathed by them to posterity.

Of poetry attaching itself to the Alexandrian school nothing
occurs in Rome at this epoch except minor poems translated from or
modelled on Alexandrian epigrams, which deserve notice not on their
own account, but as the first harbingers of the later epoch of
Roman literature.  Leaving out of account some poets little known
and whose dates cannot be fixed with certainty, there belong to
this category Quintus Catulus, consul in 652(25) and Lucius
Manlius, an esteemed senator, who wrote in 657.  The latter seems
to have been the first to circulate among the Romans various
geographical tales current among the Greeks, such as the Delian
legend of Latona, the fables of Europa and of the marvellous bird
Phoenix; as it was likewise reserved for him on his travels to
discover at Dodona and to copy that remarkable tripod, on which
might be read the oracle imparted to the Pelasgians before their
migration into the land of the Siceli and Aborigines--a discovery
which the Roman annals did not neglect devoutly to register.

Historical Composition
Polybius

In historical composition this epoch is especially marked by the
emergence of an author who did not belong to Italy either by birth
or in respect of his intellectual and literary standpoint, but who
first or rather alone brought literary appreciation and description
to bear on Rome's place in the world, and to whom all subsequent
generations, and we too, owe the best part of our knowledge of
the Roman development.  Polybius (c. 546-c. 627) of Megalopolis in
the Peloponnesus, son of the Achaean statesman Lycortas, took part
apparently as early as 565 in the expedition of the Romans against
the Celts of Asia Minor, and was afterwards on various occasions,
especially during the third Macedonian war, employed by his
countrymen in military and diplomatic affairs.  After the crisis
occasioned by that war in Hellas he was carried off along with the
other Achaean hostages to Italy,(26) where he lived in exile for
seventeen years (587-604) and was introduced by the sons of Paullus
to the genteel circles of the capital.  By the sending back of
the Achaean hostages(27) he was restored to his home, where he
thenceforth acted as permanent mediator between his confederacy
and the Romans.  He was present at the destruction of Carthage
and of Corinth (608).  He seemed educated, as it were, by destiny
to comprehend the historical position of Rome more clearly than
the Romans of that day could themselves.  From the place which
he occupied, a Greek statesman and a Roman prisoner, esteemed and
occasionally envied for his Hellenic culture by Scipio Aemilianus
and the first men of Rome generally, he saw the streams, which had
so long flowed separately, meet together in the same channel and
the history of the states of the Mediterranean resolve itself into
the hegemony of Roman power and Greek culture.  Thus Polybius
became the first Greek of note, who embraced with serious
conviction the comprehensive view of the Scipionic circle, and
recognized the superiority of Hellenism in the sphere of intellect
and of the Roman character in the sphere of politics as facts,
regarding which history had given her final decision, and to which
people on both sides were entitled and bound to submit.  In this
spirit he acted as a practical statesman, and wrote his history.
If in his youth he had done homage to the honourable but
impracticable local patriotism of the Achaeans, during his later
years, with a clear discernment of inevitable necessity, he
advocated in the community to which he belonged the policy of the
closest adherence to Rome.  It was a policy in the highest degree
judicious and beyond doubt well-intentioned, but it was far from
being high-spirited or proud.  Nor was Polybius able wholly to
disengage himself from the vanity and paltriness of the Hellenic
statesmanship of the time.  He was hardly released from exile,
when he proposed to the senate that it should formally secure to
the released their former rank in their several homes; whereupon
Cato aptly remarked, that this looked to him as if Ulysses were to
return to the cave of Polyphemus to request from the giant his hat
and girdle.  He often made use of his relations with the great
men in Rome to benefit his countrymen; but the way in which he
submitted to, and boasted of, the illustrious protection somewhat
approaches fawning servility.  His literary activity breathes
throughout the same spirit as his practical action.  It was
the task of his life to write the history of the union of the
Mediterranean states under the hegemony of Rome.  From the first
Punic war down to the destruction of Carthage and Corinth his work
embraces the fortunes of all the civilized states--namely Greece,
Macedonia, Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, Carthage, and Italy--and
exhibits in causal connection the mode in which they came under
the Roman protectorate; in so far he describes it as his object to
demonstrate the fitness and reasonableness of the Roman hegemony.
In design as in execution, this history stands in clear and
distinct contrast with the contemporary Roman as well as with the
contemporary Greek historiography.  In Rome history still remained
wholly at the stage of chronicle; there existed doubtless important
historical materials, but what was called historical composition
was restricted--with the exception of the very respectable but
purely individual writings of Cato, which at any rate did not reach
beyond the rudiments of research and narration--partly to nursery
tales, partly to collections of notices.  The Greeks had certainly
exhibited historical research and had written history; but the
conceptions of nation and state had been so completely lost amidst
the distracted times of the Diadochi, that none of the numerous
historians succeeded in following the steps of the great Attic
masters in spirit and in truth, or in treating from a general
point of view the matter of world-wide interest in the history
of the times.

Their histories were either purely outward records, or they were
pervaded by the verbiage and sophistries of Attic rhetoric and only
too often by the venality and vulgarity, the sycophancy and the
bitterness of the age.  Among the Romans as among the Greeks there
was nothing but histories of cities or of tribes.  Polybius,
a Peloponnesian, as has been justly  remarked, and holding
intellectually a position at least as far aloof from the Attics
as from the Romans, first stepped beyond these miserable limits,
treated the Roman materials with mature Hellenic criticism, and
furnished a history, which was not indeed universal, but which was
at any rate dissociated from the mere local states and laid hold of
the Romano-Greek state in the course of formation.  Never perhaps
has any historian united within himself all the advantages of an
author drawing from original sources so completely as Polybius.
The compass of his task is completely clear and present to him
at every moment; and his eye is fixed throughout on the real
historical connection of events.  The legend, the anecdote,
the mass of worthless chronicle-notices are thrown aside; the
description of countries and peoples, the representation of
political and mercantile relations--all the facts of so infinite
importance, which escape the annalist because they do not admit of
being nailed to a particular year--are put into possession of their
long-suspended rights.  In the procuring of historic materials
Polybius shows a caution and perseverance such as are not perhaps
paralleled in antiquity; he avails himself of documents, gives
comprehensive attention to the literature of different nations,
makes the most extensive use of his favourable position for
collecting the accounts of actors and eye-witnesses, and, in fine,
methodically travels over the whole domain of the Mediterranean
states and part of the coast of the Atlantic Ocean.(28)
Truthfulness is his nature.  In all great matters he has no
interest for one state or against another, for this man or against
that, but is singly and solely interested in the essential
connection of events, to present which in their true relation of
causes and effects seems to him not merely the first but the sole
task of the historian.  Lastly, the narrative is a model of
completeness, simplicity, and clearness.  Still all these uncommon
advantages by no means constitute a historian of the first rank.
Polybius grasps his literary task, as he grasped his practical,
with great understanding, but with the understanding alone.
History, the struggle of necessity and liberty, is a moral problem;
Polybius treats it as if it were a mechanical one.  The whole alone
has value for him, in nature as in the state; the particular event,
the individual man, however wonderful they may appear, are yet
properly mere single elements, insignificant wheels in the highly
artificial mechanism which is named the state.  So far Polybius was
certainly qualified as no other was to narrate the history of the
Roman people, which actually solved the marvellous problem of
raising itself to unparalleled internal and external greatness
without producing a single statesman of genius in the highest
sense, and which resting on its simple foundations developed itself
with wonderful almost mathematical consistency.  But the element of
moral freedom bears sway in the history of every people, and it was
not neglected by Polybius in the history of Rome with impunity.
His treatment of all questions, in which right, honour, religion
are involved, is not merely shallow, but radically false.  The same
holds true wherever a genetic construction is required; the purely
mechanical attempts at explanation, which Polybius substitutes,
are sometimes altogether desperate; there is hardly, for instance,
a more foolish political speculation than that which derives
the excellent constitution of Rome from a judicious mixture of
monarchical, aristocratic, and democratic elements, and deduces
the successes of Rome from the excellence of her constitution.
His conception of relations is everywhere dreadfully jejune and
destitute of imagination: his contemptuous and over-wise mode of
treating religious matters is altogether offensive.  The narrative,
preserving throughout an intentional contrast to the usual Greek
historiography with its artistic style, is doubtless correct and
clear, but flat and languid, digressing with undue frequency into
polemical discussions or into biographical, not seldom very self-
sufficient, description of his own experiences.  A controversial
vein pervades the whole work; the author destined his treatise
primarily for the Romans, and yet found among them only a very
small circle that understood him; he felt that he remained in the
eyes of the Romans a foreigner, in the eyes of his countrymen a
renegade, and that with his grand conception of his subject he
belonged more to the future than to the present Accordingly he was
not exempt from a certain ill-humour and personal bitterness, which
frequently appear after a quarrelsome and paltry fashion in his
attacks upon the superficial or even venal Greek and the uncritical
Roman historians, so that he degenerates from the tone of the
historian to that of the reviewer.  Polybius is not an attractive
author; but as truth and truthfulness are of more value than all
ornament and elegance, no other author of antiquity perhaps can
be named to whom we are indebted for so much real instruction.
His books are like the sun in the field of Roman history; at the point
where they begin the veil of mist which still envelops the Samnite
and Pyrrhic wars is raised, and at the point where they end a new
and, if possible, still more vexatious twilight begins.

Roman Chroniclers

In singular contrast to this grand conception and treatment of
Roman history by a foreigner stands the contemporary historical
literature of native growth.  At the beginning of this period we
still find some chronicles written in Greek such as that already
mentioned(29) of Aulus Postumius (consul in 603), full of wretched
rationalizing, and that of Gaius Acilius (who closed it at an
advanced age about 612).  Yet under the influence partly of
Catonian patriotism, partly of the more refined culture of
the Scipionic circle, the Latin language gained so decided an
ascendency in this field, that of the later historical works not
more than one or two occur written in Greek;(30) and not only so,
but the older Greek chronicles were translated into Latin and were
probably read mainly in these translations.  Unhappily beyond the
employment of the mother-tongue there is hardly anything else
deserving of commendation in the chronicles of this epoch composed
in Latin.  They were numerous and detailed enough--there are
mentioned, for example, those of Lucius Cassius Hemina (about 608),
of Lucius Calpurnius Piso (consul in 621), of Gaius Sempronius
Tuditanus (consul in 625), of Gaius Fannius (consul in 632).
To these falls to be added the digest of the official annals of
the city in eighty books, which Publius Mucius Scaevola (consul
in 621), a man esteemed also as a jurist, prepared and published
as -pontifex maximus-, thereby closing the city-chronicle in so
far as thenceforth the pontifical records, although not exactly
discontinued, were no longer at any rate, amidst the increasing
diligence of private chroniclers, taken account of in literature.
All these annals, whether they gave themselves forth as private or
as official works, were substantially similar compilations of the
extant historical and quasi-historical materials; and the value of
their authorities as well as their formal value declined beyond
doubt in the same proportion as their amplitude increased.
Chronicle certainly nowhere presents truth without fiction, and it
would be very foolish to quarrel with Naevius and Pictor because
they have not acted otherwise than Hecataeus and Saxo Grammaticus;
but the later attempts to build houses out of such castles in the
air put even the most tried patience to a severe test No blank in
tradition presents so wide a chasm, but that this system of smooth
and downright invention will fill it up with playful facility.
The eclipses of the sun, the numbers of the census, family-registers,
triumphs, are without hesitation carried back from the current year
up to the year One; it stands duly recorded, in what year, month,
and day king Romulus went up to heaven, and how king Servius
Tullius triumphed over the Etruscans first on the 25th November
183, and again on the 25th May 187, In entire harmony with such
details accordingly the vessel in which Aeneas had voyaged from
Ilion to Latium was shown in the Roman docks, and even the
identical sow, which had served as a guide to Aeneas, was preserved
well pickled in the Roman temple of Vesta.  With the lying
disposition of a poet these chroniclers of rank combine all the
tiresome exactness of a notary, and treat their great subject
throughout with the dulness which necessarily results from the
elimination at once of all poetical and all historical elements.
When we read, for instance, in Piso that Romulus avoided indulging
in his cups when he had a sitting of the senate next day; or that
Tarpeia betrayed the Capitol to the Sabines out of patriotism,
with a view to deprive the enemy of their shields; we cannot be
surprised at the judgment of intelligent contemporaries as to all
this sort of scribbling, "that it was not writing history, but
telling stories to children." Of far greater excellence were
isolated works on the history of the recent past and of the
present, particularly the history of the Hannibalic war by Lucius
Caelius Antipater (about 633) and the history of his own time
by Publius Sempronius Asellio, who was a little younger.  These
exhibited at least valuable materials and an earnest spirit of truth,
in the case of Antipater also a lively, although strongly affected,
style of narrative; yet, judging from all testimonies and fragments,
none of these books came up either in pithy form or in originality
to the "Origines" of Cato, who unhappily created as little of a school
in the field of history as in that of politics.

Memoirs and Speeches

The subordinate, more individual and ephemeral, species of
historical literature--memoirs, letters, and speeches--were
strongly represented also, at least as respects quantity.
The first statesmen of Rome already recorded in person their
experiences: such as Marcus Scaurus (consul in 639), Publius Rufus
(consul in 649), Quintus Catulus (consul in 652), and even the
regent Sulla; but none of these productions seem to have been of
importance for literature otherwise than by the substance of their
contents.  The collection of letters of Cornelia, the mother of
the Gracchi, was remarkable partly for the classical purity of
the language and the high spirit of the writer, partly as the first
correspondence published in Rome, and as the first literary
production of a Roman lady.  The literature of speeches preserved
at this period the stamp impressed on it by Cato; advocates'
pleadings were not yet looked on as literary productions, and such
speeches as were published were political pamphlets.  During the
revolutionary commotions this pamphlet-literature increased in
extent and importance, and among the mass of ephemeral productions
there were some which, like the Philippics of Demosthenes and
the fugitive pieces of Courier, acquired a permanent place in
literature from the important position of their authors or from
their own weight.  Such were the political speeches of Gaius
Laelius and of Scipio Aemilianus, masterpieces of excellent Latin
as of the noblest patriotism; such were the gushing speeches of
Gaius Titius, from whose pungent pictures of the place and the
time--his description of the senatorial juryman has been given
already(31)--the national comedy borrowed various points; such
above all were the numerous orations of Gaius Gracchus, whose
fiery words preserved in a faithful mirror the impassioned
earnestness, the aristocratic bearing, and the tragic destiny
of that lofty nature.

Sciences

In scientific literature the collection of juristic opinions by
Marcus Brutus, which was published about the year 600, presents
a remarkable attempt to transplant to Rome the method usual among
the Greeks of handling professional subjects by means of dialogue,
and to give to his treatise an artistic semi-dramatic form by a
machinery of conversation in which the persons, time, and place
were distinctly specified.  But the later men of science, such
as Stilo the philologist and Scaevola the jurist, laid aside
this method, more poetical than practical, both in the sciences
of general culture and in the special professional sciences.
The increasing value of science as such, and the preponderance
of a material interest in it at Rome, are clearly reflected in this
rapid rejection of the fetters of artistic form.  We have already
spoken(32) in detail of the sciences of general liberal culture,
grammar or rather philology, rhetoric and philosophy, in so far
as these now became essential elements of the usual Roman training
and thereby first began to be dissociated from the professional
sciences properly so called.

