Books: The Old Roman World

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If we turn to the class which, before the dictatorship of Julius, had
the ascendency in the state, and, for several centuries, the supreme
power, we shall find but little that is flattering to a nation or to
humanity.

[Sidenote: The Roman aristocracy.]

The Roman aristocracy was the most powerful, most wealthy, and most
august that this world has probably seen. It was under patrician
leadership that the great conquests were made, and the greatness of the
state reached. The glory of Rome was centred in those proud families
which had conquered and robbed all the nations known to the Greeks. The
immortal names of ancient Rome are identified with the aristocracy. It
was not under kings, but under nobles, that military ambition became the
vice of the most exalted characters. In the days of the republic, they
exhibited a stern virtue, an inflexible policy, an indomitable will, and
most ardent patriotism. The generals who led the armies to victory, the
statesmen who deliberated in the Senate, the consuls, the praetors, the
governors, originally belonged to this noble class. It monopolized all
the great offices of the state, and it maintained its powers and
privileges, in spite of conspiracies and rebellions. It may have yielded
somewhat to popular encroachments, but when the people began to acquire
the ascendency, the seeds of public corruption were sown. The real
dignity and glory of Rome coexisted with patrician power.

[Sidenote: Great families.]

And powerful families existed in Rome until the fall of the empire. Some
were descendants of ancient patrician houses, and numbered the
illustrious generals of the republic among their ancestors. Others owed
their rank and consequence to the accumulation of gigantic fortunes.
Others, again, rose into importance from the patronage of emperors. All
the great conquerors and generals of the republic were founders of
celebrated families, which never lost consideration. Until the
subversion of the constitution, they took great interest in politics,
and were characterized for manly patriotism. Many of them were famous
for culture of mind as well as public spirit. They frowned on the
growing immoralities, and maintained the dignity of their elevated rank.
The Senate was the most august assembly ever known on earth, controlling
kings and potentates, and making laws for the most distant nations, and
exercising a power which was irresistible.

[Sidenote: Degeneracy of the nobles.]

Under the emperors this noble class had degenerated in morals as well as
influence. They still retained their enormous fortunes, originally
acquired as governors of provinces, and continually increased by
fortunate marriages and speculations. Indeed, nothing was more marked
and melancholy at Rome than the disproportionate fortunes, the general
consequences of a low or a corrupt civilization. In the better days of
the republic, property was more equally divided. The citizens were not
ambitious for more land than they could conveniently cultivate. But the
lands, obtained by conquest, gradually fell into the possession of
powerful families. The classes of society widened as great fortunes were
accumulated. Pride of wealth kept pace with pride of ancestry. And when
Plebeian families had obtained great estates, they were amalgamated with
the old aristocracy. The Equestrian order, founded substantially on
wealth, grew daily in importance. Knights ultimately rivaled senatorial
families. Even freedmen, in an age of commercial speculation, became
powerful for their riches. Ultimately the rich formed a body by
themselves. Under the emperors, the pursuit of money became a passion;
and the rich assumed all the importance and consideration which had once
been bestowed upon those who had rendered great public services. The
laws of property were rigorous among the Romans, and wealth, when once
obtained, was easily secured and transmitted.

[Sidenote: Gigantic fortunes.]

Such gigantic fortunes were ultimately made, since the Romans were
masters of the world, that Rome became a city of palaces, and the spoils
and riches of all nations flowed to the capital. Rome was a city of
princes, and wealth gave the highest distinction. The fortunes were
almost incredible. It has been estimated that the income of some of the
richest of the senatorial families equaled a sum of five million dollars
a year in our money. It took eighty thousand dollars a year to support
the ordinary senatorial dignity. Some senators owned whole provinces.
Trimalchio--a rich freedman whom Petronius ridiculed--could afford to
lose thirty millions of sesterces in a single voyage without sensibly
diminishing his fortune. Pallas, a freedman of the Emperor Claudius,
possessed a fortune of three hundred millions of sesterces. Seneca, the
philosopher, amassed an enormous fortune.

[Sidenote: Character of the nobles.]

[Sidenote: Excessive luxury.]

[Sidenote: Luxury of the aristocracy.]

[Sidenote: Luxury of the nobles.]

