Books: The Old Roman World

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How different this poet's dinner, a table spread without luxury, and
enlivened by wit and friendship, from that which Petronius describes of
a rich freedman, which was more after the fashion of the vulgar and
luxurious gourmands of his day.

[Sidenote: Expensive furniture.]

Next to the pleasures of the table, the passion for expensive furniture
seemed to be the prevailing folly. We read of couches gemmed with
tortoise-shell, and tables of citron-wood from Africa. Silver and gold
vases, Tables, also, of Mauritanian marble, supported on pedestals of
Lybian ivory; cups of crystal; all sorts of silver plate, the
masterpieces of Myro, and the handiwork of Praxiteles, and the
engravings of Phidias. Gold services adorned the sideboard. Couches were
covered with purple silks. Chairs were elaborately carved; costly
mirrors hung against the walls, and bronze lamps were suspended from the
painted ceilings. But it was not always the most beautiful articles
which were most prized, but those which were procured with the greatest
difficulty, or brought from the remotest provinces. That which cost most
received uniformly the greatest admiration.

[Sidenote: Money making.]

If it were possible to allude to an evil more revolting than the sports
of the amphitheatre, or the extravagant luxuries of the table, I would
say that the universal abandonment to money-making, for the enjoyment of
the factitious pleasures it purchased, was even still more melancholy,
since it struck deeper into the foundations which supported society. The
leading spring of life was money. Boys were bred from early youth to all
the mysteries of unscrupulous gains. Usury was practiced to such an
incredible extent that the interest on loans, in some instances equaled,
in a few months, the whole capital. This was the more aristocratic mode
of making money, which not even senators disdained. The pages of the
poets show how profoundly money was prized, and how miserable were
people without it. Rich old bachelors, without heirs, were held in the
supremest honor. Money was the first object in all matrimonial
alliances, and provided that women were only wealthy, neither bridegroom
nor parent was fastidious as to age, or deformity, or meanness of
family, or vulgarity of person. The needy descendants of the old
Patricians yoked themselves with fortunate Plebeians, and the blooming
maidens of a comfortable obscurity sold themselves, without shame or
reluctance, to the bloated sensualists who could give them what they
supremely valued, chariots and diamonds. It was useless to appeal to
elevated sentiments when happiness consisted in an outside, factitious
life. The giddy women, in love with ornaments and dress, and the godless
men, seeking what they should eat, could only be satisfied with what
purchased their pleasures. The haughtiest aristocracy ever known on
earth, tracing their lineage to the times of Cato, and boasting of their
descent from the Scipios and the Pompeys, accustomed themselves at last
to regard money as the only test of their own social position. There was
no high social position disconnected with fortune. Even poets and
philosophers were neglected, and gladiators and buffoons preferred
before them. The great Augustine found himself utterly neglected at
Rome, because he was dependent on his pupils, and his pupils were mean
enough to run away without paying. Literature languished and died, since
it brought neither honor nor emolument. No dignitary was respected for
his office, only for his gains; nor was any office prized which did not
bring rich emoluments. And corruption was so universal, that an official
in an important post was sure of making a fortune in a short time. With
such an idolatry of money, all trades and professions fell into
disrepute which were not favorable to its accumulation, while those who
administered to the pleasures of a rich man were held in honor. Cooks,
buffoons, and dancers, received the consideration which artists and
philosophers enjoyed at Athens in the days of Pericles. But artists and
scholars were very few indeed in the more degenerate days of the empire.
Nor would they have had influence. The wit of a Petronius, the ridicule
of a Martial, the bitter sarcasm of a Juvenal, were lost on a people
abandoned to frivolous gossip and demoralizing excesses. The haughty
scorn with which a sensual beauty, living on the smiles and purse of a
fortunate glutton, would pass, in her gilded chariot, some of the
impoverished descendants of the great Camillus, might have provoked a
smile, had any one been found, even a neglected poet, to have given them
countenance and sympathy. But, alas! every body worshiped the shrine of
Mammon. Every body was valued for what he _had_, rather than for
what he _was_; and life was prized, not for those pleasures which
are cheap and free as heaven, not for quiet tastes and rich affections
and generous sympathies and intellectual genius,--the glorious
certitudes of love, esteem, and friendship, which, "be they what they
may, are yet the fountain-life of all our day,"--but for the
gratification of depraved and expensive tastes; those short-lived
enjoyments which ended with the decay of appetite, and the _ennui_
of realized expectation,--all of the earth, earthy; making a wreck of
the divine image which was made for God and heaven, and preparing the
way for a most fearful retribution, and producing, on contemplative
minds, a sadness allied with despair, driving them to caves and
solitudes, and making death the relief from sorrow. Cynicism, scorn,
unbelief, and disgusting coarseness and vulgarity, made grand sentiments
an idle dream. The fourteenth satire of Juvenal is directed mainly to
the universal passion for gain, and the demoralizing vices it brings in
its train, which made Rome a Pandemonium and a Vanity Fair.
"Flatterers," says he, "consider misers as men of happy minds, since
they admire wealth supremely, and think no instance can be found of a
poor man that is also happy; and therefore they exhort their sons to
apply themselves to the arts of money making. Come, boys; sack the
Numidian hovels and the forts of Brigantes, that your sixtieth year may
bestow on you the eagle which will make you rich. Or, if you shrink from
the long-protracted labors of the camp, then bring something that you
may profitably dispose of, and never let disgust of trade enter your
head, nor think that any difference can be drawn between perfumes and
leather. The smell of gain is good from any thing whatever. No one
asks you _how_ you get money, but _have_ it you must." The poet
Persius paints this passion for gold, displayed in the customs of the
day, in a strain at once lofty and mournful, bitter and satirical:
[Footnote: _Satire_ ii.]--