Philology

In the field of letters Latin philology flourished vigorously, in
close association with the philological treatment--long ago placed
on a sure basis--of Greek literature.  It was already mentioned
that about the beginning of this century the Latin epic poets found
their -diaskeuastae- and revisers of their text;(33) it was also
noticed, that not only did the Scipionic circle generally insist
on correctness above everything else, but several also of the most
noted poets, such as Accius and Lucilius, busied themselves with
the regulation of orthography and of grammar.  At the same period
we find isolated attempts to develop archaeology from the
historical side; although the dissertations of the unwieldy
annalists of this age, such as those of Hemina "on the Censors"
and of Tuditanus "on the Magistrates," can hardly have been better
than their chronicles.  Of more interest were the treatise on
the Magistracies by Marcus Junius the friend of Gaius Gracchus, as
the first attempt to make archaeological investigation serviceable
for political objects,(34) and the metrically composed -Didascaliae-
of the tragedian Accius, an essay towards a literary history of the
Latin drama.  But those early attempts at a scientific treatment
of the mother-tongue still bear very much a dilettante stamp, and
strikingly remind us of our orthographic literature in the Bodmer-
Klopstock period; and we may likewise without injustice assign but
a modest place to the antiquarian researches of this epoch.

Stilo

The Roman, who established the investigation of the Latin language
and antiquities in the spirit of the Alexandrian masters on a
scientific basis, was Lucius Aelius Stilo about 650.(35)  He first
went back to the oldest monuments of the language, and commented on
the Salian litanies and the Twelve Tables.  He devoted his special
attention to the comedy of the sixth century, and first formed a
list of the pieces of Plautus which in his opinion were genuine.
He sought, after the Greek fashion, to determine historically the
origin of every single phenomenon in the Roman life and dealings
and to ascertain in each case the "inventor," and at the same time
brought the whole annalistic tradition within the range of his
research.  The success, which he had among his contemporaries, is
attested by the dedication to him of the most important poetical,
and the most important historical, work of his time, the Satires
of Lucilius and the Annals of Antipater; and this first Roman
philologist influenced the studies of his nation for the future by
transmitting his spirit of investigation both into words and into
things to his disciple Varro.

Rhetoric

The literary activity in the field of Latin rhetoric was, as might
be expected, of a more subordinate kind.  There was nothing here to
be done but to write manuals and exercise-books after the model of
the Greek compendia of Hermagoras and others; and these accordingly
the schoolmasters did not fail to supply, partly on account of the
need for them, partly on account of vanity and money.  Such a
manual of rhetoric has been preserved to us, composed under Sulla's
dictatorship by an unknown author, who according to the fashion
then prevailing(36) taught simultaneously Latin literature and
Latin rhetoric, and wrote on both; a treatise remarkable not merely
for its terse, clear, and firm handling of the subject, but above
all for its comparative independence in presence of Greek models.
Although in method entirely dependent on the Greeks, the Roman yet
distinctly and even abruptly rejects all "the useless matter which
the Greeks had gathered together, solely in order that the science
might appear more difficult to learn." The bitterest censure is
bestowed on the hair-splitting dialectics--that "loquacious science
of inability to speak"--whose finished master, for sheer fear of
expressing himself ambiguously, at last no longer ventures to
pronounce his own name.  The Greek school-terminology is throughout
and intentionally avoided.  Very earnestly the author points out
the danger of many teachers, and inculcates the golden rule that
the scholar ought above all to be induced by the teacher to help
himself; with equal earnestness he recognizes the truth that the
school is a secondary, and life the main, matter, and gives in
his examples chosen with thorough independence an echo of those
forensic speeches which during the last decades had excited notice
in the Roman advocate-world.  It deserves attention, that the
opposition to the extravagances of Hellenism, which had formerly
sought to prevent the rise of a native Latin rhetoric,(37)
continued to influence it after it arose, and thereby secured
to Roman eloquence, as compared with the contemporary eloquence
of the Greeks, theoretically and practically a higher dignity
and a greater usefulness.

Philosophy

Philosophy, in fine, was not yet represented in literature,
since neither did an inward need develop a national Roman philosophy
nor did outward circumstances call forth a Latin philosophical
authorship.  It cannot even be shown with certainty that there
were Latin translations of popular summaries of philosophy
belonging to this period; those who pursued philosophy read
and disputed in Greek.

Professional Sciences
Jurisprudence

In the professional sciences there was but little activity.
Well as the Romans understood how to farm and how to calculate,
physical and mathematical research gained no hold among them.
The consequences of neglecting theory appeared practically in
the low state of medical knowledge and of a portion of the military
sciences.  Of all the professional sciences jurisprudence alone was
flourishing.  We cannot trace its internal development with
chronological accuracy.  On the whole ritual law fell more and
more into the shade, and at the end of this period stood nearly
in the same position as the canon law at the present day.  The finer
and more profound conception of law, on the other hand, which
substitutes for outward criteria the motive springs of action
within--such as the development of the ideas of offences arising
from intention and from carelessness respectively, and of
possession entitled to temporary protection--was not yet in
existence at the time of the Twelve Tables, but was so in the age
of Cicero, and probably owed its elaboration substantially to the
present epoch.  The reaction of political relations on the development
of law has been already indicated on several occasions; it was
not always advantageous.  By the institution of the tribunal of the
-Centumviri- to deal with inheritance,(38) for instance, there was
introduced in the law of property a college of jurymen, which, like
the criminal authorities, instead of simply applying the law placed
itself above it and with its so-called equity undermined the legal
institutions; one consequence of which among others was the
irrational principle, that any one, whom a relative had passed over
in his testament, was at liberty to propose that the testament
should be annulled by the court, and the court decided according
to its discretion.

The development of juristic literature admits of being more
distinctly recognized.  It had hitherto been restricted to
collections of formularies and explanations of terms in the laws;
at this period there was first formed a literature of opinions
(-responsa-), which answers nearly to our modern collections of
precedents.  These opinions--which were delivered no longer merely
by members of the pontifical college, but by every one who found
persons to consult him, at home or in the open market-place,
and with which were already associated rational and polemical
illustrations and the standing controversies peculiar to
jurisprudence--began to be noted down and to be promulgated in
collections about the beginning of the seventh century.  This was
done first by the younger Cato (d. about 600) and by Marcus Brutus
(nearly contemporary); and these collections were, as it would
appear, arranged in the order of matters.(39)  A strictly
systematic treatment of the law of the land soon followed.
Its founder was the -pontifex maximus- Quintus Mucius Scaevola
(consul in 659, d.  672),(40) in whose family jurisprudence was,
like the supreme priesthood, hereditary.  His eighteen books
on the -Ius Civile-, which embraced the positive materials of
jurisprudence--legislative enactments, judicial precedents, and
authorities--partly from the older collections, partly from oral
tradition in as great completeness as possible, formed the starting-
point and the model of the detailed systems of Roman law; in like
manner his compendious treatise of "Definitions" (--oroi--) became
the basis of juristic summaries and particularly of the books
of Rules.  Although this development of law proceeded of course
in the main independently of Hellenism, yet an acquaintance with
the philosophico-practical scheme-making of the Greeks beyond
doubt gave a general impulse to the more systematic treatment of
jurisprudence, as in fact the Greek influence is in the case of
the last-mentioned treatise apparent in the very title.  We have
already remarked that in several more external matters Roman
jurisprudence was influenced by the Stoa.(41)

Art exhibits still less pleasing results.  In architecture,
sculpture, and painting there was, no doubt, a more and more
general diffusion of a dilettante interest, but the exercise of
native art retrograded rather than advanced.  It became more and
more customary for those sojourning in Grecian lands personally to
inspect the works of art; for which in particular the winter-
quarters of Sulla's army in Asia Minor in 670-671 formed an epoch.
Connoisseur-ship developed itself also in Italy.  They had
commenced with articles in silver and bronze; about the commencement
of this epoch they began to esteem not merely Greek statues,
but also Greek pictures.  The first picture publicly exhibited in
Rome was the Bacchus of Aristides, which Lucius Mummius withdrew
from the sale of the Corinthian spoil, because king Attalus offered
as much as 6000 -denarii- (260 pounds) for it.  The buildings became
more splendid; and in particular transmarine, especially Hymettian,
marble (Cipollino) came into use for that purpose--the Italian
marble quarries were not yet in operation.  A magnificent colonnade
still admired in the time of the empire, which Quintus Metellus
(consul in 611) the conqueror of Macedonia constructed in the
Campus Martius, enclosed the first marble temple which the capital
had seen; it was soon followed by similar structures built on the
Capitol by Scipio Nasica (consul in 616), and near to the Circus by
Gnaeus Octavius (consul in 626).  The first private house adorned
with marble columns was that of the orator Lucius Crassus (d. 663)
on the Palatine.(42)  But where they could plunder or purchase,
instead of creating for themselves, they did so; it was a wretched
indication of the poverty of Roman architecture, that it already
began to employ the columns of the old Greek temples; the Roman
Capitol, for instance, was embellished by Sulla with those of the
temple of Zeus at Athens.  The works, that were produced in Rome,
proceeded from the hands of foreigners; the few Roman artists of
this period, who are particularly mentioned, are without exception
Italian or transmarine Greeks who had migrated thither.  Such was
the case with the architect Hermodorus from the Cyprian Salamis,
who among other works restored the Roman docks and built for
Quintus Metellus (consul in 611) the temple of Jupiter Stator
in the basilica constructed by him, and for Decimus Brutus (consul
in 616) the temple of Mars in the Flaminian circus; with the sculptor
Pasiteles (about 665) from Magna Graecia, who furnished images
of the gods in ivory for Roman temples; and with the painter
and philosopher Metrodorus of Athens, who was summoned to paint
the pictures for the triumph of Lucius Paullus (587).  It is
significant that the coins of this epoch exhibit in comparison
with those of the previous period a greater variety of types,
but a retrogression rather than an improvement in the cutting
of the dies.

Finally, music and dancing passed over in like manner from Hellas
to Rome, solely in order to be there applied to the enhancement of
decorative luxury.  Such foreign arts were certainly not new in
Rome; the state had from olden time allowed Etruscan flute-players
and dancers to appear at its festivals, and the freedmen and
the lowest class of the Roman people had previously followed
this trade.  But it was a novelty that Greek dances and musical
performances should form the regular accompaniment of a genteel
banquet.  Another novelty was a dancing-school, such as Scipio
Aemilianus full of indignation describes in one of his speeches,
in which upwards of five hundred boys and girls--the dregs of the
people and the children of magistrates and of dignitaries mixed up
together--received instruction from a ballet-master in far from
decorous castanet-dances, in corresponding songs, and in the use of
the proscribed Greek stringed instruments.  It was a novelty too--
not so much that a consular and -pontifex maximus- like Publius
Scaevola (consul in 621) should catch the balls in the circus as
nimbly as he solved the most complicated questions of law at home--
as that young Romans of rank should display their jockey-arts
before all the people at the festal games of Sulla.  The government
occasionally attempted to check such practices; as for instance in
639, when all musical instruments, with the exception of the simple
flute indigenous in Latium, were prohibited by the censors.
But Rome was no Sparta; the lax government by such prohibitions
rather drew attention to the evils than attempted to remedy them
by a sharp and consistent application of the laws.

If, in conclusion, we glance back at the picture as a whole which
the literature and art of Italy unfold to our view from the death
of Ennius to the beginning of the Ciceronian age, we find in these
respects as compared with the preceding epoch a most decided
decline of productiveness.  The higher kinds of literature--such
as epos, tragedy, history--have died out or have been arrested in
their development.  The subordinate kinds--the translation and
imitation of the intrigue-piece, the farce, the poetical and prose
brochure--alone are successful; in this last field of literature
swept by the full hurricane of revolution we meet with the two men
of greatest literary talent in this epoch, Gaius Gracchus and Gaius
Lucilius, who stand out amidst a number of more or less mediocre
writers just as in a similar epoch of French literature Courier
and Beranger stand out amidst a multitude of pretentious nullities.
In the plastic and delineative arts likewise the production,
always weak, is now utterly null.  On the other hand the receptive
enjoyment of art and literature flourished; as the Epigoni of
this period in the political field gathered in and used up the
inheritance that fell to their fathers, we find them in this field
also as diligent frequenters of plays, as patrons of literature,
as connoisseurs and still more as collectors in art.  The most
honourable aspect of this activity was its learned research,
which put forth a native intellectual energy, more especially in
jurisprudence and in linguistic and antiquarian investigation.
The foundation of these sciences which properly falls within the
present epoch, and the first small beginnings of an imitation of
the Alexandrian hothouse poetry, already herald the approaching
epoch of Roman Alexandrinism.  All the productions of the present
epoch are smoother, more free from faults, more systematic than
the creations of the sixth century.  The literati and the friends
of literature of this period not altogether unjustly looked down
on their predecessors as bungling novices: but while they ridiculed
or censured the defective labours of these novices, the very men
who were the most gifted among them may have confessed to themselves
that the season of the nation's youth was past, and may have
ever and anon perhaps felt in the still depths of the heart
a secret longing to stray once more in the delightful paths
of youthful error.



End of Volume IV



NOTES FOR VOLUME IV



Chapter I

1.  III. VII. The State of Culture in Spain.

2.   Italica must have been intended by Scipio to be what was called in
Italy forum et -conciliabulum civium Romanorum-; Aquae Sextiae in Gaul
had a similar origin afterwards.  The formation of transmarine burgess-
communities only began at a later date with Carthage and Narbo: yet
it is remarkable that Scipio already made a first step, in a certain
sense, in that direction.

3.  III. VII. Gracchus

4.  The chronology of the war with Viriathus is far from being
precisely settled.  It is certain that the appearance of Viriathus
dates from the conflict with Vetilius (Appian, Hisp. 61; Liv. lii.;
Oros. v. 4), and that he perished in 615 (Diod. Vat. p. 110, etc.);
the duration of his rule is reckoned at eight (Appian, Hisp. 63), ten
(Justin, xliv. 2), eleven (Diodorus, p. 597), fifteen (Liv. liv.;
Eutrop. iv. 16; Oros. v. 4; Flor. i. 33), and twenty years (Vellei.
ii. 90).  The first estimate possesses some probability, because the
appearance of Viriathus is connected both in Diodorus (p. 591; Vat.
p. 107, 108) and in Orosius (v. 4) with the destruction of Corinth.
Of the Roman governors, with whom Viriathus fought, several undoubtedly
belong to the northern province; for though Viriathus was at work
chiefly in the southern, he was not exclusively so (Liv. lii.);
consequently we must not calculate the number of the years of his
generalship by the number of these names.

5.  IV. I. Celtiberian War

6.  III. VII. Massinissa

7.  III. VI. Peace, III. VII. Carthage

8.  The line of the coast has been in the course of centuries so
much changed that the former local relations are but imperfectly
recognizable on the ancient site.  The name of the city is preserved
by Cape Cartagena--also called from the saint's tomb found there
Ras Sidi bu Said--the eastern headland of the peninsula, projecting
into the gulf with its highest point rising to 393 feet above
the level of the sea.

9.  The dimensions given by Beule (Fouilles a Carthage, 1861)
are as follows in metres and in Greek feet (1=0.309 metre):--

Outer wall                   2   metres = 6 1/2 feet.
Corridor                     1.9 "      = 6     "
Front wall of casemates      1   "      = 3 1/4 "
Casemate rooms               4.2 "      = 14    "
Back wall of casemates       1   "      = 3 1/4 "
                         ------------------------
Whole breadth of the walls  10.1 metres = 33    feet.