The Romans were a sensual, ostentatious, and luxurious people, and they
accordingly wasted their fortunes by an extravagance in their living
which has had no parallel. The pleasures of the table and the cares of
the kitchen were the most serious avocation of the aristocracy in the
days of the greatest corruption. They had around them a regular court of
parasites and flatterers, and they employed even persons of high rank as
their chamberlains and stewards. Carving was taught in celebrated
schools, and the masters of this sublime art were held in higher
estimation than philosophers or poets. Says Juvenal:--

"To such perfection now is carving brought,
That different gestures, by our curious men
Are used for different dishes, hare or hen."

Their entertainments were accompanied with every thing which could
flatter vanity or excite the passions. Musicians, male and female
dancers, players of farce and pantomime, jesters, buffoons, and
gladiators, exhibited while the guests reclined at table. The tables
were made of Thuja-root, with claws of ivory or Delian bronze, and cost
immense sums. Even Cicero, in an economical age, paid six hundred and
fifty pounds for his banqueting table. These tables were waited upon by
an army of slaves, clad in costly dresses. In the intervals of courses
they played with dice, or listened to music, or were amused with dances.
They wore a great profusion of jewels--such as necklaces and rings and
bracelets. They reclined at table after the fashion of the Orientals.
They ate, as delicacies, water-rats and white worms. Gluttony was
carried to such a point that the sea and earth scarcely sufficed to set
off their tables. The women passed whole nights at the table, and were
proud of their power to carry off an excess of wine. As Cleopatra says
of her riotings with Antony,--

"O times!--
I laughed him out of patience; and that night
I laughed him into patience: and next morn,
Ere the ninth hour, I drank him to his bed."

The wines were often kept for two ages, and some qualities were so
highly prized as to sell for about twenty dollars an ounce. Large hogs
were roasted whole at a banquet. The ancient epicures expatiate on
ram's-head pies, stuffed fowls, boiled calf, and pastry stuffed with
raisins and nuts. Dishes were made of gold and silver, set with precious
stones. Cicero and Pompey one day surprised Lucullus at one of his
ordinary banquets, when he expected no guests, and even that cost fifty
thousand drachmas--about four thousand dollars. His beds were of purple,
and his vessels glittered with jewels. The halls of Heliogabalus were
hung with cloth of gold, enriched with jewels. His beds were of massive
silver, his table and plate of pure gold, and his mattresses, covered
with carpets of cloth of gold, were stuffed with down found only under
the wings of partridges. Crassus paid one hundred thousand sesterces for
a golden cup. Banqueting rooms were strewed with lilies and roses.
Apicius, in the time of Trajan, spent one hundred millions of sesterces
in debauchery and gluttony. Having only ten millions left, he ended his
life with poison, thinking he might die of hunger. The suppers of
Heliogabalus never cost less than one hundred thousand sesterces. And
things were valued for their cost and rarity, rather than their real
value. Enormous prices were paid for carp, the favorite dish of the
Romans. Drusillus, a freedman of Claudius, caused a dish to be made of
five hundred pounds weight of silver. Vitellius had one made of such
prodigious size that they were obliged to build a furnace on purpose for
it; and at a feast in honor of this dish which he gave, it was filled
with the livers of the scarrus (fish), the brains of peacocks, the
tongues of a bird of red plumage, called Phaesuicopterus, and the roes of
lampreys caught in the Carpathian Sea. Falernian wine was never drunk
until ten years old, and it was generally cooled with ices. The passion
for play was universal. Nero ventured four hundred thousand sesterces on
a single throw of the dice. Cleopatra, when she feasted Antony, gave
each time to that general the gold vessels, enriched with jewels, the
tapestry and purple carpets, embroidered with gold, which had been used
in the repasts. Horace speaks of a debauchee who drank at a meal a
goblet of vinegar, in which he dissolved a pearl worth a million of
sesterces, which hung at the ear of his mistress. Precious stones were
so common that a woman of the utmost simplicity dared not go without her
diamonds. Even men wore jewels, especially elaborate rings, and upon all
the fingers at last. The taste of the Roman aristocracy, with their
immense fortunes, inclined them to pomp, to extravagance, to
ostentatious modes of living, to luxurious banquets, to
conventionalities and ceremonies, to an unbounded epicureanism. They
lived for the present hour, and for sensual pleasures. There was no
elevation of life. It was the body and not the soul, the present and not
the future, which alone concerned them. They were grossly material in
all their desires and habits. They squandered money on their banquets,
their stables, and their dress. And it was to their crimes, says
Juvenal, that they were indebted for their gardens, their palaces, their
tables, and their fine old plate. The day was portioned out in the
public places, in the bath, the banquet. Martial indignantly rebukes
these extravagances, as unable to purchase happiness, in his Epigram to
Quintus: "Because you purchase slaves at two hundred thousand sesterces;
because you drink wines stored during the reign of Numa; because your
furniture costs you a million; because a pound weight of wrought silver
costs you five thousand; because a golden chariot becomes yours at the
price of a whole farm; because your mule costs you more than the value
of a house--do not imagine that such expenses are the proof of a great
mind." [Footnote: Book iii. p. 62.]