"O that I could my rich old uncle see
In funeral pomp! O that some deity
To pots of buried gold would guide my share!
O that my ward, whom I succeed as heir,
Were once at rest! Poor child! he lies in pain,
And death to him must be accounted gain.
By will thrice has Nerius swelled his store,
And now he is a widower once more.
O groveling souls, and void of things divine!
Why bring our passions to the immortal's shrine?"

The old Greek philosophers gloried in their poverty; but poverty was the
greatest reproach to a Roman. "In exact proportion to the sum of money a
man keeps in his chest," says Juvenal, [Footnote: _Satire_ iii.]
"is the credit given to his oath. And the first question ever asked of a
man is in reference to his income, rather than his character. How many
slaves does he keep? How many acres does he own? What dishes are his
table spread with?--these are the universal inquiries. Poverty, bitter
though it be, has no sharper sting than this,--that it makes them
ridiculous. Who was ever allowed at Rome to become a son-in-law if his
estate was inferior, and not a match for the portion of the young lady?
What poor man's name appears in any will? When is one summoned to a
consultation even by an aedile?"

"Long, long ago, in one despairing band,
The poor, self-exiled, should have left the land."

And with this reproach of poverty there was no means to escape from it.
Nor was there alleviation. A man was regarded as a fool who gave any
thing except to the rich. Charity and benevolence were unknown virtues.
The sick and the miserable were left to die unlamented and unknown.
Prosperity and success, no matter by what means they were purchased,
secured reverence and influence.