Or, as Diodorus (p. 522) states it, 22 cubits (1 Greek cubit = 1 1/2
feet), while Livy (ap. Oros. iv.  22) and Appian (Pun. 95), who seem
to have had before them another less accurate passage of Polybius,
state the breadth of the walls at 30 feet.  The triple wall of
Appian--as to which a false idea has hitherto been diffused by
Floras (i. 31)--denotes the outer wall, and the front and back walls
of the casemates.  That this coincidence is not accidental, and that
we have here in reality the remains of the famed walls of Carthage
before us, will be evident to every one: the objections of Davis
(Carthage and her Remains, p. 370 et seq.) only show how little
even the utmost zeal can adduce in opposition to the main results
of Beule.  Only we must maintain that all the ancient authorities
give the statements of which we are now speaking with reference not
to the citadel-wall, but to the city-wall on the landward side, of
which the wall along the south side of the citadel-hill was an
integral part (Oros. iv. 22).  In accordance with this view, the
excavations at the citadel-hill on the east, north, and west, have
shown no traces of fortifications, whereas on the south side they
have brought to light the very remains of this great wall.  There is
no reason for regarding these as the remains of a separate
fortification of the citadel distinct from the city wall; it may
be presumed that further excavations at a corresponding depth--the
foundation of the city wall discovered at the Byrsa lies fifty-six
feet beneath the present surface--will bring to light like, or at
any rate analogous, foundations along the whole landward side,
although it is probable that at the point where the walled suburb of
Magalia rested on the main wall the fortification was either weaker
from the first or was early neglected.  The length of the wall as a
whole cannot be stated with precision; but it must have been very
considerable, for three hundred elephants were stabled there, and
the stores for their fodder and perhaps other spaces also as well as
the gates are to be taken into account.  It is easy to conceive how
the inner city, within the walls of which the Byrsa was included,
should, especially by way of contrast to the suburb of Magalia which
had its separate circumvallation, be sometimes itself called Byrsa
(App. Pun. 117; Nepos, ap. Serv. Aen. i. 368).

10.  Such is the height given by Appian, l. c.; Diodorus gives
the height, probably inclusive of the battlements, at 40 cubits
or 60 feet.  The remnant preserved is still from 13 to 16 feet
(4-5 metres) high.

11.  The rooms of a horse-shoe shape brought to light in excavation
have a depth of 14, and a breadth of 11, Greek feet; the width of
the entrances is not specified.  Whether these dimensions and the
proportions of the corridor suffice for our recognizing them
as elephants' stalls, remains to be settled by a more accurate
investigation.  The partition-walls, which separate the apartments,
have a thickness of 1.1 metre = 3 1/2 feet.

12.  Oros. iv. 22.  Fully 2000 paces, or--as Polybius must have
said--16 stadia, are=about 3000 metres.  The citadel-hill, on which
the church of St.  Louis now stands, measures at the top about 1400,
half-way up about 2600, metres in circumference (Beule, p. 22); for
the circumference at the base that estimate will very well suffice.

13.  It now bears the fort Goletta.

14.  That this Phoenician word signifies a basin excavated in a
circular shape, is shown both by Diodorus (iii. 44), and by its
being employed by the Greeks to denote a "cup." It thus suits only
the inner harbour of Carthage, and in that sense it is used by Strabo
(xvii. 2, 14, where it is strictly applied to the admiral's island)
and Fest. Ep. v. -cothones-, p. 37.  Appian (Pun. 127) is not quite
accurate in describing the rectangular harbour in front of the Cothon
as part of it.

15.  --Oios pepnutai, toi de skiai aissousin--.

16.  III. III. Acquisition of Territory in Illyria, III. IX. Macedonia

17.  III. X. Macedonia Broken Up

18.  This road was known already by the author of the pseudo-
Aristotelian treatise De Mirabilibus as a commercial route between
the Adriatic and Black seas, viz.  As that along which the wine jars
from Corcyra met halfway those from Thasos and Lesbos.  Even now
it runs substantially in the same direction from Durazzo, cutting
through the mountains of Bagora (Candavian chain) near the lake
of Ochrida (Lychnitis), by way of Monastir to Salonica.

19.  III. X. Greek National Party

20.  III. IX. The Achaeans

21.  III. IX. The Achaeans

22.  At Sabine townships, at Parma, and even at Italica in Spain
(p. 214), several pediments marked with the name of Mummius have
been brought to light, which once supported gifts forming part
of the spoil.

23.  III. III. Organization of the Provinces

24.  III. VIII. Final Regulation of Greece

25.  The question whether Greece did or did  not become  a Roman
province in 608, virtually runs into a dispute about words.  It is
certain that the Greek communities throughout remained "free" (C. I.
Gr. 1543, 15; Caesar, B. C. iii. 5; Appian, Mithr. 58; Zonar. ix.
31).  But it is no less certain that Greece was then "taken possession
of" by the Romans (Tac. Ann. xiv. 21; 1 Maccab. viii. 9, 10); that
thenceforth each community paid a fixed tribute to Rome (Pausan. vii.
16, 6; comp. Cic. De Prov. Cons. 3, 5), the little island of Gyarus,
for instance, paying 150 --drachmae-- annually (Strabo, x. 485);
that the "rods and axes" of the Roman governor thenceforth ruled
in Greece (Polyb. xxxviii. l. c.; comp. Cic. Verr. l. i. 21, 55),
and that he thenceforth exercised the superintendence over the
constitutions of the cities (C. I. Gr. 1543), as well as in certain
cases the criminal jurisdiction (C. I. Gr. 1543; Plut. Cim. 2), just
as the senate had hitherto done; and that, lastly, the Macedonian
provincial era was also in use in Greece. Between these facts there
is no inconsistency, or at any rate none further than is involved
in the position of the free cities generally, which are spoken of
sometimes as if excluded from the province (e. g. Sueton. Cats., 25;
Colum. xi. 3, 26), sometimes as assigned to it (e. g. Joseph. Ant.
Jud. xiv. 4, 4). The Roman domanial possessions in Greece were,
no doubt, restricted to the territory of Corinth and possibly some
portions of Euboea (C. I. Gr. 5879), and there were no subjects
in the strict sense there at all; yet if we look to the relations
practically subsisting between the Greek communities and the
Macedonian governor, Greece may be reckoned as included in the
province of Macedonia in the same manner as Massilia in the province
of Narbo or Dyrrhachium in that of Macedonia. We find even cases
that go much further: Cisalpine Gaul consisted after 665 of mere
burgess or Latin communities and was yet made a province by Sulla,
and in the time of Caesar we meet with regions which consisted
exclusively of burgess-communities and yet by no means ceased to
be provinces. In these cases the fundamental idea of the Roman
-provinicia- comes out very clearly; it was primarily nothing but
a "command," and all the administrative and judicial functions of
the commandant were originally collateral duties and corollaries
of his military position.

On the other hand, if we look to the formal sovereignty of the free
communities, it must be granted that the position of Greece was not
altered in point of constitutional law by the events of 608. It was
a difference de facto rather than de jure, when instead of the Achaean
league the individual communities of Achaia now appeared by the side
of Rome as tributary protected states, and when, after the erection
of Macedonia as a separate Roman province, the latter relieved the
authorities of the capital of the superintendence over the Greek
client-states. Greece therefore may or may not be regarded as a part
of the "command" of Macedonia, according as the practical or the
formal point of view preponderates; but the preponderance is justly
conceded to the former.

26.  III. X. Intervention in the Syro-Egyptian War

27.  A remarkable proof of this is found in the names employed to
designate the fine bronze and copper wares of Greece, which in the time
of Cicero were called indiscriminately "Corinthian" or "Delian" copper.
Their designation in Italy was naturally derived not from the places
of manufacture but from those of export (Plin. H. N. xxxiv. 2, 9);
although, of course, we do not mean to deny that similar vases were
manufactured in Corinth and Delos themselves.

28.  III. X. Course Pursued with Pergamus

29.  III. IX. Extension of the Kingdom of Pergamus

30.  III. X. Course Pursued with Pergamus

31.  Several letters recently brought to light (Munchener
Sitzungsberichte, 1860, p. 180 et seq.) from the kings Eumenes II,
and Attalus II to the priest of Pessinus, who was uniformly called
Attis (comp. Polyb. xxii. 20), very clearly illustrate these
relations.  The earliest of these and the only one with a date,
written in the 34th year of the reign of Eumenes on the 7th day
before the end of Gorpiaeus, and therefore in 590-1 u. c. offers to
the priest military aid in order to wrest from the Pesongi (not
otherwise known) temple-land occupied by them.  The following,
likewise from Eumenes, exhibits the king as a party in the feud
between the priest of Pessinus and his brother Aiorix.  Beyond doubt
both acts of Eumenes were included among those which were reported at
Rome in 590 et seq. as attempts on his part to interfere further in
Gallic affairs, and to support his partisans in that quarter (Polyb.
xxxi. 6, 9; xxxii. 3, 5).  On the other hand it is plain from one of
the letters of his successor Attalus that the times had changed and
his wishes had lowered their tone.  The priest Attis appears to have
at a conference at Apamea obtained once more from Attalus the promise
of armed assistance; but afterwards the king writes to him that in a
state council held for the purpose, at which Athenaeus (certainly the
known brother of the king), Sosander, Menogenes, Chlorus, and other
relatives (--anagkaioi--) had been present, after long hesitation the
majority had at length acceded to the opinion of Chlorus that nothing
should be done without previously consulting the Romans; for, even if
a success were obtained, they would expose themselves to its being lost
again, and to the evil suspicion "which they had cherished also
against his brother" (Eumenes II.).

32.  In the same testament the king gave to his city Pergamus
"freedom," that is the --demokratia--, urban self-government.
According to the tenor of a remarkable document that has recently
been found there (Staatsrecht, iii(3). p. 726) after the testament
was opened, but before its confirmation by the Romans, the Demos thus
constituted resolved to confer urban burgess-rights on the classes
of the population  hitherto excluded  from  them, especially on the
-paroeci- entered in the census and on the soldiers dwelling in town
and country, including the Macedonians, in order thus to bring
about a good understanding among the whole population.  Evidently
the burgesses, in confronting the Romans with this comprehensive
reconciliation as an accomplished fact, desired, before the Roman
rule was properly introduced, to prepare themselves against it
and to take away from the foreign rulers the possibility of using
the differences of rights within the population for breaking up
its municipal freedom.

33.  These strange "Heliopolites" may, according to the probable
opinion which a friend has expressed to me, be accounted for by supposing
that the liberated slaves constituted themselves citizens of a town
Heliopolis--not otherwise mentioned or perhaps having an existence
merely in imagination for the moment--which derived its name from
the God of the Sun so highly honoured in Syria.

34.  III. IX. Extension of the Kingdom of Pergamus

35.  III. IX. Extension of the Kingdom of Pergamus

36.  III. IX. Extension of the Kingdom of Pergamus

37.  III. X. Intervention in the Syro-Egyptian War

38.  III. IX. Armenia

39.  From him proceed the coins with the inscription "Shekel
Israel," and the date of the "holy Jerusalem," or the "deliverance
of Sion." The similar coins with the name of Simon, the prince
(Nessi) of Israel, belong not to him, but to Bar-Cochba the leader
of the insurgents in the time of Hadrian.

40.  III. III. Illyrian Piracy

41.  IV. I. New Organization of Spain

42.  III. X. Intervention in the Syro-Egyptian War



Chapter II

1.  In 537 the law restricting re-election to the consulship was
suspended during the continuance of the war in Italy, that is, down to
551 (p. 14; Liv.  xxvii. 6).  But after the death of Marcellus in 546
re-elections to the consulship, if we do not include the abdicating
consuls of 592, only occurred in the years 547, 554, 560, 579, 585, 586,
591, 596, 599, 602; consequently not oftener in those fifty-six years
than, for instance, in the ten years 401-410.  Only one of these, and
that the very last, took place in violation of the ten years' interval
(i.  402); and beyond doubt the singular election of Marcus Marcellus
who was consul in 588 and 599 to a third consulship in 602, with the
special circumstances of which we are not acquainted, gave occasion to
the law prohibiting re-election to the consulship altogether (Liv.  Ep.
56); especially as this proposal must have been introduced before 605,
seeing that it was supported by Cato (p.  55, Jordan).

2.  III. XI. The Nobility in Possession of the Equestrian Centuries

3.  III. XI. Festivals

4.  IV. I. General Results

5.  III. XII. Results

6.  I. XIII. Landed Proprietors

7.  It was asserted even then, that the human race in that quarter
was pre-eminently fitted for slavery by its especial power of
endurance.  Plautus (Trin.  542) commends the Syrians: -genus quod
patientissitmum est hominum-.

8.  III. XII. Rural Slaves ff., III. XII. Culture of Oil and Wine,
and Rearing of Cattle

9.  III. XII. Pastoral Husbandry

10.  III. I. The Carthaginian Dominion in Africa

11.  The hybrid Greek name for the workhouse (-ergastulum-, from
--ergaszomai--, after the analogy of -stabulum-, -operculum-) is
an indication that this mode of management came to the Romans from
a region where the Greek language was used, but at a period when
a thorough Hellenic culture was not yet attained.

12.  III. VI. Guerilla War in Sicily

13.  III. XII. Falling Off in the Population

14.  IV. I. War against Aristonicus

15.  IV. I. Cilicia

16.  Even now there are not unfrequently found in front of
Castrogiovanni, at the point where the ascent is least abrupt, Roman
projectiles with the name of the consul of 621: L. Piso L. f. cos.

17.  II. III. Licinio-Sextian Laws

18.  III. I. Capital and Its Power in Carthage

19.  II. III. Influence of the Extension of the Roman Dominion in
Elevating the Farmer-Class

20.  III. XI. Assignations of Land

21.  II. II. Public Land

22.  III. XII. Falling Off of the Population

23.  IV. II. Permanent Criminal Commissions

24.  III. XI. Position of the Governors

25.  III. IX. Death of Scipio

26.  III. XI. Reform of the Centuries

27.  III. VII. Gracchus

28.  IV. I. War against Aristonicus

29.  IV. I. Mancinus

30.  II. III. Licinio-Sextian Laws

31.  II. III. Its Influence in Legislation

32.  IV. I. War against Aristonicus

33.  II. III. Attempts at Counter-Revolution

34.  This fact, hitherto only partially known from Cicero (De L. Agr.
ii. 31. 82; comp.  Liv. xlii. 2, 19), is now more fully established
by the fragments of Licinianus, p. 4.  The two accounts are to be
combined to this effect, that Lentulus ejected the possessors in
consideration of a compensatory sum fixed by him, but accomplished
nothing with real landowners, as he was not entitled to dispossess
them and they would not consent to sell.

35.  II. II. Agrarian Law of Spurius Cassius

36.  III. XI. Rise of A City Rabble

37.  III. IX. Nullity of the Comitia



Chapter III

1.  IV. I. War against Aristonicus

2.  IV. II. Ideas of Reform

3.  III. VI. The African Expedition of Scipio

4.  To this occasion belongs his oration -contra legem iudiciariam-
Ti. Gracchi--which we are to understand as referring not, as has been
asserted, to a law as to the -indicia publica-, but to the supplementary
law annexed to his agrarian rogation: -ut triumviri iudicarent-, qua
publicus ager, qua privatus esset (Liv. Ep. lviii.; see IV. II.
Tribunate of Gracchus above).

5.  IV. II. Vote by Ballot

6.  The restriction, that the continuance should only be allowable if
there was a want of other qualified candidates (Appian, B. C. i. 21),
was not difficult of evasion. The law itself seems not to have belonged
to the older regulations (Staatsrecht, i. 473), but to have been
introduced for the first time by the Gracchans.

7.  Such are the words spoken on the announcement of his projects of
law:--"If I were to speak to you and ask of you--seeing that I am of
noble descent and have lost my brother on your account, and that there
is now no survivor of the descendants of Publius Africanus and Tiberius
Gracchus excepting only myself and a boy--to allow me to take rest for
the present, in order that our stock may not be extirpated and that
an offset of this family may still survive; you would perhaps readily
grant me such a request."

