The feeling of noblesse oblige was strongly implanted in this senatorial class. The wealth of most members also put them above the more sordid temptations. The senator was not permitted to undertake any mercantile or financial business. The ancient notion still survived, that the only really honourable occupations for money were war and agriculture. The senator might own land and dispose of its produce or receive its rents, but he could not, for instance, be a money-lender or tax-farmer. Sometimes, no doubt, a senator evaded these provisions by employing a "dummy," but we must not probe too deep under the surface. In compensation for this disability it was from the senatorial class that were drawn all the governors of the important provinces, except Egypt, and all the higher military officers. In these capacities they received salaries. The governor of Africa, for example, was paid L10,000 a year.

Such men were no mere inexperienced aristocrats or plutocrats. They had regularly passed through a military training in youth, and had then held a minor civil appointment, commonly involving some knowledge of public finance. Next they had passed into the Senate and taken part in its business; had then held other public offices which taught them practical administration and probably legal procedure; and had afterwards been put in command of a "legion," that is to say, a brigade or corps d'armee. After performing such functions with credit, a senator might be sent to govern Syria or Macedonia or Britain or some other province. He was then a man of varied experience and ripe judgment, trained in official discipline and etiquette, as well as in knowledge. This was the kind of man whom Paul met in Cyprus in the person of the governor Sergius Paulus, or at Corinth in the person of Gallio.

Certain smaller provinces might be administered by men of another order, who were neither filled with the senatorial traditions nor had passed through the senatorial career. These were but "factors" or "agents" of Caesar, and among them were the Pontius Pilate, Felix, and Festus, who were administrators of Judaea in New Testament times.

Next in rank to the senatorial order stood that of the "Knights." If the senators represent, in a certain sense, the peerage and baronetage, the next order represents—also in a certain sense.—the knightage. Generally speaking, it comprehended what we should call the upper middle classes, and particularly those concerned in the higher walks of finance; such persons as, with us, would be the directors or managers of great companies and banks. It also included persons whom the head of the state chose to honour with something less than senatorial standing. Many of these men were extremely wealthy, but the minimum property qualification stood at only L3200, and Roman citizens who possessed that amount were rather apt to pose as knights, and to be commonly spoken of as such by a kind of courtesy title, although their names could not be found upon the authorised rolls. Though several emperors did their best to stop this practice, the endeavour was for the most part fruitless. Once in England the "esquires" were a class with certain recognised claims, but nothing could stop the polite tendency to add "Esq." to the name of a person on a private letter. The case was somewhat similar at Rome, although the practice did not proceed quite so far.

Nevertheless there was a distinct and official roll of "Roman knights," whom the head of the state had honoured with a public present of "the gold ring," a ceremony corresponding to the royal sword-stroke of modern times. This body, mounted on horses nominally presented by the public, and riding in procession through the streets, was reviewed and revised every year. Their roll was called, and if a name was omitted from its proper place, it meant—without explanation necessary—that by the pleasure of the emperor the person in question had ceased to be a knight. Every member of the already-mentioned higher or senatorial order was by right a knight until he actually became a senator, from which time he ceased to enjoy the privileges of a knight because he was enjoying those of the higher order rank. For there were privileges as well as disabilities in each case. As a senator could govern large provinces and command armies, but could not engage in purely financial business; so the knight could—and almost alone did—conduct the large financial enterprises of the Roman world, but could not command armies nor hold any of the great public offices or higher provincial appointments, except the governorship of Egypt. Relatively to the senators the emperor was technically only "first among equals"; he was the first senator, as well as the first man of the state. At this date a senator would hold a truly public office, civil or military, with or under this "superior equal," but he would not act as his personal agent or assistant. The Roman aristocrat had not yet learned to serve in that capacity, still less on the "household" staff of the autocrat. There were as yet no highly placed Romans serving as Lord High Chamberlain, much less as Private Secretary. The "knights" stood in a different position. They were prepared to be the emperor's personal agents, just as they were prepared to be the agents of any one else, if sufficiently remunerated. They would take his personal orders, whether in managing his estates, collecting his provincial revenues, or relieving him of some routine portion of his own official labour.