Indeed, the Romans were a worldly, selfish, Epicurean people, for whom
we can feel but little admiration in any age of the republic. They never
were finely moulded. They had no sentiment, unless in the earlier ages,
it took the form of glory and patriotism. In their prosperity, they were
proud and scornful. In adversity, they buried themselves in low
excesses. They were not easily moved by softening influences. They had
no lofty idealism, like the Greeks; nor were they even social, as they
were. They were disgustingly _practical. Oui bono?_--"who shall
show us any good?"--this was their by-word, this the sole principle of
their existence. They were jealous of their dignity, and carried away by
pomps and show. They were fond of etiquette and ceremony, and were
conventional in all their habits. They had very little true intellectual
independence, and were slaves of fashion as they were of ceremony and
dress. They were inordinately greedy of social position and of social
distinctions. They loved titles and surnames and inequalities of rank.
They plumed themselves on taking a common-sense view of life, disdaining
all lofty standards. They were dazzled by an outside life, and cared but
little for the great certitudes on which real dignity and happiness
rest. They had no conception of philanthropy. They lived for themselves.
Nor had they veneration for ideal worth or beauty or abstract truth.
They were reserved and reticent and haughty in social life. They were
superstitious, and believed in dreams and omens and talismans. They were
hospitable to their friends, but chiefly to display their wealth and
pomp. They were coarse and indecent in banquets. They loved money
supremely, but squandered it recklessly to gratify vanity. They had no
high conceptions of art. They were copyists of the Greeks, and never
produced any thing original but jurisprudence. They did not even add to
the arts and sciences, which they applied to practical purposes. Their
literature never produced a sentimentalist; their philosophy never
soared into idealism; their art never ventured upon new creations. Their
supreme ambition was to rule, and to rule despotically. They gloried in
slavery, and degraded women and trod upon the defenseless. They had no
pity, no gentleness, no delicacy of feeling. They could not comprehend a
disinterested action. They lived to eat and drink, and wear robes of
purple, and ride in chariots of silver, and receive greetings in the
market-place, and be attended by an army of sycophants, flatterers, and
slaves. What was elevated and what was pure were laughed at as unreal,
as dreamy, as transcendental. All science was directed to
_utilities_, and utilities were wines, rare fishes and birds,
carpets, silks, cooking, palaces, chariots, horses, pomps. Their supreme
idea was conquest, dominion over man, over beast, over seas, over
nature--all with a view of becoming rich, comfortable, honorable. This
was their Utopia. Epicurus was their god. Sensualism was the convertible
term for their utilities, and pervaded their literature, their social
life, and their public efforts; extinguishing poetry, friendship,
affections, genius, self-sacrifice, lofty sentiments--the real utilities
which make up our higher life, and fit man for an ever-expanding
felicity. Practically, they were atheists--unbelievers of what is fixed
and immutable in the soul, and glorious in the soul's aspirations. They
had will and passion, sagacity and the power to rule, by which they
became aggrandized; but they were wanting in those elements and virtues
which endear their memory to mankind. They were both tyrants and
sensualists; fitted to make conquests, unfitted to enjoy them. In an
important sense, they were great civilizers, but their civilization
pertained to material life. They worshiped the god of the sense, rather
than the god of the reason; and, compared with the Greeks, bequeathed
but little to our times which we value, except laws and maxims of
government, and ideas of centralized power.

Such was imperial Rome, in all the internal relations of life, and amid
all the trophies and praises which resulted from universal conquest. I
cannot understand the enthusiasm of Gibbon for such a people, or for
such an empire,--a grinding and resistless imperial despotism, a
sensual and proud aristocracy, a debased and ignorant populace,
disproportionate fortunes, slavery flourishing to a state unprecedented
in the world's history, women the victims and the toys of men, lax
sentiments of public morality, a whole people given over to demoralizing
sports and spectacles, pleasure the master passion of the people, money
the mainspring of society, all the vices which lead to violence and
prepare the way for the total eclipse of the glory of man. What was a
cultivated face of nature, or palaces, or pomps, or a splendid material
civilization, or great armies, or a numerous population, or the triumph
of energy and skill, when the moral health was completely undermined?
The external grandeur was nothing amid so much vice and wickedness and
wretchedness. A world, therefore, as fair and glorious as our own, must
needs crumble away. There were no proper conservative forces. The poison
had descended to the extremities of the social system. A corrupt body
must die when vitality had fled. The soul was gone. Principle,
patriotism, virtue, had all passed away. The barbarians were advancing
to conquer and desolate. There was no power to resist them, but
enervated and timid legions, with the accumulated vices of all the
nations of the earth, which they had been learning for four hundred
years. Society must needs resolve itself into its original elements when
men would not make sacrifices, and so few belonged to their country. The
machine was sure to break up at the first great shock. No state could
stand with such an accumulation of wrongs, with such complicated and
fatal diseases eating out the vitals of the empire. The house was built
upon the sands. The army may have rallied under able generals, in view
of the approaching catastrophe; philosophy may have gilded the days of a
few indignant citizens; good emperors may have attempted to raise
barriers against corruption; and even Christianity may have converted by
thousands: still nothing, according to natural laws, could save the
empire. It was doomed. Retributive justice must march on in its majestic
course. The empire had accomplished its mission. The time came for it to
die. The Sibylline oracle must needs be fulfilled: "O haughty Rome, the
divine chastisement shall come upon thee; the fire shall consume thee;
thy wealth shall perish; foxes and wolves shall dwell among thy ruins:
and then what land that thou hast enslaved shall be thy ally, and which
of thy gods shall save thee? for there shall be confusion over the face
of the whole earth, and the fall of cities shall come." [Footnote: If
any one thinks this general description of Roman life and manners
exaggerated, he can turn from such poets as Juvenal and Martial, and
read what St. Pani says in the first chapter of the _Epistle to the
Romans._]