8.  IV. III. Democratic Agitation under Carbo and Flaccus

9.  III. XII. Results. Competition of Transmarine Corn

10.  III. XII. Prices of Italian Corn

11.  III. XI. Reform of the Centuries

12.  IV. III. The Commission for Distributing the Domains

13.  III. VII. The Romans Maintain A Standing Army in Spain

14.  Thus the statement of Appian (Hisp. 78) that six years' service
entitled a man to demand his discharge, may perhaps be reconciled with
the better known statement of Polybius (vi. 19), respecting which
Marquardt (Handbuch, vi. 381) has formed a correct judgment. The time,
at which the two alterations were introduced, cannot be determined
further, than that the first was probably in existence as early as 603
(Nitzsch, Gracchen, p. 231), and the second certainly as early as the
time of Polybius. That Gracchus reduced the number of the legal years of
service, seems to follow from Asconius in Cornel, p. 68; comp. Plutarch,
Ti. Gracch. 16; Dio, Fr. 83, 7, Bekk.

15.  II. I. Right of Appeal; II. VIII. Changes in Procedure

16.  III. XII. Moneyed Aristocracy

17.  IV. II. Exclusion of the Senators from the Equestrian Centuries

18.  III. XI. The Censorship A Prop of the Nobility

19.  III. XI. Patricio-Plebeian Nobility, III. XI. Family Government

20.  IV. I. Western Asia

21.  That he, and not Tiberius, was the author of this law, now appears
from Fronto in the letters to Verus, init. Comp. Gracchus ap. Gell. xi.
10; Cic. de. Rep. iii. 29, and Verr. iii. 6, 12; Vellei. ii. 6.

22.  IV. III. Modifications of the Penal Law

23.  We still possess a great portion of the new judicial ordinance--
primarily occasioned by this alteration in the personnel of the judges--
for the standing commission regarding extortion; it is known under the
name of the Servilian, or rather Acilian, law -de repetundis-.

24.  This and the law -ne quis iudicio circumveniatur- may
have been identical.

25.  A considerable fragment of a speech of Gracchus, still extant,
relates to this trafficking about the possession of Phrygia, which after
the annexation of the kingdom of Attalus was offered for sale by Manius
Aquillius to the kings of Bithynia and of Pontus, and was bought by the
latter as the highest bidder.(p. 280) In this speech he observes that
no senator troubled himself about public affairs for nothing, and adds
that with reference to the law under discussion (as to the bestowal
of Phrygia on king Mithradates) the senate was divisible into three
classes, viz. Those who were in favour of it, those who were against it,
and those who were silent: that the first were bribed by kingMithra dates,
the second by king Nicomedes, while the third were the most cunning,
for they accepted money from the envoys of both kings and made each
party believe that they were silent in its interest.

26.  IV. III. Democratic Agitation under Carbo and Flaccus

27.  IV. II. Tribunate of Gracchus

28.  II. II. Legislation

29.  II. III. Political Abolition of the Patriciate



Chapter IV

1.  IV. III. Democratic Agitation under Carbo and Flaccus

2.  IV. II. Tribunate of Gracchus

3.  It is in great part still extant and known under the erroneous
name, which has now been handed down for three hundred years,
of the Thorian agrarian law.

4.  II. VII. Attempts at Peace

5.  II. VII. Attempts at Peace

6.  This is apparent, as is well known, from the further course of
events. In opposition to this view stress has been laid on the fact
that in Valerius Maximus, vi. 9, 13, Quintus Caepio is called patron
of the senate; but on the one hand this does not prove enough, and on
the other hand what is there narrated does not at all suit the consul
of 648, so that there must be an error either in the name or in
the facts reported.

7.  It is assumed in many quarters that the establishment of the
province of Cilicia only took place after the Cilician expedition of
Publius Servilius in 676 et seq., but erroneously; for as early as 662
we find Sulla (Appian, Mithr. 57; B. C. i. 77; Victor, 75), and in
674, 675, Gnaeus Dolabella (Cic. Verr. i. 1, 16, 44) as governors of
Cilicia--which leaves no alternative but to place the establishment of
the province in 652. This view is further supported by the fact that
at this time the expeditions of the Romans against the corsairs--e. g.
the Balearic, Ligurian, and Dalmatian expeditions--appear to have been
regularly directed to the occupation of the points of the coast whence
piracy issued; and this was natural, for, as the Romans had no standing
fleet, the only means of effectually checking piracy was the occupation
of the coasts. It is to be remembered, moreover, that the idea of a
-provincia- did not absolutely involve possession of the country, but
in itself implied no more than an independent military command; it is
very possible, that the Romans in the first instance occupied nothing in
this rugged country save stations for their vessels and troops.

The plain of eastern Cilicia remained down to the war against Tigranes
attached to the Syrian empire (Appian, Syr. 48); the districts to
the north of the Taurus formerly reckoned as belonging to Cilicia--
Cappadocian Cilicia, as it was called, and Cataonia--belonged to
Cappadocia, the former from the time of the breaking up of the kingdom
of Attalus (Justin, xxxvii. 1; see above, IV. I. War against Aristonicus),
the latter probably even from the time of the peace with Antiochus.

8.  IV. II. Insurrections of the Slaves

9.  III. VII. Numidians

10.  IV. I The Siege

11.  The following table exhibits the genealogy of the Numidian princes:--

Massinissa
516-605
(238-149)
------------------------------------------------------
Micipsa                        Gulussa      Mastanabal
d. 636                         d. bef. 636  d. bef. 636
(118)                          (118)        (118)
----------------------------   -------     ---------------------
Adherbal Hiempsal I  Micipsa   Massiva     Gauda        Jugurtha
d. 642   d. c. 637   (Diod.    d. 643      d.bef. 666   d. 650
(112)    (117)       p. 607)   (111)       (88)         (104)
                                           -----------  -------
                                           Hiempsal II  Oxyntas
                                           ------
                                           Juba I
                                           -------
                                           Juba II

12.  In the exciting and clever description of this war by Sallust
the chronology has been unduly neglected. The war terminated in the
summer of 649 (c. 114); if therefore Marius began his management
of the war as consul in 647, he held the command there in three
campaigns. But the narrative describes only two, and rightly so.
For, just as Metellus to all appearance went to Africa as early as 645,
but, since he arrived late (c. 37, 44), and the reorganization of the
army cost time (c. 44), only began his operations in the following
year, in like manner Marius, who was likewise detained for a
considerable time in Italy by his military preparations (c. 84),
entered on the chief command either as consul in 647 late in the
season and after the close of the campaign, or only as proconsul in
648; so that the two campaigns of Metellus thus fall in 646, 647, and
those of Marius in 648, 649. It is in keeping with this that Metellus
did not triumph till the year 648 (Eph. epigr. iv. p. 277). With this
view the circumstance also very well accords, that the battle on the
Muthul and the siege of Zama must, from the relation in which they
stand to Marius' candidature for the consulship, be necessarily
placed in 646. In no case can the author be pronounced free from
inaccuracies; Marius, for instance, is even spoken of by him
as consul in 649.

The prolongation of the command of Metellus, which Sallust reports
(lxii. 10), can in accordance with the place at which it stands only
refer to the year 647; when in the summer of 646 on the footing of the
Sempronian law the provinces of the consuls to be elected for 647 were
to be fixed, the senate destined two other provinces and thus left
Numidia to Metellus. This resolve of the senate was overturned by
the plebiscitum mentioned at lxxii. 7. The following words which are
transmitted to us defectively in the best manuscripts of both families,
-sed paulo... decreverat; ea res frustra fuit,- must either have named
the provinces destined for the consuls by the senate, possibly -sed
paulo [ante ut consulibus Italia et Gallia provinciae essent senatus]
decreverat- or have run according to the way of filling up the
passage in the ordinary manuscripts; -sed paulo [ante senatus
Metello Numidiam] decreverat-.

13.  Now Beja on the Mejerdah.

14.  The locality has not been discovered. The earlier supposition
that Thelepte (near Feriana, to the northward of Capsa) was meant, is
arbitrary; and the identification with a locality still at the present
day named Thala to the east of Capsa is not duly made out.

15.  Sallust's political genre-painting of the Jugurthine war--the
only picture that has preserved its colours fresh in the otherwise
utterly faded and blanched tradition of this epoch--closes with the
fall of Jugurtha, faithful to its style of composition, poetical, not
historical; nor does there elsewhere exist any connected account of
the treatment of the Numidian kingdom. That Gauda became Jugurtha's
successor is indicated by Sallust, c. 65 and Dio. Fr. 79, 4, Bekk.,
and confirmed by an inscription of Carthagena (Orell. 630), which
calls him king and father of Hiempsal II. That on the east the
frontier relations subsisting between Numidia on the one hand and
Roman Africa and Cyrene on the other remained unchanged, is shown by
Caesar (B. C. ii. 38; B. Afr. 43, 77) and by the later provincial
constitution. On the other hand the nature of the case implied, and
Sallust (c. 97, 102, 111) indicates, that the kingdom of Bocchus was
considerably enlarged; with which is undoubtedly connected the fact,
that Mauretania, originally restricted to the region of Tingis
(Morocco), afterwards extended to the region of Caesarea (province
of Algiers) and to that of Sitifis (western half of the province of
Constantine). As Mauretania was twice enlarged by the Romans, first
in 649 after the surrender of Jugurtha, and then in 708 after the
breaking up of the Numidian kingdom, it is probable that the
region of Caesarea was added on the first, and that of Sitifis
on the second augmentation.

16.  III. VIII. Interference of the Community with the Finances



Chapter V

1.  If Cicero has not allowed himself to fall into an anachronism
when he makes Africanus say this as early as 625 (de Rep. iii. 9),
the view indicated in the text remains perhaps the only possible one.
This enactment did not refer to Northern Italy and Liguria, as the
cultivation of the vine by the Genuates in 637 (III. XII. Culture Of
Oil and Wine, and Rearing of Cattle, note) proves; and as little to
the immediate territory of Massilia (Just. xliii 4; Posidon. Fr. 25,
Mull.; Strabo, iv. 179).  The large export of wine and oil from
Italy to the region of the Rhone in the seventh century of the
city is well known.

2.  In Auvergne.  Their capital, Nemetum or Nemossus, lay not
far from Clermont.

3.  The battle at Vindalium is placed by the epitomator of Livy and by
Orosius before that on the Isara; but the reverse order is supported by
Floras and Strabo (iv. 191), and is confirmed partly by the circumstance
that Maximus, according to the epitome of Livy and Pliny, H. N. vii. 50,
conquered the Gauls when consul, partly and especially by the Capitoline
Fasti, according to which Maximus not only triumphed before Ahenobarbus,
but the former triumphed over the Allobroges and the king of the Arverni,
the latter only over the Arverni.  It is clear that the battle with
the Allobroges and Arverni must have taken place earlier than that
with the Arverni alone.

4.  Aquae was not a colony, as Livy says (Ep. 61), but a -castellum-
(Strabo, iv. 180; Velleius, i. 15; Madvig, Opusc. i. 303).  The same
holds true of Italica (p. 214), and of many other places--Vindonissa,
for instance, never was in law anything else than a Celtic village,
but was withal a fortified Roman camp, and a township of very
considerable importance.

5.  III. VII. Measures Adopted to Check the Immigrations of
the Transalpine Gauls

6.  III. III. Expedition against Scodra

7.  III. III. Impression in Greece and Macedonia

8.  III. X. Humiliation of the Greeks in General

9.  IV. I. Province of Macedonia. the Pirustae in the valleys of
the Drin belonged to the province of Macedonia, but made forays
into the neighbouring Illyricum (Caesar, B. G. v. 1).

10.  II. IV. the Celts Assail the Etruscans in Northern Italy

11.  "The Helvetii dwelt," Tacitus says (Germ. 28), "between the
Hercynian Forest (i. e. here probably the Rauhe Alp), the Rhine, and
the Main; the Boii farther on."  Posidonius also (ap. Strab. vii. 293)
states that the Boii, at the time when they repulsed the Cimbri,
inhabited the Hercynian Forest, i. e. the mountains from the Rauhe
Alp to the Bohmerwald The circumstance that Caesar transplants them
"beyond the Rhine" (B. G. i. 5) is by no means inconsistent with this,
for, as he there speaks from the Helvetian point of view, he may very
well mean the country to the north-east of the lake of Constance; which
quite accords with the fact, that Strabo (vii. 292) describes the former
Boian country as bordering on the lake of Constance, except that he is
not quite accurate in naming along with them the Vindelici as dwelling
by the lake of Constance, for the latter only established themselves
there after the Boii had evacuated these districts.  From these seats
of theirs the Boii were dispossessed by the Marcomani and other
Germanic tribes even before the time of Posidonius, consequently
before 650; detached portions of them in Caesar's time roamed about
in Carinthia (B. G. i. 5), and came thence to the Helvetii and into
western Gaul; another swarm found new settlements on the Plattensee,
where it was annihilated by the Getae; but the district--the "Boian
desert," as it was called--preserved the name of this the most harassed
of all the Celtic peoples (III. VII. Colonizing of The Region South
of The Po, note).

12.  They are called in the Triumphal Fasti -Galli Karni-; and in Victor
-Ligures Taurisci- (for such should be the reading instead of the
received -Ligures et Caurisci-).

13.  The quaestor of Macedonia M. Annius P. f., to whom the town of
Lete (Aivati four leagues to the north-west of Thessalonica) erected
in the year 29 of the province and 636 of the city this memorial stone
(Dittenberger, Syll. 247), is not otherwise known; the praetor Sex.
Pompeius whose fall is mentioned in it can be no other than the
grandfather of the Pompeius with whom Caesar fought and the brother-in-
law of the poet Lucilius.  The enemy are designated as --Galaton
ethnos--.  It is brought into prominence that Annius in order to spare
the provincials omitted to call out their contingents and repelled the
barbarians with the Roman troops alone.  To all appearance Macedonia
even at that time required a de facto standing Roman garrison.

14.  If Quintus Fabius Maximus Eburnus consul in 638 went to Macedonia
(C. I. Gr. 1534; Zumpt, Comm. Epigr. ii. 167), he too must have
suffered a misfortune there, since Cicero, in Pison. 16, 38, says:
-ex (Macedonia) aliquot praetorio imperio, consulari quidem nemo rediit,
qui incolumis fuerit, quin triumpharit-; for the triumphal list, which
is complete for this epoch, knows only the three Macedonian triumphs
of Metellus in 643, of Drusus in 644, and of Minucius in 648.

15.  As, according to Frontinus (ii. 43), Velleius and Eutropius, the
tribe conquered by Minucius was the Scordisci, it can only be through
an error on the part of Florus that he mentions the Hebrus (the Maritza)
instead of the Margus (Morava).

16.  This annihilation of the Scordisci, while the Maedi and Dardani
were admitted to treaty, is reported by Appian (Illyr. 5), and in fact
thence forth the Scordisci disappear from this region.  If the final
subjugation took place in the 32nd year --apo teis proteis es Keltous
peiras--, it would seem that this must be understood of a thirty-two
years' war between the Romans and the Scordisci, the commencement of
which presumably falls not long after the constituting of the province
of Macedonia (608) and of which the incidents in arms above recorded,
636-647, are a part.  It is obvious from Appian's narrative that the
conquest ensued shortly before the outbreak of the Italian civil wars,
and so probably at the latest in 663.  It falls between 650 and 656,
if a triumph followed it, for the triumphal list before and after is
complete; it is possible however that for some reason there was no
triumph.  The victor is not further known; perhaps it was no other than
the consul of the year 671; since the latter may well have been late
in attaining the consulate in consequence of the Cinnan-Marian troubles.