Unbounded pride, insolence, inhumanity, selfishness, and scorn marked
this noble class. Of course there were exceptions, but the historians
and satirists give the saddest pictures of their cold-hearted depravity.
The sole result of friendship with a great man was a meal, at which
flattery and sycophancy were expected; but the best wine was drunk by
the host, instead of by the guest. Provinces were ransacked for fish and
fowl and game for the tables of the great, and sensualism was thought to
be no reproach. They violated the laws of chastity and decorum. They
scourged to death their slaves. They degraded their wives and sisters.
They patronized the most demoralizing sports. They enriched themselves
by usury, and enjoyed monopolies. They practiced no generosity, except
at their banquets, when ostentation balanced their avarice. They
measured every thing by the money-standard. They had no taste for
literature, but they rewarded sculptors and painters, if they
prostituted art to their vanity or passions. They had no reverence for
religion, and ridiculed the gods. Their distinguishing vices were
meanness and servility, the pursuit of money by every artifice, the
absence of honor, and unblushing sensuality.

[Sidenote: Gibbon's account of the nobles.]

[Sidenote: Sarcasms of Ammianus Marcellinus.]

Gibbon has eloquently abridged the remarks of Ammianus Marcellinus,
respecting these people: "They contend with each other in the empty
vanity of titles and surnames. They affect to multiply their likenesses
in statues of bronze or marble; nor are they satisfied unless these
statues are covered with plates of gold. They boast of the rent-rolls of
their estates. They measure their rank and consequence by the loftiness
of their chariots, and the weighty magnificence of their dress. Their
long robes of silk and purple float in the wind, and, as they are
agitated by art or accident, they discover the under garments, the rich
tunics embroidered with the figures of various animals. Followed by a
train of fifty servants, and tearing up the pavement, they move along
the streets as if they traveled with post-horses; and the example of the
senators is boldly imitated by the matrons and ladies, whose covered
carriages are continually driving round the immense space of the city
and suburbs. Whenever they condescend to enter the public baths, they
assume, on their entrance, a tone of loud and insolent command, and
maintain a haughty demeanor, which, perhaps, might have been excused in
the great Marcellus, after the conquest of Syracuse. Sometimes these
heroes undertake more arduous achievements: they visit their estates in
Italy, and procure themselves, by servile hands, the amusements of the
chase. And if, at any time, especially on a hot day, they have the
courage to sail in their gilded galleys from the Lucrine Lake to their
elegant villas on the sea-coast of Puteoli and Cargeta, they compare
these expeditions to the marches of Caesar and Alexander. Yet, should a
fly presume to settle on the silken folds of their gilded umbrellas,
should a sunbeam penetrate through some unguarded chink, they deplore
their intolerable hardships, and lament, in affected language, that they
were not born in the regions of eternal darkness. In the exercise of
domestic jurisdiction they express an exquisite sensibility for any
personal injury, and a contemptuous indifference for the rest of
mankind. When they have called for warm water, should a slave be tardy
in his obedience, he is chastised with an hundred lashes; should he
commit a willful murder, his master will mildly observe that he is a
worthless fellow, and should be punished if he repeat the offense. If a
foreigner of no contemptible rank be introduced to these senators, he is
welcomed with such warm professions that he retires charmed with their
affability; but when he repeats his visit, he is surprised and mortified
to find that his name, his person, and his country are forgotten. The
modest, the sober, and the learned are rarely invited to their sumptuous
banquets; but the most worthless of mankind--parasites who applaud every
look and gesture, who gaze with rapture on marble columns and variegated
pavements, and strenuously praise the pomp and elegance which he is
taught to consider as a part of his personal merit. At the Roman table,
the birds, the squirrels, the fish which appear of uncommon size, are
contemplated with curious attention, and notaries are summoned to
attest, by authentic record, their real weight. Another method of
introduction into the houses of the great is skill in games, which is a
sure road to wealth and reputation. A master of this sublime art, if
placed, at a supper, below a magistrate, displays in his countenance a
surprise and indignation which Cato might be supposed to feel when
refused the praetorship. The acquisition of knowledge seldom engages the
attention of the nobles, who abhor the fatigue and disdain the
advantages of study; and the only books they peruse are the 'Satires of
Juvenal,' or the fabulous histories of Marius Maximus. The libraries
they have inherited from their fathers are secluded, like dreary
sepulchres, from the light of day; but the costly instruments of the
theatre, flutes and hydraulic organs, are constructed for their use. In
their palaces sound is preferred to sense, and the care of the body to
that of the mind. The suspicion of a malady is of sufficient weight to
excuse the visits of the most intimate friends. The prospect of gain
will urge a rich and gouty senator as far as Spoleta; every sentiment of
arrogance and dignity is suppressed in the hope of an inheritance or
legacy, and a wealthy, childless citizen is the most powerful of the
Romans. The distress which follows and chastises extravagant luxury
often reduces the great to use the most humiliating expedients. When
they wish to borrow, they employ the base and supplicating style of the
slaves in the comedy; but when they are called upon to pay, they assume
the royal and tragic declamations of the grandsons of Hercules. If the
demand is repeated, they readily procure some trusty sycophant to
maintain a charge of poison or magic against the insolent creditor, who
is seldom released from prison until he has signed a discharge of the
whole debt. And these vices are mixed with a puerile superstition which
disgraces their understanding. They listen with confidence to the
productions of haru-spices, who pretend to read in the entrails of
victims the signs of future greatness and prosperity; and this
superstition is observed among those very skeptics who impiously deny or
doubt the existence of a celestial power." [Footnote: Found in the sixth
chapter of the fourteenth, and the fourth of the twenty-eighth, book of
Ammianus Marcellinus.]