* * * * *

REFERENCES.--Mr. Merivale has written most fully of modern writers on
the condition of the empire. Gibbon has occasional paragraphs which show
the condition of Roman society. Lyman's Life of the Emperors should be
read, and also DeQuincy's Lives of the Caesars. See, also, Niebuhr,
Arnold, and Mommsen, though these writers have chiefly confined
themselves to republican Rome. But, if one would get the truest and most
vivid description, he must read the Roman poets, especially Juvenal and
Martial. The work of Petronius is too indecent to be read. Ammianus
Marcellinus gives us some striking pictures of the latter Romans.
Suetonius, in his Lives of the Caesars, furnishes many facts. Becker's
Gallus is a fine description of Roman habits and customs. Smith's
Dictionary of Antiquities should be consulted, as it is a great
thesaurus of important facts. Lucian does not describe Roman manners,
but he aims his sarcasms on the hollowness of Roman life, as do the
great satirists generally. Tillemont is the basis of Gibbon's history,
so far as pertains to the emperors.

CHAPTER XI.

THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE.

We have contemplated the grandeur and the glory of the Roman empire; and
we have also seen, in connection with the magnificent triumphs of art,
science, literature, and philosophy, a melancholy degradation of
society, so fatal and universal, that all strength was undermined, and
nothing was left but worn-out mechanisms and lifeless forms to resist
the pressure of external enemies. So vast, so strong, so proud was this
empire, that no one dreamed it could ever be subverted. With all the
miseries of the people, with that hateful demoralization which pervaded
all classes and orders and interests, there was still a splendid
external, which called forth general panegyrics, and the idea of public
danger was derided or discredited. If Rome, in the infancy of the
republic, had resisted the invading Gauls, what was there to fear from
the half-naked barbarians who lived beyond the boundaries of the empire?
The long-continued peace and prosperity had engendered not merely the
vices of self-interest, those destructive cankers which ever insure a
ruin, but a general feeling of security and self-exaggeration. The
eternal city was still prosperous and proud, the centre of all that was
grand in the civilization of the ancient world. Provincial cities vied
with the capital in luxuries, in pomps, in sports, and in commercial
wealth. The cultivated face of nature betokened universal prosperity.
Nothing was wanting but energy, genius, and virtue among the people.

[Sidenote: Prosperity deceptive.]

But all this prosperity was deceptive. All was rotten and hollow at
heart; and, had there not been universal delusion, it would have been
apparent that the machine would break up at the first great shock. There
was no spring in the splendid mechanism. It was broken, and society had
really been retrograding from the time of Trajan--from the moment that
it had completed its task of conquest. There was a strange torpor
everywhere, so soon as external antagonism had ceased, and if the
barbarians had not come the empire would have been disintegrated, and
would scarcely have lasted two centuries longer.

[Sidenote: The empire had fulfilled its mission.]

Moreover, the empire had fulfilled its mission. It had conquered the
world that a great centralization of power might be created, under which
peace and plenty might reign, and a new religion might spread.

Still, whatever the plans of Providence may have been in allowing that
imperial despotism to grow and spread from the banks of the Tiber to the
uttermost parts of the civilized world, we cannot but feel that a great
retribution was deserved for the crimes which Rome had committed upon
mankind. He that takes the sword shall perish with the sword. Rome had
drank of the blood of millions, and was foul with all the abominations
of the countries she had subdued, and her turn must come, and a new race
must try new experiments for humanity.

[Sidenote: War the instrument of punishment.]

The great instrument of God in punishing wicked nations and effecting
important changes, is war. There are other forms or divine displeasure.
Plague, pestilence, and famine are often sent upon degraded peoples. But
these are either the necessary attendants on war itself, or they are
limited and transient. They do not produce the great revolutions in
which new ideas are born and new forms of social life arise.

But war seems to be the ultimate scourge of God, when he dooms nations
to destruction, or to great changes. It combines within itself all kinds
of evil and calamity--poverty, sickness, captivity, disgrace, and
death. A conquered nation is most forlorn and dismal. The song of the
conquered is--"By the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept."

The passions which produce war are born in hell. They are pride,
ambition, cruelty, avarice, and lust. These are the natural causes which
array nation against nation, or people against people. But these are
second causes. The primary cause is God, who useth the passions and
interests of men, as his instruments of punishment.

[Sidenote: Illustrated by the history of nations.]