17.  The account that large tracts on the coasts of the North Sea
had been torn away by inundations, and that this had occasioned the
migration of the Cimbri in a body (Strabo, vii. 293), does not indeed
appear to us fabulous, as it seemed to those who recorded it; but
whether it was based on tradition or on conjecture, cannot be decided.

18.  III. VII. Measures Adopted to Check the Immigrations of
the Transalpine Gauls

19.  IV. III. Modifications of the Penal Law

20.  The usual hypothesis, that the Tougeni and Tigorini had advanced
at the same time with the Cimbri into Gaul, cannot be supported by
Strabo (vii. 293), and is little in harmony with the separate part acted
by the Helvetii.  Our traditional accounts of this war are, besides, so
fragmentary that, just as in the case of the Samnite wars, a connected
historical narration can only lay claim to approximate accuracy.

21.  To this, beyond doubt, the fragment of Diodorus (Vat. p. 122)
relates.

22.  IV. IV. The Proletariate and Equestrian Order under the Restoration

23.  The deposition from office of the proconsul Caepio, with which was
combined the confiscation of his property (Liv. Ep. 67), was probably
pronounced by the assembly of the people immediately after the battle
of Arausio (6th October 649).  That some time elapsed between the
deposition and his proper downfall, is clearly shown by the proposal
made in 650, and aimed at Caepio, that deposition from office should
involve the forfeiture of a seat in the senate (Asconius in Cornel,
p. 78).  The fragments of Licinianus (p. 10; -Cn. Manilius ob eandem
causam quam et Caepio L. Saturnini rogatione e civitate est cito [?]
eiectus-; which clears up the allusion in Cic. de Or. ii. 28, 125) now
inform us that a law proposed by Lucius Appuleius Saturninus brought
about this catastrophe.  This is evidently no other than the Appuleian
law as to the -minuta maiestas- of the Roman state (Cic. de Or. ii.
25, 107; 49, 201), or, as its tenor was already formerly explained
(ii. p. 143 of the first edition [of the German]), the proposal of
Saturninus for the appointment of an extraordinary commission to
investigate the treasons that had taken place during the Cimbrian
troubles.  The commission of inquiry as to the gold of Tolosa
(Cic. de N. D. iii. 30, 74) arose in quite a similar way out of
the Appuleian law, as the special courts of inquiry--further mentioned
in that passage--as to a scandalous bribery of judges out of the Mucian
law of 613, as to the occurrences with the Vestals out of the Peducaean
law of 641, and as to the Jugurthine war out of the Mamilian law of 644.
A comparison of these cases also shows that in such special
commissions--different in this respect from the ordinary ones--even
punishments affecting life and limb might be and were inflicted.  If
elsewhere the tribune of the people, Gaius Norbanus, is named as the
person who set agoing the proceedings against Caepio and was afterwards
brought to trial for doing so (Cic. de Or. ii. 40, 167; 48, 199; 49, 200;
Or. Part. 30, 105, et al.), this is not inconsistent with the view
given above; for the proposal proceeded as usual from several tribunes
of the people (ad Herenn. i. 14, 24; Cic. de Or. ii. 47, 197), and,
as Saturninus was already dead when the aristocratic party was in a
position to think of retaliation, they fastened on his colleague.
As to the period of this second and final condemnation of Caepio,
the usual very inconsiderate hypothesis, which places it in 659,
ten years after the battle of Arausio, has been already rejected.
It rests simply on the fact that Crassus when consul, consequently
in 659, spoke in favour of Caepio (Cic. Brut. 44, 162); which, however,
he manifestly did not as his advocate, but on the occasion when
Norbanus was brought to account by Publius Sulpicius Rufus for his
conduct toward Caepio in 659.  Formerly the year 650 was assumed for
this second accusation; now that we know that it originated from a
proposal of Saturninus, we can only hesitate between 651, when he was
tribune of the people for the first time (Plutarch, Mar. 14; Oros,
v. 17; App. i. 28; Diodor. p. 608, 631), and 654, when he held that
office a second time.  There are not materials for deciding the point
with entire certainty, but the great preponderance of probability is
in favour of the former year; partly because it was nearer to the
disastrous events in Gaul, partly because in the tolerably full
accounts of the second tribunate of Saturninus there is no mention
of Quintus Caepio the father and the acts of violence directed against
him.  The circumstance, that the sums paid back to the treasury in
consequence of the verdicts as to the embezzlement of the Tolosan
booty were claimed by Saturninus in his second tribunate for his
schemes of colonization (De Viris Ill. 73, 5, and thereon Orelli,
Ind. Legg. p. 137), is not in itself decisive, and may, moreover,
have been easily transferred by mistake from the first African to
the second general agrarian law of Saturninus.

The fact that afterwards, when Norbanus was impeached, his impeachment
proceeded on the very ground of the law which he had taken part in
suggesting, was an ironical incident common in the Roman political
procedure of this period (Cic. Brut. 89, 305) and should not mislead
us into the belief that the Appuleian law was, like the later
Cornelian, a general law of high treason.

24.  The view here presented rests in the main on the comparatively
trustworthy account in the Epitome of Livy (where we should read
-reversi in Gallium in Vellocassis se Teutonis coniunxerunt) and in
Obsequens; to the disregard of authorities of lesser weight, which
make the Teutones appear by the side of the Cimbri at an earlier date,
some of them, such as Appian, Celt. 13, even as early as the battle of
Noreia.  With these we connect the notices in Caesar (B. G. i. 33; ii.
4, 29); as the invasion of the Roman province and of Italy by the Cimbri
can only mean the expedition of 652.

25.  It is injudicious to deviate from the traditional account
and to transfer the field of battle to Verona: in so doing the fact
is overlooked that a whole winter and various movements of troops
intervened between the conflicts on the Adige and the decisive
engagement, and that Catulus, according to express statement (Plut. Mar.
24), had retreated as far as the right bank of the Po.  The statements
that the Cimbri were defeated on the Po (Hier. Chron.), and that they
were defeated where Stilicho afterwards defeated the Getae, i. e. at
Cherasco on the Tanaro, although both inaccurate, point at least to
Vercellae much rather than to Verona.



Chapter VI

1.  IV. IV. The Domain Question under the Restoration

2.  I. VI. The Servian Constitution, II. III. Its Composition

3.  III. XI. Reforms in the Military Service

4. III. XI. The Nobility in Possession of the Equestrian Centuries

5.  IV. IV. Treaty between Rome and Numidia

6.  IV. V. Warfare of Prosecutions

7.  It is not possible to distinguish exactly what belongs to the first
and what to the second tribunate of Saturninus; the more especially,
as in both he evidently followed out the same Gracchan tendencies.
The African agrarian law is definitely placed by the treatise De Viris Ill.
73, 1 in 651; and this date accords with the termination, which had
taken place just shortly before, of the Jugurthine war.  The second
agrarian law belongs beyond doubt to 654.  The treason-law and the corn-
law have been only conjecturally placed, the former in 651 (p. 442
note), the latter in 654.

8.  All indications point to this conclusion.  The elder Quintus Caepio
was consul in 648, the younger quaestor in 651 or 654, the former
consequently was born about or before 605, the latter about 624 or 627.
The fact that the former died without leaving sons (Strabo, iv. 188) is
not inconsistent with this view, for the younger Caepio fell in 664,
and the elder, who ended his life in exile at Smyrna, may very well
have survived him.

9.  IV. IV. Treaty between Rome and Numidia

10.  IV. V. Warfare of Prosecutions

11.  IV. IV. Rival Demagogism of the Senate.  The Livian Laws

12.  IV. V. And Reach the Danube

13.  IV. IV. Administration under the Restoration

14.  IV. VI. Collision between the Senate and Equites in
the Administration of the Provinces



Chapter VII

1.  IV. III. Modifications of the Penal Law

2.  I. VII. Relation of Rome to Latium, II. V. As to the Officering
of the Army

3.  II. VII. Furnishing of Contingents; III. XI. Latins

4.  III. XI. Roman Franchise More Difficult of Acquisition

5.  III. XI. Roman Franchise More Difficult of Acquisition

6.  IV. III. Democratic Agitation under Carbo and Flaccus,
IV. III. Overthrow of Gracchus

7.  These figures are taken from the numbers of the census of 639 and
684; there were in the former year 394, 336 burgesses capable of bearing
arms, in the latter 910,000 (according to Phlegon Fr. 12 Mull., which
statement Clinton and his copyists erroneously refer to the census of
668; according to Liv. Ep. 98 the number was--by the correct reading--
900,000 persons).  The only figures known between these two--those of
the census of 668, which according to Hieronymus gave 463,000 persons--
probably turned out so low only because the census took place amidst
the crisis of the revolution.  As an increase of the population of Italy
is not conceivable in the period from 639 to 684, and even the Sullan
assignations of land can at the most have but filled the gaps which the
war had made, the surplus of fully 500,000 men capable of bearing arms
may be referred with certainty to the reception of the allies which had
taken place in the interval.  But it is possible, and even probable,
that in these fateful years the total amount of the Italian population
may have retrograded rather than advanced: if we reckon the total
deficit at 100,000 men capable of bearing arms, which seems not
excessive, there were at the time of the Social War in Italy three non-
burgesses for two burgesses.

8.  The form of oath is preserved (in Diodor. Vat. p. 116); it runs
thus: "I swear by the Capitoline Jupiter and by the Roman Vesta and by
the hereditary Mars and by the generative Sun and by the nourishing
Earth and by the divine founders and enlargers (the Penates) of the City
of Rome, that he shall be my friend and he shall be my foe who is friend
or foe to Drusus; also that I will spare neither mine own life nor the
life of my children or of my parents, except in so far as it is for the
good of Drusus and those who share this oath.  But if I should become a
burgess by the law of Drusus, I will esteem Rome as my home and Drusus
as the greatest of my benefactors.  I shall tender this oath to as many
of my fellow-citizens as I can; and if I swear truly, may it fare with
me well; if I swear falsely, may it fare with me ill." But we shall do
well to employ this account with caution; it is derived either from
the speeches delivered against Drusus by Philippus (which seems to
be indicated by the absurd title "oath of Philippus" prefixed by the
extractor of the formula) or at best from the documents of criminal
procedure subsequently drawn up respecting this conspiracy in Rome; and
even on the latter hypothesis it remains questionable, whether this form
of oath was elicited from the accused or imputed to them in the inquiry.

9.  II. VII. Dissolution of National Leagues

10.  IV. VI. Discussions on the Livian Laws

11.  IV. IV. Dissatisfaction in the Capital, IV. V. Warfare
of Prosecutions

12.  Even from our scanty information, the best part of which is
given by Diodorus, p. 538 and Strabo, v. 4, 2, this is very distinctly
apparent; for example, the latter expressly says that the burgess-body
chose the magistrates.  That the senate of Italia was meant to be formed
in another manner and to have different powers from that of Rome,
has been asserted, but has not been proved.  Of course in its first
composition care would be taken to have a representation in some degree
uniform of the insurgent cities; but that the senators were to be
regularly deputed by the communities, is nowhere stated.  As little
does the commission given to the senate to draw up a constitution exclude
its promulgation by the magistrates and ratification by the assembly
of the people.

13.  The bullets found at Asculum show that the Gauls were very
numerousalso in the army of Strabo.

14.  We still have a decree of the Roman senate of 22 May 676, which
grants honours and advantages on their discharge to three Greek ship-
captains of Carystus, Clazomenae, and Miletus for faithful services
renderedsince the commencement of the Italian war (664).  Of the same
nature is the account of Memnon, that two triremes were summoned from
Heraclea on the Black Sea for the Italian war, and that they returned
in the eleventh year with rich honorary gifts.

15.  That this statement of Appian is not exaggerated, is shown
by the bullets found at Asculum which name among others the
fifteenth legion.

16.  The Julian law must have been passed in the last months of 664,
for during the good season of the year Caesar was in the field;
the Plautian was probably passed, as was ordinarily the rule with
tribunician proposals, immediately after the tribunes entered on office,
consequently in Dec. 664 or Jan. 665.

17.  Leaden bullets with the name of the legion which threw them, and
sometimes with curses against the "runaway slaves"--and accordingly
Roman--or with the inscription "hit the Picentes" or "hit Pompeius"--
the former Roman, the latter Italian--are even now sometimes found,
belonging to that period, in the region of Ascoli.

18.  The rare -denarii- with -Safinim- and -G. Mutil- in Oscan
characters must belong to this period; for, as long as the designation
-Italia- was retained by the insurgents, no single canton could, as a
sovereign power, coin money with its own name.

19.  I. VII. Servian Wall

20.  Licinianus (p. 15) under the year 667 says: -dediticiis omnibus
[ci]vita[s] data; qui polliciti mult[a] milia militum vix XV... cohortes
miserunt-; a statement in which Livy's account (Epit. 80): -Italicis
populis a senatu civitas data est- reappears in a somewhat more precise
shape.  The -dediticii- were according to Roman state-law those
-peregrini liberi- (Gaius i. 13-15, 25, Ulp. xx. 14, xxii. 2) who
had become subject to the Romans and had not been admitted to alliance.
They not merely retain life, liberty, and property, but may be formed
into communities with a constitution of their own. --Apolides--,
-nullius certae civitatis cives- (Ulp. xx. 14; comp. Dig. xlviii. 19, 17,
i), were only the freedmen placed by legal fiction on the same footing
with the -dediticii qui dediticiorum numero sunt-, only by erroneous
usage and rarely by the better authors called directly -dediticii-; (Gai.
i. 12, Ulp. i. 14, Paul. iv. 12, 6) as well as the kindred -liberti
Latini Iuniani-.  But the -dediticii-nevertheless were destitute of
rights as respected the Roman state, in so far as by Roman state-law
every -deditio- was necessarily unconditional (Polyb, xxi. 1; comp. xx.
9, 10, xxxvi. 2) and all the privileges expressly or tacitly conceded to
them were conceded only -precario- and therefore revocable at pleasure
(Appian, Hisp. 44); so that the Roman state, what ever it might
immediately or afterwards decree regarding its -dediticii-, could never
perpetrate as respected them a violation of rights.  This destitution of
rights only ceased on the conclusion of a treaty of alliance (Liv.
xxxiv. 57).  Accordingly -deditio- and -foedus- appear in constitutional
law as contrasted terms excluding each other (Liv. iv. 30, xxviii. 34;
Cod. Theod. vii. 13, 16 and Gothofr. thereon), and of precisely the same
nature is the distinction current among the jurists between the -quasi-
dediticii- and the -quasi Latini-, for the Latins are just the
-foederati- in an eminent sense (Cic. pro Balb. 24, 54).

According to the older constitutional law there were, with the exception
of the not numerous communities that were declared to have forfeited
their treaties in consequence of the Hannibalic war (p. 24), no Italian
-dediticii-; in the Plautian law of 664-5 the description: -qui
foederatis civitatibus adscripti fuerunt- (Cic. pro Arch. 4, 7)
still included in substance all Italians.  But as the -dediticii-
who received the franchise supplementary in 667 cannot reasonably
be understood as embracing merely the Bruttii and Picentes, we may
assume that all the insurgents, so far as they had laid down their
arms and had not acquired the franchise under the Plautio-Papirian
law were treated as -dediticii-, or--which is the same thing--
that their treaties cancelled as a matter of course by the insurrection
(hence -qui foederati fuerunt- in the passage of Cicero cited) were
not legally renewed to them on their surrender.