Such, in the latter days of the empire, was the leading class at Rome,
and probably in the cities which aped the fashions of the capital. There
was a melancholy absence of elevation of sentiment, of patriotism, of
manly courage, and of dignity of character. Frivolity and luxury
loosened all the ties of society. The animating principle of their lives
was a heartless Epicureanism. They lived for the present hour, and for
their pleasures, indifferent to the great interests of the public, and
to the miseries of the poor. They were bound up in themselves. They were
grossly material in all their aims. They had lost all ideas of public
virtue. They degraded women; they oppressed the people; they laughed at
philanthropy; they could not be reached by elevated sentiments; they had
no concern for the future. Scornful, egotistical, haughty, self-
indulgent, affected, cynical, all their thoughts and conversation were
directed to frivolities. Nothing made any impression upon them but
passing vanities. They ignored both Heaven and Hell. They were like the
courtiers of Louis XV. in the most godless period of the monarchy. They
were worse, for they superadded pagan infidelities. There were memorable
exceptions, but not many, until Christianity had reached the throne.
"One after another, the nobles sunk into a lethargy almost without a
parallel. The proudest names of the old republic were finally associated
with the idlest amusements and the most preposterous novelties. A
Gabrius, a Callius, and a Crassus were immortalized by the elegance of
their dancing. A Lucullus, a Hortensius, a Philippus estimated one
another, not by their eloquence, their courage, or their virtue, but by
the perfection of their fish-ponds, and the singularity of the breeds
they nourished. They seemed to touch the sky with their finger if they
had stocked their preserves with bearded mullets, and taught them to
recognize their masters' voices, and come to be fed from their hands."
[Footnote: Merivale, chap. ii.]

[Sidenote: Condition of the people.]