It follows that it was often more lucrative to be a knight than a senator, and a number of senators were not unwilling to give up their rank, for the same reasons which induce a modern peer to serve on companies or a peeress to open a shop. On the other hand many a knight would have declined to become a senator, at least until he had sufficiently feathered his nest. The inducement to become or remain a senator was the social rank, the honour and dignity, with their outward insignia and the deference paid to them, the front seat, and the reception at court. In these the wives also shared, and at Rome the influence of the wife could not be disregarded.

If you met a senator, or a person of senatorial rank, in the street, you would know him for such by the broad band of purple which ran down the front, and probably also down the back, of his tunic, and by the silver or ivory crescent which he wore upon his black shoes. His wife, it is perhaps needless to say made even more show of what is called the "broad stripe." If you met a knight, you would perceive his standing by his two narrow stripes of purple appearing upon the same part of his dress. Each would wear a gold ring; but that in itself would prove nothing, since, despite all attempts at prohibiting the custom, every Roman who could afford a gold ring permitted himself that luxury.

If you entered one of the large semicircular theatres, which are to be described in due course, you would find that the men wearing the broad stripe seated themselves in the chairs which stood upon the level in front of the stage, while those wearing the narrow stripes would occupy the first fourteen tiers of seats rising just behind them. No one else might, occupy those places. If some one who had been improperly posing as a knight, or who had been degraded from his rank because he had wasted his credit and his money and no longer possessed either L3200 or a reputation, ventured to seat himself in the fourteen rows in the hope of being unnoticed, he would be speedily called upon by the usher to withdraw. Snobs occasionally made the attempt, and, at a somewhat later date, we have an amusing epigram of Martial concerning one who repeatedly but unsuccessfully dodged the usher and who was at last compelled to kneel in the gangway opposite the end of the fourteenth row, where it might look to those behind as if he were sitting among the knights, while technically he could claim that he was not sitting at all.

Elsewhere also, as for instance at the chariot-races in the Circus, and at the gladiatorial shows in the amphitheatre, there were special places set apart for the two orders.

Below the senators and the knights came the "people,"—the "commons," or "third estate"—with all its usual grades and its usual variety of occupation or no occupation, of manners and character or absence of both. With the life of these, as with the life of a noble, we shall deal at the proper time.

So much for the Roman citizen proper. Other elements of the population were the foreigners. At Rome these were exceedingly numerous, and the city may in this respect be called—as indeed it was called—a microcosm, a small copy or epitome of the Roman world. Gauls, Africans, Greeks, Jews, Syrians, and Egyptians were perhaps the most commonly to be seen, but particularly prominent were the Greeks and the Jews. The Greeks were recognised above all as the clever men, the artists, the social entertainers, and the literary guides. The Jews, who formed a sort of colony in what is now known as Trastevere—the low-lying quarter across the Tiber—were not yet the princes of high finance. As yet they were chiefly the hucksters and petty traders, notorious for their strange habits and for the fanaticism of their religion, which nevertheless exercised a strange potency and made many proselytes even in high places, especially among the women. Poppaea, the wife of Nero himself, is commonly considered to have been such a proselyte, although the strange notion that she herself was a Jewess is without any sort of foundation. It is a common error to suppose that the Jews came to Rome only after the destruction of Jerusalem. The dispersion had occurred long before Rome had anything to do with Judaea, and naturally the enterprising Jew was to be found in all profitable places, whether in Alexandria, Antioch, Smyrna, Corinth, Rome, or farther afield.