21.  II. III. Laws Imposing Taxes

22.  IV. VI. The Equestrian Party

23.  II. XI. Squandering of the Spoil

24.  It is not clear, what the -lex unciaria- of the consuls Sulla and
Rufus in the year 666 prescribed in this respect; but the simplest
hypothesis is that which regards it as a renewal of the law of 397 (i.
364), so that the highest allowable rate of interest was again 1 1/12th
of the capital for the year of ten months or 10 per cent for the year
of twelve months.

25.  III. XI. Reform of the Centuries

26.  II. III. Powers of the Senate

27.  IV. II. Death of Gracchus, IV. III. Attack on The Transmarine
Colonization.  Downfall of Gracchus, IV. VI. Saturninus Assailed

28.  II. III. The Tribunate of the People As an Instrument of Government



Chapter VIII

1.  IV. VIII. Occupation of Cilicia

2.  III. IX. Armenia

3.  IV. I. Western Asia

4.  The words quoted as Phrygian --Bagaios-- = Zeus and the old
royal name --Manis-- have been beyond doubt correctly referred to
the Zend -bagha- = God and the Germanic -Mannus-, Indian -Manus-
(Lassen, -Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenland-.  Gesellschaft,
vol. x. p. 329 f.).

5.  They are here grouped together, because, though they were in
part doubtless not executed till between the first and the second
war with Rome, they to some extent preceded even the first (Memn.
30; Justin, xxxviii. 7 ap. fin.; App. Mithr. 13; Eutrop. v. 5) and
a narrative in chronological order is in this case absolutely
impracticable.  Even the recently found decree of Chersonesus
(p. 17) has given no information in this respect According to it
Diophantus was twice sent against the Taurian Scythians; but that
the second insurrection of these is connected with the decree of
the Roman senate in favour of the Scythian princes (p. 21) is not
clear from the document, and is not even probable.

6.  It is very probable that the extraordinary drought, which
is the chief obstacle now to agriculture in the Crimea and in
these regions generally, has been greatly increased by the
disappearance of the forests of central and southern Russia,
which formerly to some extent protected the coast-provinces
from the parching northeast wind.

7.  The recently discovered decree of the town of Chersonesus in
honour of this Diophantus (Dittenberger, Syll. n. 252) thoroughly
confirms the traditional account.  It shows us the city in the
immediate vicinity--the port of Balaclava must at that time have
been in the power of the Tauri and Simferopol in that of the
Scythians--hard pressed partly by the Tauri on the south coast of
the Crimea, partly and especially by the Scythians who held in
their power the whole interior of the peninsula and the mainland
adjoining; it shows us further how the general of king Mithradates
relieves on all sides the Greek city, defeats the Tauri, and erects
in their territory a stronghold (probably Eupatorion), restores the
connection between the western and the eastern Hellenes of the
peninsula, overpowers in the west the dynasty of Scilurus, and in
the east Saumacus prince of the Scythians, pursues the Scythians
even to the mainland, and at length conquers them with the
Reuxinales--such is the name given to the later Roxolani here,
where they first appear--in the great pitched battle, which is
mentioned also in the traditional account.  There does not seem to
have been any formal subordination of the Greek city under the king;
Mithradates appears only as protecting ally, who fights the battles
against the Scythians that passed as invincible (--tous anupostatous
dokountas eimen--), on behalf of the Greek city, which probably
stood to him nearly in the relation of Massilia and Athens to Rome.
The Scythians on the other band in the Crimea become subjects
(--upakooi--) of Mithradates.

8.  The chronology of the following events can only be determined
approximately.  Mithradates Eupator seems to have practically
entered on the government somewhere about 640; Sulla's intervention
took place in 662 (Liv. Ep. 70) with which accords the calculation
assigning to the Mithradatic wars a period of thirty years (662-691)
(Plin. H. N. vii. 26, 97).  In the interval fell the quarrels as to
the Paphlagonian and Cappadocian succession, with which the bribery
attempted by Mithradates in Rome (Diod. 631) apparently in the first
tribunate of Saturninus in 651 (IV. VI. Saturninus) was probably
connected.  Marius, who left Rome in 665 and did not remain long
in the east, found Mithradates already in Cappadocia and negotiated
with him regarding his aggressions (Cic. ad Brut. i. 5; Plut. Mar. 31);
Ariarathes VI had consequently been by that time put to death.

9.  IV. III. Character of the Constitution of Gaius Gracchus

10.  A decree of the senate of the year 638 recently found in the
village Aresti to the south of Synnada (Viereck, -Sermo Graecus quo
senatus Romanus usus sit-, p. 51) confirms all the regulations made
by the king up to his death and thus shows that Great Phrygia after
the death of the father was not merely taken from the son, as Appian
also states, but was thereby brought directly under Roman allegiance.

11.  III. IX. Rupture between Antiochus and the Romans

12.  Retribution came upon the authors of the arrest and surrender
of Aquillius twenty-five years afterwards, when after Mithradates'
death his son Pharnaces handed them over to the Romans.

13.  IV. VII. Economic Crisis

14.  We must recollect that after the outbreak of the Social War
the legion had at least not more than half the number of men which it
had previously, as it was no longer accompanied by Italian contingents.

15.  The chronology of these events is, like all their details,
enveloped in an obscurity which investigation is able to dispel,
at most, only partially.  That the battle of Chaeronea took place,
if not on the same day as the storming of Athens (Pausan, i. 20),
at any rate soon afterwards, perhaps in March 668, is tolerably certain.
That the succeeding Thessalian and the second Boeotian campaign took
up not merely the remainder of 668 but also the whole of 669, is in
itself probable and is rendered still more so by the fact that Sulla's
enterprises in Asia are not sufficient to fill more than a single
campaign.  Licinianus also appears to indicate that Sulla returned to
Athens for the winter of 668-669 and there took in hand the work of
investigation and punishment; after which he relates the battle of
Orchomenus.  The crossing of Sulla to Asia has accordingly been
placed not in 669, but in 670.

16.  The resolution of the citizens of Ephesus to this effect has
recently been found (Waddington, Additions to Lebas, Inscr. iii.
136 a).  They had, according to their own declaration, fallen into
the power of Mithradates "the king of Cappadocia," being frightened
by the magnitude of his forces and the suddenness of his attack;
but, when opportunity offered, they declared war against him "for
the rule (--egemonia--) of the Romans and the common weal."

17.  The statement that Mithradates in the peace stipulated for
impunity to the towns which had embraced his side (Memnon, 35)
seems, looking to the character of the victor and of the
vanquished, far from credible, and it is not given by Appian
or by Licinianus.  They neglected to draw up the treaty of
peace in writing, and this neglect afterwards left room far
various misrepresentations.

18.  Armenian tradition also is acquainted with the first
Mithradatic war.  Ardasches king of Armenia--Moses of Chorene tells
us--was not content with the second rank which rightfully belonged
to him in the Persian (Parthian) empire, but compelled the Parthian
king Arschagan to cede to him the supreme power, whereupon he had a
palace built for himself in Persia and had coins struck there with
his own image.  He appointed Arschagan viceroy of Persia and his
son Dicran (Tigranes) viceroy of Armenia, and gave his daughter
Ardaschama in marriage to the great-prince of the Iberians
Mihrdates (Mithradates) who was descended from Mihrdates satrap
of Darius and governor appointed by Alexander over the conquered
Iberians, and ruled in the northern mountains as well as over the
Black Sea.  Ardasches then took Croesus the king of the Lydians
prisoner, subdued the mainland between the two great seas (Asia
Minor), and crossed the sea with innumerable vessels to subjugate
the west.  As there was anarchy at that time in Rome, he nowhere
encountered serious resistance, but his soldiers killed each other
and Ardasches fell by the hands of his own troops.  After
Ardasches' death his successor Dicran marched against the army of
the Greeks (i. e. the Romans) who now in turn invaded the Armenian
land; he set a limit to their advance, handed over to his brother-
in-law Mihrdates the administration of Madschag (Mazaca in
Cappadocia) and of the interior along with a considerable force,
and returned to Armenia.  Many years afterwards there were still
pointed out in the Armenian towns statues of Greek gods by well-
known masters, trophies of this campaign.

We have no difficulty in recognizing here various facts of
the first Mithradatic war, but the whole narrative is evidently
confused, furnished with heterogeneous additions, and in particular
transferred by patriotic falsification to Armenia.  In just the
same way the victory over Crassus is afterwards attributed to
the Armenians.  These Oriental accounts are to be received with all
the greater caution, that they are by no means mere popular legends;
on the contrary the accounts of Josephus, Eusebius, and other
authorities current among the Christians of the fifth century have been
amalgamated with the Armenian traditions, and the historical romances
of the Greeks and beyond doubt the patriotic fancies also of Moses
himself have been laid to a considerable extent under contribution.
Bad as is cur Occidental tradition in itself, to call in the aid of
Oriental tradition in this and similar cases--as has been attempted
for instance by the uncritical Saint-Martin--can only lead to
still further confusion.

19.  III. X. Intervention in the Syro-Egyptian War



Chapter IX

1.  The whole of the representation that follows is based in
substance on the recently discovered account of Licinianus, which
communicates a number of facts previously unknown, and in
particular enables us to perceive the sequence and connection of
these events more clearly than was possible before.

2.  IV. VII. The Bestowal of the Franchise and Its Limitations.
That there was no confirmation by the comitia, is clear from
Cic. Phil. xii. 11, 27.  The senate seems to have made use of
the form of simply prolonging the term of the Plautio- Papirian
law (IV. VII. Bestowal of Latin Rights on the Italian Celts),
a course which by use and wont (i. 409) was open to it and
practically amounted to conferring the franchise on all Italians.

3.  "-Ad flatus sidere-," as Livy (according to Obsequens, 56)
expresses it, means "seized by the pestilence" (Petron. Sat. 2;
Plin. H. N. ii. 41, 108; Liv. viii. 9, 12), not "struck by
lightning," as later writers have misunderstood it.

4.  IV. VII. Combats with the Marsians

5.  IV. VII. Sulpicius Rufus

6.  IV. VII. Bestowal of Latin Rights on the Italian Celts

7.  IV. V. In Illyria

8.  IV. VI. Discussions on the Livian Laws

9.  IV. VII. Energetic Decrees

10.  Lucius Valerius Flaccus, whom the Fasti name as consul in 668,
was not the consul of 654, but a younger man of the same name,
perhaps son of the preceding.  For, first, the law which prohibited
re-election to the consulship remained legally in full force from
c. 603 (IV. II. Attempts at Reform) to 673, and it is not probable
that what was done in the case of Scipio Aemilianus and Marius was
done also for Flaccus.  Secondly, there is no mention anywhere, when
either Flaccus is named, of a double consulship, not even where it
was necessary as in Cic. pro Flacc. 32, 77.  Thirdly, the Lucius
Valerius Flaccus who was active in Rome in 669 as -princeps
senatus- and consequently of consular rank (Liv. 83), cannot have
been the consul of 668, for the latter had already at that time
departed for Asia and was probably already dead.  The consul of
654, censor in 657, is the person whom Cicero (ad Att. viii. 3, 6)
mentions among the consulars present in Rome in 667; he was in 669
beyond doubt the oldest of the old censors living and thus fitted
to be -princeps senatus-; he was also the -interrex- and the
-magister equitum- of 672.  On the other hand, the consul of 668,
who Perished at Nicomedia (p. 47), was the father of the Lucius
Flaccus defended by Cicero (pro Flacc. 25, 61, comp. 23, 55. 32, 77).

11.  IV. VI. The Equestrian Party

12.  IV. VII. Sulla Embarks for Asia

13.  We can only suppose this to be the Brutus referred to, since
Marcus Brutus the father of the so-called Liberator was tribune of
the people in 671, and therefore could not command in the field.

14.  IV. IV. Prosecutions of the Democrats

15.  It is stated, that Sulla occupied the defile by which alone
Praeneste was accessible (App. i. 90); and the further events
showed that the road to Rome was open to him as well as to the
relieving army.  Beyond doubt Sulla posted himself on the cross
road which turns off from the Via Latina, along which the Samnites
advanced, at Valmontone towards Palestrina; in this case Sulla
communicated with the capital by the Praenestine, and the enemy by
the Latin or Labican, road.

16.  Hardly any other name can well be concealed under the corrupt
reading in Liv. 89 -miam in Samnio-; comp. Strabo, v. 3, 10.

17.  IV. IX. Pompeius

18.  IV. VIII. New Difficulties



Chapter X

1.  III. XI. Abolition of the Dictatorship

2.  -Satius est uti regibus quam uti malis legibus- (Ad Herenn. ii.
36).

3.  II. I. The Dictator, II. II. The Valerio-Horatian Laws, II. III.
Limitation of the Dictatorship

4.  IV. VII. Legislation of Sulla

5.  This total number is given by Valerius Maximus, ix. 2. 1.
According to Appian (B. C. i. 95), there were proscribed by Sulla
nearly 40 senators, which number subsequently received some
additions, and about 1600 equites; according to Florus (ii. 9,
whence Augustine de Civ. Dei, iii. 28), 2000 senators and equites.
According to Plutarch (Sull. 31), 520 names were placed on the list
in the first three days; according to Orosius (v. 21), 580 names
during the first days.  there is no material contradiction between
these various reports, for it was not senators and equites alone
that were put to death, and the list remained open for months.
When Appian, at another passage (i. 103), mentions as put to death
or banished by Sulla, 15 consulars, 90 senators, 2600 equites, he
there confounds, as the connection shows, the victims of the civil
war throughout with the victims of Sulla.  The 15 consulars were--
Quintus Catulus, consul in 652; Marcus Antonius, 655; Publius
Crassus, 657; Quintus Scaevola, 659; Lucius Domitius, 660; Lucius
Caesar, 664; Quintus Rufus, 666; Lucius Cinna, 667-670; Gnaeus
Octavius, 667; Lucius Merula, 667; Lucius Flaccus, 668; Gnaeus
Carbo, 669, 670, 672; Gaius Norbanus, 671; Lucius Scipio, 671;
Gaius Marius, 672; of whom fourteen were killed, and one, Lucius
Scipio, was banished.  When, on the other hand, the Livian account
in Eutropius (v. 9) and Orosius (v. 22) specifies as swept away
(-consumpti-) in the Social and Civil wars, 24 consulars, 7
praetorians, 60 aedilicians, 200 senators, the calculation includes
partly the men who fell in the Italian war, such as the consulars
Aulus Albinus, consul in 655; Titus Didius, 656; Publius Lupus,
664; Lucius Cato, 665; partly perhaps Quintus Metellus Numidicus
(IV. VI. Violent Proceedings in The Voting), Manius Aquillius,
Gaius Marius the father, Gnaeus Strabo, whom we may certainly regard
as also victims of that period, or other men whose fate is unknown to us.
Of the fourteen consulars killed, three--Rufus, Cinna, and Flaccus--
fell through military revolts, while eight Sullan and three Marian
consulars fell as victims to the opposite party.  On a comparison of
the figures given above, 50 senators and 1000 equites were regarded
as victims of Marius, 40 senators and 1600 equites as victims
of Sulla; this furnishes a standard--at least not altogether
arbitrary--for estimating the extent of the crimes on both sides.

6.  The Sextus Alfenus, frequently mentioned in Cicero's oration on
behalf of Publius Quinctius, was one of these.

7.  II. VII. Latins.  To this was added the peculiar aggravation that,
while in other instances the right of the Latins, like that of
the -peregrini-, implied membership in a definite Latin or foreign
community, in this case--just as with the later freedmen of Latin
and deditician rights (comp. IV. VII. The Bestowal of the Franchise and
Its Limitations. n.)--it was without any such right of urban membership.
The consequence was, that these Latins were destitute of the privileges
attaching to an urban constitution, and, strictly speaking, could not
even make a testament, since no one could execute a testament otherwise
than according to the law of his town; they could doubtless, however,
acquire under Roman testaments, and among the living could hold dealings
with each other and with Romans or Latins in the forms of Roman law.