As for the miserable class whom they oppressed, their condition became
worse every day from the accession of the emperors. The Plebeians had
ever disdained those arts which now occupy the middle classes. These
were intrusted to slaves. Originally, they employed themselves upon the
lands which had been obtained by conquest. But these lands were
gradually absorbed or usurped by the large proprietors. The small
farmers, oppressed with debt and usury, parted with their lands to their
wealthy creditors. In the time of Cicero, it was computed that there
were only about two thousand citizens possessed of independent property.
These two thousand people owned the world. The rest were dependent; and
they were powerless when deprived of political rights, for the great
candidate for public honors and offices liberally paid for votes. But
under the emperors the commons had subsided into a miserable populace,
fed from the public stores. They would have perished but for largesses.
Monthly distributions of corn were converted into daily allowance for
bread. They were amused with games and festivals. From the stately baths
they might be seen to issue without shoes and without a mantle. They
loitered in the public streets, and dissipated in gaming their miserable
pittance. They spent the hours of the night in the lowest resorts of
crime and misery. As many as four hundred thousand sometimes assembled
to witness the chariot races. The vast theatres were crowded to see male
and female dancers. The amphitheatres were still more largely attended
by the better populace. They expired in wretched apartments without
attracting the attention of government. Pestilence and famine and
squalid misery thinned their ranks, and they would have been annihilated
but for constant succession to their ranks from the provinces. In the
busy streets of Rome might be seen adventurers from all parts of the
world, disgraced by all the various vices of their respective countries.
They had no education, and but little of religious advantages. They were
held in terror by both priests and nobles. The priest terrified them
with Egyptian sorceries, the noble crushed them by iron weight. Like
Iazzaroni, they lived in the streets, or were crowded into filthy
apartments. Several families tenanted the same house. A gladiatorial
show delighted them, but the circus was their peculiar joy. Here they
sought to drown the consciousness of their squalid degradation. They
were sold into slavery for trifling debts. They had no home. The poor
man had no ambition or hope. His wife was a slave; his children were
precocious demons, whose prattle was the cry for bread, whose laughter
was the howl of pandemonium, whose sports were the tricks of premature
iniquity, whose beauty was the squalor of disease and filth. He fled
from a wife in whom he had no trust, from children in whom he had no
hope, from brothers for whom he felt no sympathy, from parents for whom
he felt no reverence. The circus was _his_ home, the wild beast
_his_ consolation. The future was a blank. Death was the release
from suffering. Historians and poets say but little of his degraded
existence; but from the few hints we have, we infer depravity and brutal
tastes. If degraded at all, they must have been very degraded, since the
Romans had but little sentiment, and no ideality. They were sunk in
vice, for they had no sense of responsibility. They never emerged from
their wretched condition. The philosophers, poets, scholars, and lawyers
of Rome, sprang uniformly from the aristocratic classes. In the
provinces, the poor sometimes rose, but very seldom. The whole aspect of
society was a fearful inequality--disproportionate fortunes, slavery,
and beggary. There was no middle class, of any influence or
consideration. It was for the interest of people without means to enroll
themselves in the service of the rich. Hence the immense numbers
employed in the palaces in menial work. They would have been enrolled in
the armies, but for their inefficiency. The army was recruited from the
provinces--the rural population--and even from the barbarians
themselves. There were no hospitals for the sick and the old, except one
on an island in the Tiber. The old and helpless were left to die,
unpitied and unconsoled. Suicide was so common that it attracted no
attention, but infanticide was not so marked, since there was so little
feeling of compassion for the future fate of the miserable children.
Superstition culminated at Rome, for there were seen the priests and
devotees of all the countries which it governed--"the dark-skinned
daughters of Isis, with drum and timbrel and wanton mien; devotees of
the Persian Mithras, imported by the Pompeians from Cilicia; emasculated
Asiatics, priests of Berecynthian Cybele, with their wild dances and
discordant cries; worshipers of the great goddess Diana; barbarian
captives with the rites of Teuton priests; Syrians, Jews, Chaldean
astrologers, and Thessalian sorcerers." Oh, what scenes of sin and
misery did that imperial capital witness in the third and fourth
centuries--sensualism and superstition, fears and tribulations,
pestilence and famine, even amid the pomps of senatorial families, and
the grandeur of palaces and temples. "The crowds which flocked to Rome
from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, brought with them
practices extremely demoralizing. The awful rites of initiation, the
tricks of magicians, the pretended virtues of amulets and charms, the
riddles of emblematical idolatry, with which the superstition of the
East abounded, amused the languid voluptuaries who neither had the
energy for a moral belief, nor the boldness requisite for logical
skepticism." They were brutal, bloodthirsty, callous to the sight of
suffering, and familiar with cruelties and crimes. They were
superstitious, without religious faith, without hope, and without God in
the world.