How impressive the history of the different civilized nations, which
formed so large a part of the universal monarchy of the Romans. Assyria,
Egypt, Persia, Asia Minor, Palestine, Greece, had successively been
great empires and states--independent and conquering. They arose from
the prevalence of martial virtues, of courage, temperance, fortitude,
allied with ambition and poverty. Then monarchs craved greater power and
possessions. Their passions were inexcusable; but they possessed men who
were powerful and not enslaved to enervating vices. They made war on
nations sunk in effeminacy and vile idolatries--men worse than they. The
conquered nations needed chastisement and reconstruction; and,
generally, by their blindness and arrogance, provoked the issue. Wealth
and power had inflated them with false security, with egotistic aims; or
else had enervated them and undermined their strength. They became
subject to a stronger power. Their pride was buried in the dust. They
became enslaved, miserable, ruined. They were punished in as signal,
though not miraculous manner, as the Antediluvians, or the cities of
Sodom and Gomorrah. The same hand, _however_, is seen in vengeance
and in mercy. They regained in adversity the strength they had lost in
prosperity, and civilization lost nothing by their sufferings.

[Sidenote: Wars over-ruled.]

The conquering powers, in their turn, became powerful, wealthy, and
corrupt. Effeminacy and weakness succeeded; war came upon them, and they
became the prey of the stronger. Their conquerors, again, were enslaved
by their vices, and their empire passed away in the same gloom and
despair.

We see, however, in each successive conquest, the destruction, not of
civilization, but of men. Countries are overrun, thrones are subverted,
the rich are made slaves, the proud utter cries of despair; but the land
survives, and arts and science take a new direction, and the new masters
are more interested in great improvements than the old tyrants. The
condition of Babylonia was probably better for the Persian conquest,
while the whole oriental world gained by the wars of Alexander. Grecian
culture succeeded Persian misrule. The Romans came and took away from
Grecian dynasties, in Asia and Egypt, when they became enfeebled by
prosperity and self-indulgence, the powers they had usurped, without
destroying Grecian civilization. That remained, and will remain, in some
form, forever, as an heirloom of priceless value to all future nations.
The Greeks, when they conquered the Persians, had also spared the most
precious monuments of their former industry and genius. The Romans,
also, when they conquered Greece itself, guarded and prized her peculiar
contributions to mankind. And they gave to all these conquered
territories, something of their own. They gave laws, and a good
government. The Grecian and Asiatic cities were humiliated by what they
regarded as barbaric inroads; for the culture of Athens, Corinth,
Antioch, and Ephesus, was higher than that of Rome, at that time; but
who can doubt a beneficent change in the administration of public
affairs? Society was doubtless improved everywhere by the Roman
conquests. It is not probable that Athens, after she became tributary to
Rome, was equal to the Athens of Pericles and Plato; but it is probable
that society in Athens was better than what it was for a century before
her fall. But what if particular cities suffered? These did not
constitute the whole country. Can it be doubted that Syria, as a
province, enjoyed more rational liberty and more scope for energy, under
the Roman rule, than under that of the degenerate scions of the old
Grecian kings? We see a retribution in the conquest, and also a blessing
in disguise.

[Sidenote: The Celtic nations.]

But still more forcibly are these truths illustrated in the conquest of
the Celtic nations of Europe. They were barbarians; they had neither
science, nor literature, nor art; they were given over to perpetual
quarrels, and to rude pleasures. Ignorance, superstition, and
unrestrained passions were the main features of society. Other rude
warriors wandered from place to place, with no other end than pillage.
They had fine elements of character, but they needed civilization. They
were conquered. The Romans taught them laws, and language, and
literature, and arts. Cities arose among them, and these conquered
barbarians became the friends of order and peace, and formed the most
prosperous part of the whole empire. It was from these Celtic nations
that the Roman armies were recruited. The great men of Rome, in the
second and third centuries, came from these Celtic provinces. They
infused a new blood into the decaying body. Who can doubt the benefit to
mankind by the conquests of Britain, of Gaul, and of Spain? The Romans
proved the greatest civilizers of the ancient world, with all their
arrogance and want of appreciation of those things which gave a glory to
the Greeks. They introduced among the barbaric nations their own arts,
language, literature, and laws; and the civilization which they taught
never passed away. It was obscured, indeed, during the revolutions which
succeeded the fall of the empire, but it was gradually revived, and
beamed with added lustre when its merits were at last perceived.