In the political sense all these foreigners belonged to their own provinces and communities. They might be citizens there, but they were not citizens at Rome. At Rome they had no public claims and no official career, unless—as not seldom happened—they received, for some service or some distinction, the gift of the Roman citizenship. Sometimes the citizenship was given wholesale to a town, or even to a province. How the Hebrew father or grandfather of St. Paul became a Roman citizen, we do not know. Their own abilities or the emperor's favour might carry such citizens, or their children, up all the steps which were open to the ordinary Roman.

After the foreigners come the slaves. At Rome itself they formed about one-third of the population. This is not the moment for any detailed account of their employment, their treatment, or their liberation.

Suffice it for the present that the slave possessed no rights at all. He was the chattel of his master, who possessed over him the full power of life and death, limited only by public opinion and prudential considerations. A Roman might have at his disposal one slave or ten thousand slaves. He could use them as he liked, kill them if he chose, and, subject to certain limitations, set them free if he willed, provided that he did not set too many free at once. The last restriction was especially necessary, inasmuch as a slave who was manumitted by his master with the proper ceremonies became ipso facto a Roman citizen, but was still bound by certain ties of loyalty to his former master. For a Roman to possess too large an attachment of "freedmen," as they were called, might prove dangerous. The "freedman," though a citizen, could not himself enter upon a public career; neither, in ordinary circumstances, could his children; but in the third generation the family stood on an entire equality with any other Roman family in that respect.

For the present it may be added that our conception of the meaning of the word "slave" must not be that attached to its modern use. Many such slaves were men of great special or general ability, or men of high culture, especially if Greeks, Syrians, Jews, or Egyptians. They were frequently superior to their masters, and subsequently, as free citizens, added much to either the refinement or the over-refinement of Roman life. Perhaps it is as well, in passing, to point out that the later Roman people was in no small degree descended from all this aggregation of foreigners and emancipated slaves, and that we must speak with the greatest reservation when we describe the modern Roman as a direct descendant of the ancient stock who fought with Hannibal and subjugated the world.



CHAPTER V

NERO THE EMPEROR

Roughly then this is the situation at the centre of government. Sumptuously housed on the Palatine Hill—the origin of our word "palace"—is His Highness Claudius Nero, Head of the State, Commander-in-Chief of the Forces, Empowered to act as Tribune of the People, and Head of the State Religion: in modern times commonly called "the Emperor." Every day and night his palace is surrounded by a regiment of the Imperial Guards, and attached to his person is a special corps for bodyguard, and orderlies. In practice, whatever be the theory, he possesses the control of legislation and appointments; upon him practically depends all recognised distinction of social rank. Down below, to the side of the Forum, is the Senate-House, in which there gathers, twice each month, and oftener if summoned, the great deliberative body which, in spite of all disturbances, civil wars, and limitations or broadenings of its power, is the continuation of the assembly of grave Roman fathers who first met some eight hundred years before. These men, who are of birth and wealth and commonly of sound public training, are the nominal upholders and directors of the commonwealth, still left to perform many functions and to administer the more peaceful provinces in their own way—especially if they relieve the emperor of trouble—but in practice controlled by His Highness whenever and however it suits his purpose. They and the emperor form a partnership in authority, but the Senate is very distinctly the junior partner. They lend him advice or sanction when he seeks it, and they sometimes act as a break on his impetuosity. It is not well to alienate them, for they are proud; they are jointly, sometimes individually, powerful; and their moral weight with army and public is not to be despised.

Thus stands the central government, while socially there follows the order of the Knights, depending for their rank upon the emperor, and in many cases serving in his employ. Below these the populace, of whose rights and liberties the emperor is an official champion to whom theoretically any Roman citizen can appeal against a sentence of death or against cruel wrong. It is hard to conceive of a stronger position for one man to hold.

When we survey this vast aggregation of various provinces, with their differences of race, language, religion, and habits; when we remember that it was on the whole strictly, energetically, and legally administered; it is hard—even allowing for a wise Senate and capable ministers—to realise a man competent for the position.