8.  IV. IV. The Domain Question under the Restoration

9.  That Sulla's assessment of the five years' arrears and of the
war expenses levied on the communities of Asia (Appian, Mithr. 62
et al.) formed a standard for the future, is shown by the facts,
that the distribution of Asia into forty districts is referred to
Sulla (Cassiodor. Chron. 670) and that the Sullan apportionment
was assumed as a basis in the case of subsequent imposts (Cic. pro
Flacc. 14, 32), and by the further circumstance, that on occasion
of building a fleet in 672 the sums applied for that purpose were
deducted from the payment of tribute (-ex pecunia vectigali populo
Romano-: Cic. Verr. l. i. 35, 89).  Lastly, Cicero (ad Q. fr. i. i,
ii, 33) directly says, that the Greeks "were not in a position of
themselves to pay the tax imposed on them by Sulla without -publicani-."

10.  III. XI. Separation of the Orders in the Theatre

11.  IV. III. Insignia of the Equites.  Tradition has not indeed
informed us by whom that law was issued, which rendered it necessary
that the earlier privilege should be renewed by the Roscian theatre-law
of 687 (Becker-Friedlander, iv, 531); but under the circumstances
the author of that law was undoubtedly Sulla.

12.  IV. VI. Livius Drusus

13.  IV. VII. Rejection of the Proposals for an Accomodation

14.  III. XI. The Nobility in Possession of the Senate

15.  How many quaestors had been hitherto chosen annually, is not
known.  In 487 the number stood at eight--two urban, two military,
and four naval, quaestors (II. VII. Quaestors of the Fleet,
II. VII. Intermediate Fuctionaries); to which there fell to be added
the quaestors employed in the provinces (III. III. Provincial Praetors).
For the naval quaestors at Ostia, Cales, and so forth were by no means
discontinued, and the military quaestors could not be employed
elsewhere, since in that case the consul, when he appeared as
commander-in-chief, would have been without a quaestor.  Now, as
down to Sulla's time there were nine provinces, and moreover two
quaestors were sent to Sicily, he may possibly have found as many
as eighteen quaestors in existence.  But as the number of the
supreme magistrates of this period was considerably less than that
of their functions (p. 120), and the difficulty thus arising was
constantly remedied by extension of the term of office and other
expedients, and as generally the tendency of the Roman government
was to limit as much as possible the number of magistrates, there
may have been more quaestorial functions than quaestors, and it may
be even that at this period no quaestor at all was sent to small
provinces such as Cilicia.  Certainly however there were, already
before Sulla's time, more than eight quaestors.

16.  III. XI. The Censorship A Prop of the Nobility

17.  We cannot strictly speak at all of a fixed number of senators.
Though the censors before Sulla prepared on each occasion a list of
300 persons, there always fell to be added to this list those non-
senators who filled a curule office between the time when the list
was drawn up and the preparation of the next one; and after Sulla
there were as many senators as there were surviving quaestorians
But it may be probably assumed that Sulla meant to bring the senate
up to 500 or 600 members; and this number results, if we assume
that 20 new members, at an average age of 30, were admitted
annually, and we estimate the average duration of the senatorial
dignity at from 25 to 30 years.  At a numerously attended sitting
of the senate in Cicero's time 417 members were present.

18.  II. III. The Senate. Its Composition

19.  IV. VI. Political Projects of Marius

20.  III. XI. Interference of the Community in War and Administration

21.  IV. VII. Legislation of Sulla

22.  II. III. Restrictions As to the Accumulation and the Reoccupation
of Offices

23.  IV. II. Attempts at Reform

24.  To this the words of Lepidus in Sallust (Hist. i. 41, 11
Dietsch) refer: -populus Romanus excitus... iure agitandi-, to
which Tacitus (Ann. iii. 27) alludes: -statim turbidis Lepidi
rogationibus neque multo post tribunis reddita licentia quoquo
vellent populum agitandi-.  That the tribunes did not altogether
lose the right of discussing matters with the people is shown by
Cic. De Leg. iii. 4, 10 and more clearly by the -plebiscitum de
Thermensibus-, which however in the opening formula also designates
itself as issued -de senatus sententia-.  That the consuls on the
other hand could under the Sullan arrangements submit proposals to
the people without a previous resolution of the senate, is shown
not only by the silence of the authorities, but also by the course
of the revolutions of 667 and 676, whose leaders for this very
reason were not tribunes but consuls.  Accordingly we find at this
period consular laws upon secondary questions of administration,
such as the corn law of 681, for which at other times we should
have certainly found -plebiscita-.

25.  II. III. Influence of the Elections

26.  IV. II. Vote by Ballot

27.  For this hypothesis there is no other proof, except that
the Italian Celt-land was as decidedly not a province--in the sense
in which the word signifies a definite district administered by a
governor annually changed--in the earlier times, as it certainly was
one in the time of Caesar (comp. Licin. p. 39; -data erat et Sullae
provincia Gallia Cisalpina-).

The case is much the same with the advancement of the frontier;
we know that formerly the Aesis, and in Caesar's time the Rubico,
separated the Celtic land from Italy, but we do not know when the
boundary was shifted.  From the circumstance indeed, that Marcus
Terentius Varro Lucullus as propraetor undertook a regulation of
the frontier in the district between the Aesis and Rubico (Orelli,
Inscr. 570), it has been inferred that that must still have been
provincial land at least in the year after Lucullus' praetorship 679,
since the propraetor had nothing to do on Italian soil.  But it was
only within the -pomerium- that every prolonged -imperium- ceased of
itself; in Italy, on the other hand, such a prolonged -imperium- was
even under Sulla's arrangement--though not regularly existing--at
any rate allowable, and the office held by Lucullus was in any case
an extraordinary one.  But we are able moreover to show when and
how Lucullus held such an office in this quarter.  He was already
before the Sullan reorganization in 672 active as commanding
officer in this very district (p, 87), and was probably, just like
Pompeius, furnished by Sulla with propraetorian powers; in this
character he must have regulated the boundary in question in 672
or 673 (comp. Appian, i. 95).  No inference therefore may be drawn
from this inscription as to the legal position of North Italy, and
least of all for the time after Sulla's dictatorship.  On the other
hand a remarkable hint is contained in the statement, that Sulla
advanced the Roman -pomerium- (Seneca, de brev. vitae, 14; Dio,
xliii. 50); which distinction was by Roman state-law only accorded
to one who had advanced the bounds not of the empire, but of the
city--that is, the bounds of Italy (i. 128).

28.  As two quaestors were sent to Sicily, and one to each of the
other provinces, and as moreover the two urban quaestors, the two
attached to the consuls in conducting war, and the four quaestors
of the fleet continued to subsist, nineteen magistrates were
annually required for this office.  The department of the twentieth
quaestor cannot be ascertained.

29.  The Italian confederacy was much older (II. VII. Italy and
The Italians); but it was a league of states, not, like the Sullan
Italy, a state-domain marked off as an unit within the Roman empire.

30.  II. III. Complete Opening Up of Magistracies and Priesthoods

31.  II. III. Combination of The Plebian Aristocracy and The Farmers
against The Nobility

32.  III. XIII. Religious Economy

33.  IV. X. Punishments Inflicted on Particular Communities

34.  e. g. IV. IV. Dissatisfaction in the Capital, IV. V. Warfare of
Prosecutions

35.  IV. II. Vote by Ballot

36.  IV. III. Modifications of the Penal Law

37.  II. II. Intercession

38.  IV. III. Modifications of the Penal Law

39.  IV. VII. Rejection of the Proposals for an Accomodation

40.  II. VII. Subject Communities

41.  IV. X. Cisapline Gaul Erected into A Province

42.  IV. VII. Preparations for General Revolt against Rome

43.  III. XI. Roman Franchise More Difficult of Acquisition

44.  IV. IX. Government of Cinna

45.  IV. VII. Decay of Military Discipline

46.  IV. VII. Economic Crisis

47.  IV. VII. Strabo

48.  IV. VIII. Flaccus Arrives in Asia

49.  IV. IX. Death of Cinna

50.  IV. IX. Nola

51.  IV. IX. Fresh Difficulties with Mithradates

52.  Euripides, Medea, 807:-- --Meideis me phaulein kasthenei
nomizeto Meid eisuchaian, alla thateron tropou Bareian echthrois
kai philoisin eumenei--.

53.  IV. IX. Fresh Difficulties with Mithradates

54.  IV. IX. Fresh Difficulties with Mithradates, IV. X. Re-establishment
of Constitutional Order

55.  Not -pthiriasis-, as another account states; for the simple
reason that such a disease is entirely imaginary.



Chapter XI

1.  IV. V. Transalpine Relations of Rome, IV. V. The Romans Cross
the Eastern Alps

2.  IV. I. The Callaeci Conquered

3.  IV. V. And Reach the Danube

4.  -Exterae nationes in arbitratu dicione potestate amicitiave
populi Romani- (lex repet. v. i), the official designation of the
non-Italian subjects and clients as contrasted with the Italian
"allies and kinsmen" (-socii nominisve Latini-).

5.  III. XI. As to the Management of the Finances

6.  III. XII. Mercantile Spirit

7.  IV. III. Jury Courts, IV. III. Character of the Constitution
of Gaius Gracchus

8.  This tax-tenth, which the state levied from private landed
property, is to be clearly distinguished from the proprietor's
tenth, which it imposed on the domain-land.  The former was let in
Sicily, and was fixed once for all; the latter--especially that of
the territory of Leontini--was let by the censors in Rome, and the
proportion of produce payable and other conditions were regulated
at their discretion (Cic. Verr. iii. 6, 13; v. 21, 53; de leg. agr.
i. 2, 4; ii. 18, 48).  Comp, my Staatsrecht, iii. 730.

9.  The mode of proceeding was apparently as follows.  The Roman
government fixed in the first instance the kind and the amount of
the tax.  Thus in Asia, for instance, according to the arrangement
of Sulla and Caesar the tenth sheaf was levied (Appian. B. C. v.
4); thus the Jews by Caesar's edict contributed every second year
a fourth of the seed (Joseph, iv. 10, 6; comp. ii. 5); thus in
Cilicia and Syria subsequently there was paid 5 per cent from
estate (Appian. Syr. 50), and in Africa also an apparently similar
tax was paid--in which case, we may add, the estate seems to have
been valued according to certain presumptive indications, e. g. the
size of the land occupied, the number of doorways, the number of
head of children and slaves (-exactio capitum atque ostiorum-,
Cicero, Ad Fam. iii. 8, 5, with reference to Cilicia; --phoros epi
tei gei kai tois somasin--, Appian. Pun. 135, with reference to
Africa).  In accordance with this regulation the magistrates of
each community under the superintendence of the Roman governor
(Cic. ad Q. Fr. i. 1, 8; SC. de Asclep. 22, 23) settled who were
liable to the tax, and what was to be paid by each tributary (
-imperata- --epikephalia--, Cic. ad Att. v. 16); if any one did not
pay this in proper time, his tax-debt was sold just as in Rome, i.
e. it was handed over to a contractor with an adjudication to
collect it (-venditio tributorum-, Cic. Ad Fam. iii. 8, 5; --onas--
-omnium venditas-, Cic. ad Att. v. 16).  The produce of these taxes
flowed into the coffers of the leading communities--the Jews, for
instance, had to send their corn to Sidon--and from these coffers
the fixed amount in money was then conveyed to Rome.  These taxes
also were consequently raised indirectly, and the intermediate
agent either retained, according to circumstances, a part of the
produce of the taxes for himself, or advanced it from his own
substance; the distinction between this mode of raising and the
other by means of the -publicani- lay merely in the circumstance,
that in the former the public authorities of the contributors,
in the latter Roman private contractors, constituted the
intermediate agency.

10.  IV. III. Jury Courts

11.  III. VII. Administration of Spain

12.  IV. X. Regulation of the Finances

13.  For example, in Judaea the town of Joppa paid 26,075 -modii-
of corn, the other Jews the tenth sheaf, to the native princes; to
which fell to be added the temple-tribute and the Sidonian payment
destined for the Romans.  In Sicily too, in addition to the Roman
tenth, a very considerable local taxation was raised from property.

14.  IV. VI. The New Military Organization

15.  IV. II. Vote by Ballot

16.  III. VII. Liguria

17.  IV. V. Province of Narbo

18.  IV. V. In Illyria

19.  IV. I. Province of Macedonia

20.  III. XI. Italian Subjects, III. XII. Roman Wealth

21.  IV. V. Taurisci

22.  III. IV. Pressure of the War

23.  IV. VII. Outbreak of the Mithradatic War

24.  IV. IX. Preparations on Either Side

25.  III. XII. The Management of Land and of Capital

26.  IV. V. Conflicts with the Ligurians.  With this may be connected
the remark of the Roman agriculturist, Saserna, who lived after Cato
and before Varro (ap. Colum. i. 1, 5), that the culture of the vine
and olive was constantly moving farther to the north.--The decree of
the senate as to the translation of the treatise of Mago (IV. II.
The Italian Farmers) belongs also to this class of measures.

27.  IV. II. Slavery and Its Consequences

28.  IV. VIII. Thrace and Macedonia Occupied by the Pontic Armies.

29.  IV. I. Destruction of Carthage, IV. I. Destruction of Corinth

30.  IV. V. The Advance of the Romans Checked by the Policy
of the Restoration

31.  IV. IV. The Provinces

32.  IV. VII. Economic Crisis

33.  IV. VII. The Sulpician Laws

34.  IV. VII. Legislation of Sulla

35.  IV. IX. Government of Cinna

36.  IV. VIII. Orders Issued from Ephesus for A General Massacre

37.  IV. VIII. Thrace and Macedonia Occupied by the Pontic Armies.

38.  IV. VI. Roman Intervention

39.  III. XII. Roman Wealth

40.  IV. V. Taurisci

41.  III. VI. Pressure of the War

42.  II. VIII. Silver Standard of Value

43.  III. VI. Pressure of the War

44.  III. I. Comparison between Carthage and Rome

45.  IV. X. Proscription-Lists

46.  III. III. Autonomy, III. VII. the State of Culture in Spain,
III. XII. Coins and Moneys

47.  III. XII. Coins and Moneys

48.  III. XIII. Increase of Amusements

49.  In the house, which Sulla inhabited when a young man, he paid
for the ground-floor a rent of 3000 sesterces, and the tenant of
the upper story a rent of 2000 sesterces (Plutarch, Sull. 1);
which, capitalized at two-thirds of the usual interest on capital,
yields nearly the above amount.  This was a cheap dwelling.  That a
rent of 6000 sesterces (60 pounds) in the capital is called a high
one in the case of the year 629 (Vell. ii. 10) must have been due
to special circumstances.

50.  III. I. Comparison between Carthage and Rome

51.  IV. II. Tribunate of Gracchus

52.  "If we could, citizens"--he said in his speech--"we should
indeed all keep clear of this burden.  But, as nature has so
arranged it that we cannot either live comfortably with wives
or live at all without them, it is proper to have regard rather
to the permanent weal than to our own brief comfort."



Chapter XII

1.  IV. XI. Money-Dealing and Commerce

2.  IV. X. The Roman Municipal System

3.  IV. I. The Subjects

4.  IV. I. The Callaeci Conquered

5.  IV. I. The New Organization of Spain

6.  IV. VII. Second Year of the War

7.  The statement that no "Greek games" were exhibited in Rome
before 608 (Tac. Ann. xiv. 21) is not accurate: Greek artists
(--technitai--) and athletes appeared as early as 568 (Liv. xxxix.
22), and Greek flute-players, tragedians, and pugilists in 587
(Pol. xxx, 13).