Yet Augustus had been conspicuously successful, and Tiberius not less so; Claudius, despite a certain weakness, cannot by any means be called a failure; after Nero, Vespasian and Titus were capable enough; while Trajan deserves nothing but admiration. On the other hand Caligula, it is true, had had more than a touch of the madman in his composition, and had believed himself to be omnipotent and on a level with Jupiter. Nero had begun well, but had been led by vanity, vice, and extravagance to an astounding pitch of folly and oppression. Nevertheless it must be remarked, and it should be firmly emphasised, that what is called the tyranny of Caligula and Nero is mainly—and in Caligula's case almost solely—a tyranny affecting the Romans themselves, affecting the lives and property of the Roman senators and other prominent persons, and affecting the lives and honour of their wives and daughters. The outcry against these two emperors comes from the Romans, not from the subject peoples. At least in Caligula's case the provinces were as peaceful and prosperous as at other times. It is true that the madman once meant to insist on the Jews putting up his own statue in the temple at Jerusalem, but this was because his vanity was aggrieved by their unwillingness. Under Nero the case is much the same. His tyranny for the most part took the shape of cruelty, insult, and plunder in Rome itself. It was only when he was becoming hopelessly in debt that he began to plunder the provinces as well as Italy by demanding contributions of money, and in particular to seize upon Greek works of art without paying for them. It is a mistake to think of Nero as habitually and without scruple trampling under his blood-stained foot the rights and privileges of the provinces, or grinding from them the last penny, or harrying, slaying, and violating throughout the empire.

There is nothing to show that, during the greater part of his reign, the provinces at large felt any material difference between the rule of Nero and the rule of Claudius, or that they rejoiced particularly in his fall. In many quarters he was a favourite. In the latter half of his reign he made himself a brute beast, and often a fool, in the eyes of respectable Romans. But it was, as still more with Caligula, rather in his immediate environment that his tyranny was felt to be intolerable; that is to say, among the men and women who had the misfortune to come in his way with sufficient attraction of purse or beauty to awaken his cupidity. And these were the Romans themselves, senators and knights, not the populace, and in but a small degree, if at all, the provincials in Spain or Greece or Palestine.



Perhaps this is the time to look for a little while at this Nero, whose name has deservedly passed into a byword for heartless bestiality. In the year 64 he is 27 years of age, and has been seated on the throne for ten years. Four years more are to elapse before he perishes with the cry, "What an artist the world is losing!" In his early years his vicious propensities, inherited from an abominable father, had been kept in check partly by his preceptor, the philosopher Seneca, and by Burrus, the commander of the Imperial Guards, partly by his domineering and furious-tempered mother, Agrippina, who seems to have so closely resembled the mother of Lord Byron. But at this date he had got rid of both his tutors. Burrus was dead, probably by poison, and Seneca was in forced retirement. The emperor had also caused his own mother to be murdered. Poisoning, strangling, drowning, or a command—explicit or implied—to depart this life, were his ways of shaking off any incubus upon a free indulgence of his will. His follies and vices had revealed themselves from the first, and had gone to outrageous lengths, but now he is entirely unhampered in exhibiting them.



Educated slightly in philosophy, but better in music and letters, he could speak, like others of his day, Greek as well as his native Latin. His aim was to be an "artist," but if the want of balance which too often goes with what is called the "artistic temperament" ever manifested itself in its worst form, it was in Nero. Apart from his passion for music and verse, he developed an early mania for horse-racing, and when he was caught talking in school—where such conversation was forbidden—about a charioteer who had fallen out of his chariot and been dragged along the ground, he explained that he was discussing the passage in Homer where Achilles drags the body of Hector round the walls of Troy. In after life he carried both forms of mania to amazing lengths. The highest form of music was then represented by singing to the harp. Nero's ambition was no less than to compete with the champion minstrels of the world. As he remarked, "music is not music unless it is heard," and he decided to make public appearances upon the stage like any professional. Whenever he did so, a number of energetic youths, salaried for the purpose, were distributed among the audience as claqueurs—the words actually used for them being perhaps translatable as "boomers" or "rattlers." He acted parts in plays—a proceeding which would correspond to an appearance in opera—and made a peregrination through Greece and back by way of Naples as an exponent of the art of singing to the harp. While upon this tour, whenever he was performing in the theatre, the doors were shut, and no one might leave the building for any reason whatever. "Many," says the memoir-writer, "got so tired of listening and praising that they jumped down from the wall, or pretended to be dead, so as to get carried out." Naturally he always won the prize, and, on his side, it should be remarked that he honestly believed he had earned it. He practised assiduously, took hard physical training, regulated his diet for the cultivation of his voice, which was not naturally of the best, and probably became not at all a bad amateur. His monstrous self-conceit did the rest. Besides singing to the harp, he was prepared to perform upon the flute and the bagpipes, and to give a dance afterwards. All this, of course, was undignified and ridiculous, but it was scarcely tyranny. Doubtless there was sufficient suffering among the audience, but that cruelty was hardly deliberate. In the Roman noble, whose ideal of behaviour included dignity and gravity, these public appearances perhaps often aroused more indignation and scorn than did his sensual vices. The same contempt was often evoked by other proceedings of a similar nature. His insatiable fondness for horse-racing, or rather chariot-racing, induced him to appear also as a charioteer. First he practised in his extensive private park or gardens, which were situated across the Tiber on the ground now approximately occupied by St. Peter's and the Vatican. When he appeared at the Olympic games driving a team of ten horses, he was thrown out of the car, and had to be lifted into it again. Though he was eventually compelled to abandon the race, he was, of course, crowned victor all the same. He dabbled also in painting and modelling.

We must not dwell too long upon his eccentricities. One might describe how in his earlier years he often put on mufti and roamed the streets at night with a few choice Mohawks, broke into shops, and insulted respectable citizens, throwing them into the drains if they resisted; how, being unrecognized, he once received a sound thrashing from a person of the senatorial order, and was thereafter attended on such occasions by police following at a distance. One might describe his dicing at L3 or L4 a pip, or his banquets, at one of which he paid as much as L30,000 for roses from Alexandria. After the great conflagration which swept over a large part of Rome in this very year 64 he began to build his enormous Golden House, in which stood a colossal effigy of himself 120 feet high, and in which the circuit of the colonnade made three Roman miles. Whether he deliberately set fire to the city in order to make room for this stupendous palace is open to doubt. It was naturally believed at the time, and, in order to divert suspicion from himself, he turned it upon those persons for whom the Roman populace had at that moment the greatest contempt, because, as the historian puts it, of their pestilent superstition and of a profound suspicion that they harboured a "hatred of the human race." These were the new sect of the Christians, and with burning Christians did Nero proceed to light up his gardens on one famous night, as a means of placating the populace whom he had offended, but who for the most part loved him for his misplaced generosity in the matter of "bread and sports." The tolerant attitude of the Romans towards foreign religions will be discussed in its own place; but the cruelty of a Nero in the year 64 can hardly be put down as properly a religious persecution in any way typical of the Roman government.

The sensual vices of Nero are indescribable, and that word must suffice. His extravagances, whether in lavish presents or in personal expenditure, soon rendered him bankrupt. He had no means of paying the soldiers or meeting his own appetites. Then began, or increased, his attacks on wealthy persons, his executions and banishments of senators and other wealthy men, and his flimsy pretexts for all manner of confiscation. The Senate he hated and the Senate hated him. Nevertheless, so far as the empire itself was concerned, no systematic or widespread oppression can have been perceptible. His officers and the officers of the Senate were apparently all the time governing and administering the law and the taxation throughout the empire in as sound and steady a way as if an Augustus sat upon the throne.