8.  III. XIII. Irreligious Spirit

9.  A delightful specimen may be found in Cicero de Officiis,
iii. 12, 13.

10.  IV. VI. Collision between the Senate and Equites in the
Administration of the Provinces; IV. IX. Siege of Praeneste

11.  In Varro's satire, "The Aborigines," he sarcastically set
forth how the primitive men had not been content with the God
who alone is recognized by thought, but had longed after
puppets and effigies.

12.  III. XI. Interference of The Community in War and Administration

13.  IV. VI. Political Projects of Marius

14.  IV. X. Co-optation Restored in the Priestly Colleges

15.  IV. VI. The Equestrian Party

16.  III. XIV. Cato's Encyclopedia

17.  Cicero says that he treated his learned slave Dionysius more
respectfully than Scipio treated Panaetius, and in the same sense
it is said in Lucilius:--

-Paenula, si quaeris, canteriu', servu', segestre Utilior mihi,
quam sapiens-.

18.  IV. XII. Panaetius



Chapter XIII

1.  Thus in the -Paulus-, an original piece, the following line
occurred, probably in the description of the pass of Pythium
(III. X. Perseus Is Driven Back to Pydna):--

-Qua vix caprigeno generi gradilis gressio est-.

And in another piece the hearers are expected to understand the
following description--

-Quadrupes tardigrada agrestis humilis aspera, Capite brevi,
cervice anguina, aspectu truci, Eviscerata inanima cum
animali sono-.

To which they naturally reply--

-Ita saeptuosa dictione abs te datur, Quod conjectura sapiens aegre
contuit; Non intellegimus, nisi si aperte dixeris-.

Then follows the confession that the tortoise is referred to.
Such enigmas, moreover, were not wanting even among the Attic
tragedians, who on that account were often and sharply taken to
task by the Middle Comedy.

2.  Perhaps the only exception is in the -Andria- (iv. 5) the
answer to the question how matters go:--

"-Sic Ut quimus," aiunt, "quando ut volumus non licet-"

in allusion to the line of Caecilius, which is, indeed, also
imitated from a Greek proverb:--

-Vivas ut possis, quando non quis ut velis-.

The comedy is the oldest of Terence's, and was exhibited by
the theatrical authorities on the recommendation of Caecilius.
The gentle expression of gratitude is characteristic.

3.  A counterpart to the hind chased by dogs and with tears calling
on a young man for help, which Terence ridicules (Phorm. prol. 4),
may be recognized in the far from ingenious Plautine allegory of
the goat and the ape (Merc, ii. 1).  Such excrescences are
ultimately traceable to the rhetoric of Euripides (e. g.
Eurip. Hec. 90).

4.  Micio in the -Adelphi- (i. i) praises his good fortune in life,
more particularly because he has never had a wife, "which those
(the Greeks) reckon a piece of good fortune."

5.  In the prologue of the -Heauton Timorumenos- he puts
the objection into the mouth of his censors:--

-Repente ad studium hunc se applicasse musicum Amicum ingenio
fretum, haud natura sua-.

And in the later prologue (594) to the -Adelphi- he says--

-Nam quod isti dicunt malevoli, homines nobiles Eum adiutare,
adsidueque una scribere; Quod illi maledictum vehemens esse
existimant Eam laudem hic ducit maximam, quum illis placet Qui
vobis universis et populo placent; Quorum opera in bello, in otio,
in negotio, Suo quisque tempore usus est sine superbia-.

As early as the time of Cicero it was the general supposition that
Laelius and Scipio Aemilianus were here meant: the scenes were
designated which were alleged to proceed from them; stories were
told of the journeys of the poor poet with his genteel patrons to
their estates near Rome; and it was reckoned unpardonable that
they should have done nothing at all for the improvement of his
financial circumstances.  But the power which creates legend is,
as is well known, nowhere more potent than in the history of
literature.  It is clear, and even judicious Roman critics
acknowledged, that these lines could not possibly apply to Scipio
who was then twenty-five years of age, and to his friend Laelius
who was not much older.  Others with at least more judgment thought
of the poets of quality Quintus Labeo (consul in 571) and Marcus
Popillius (consul in 581), and of the learned patron of art and
mathematician, Lucius Sulpicius Gallus (consul in 588); but this
too is evidently mere conjecture.  That Terence was in close
relations with the Scipionic house cannot, however, be doubted: it
is a significant fact, that the first exhibition of the -Adelphi-
and the second of the -Hecyra- took place at the funeral games of
Lucius Paullus, which were provided by his sons Scipio and Fabius.

6.  IV. XI. Token-Money

7.  III. XIV. National Comedy

8.  External circumstances also, it may be presumed, co-operated in
bringing about this change.  After all the Italian communities had
obtained the Roman franchise in consequence of the Social war, it
was no longer allowable to transfer the scene of a comedy to any
such community, and the poet had either to keep to general ground
or to choose places that had fallen into ruin or were situated
abroad.  Certainly this circumstance, which was taken into account
even in the production of the older comedies, exercised an
unfavourable effect on the national comedy.

9.  I. XV. Masks

10.  With these names there has been associated from ancient times
a series of errors.  The utter mistake of Greek reporters, that
these farces were played at Rome in the Oscan language, is now with
justice universally rejected; but it is, on a closer consideration,
little short of impossible to bring these pieces, which are laid in
the midst of Latin town and country life, into relation with the
national Oscan character at all.  The appellation of "Atellan play"
is to be explained in another way.  The Latin farce with its fixed
characters and standing jests needed a permanent scenery: the fool-
world everywhere seeks for itself a local habitation.  Of course
under the Roman stage-police none of the Roman communities, or of
the Latin communities allied with Rome, could be taken for this
purpose, although it was allowable to transfer the -togatae- to
these.  But Atella, which, although destroyed de jure along with
Capua in 543 (III. VI. Capua Capitulates, III. VI. In Italy),
continued practically to subsist as a village inhabited by Roman
farmers, was adapted in every respect for the purpose.  This conjecture
is changed into certainty by our observing that several of these farces
are laid in other communities within the domain of the Latin tongue,
which existed no longer at all, or no longer at any rate in the eye
of the law-such as the -Campani- of Pomponius and perhaps also his
-Adelphi- and his -Quinquatria- in Capua, and the -Milites Pometinenses-
of Novius in Suessa Pometia--while no existing community was subjected
to similar maltreatment.  The real home of these pieces was
therefore Latium, their poetical stage was the Latinized Oscan
land; with the Oscan nation they have no connection.  The statement
that a piece of Naevius (d. after 550) was for want of proper
actors performed by "Atellan players" and was therefore called
-personata- (Festus, s. v.), proves nothing against this view:
the appellation "Atellan players" comes to stand here proleptically,
and we might even conjecture from this passage that they were
formerly termed "masked players" (-personati-).

An explanation quite similar may be given of the "lays of
Fescennium," which likewise belong to the burlesque poetry of
the Romans and were localized in the South Etruscan village of
Fescennium; it is not necessary on that account to class them
with Etruscan poetry any more than the Atellanae with Oscan.
That Fescennium was in historical times not a town but a village,
cannot certainly be directly proved, but is in the highest degree
probable from the way in which authors mention the place and from
the silence of inscriptions.

11.  The close and original connection, which Livy in particular
represents as subsisting between the Atellan farce and the -satura-
with the drama thence developed, is not at all tenable.  The
difference between the -histrio- and the Atellan player was
just about as great as is at present the difference between a
professional actor and a man who goes to a masked ball; between the
dramatic piece, which down to Terence's time had no masks, and the
Atellan, which was essentially based on the character-mask, there
subsisted an original distinction in no way to be effaced.  The
drama arose out of the flute-piece, which at first without any
recitation was confined merely to song and dance, then acquired a
text (-satura-), and lastly obtained through Andronicus a libretto
borrowed from the Greek stage, in which the old flute-lays occupied
nearly the place of the Greek chorus.  This course of development
nowhere in its earlier stages comes into contact with the farce,
which was performed by amateurs.

12.  In the time of the empire the Atellana was represented by
professional actors (Friedlander in Becker's Handbuch. vi. 549).
The time at which these began to engage in it is not reported, but
it can hardly have been other than the time at which the Atellan
was admitted among the regular stage-plays, i. e. the epoch before
Cicero (Cic. ad Fam. ix. 16).  This view is not inconsistent with
the circumstance that still in Livy's time (vii. 2) the Atellan
players retained their honorary rights as contrasted with other
actors; for the statement that professional actors began to take
part in performing the Atellana for pay does not imply that
the Atellana was no longer performed, in the country towns
for instance, by unpaid amateurs, and the privilege therefore
still remained applicable,

13.  It deserves attention that the Greek farce was not only
especially at home in Lower Italy, but that several of its
pieces (e. g. among those of Sopater, the "Lentile-Porridge,"
the "Wooers of Bacchis," the "Valet of Mystakos," the "Bookworms,"
the "Physiologist") strikingly remind us of the Atellanae.
This composition of farces must have reached down to the time
at which the Greeks in and around Neapolis formed a circle
enclosed within the Latin-speaking Campania; for one of these
writers of farces, Blaesus of Capreae, bears even a Roman name
and wrote a farce "Saturnus."

14.  According to Eusebius, Pomponius flourished about 664;
Velleius calls him a contemporary of Lucius Crassus (614-663) and
Marcus Antonius (611-667).  The former statement is probably about
a generation too late; the reckoning by -victoriati- (p. 182) which
was discontinued about 650 still occurs in his -Pictores-, and
about the end of this period we already meet the mimes which
displaced the Atellanae from the stage.

15.  It was probably merry enough in this form.  In the
-Phoenissae- of Novius, for instance, there was the line:--

-Sume arma, iam te occidam clava scirpea-, Just as Menander's
--Pseudeirakleis-- makes his appearance.

16.  Hitherto the person providing the play had been obliged to fit
up the stage and scenic apparatus out of the round sum assigned to
him or at his own expense, and probably much money would not often
be expended on these.  But in 580 the censors made the erection of
the stage for the games of the praetors and aediles a matter of
special contract (Liv. xli. 27); the circumstance that the stage-
apparatus was now no longer erected merely for a single performance
must have led to a perceptible improvement of it.

17.  The attention given to the acoustic arrangements of the Greeks
may be inferred from Vitruv. v. 5, 8. Ritschl (Parerg. i. 227, xx.)
has discussed the question of the seats; but it is probable
(according to Plautus, Capt. prol. 11) that those only who were
not -capite censi- had a claim to a seat.  It is probable, moreover,
that the words of Horace that "captive Greece led captive her
conqueror" primarily refer to these epoch-making theatrical games
of Mummius (Tac. Ann. xiv. 21).

18.  The scenery of Pulcher must have been regularly painted, since
the birds are said to have attempted to perch on the tiles (Plin.
H. N. xxxv. 4, 23; Val. Max. ii. 4, 6).  Hitherto the machinery for
thunder had consisted in the shaking of nails and stones in a
copper kettle; Pulcher first produced a better thunder by rolling
stones, which was thenceforth named "Claudian thunder" (Festus,
v. Claudiana, p. 57).

19.  Among the few minor poems preserved from this epoch there
occurs the following epigram on this illustrious actor:--

-Constiteram, exorientem Auroram forte salutans, Cum subito a laeva
Roscius exoritur.  Pace mihi liceat, coelestes, dicere vestra;
Mortalis visust pulchrior esse deo-.

The author of this epigram, Greek in its tone and inspired by Greek
enthusiasm for art, was no less a man than the conqueror of the
Cimbri, Quintus Lutatius Catulus, consul in 652.

20.  IV. XII. Course of Literature and Rhetoric

21.  -Quam lepide --legeis-- compostae ut tesserulae omnes Arte
pavimento atque emblemate vermiculato-.

22.  The poet advises him--

-Quo facetior videare et scire plus quant ceteri---to say not
-pertaesum- but -pertisum-.

23.  IV. III. Its Suspension by Scipio Aemilianus

24.  The following longer fragment is a characteristic specimen of
the style and metrical treatment, the loose structure of which
cannot possibly be reproduced in German hexameters:--

-Virtus, Albine, est pretium persolvere verum
Queis in versamur, queis vivimu' rebu' potesse;
Virtus est homini scire quo quaeque habeat res;
Virtus scire homini rectum, utile, quid sit honestum,
Quae bona, quae mala item, quid inutile, turpe, inhonestum;
Virtus quaerendae finem rei scire modumque;
Virtus divitiis pretium persolvere posse;
Virtus id dare quod re ipsa debetur honori,
Hostem esse atque inimicum hominum morumque malorum,
Contra defensorem hominum morumque bonorum,
Hos magni facere, his bene velle, his vivere amicum;
Commoda praeterea patriai prima putare,
Deinde parentum, tertia iam postremaque nostra-.

25.  IV. XIII. Dramatic Arrangements, second note

26.  III. X. Measures of Security in Greece

27.  IV. I. Greece

28.  Such scientific travels were, however, nothing uncommon among
the Greeks of this period.  Thus in Plautus (Men. 248, comp. 235)
one who has navigated the whole Mediterranean asks--

-Quin nos hinc domum Redimus, nisi si historiam scripturi sumus-?

29.  III. XIV. National Opposition

30.  The only real exception, so far as we know, is the Greek
history of Gnaeus Aufidius, who flourished in Cicero's boyhood
(Tusc, v. 38, 112), that is, about 660.  The Greek memoirs of
Publius Rutilius Rufus (consul in 649) are hardly to be regarded
as an exception, since their author wrote them in exile at Smyrna.

31.  IV. XI. Hellenism and Its Results

32.  IV. XII. Education

33.  IV. XII. Latin Instruction

34.  The assertion, for instance, that the quaestors were
nominated in the regal period by the burgesses, not by the king,
is as certainly erroneous as it bears on its face the impress of
a partisan character.

35.  IV. XII. Course of Literature and Rhetoric

36.  IV. XII. Course of Literature and Rhetoric

37.  IV. XII. Course of Literature and Rhetoric

38.  IV. X. Permanent and Special -Quaestiones-

39.  Cato's book probably bore the title -De iuris disciplina-
(Gell. xiii. 20), that of Brutus the title -De iure civili- (Cic.
pro Cluent. 51, 141; De Orat. ii. 55, 223); that they were
essentially collections of opinions, is shown by Cicero (De Orat.
ii. 33, 142).

40.  IV. VI. Collision between the Senate and Equites in the
Administration of the Provinces, pp. 84, 205

41.  IV. XII. Roman Stoa f.

42.  IV. XI. Buildings



End of Book IV



TABLE OF CALENDAR EQUIVALENTS

A.U.C.*          B.C.  B.C.             A.U.C.
---------------------------------------------------------------
000              753   753              000
    025          728       750          003
        050      703           725      028
            075  678               700  053
100              653   675              078
    125          628       650          103
        150      603           625      128
            175  578               600  153
200              553   575              178
    225          528       550          203
        250      503           525      228
            275  478               500  253
300              453   475              278
    325          428       450          303
        350      303           425      328
            375  378               400  353
400              353   375              378
    425          328       350          403
        450      303           325      428
            475  278               300  453
500              253   275              478
    525          228       250          503
        550      203           225      528
            575  178               200  553
600              153   175              578
    625          128       150          603
        650      103           125      628
            675  078               100  653
700              053   075              678
    725          028       050          703
        750      003           025      728
            753  000               000  753

*A. U. C.--Ab Urbe Condita (from the founding of the City of Rome)