If we wish to picture Nero to ourselves, here is his description: "He was of a fairly good height; his skin was blotched, and his odour unpleasant; his hair was inclined to be yellow; his face was more handsome than attractive; his eyes were grayish-blue and short-sighted; his neck was fat; he was protuberant below the waist; his legs were very slender; his health was good."

Such was the man to whom St. Paul elected to have his case referred, when at Caesarea he exercised his privilege as a Roman citizen and appealed to the titular protector of the commons. "Thou hast appealed unto Caesar, and unto Caesar shalt thou go." There is indeed no great probability that the apostle was ever brought directly before this precious emperor. We may perhaps draw from bur inner consciousness elaborate and interesting pictures of the two men confronting each other, but we must not forget that they will be pure imagination. The appeal of a citizen did not imply such right to an interview, for the Caesar in such minor cases commonly delegated his powers to other judicial authorities at Rome. Paul's object was gained if his case was safely removed from the local influences of Judaea and the weaker policy of its governor, the "agent of Caesar," to the capital with its broader-minded men and its superiority to small bribes and local interference.



CHAPTER VI

ADMINISTRATION AND TAXATION OF THE EMPIRE

We are now brought to the consideration of the methods by which this huge empire was organised and governed.

And first let us observe that the Romans—strict disciplinarians and great lawyers as they were—never sought to impose upon the subject provinces any uniformity. They never sought, any more than Great Britain has sought, to erect one code of law, one form of administration, one standard of rights, one rate of taxation, one religion, and to make it equally applicable to Spain and Britain, Greece and Africa, Gaul and Asia Minor. There were, of course, common to all the empire certain rules essential to civilisation, certain natural laws and laws of all nations. Murder, violence, robbery, deliberate sacrilege, and so forth were punishable everywhere, though not necessarily by the same authority nor in the same manner. Necessarily it was held everywhere that contracts must be fulfilled and debts paid. Beyond the fact that Rome demanded peace and order and the essentials of civilised life, and provided machinery to secure those ends, she troubled little about differences of local procedure and varieties of local law, so long as the Roman rule was duly recognised and the Roman taxes duly paid. As with Great Britain, her care was for results, not for machinery, or, as the great Roman historian puts it, she "valued the reality of the empire, not the show."

Outside Italy there spread the provinces. These had been conquered or peacefully annexed at various times. A number of small states had come in by perpetual alliance. Some provinces, such as Gaul, had formerly been divided among tribes and tribal chiefs. Some, such as Greece, had consisted of highly civilised city-communities with small territories and managing their own affairs, although they might all alike be acknowledging the suzerainty of some powerful prince. Some, such as Cappadocia, Syria, and Egypt, had been under their native kings. Judaea was a peculiar example of a small theocratic state, in which the chief power lay with the priests.

Rome was too wise to meddle more than she need with existing conditions. She preferred as far as possible to accept the existing machinery and to use it, with only necessary modifications, as her instrument of administration. To the Sanhedrin at Jerusalem, for example, she conceded a large criminal jurisdiction over ecclesiastical offenders, so long as that jurisdiction did not limit the universal rights of a "Roman citizen."

When a province was conquered, all its territory became technically the property of the Roman state. Some of it was kept as such, and mines of gold, silver, lead, iron, and salt, or quarries of marble, granite, and gravel, were commonly annexed as state property. If it was expedient to allot some portion of the conquered land to a Roman settlement—commonly a settlement of veteran soldiers called a "colony"—that was done. Such a settlement meant the founding of a town, to which was granted a certain environment of land. Those who took part in its formation were "Roman citizens" and forfeited no rights as such. As the native people came in from the surrounding districts to reside in it, they also, it appears, somewhat easily acquired similar privileges. Here the Roman law existed in its entirety. A colony was almost exactly a little Rome in respect of its system of officers and its legal procedure. Sometimes a town which had not originally been so founded might be made a "colony" by receiving a draft of Romans, and sometimes it was made such in sheer compliment. In the Eastern half of the empire such settlements were comparatively rare; they were but dots upon the map, as at Corinth, Philippi, Antioch in Pisidia, or Caesarea. In the West they were much more numerous. The south of France contained many; a number also existed in southern Spain. So many indeed were planted in these parts that they became, as has been already remarked, completely romanized. Farther north Cologne still perpetuates its Roman name of Colonia. Nevertheless in the West the bulk of the land of the provinces is far from being taken up, in the year 64, by colonies.

Apart from the lands thus appropriated, what happens to the rest of the conquered territory which is theoretically Roman property? Generally it is handed back to its original inhabitants, on condition that they pay rent for it, whether in money or in kind, or partly in each. Egypt pays in kind when it sends to Rome the corn in the great merchantmen; Africa pays in kind when it does the same; the Frisians of Holland pay in kind when they supply a certain quantity of hides. Before the days of the Emperor Augustus there had existed for the empire in general the abominable system of tithes, which were farmed by companies. But after him, and at our date, for the most part the payment is by a fixed sum of money, which has been calculated upon the basis of those tithes. In the imperial Record Office there is a register of the area of land in a given province, and an assessment of its producing value. The amount of the land-tax to be paid into the Roman treasury is therefore fixed. Those who read in the New Testament that Augustus Caesar sent forth an order that "all the world—that is, the Roman world—should be taxed" need find no difficulty in understanding what it means. "Taxed" is Old English for assessed, as when we speak of "taxing a bill of costs." The Greek word means simply that a register should be made. The order of Augustus was that a census should be taken throughout the provinces; that a return should be made of population, property, trades, and all that a reasonable government requires to know; and that payments should be determined thereby. All the world had been "taxed" in the modern sense long before Augustus, and it has been taxed, unfortunately without much promise of respite, ever since.

The chief revenues of Rome were derived from this land-tax; but, when combined with other taxes, a large proportion of it was spent in the administration of the province from which it was obtained. No error could be greater than to suppose that Roman officers simply came and carried off all this money as booty to Rome for the pampering of its emperor and populace. Naturally the balance which accrued for the feeding of Borne, for Roman enjoyment and Roman buildings was very large; and doubtless this fact was bad for the morale of Rome itself and requires considerable casuistry to defend it. But it would be a monstrous misconception to imagine that all the "tribute paid to Caesar" was absolutely drained, by an act of sheer oppression, clean out of the province year by year. No country can be protected, policed, and have its justice administered without taxes, and the provincials were not paying more, and were often paying much less, as well as paying it in a more just and rational way, than when they were being taxed by their own kings, their own oligarchies, or their own socialistic democracies. The Roman settlements—the colonies—unless specially exempted, had to pay the land-tax as much as any other community. The only land which was exempt from it was Italy, and Italy paid sundry other taxes to make up for it, at least in part. But though Italy was first and foremost in the imperial regard, the emperor was by no means indifferent to the welfare of the provinces. If an earthquake, a fire, or other great calamity befell a town, it was by no means rare for the emperor to send a large sum of money in relief.

Besides the land-tax there was also a tax on persons and personal property. The tax on persons was not precisely a poll-tax, except in places like Britain and Egypt, where it was difficult to make proper estimates otherwise, but a tax on occupations and trades. This, if we choose, may be put down as a crude form of income-tax, although it was not actually assessed on income. In another sense it may be regarded as a tax on a license, assuming that we demand a license for every kind of occupation. Italy again was exempt from this taxation also. Obviously a census, and a regularly revised census, was necessary to carry out this system; and Rome required a whole army of agents, just as a modern state would require one, for assessing and collecting these dues.

The land-tax and the person-tax were the two chief sources of Roman revenue. These were regular and direct. There were others, subject, like our own taxes, to increase or decrease according to circumstances, but for the most part kept at very much the same standards under several consecutive emperors. For instance there were customs duties, paid on the frontiers of the empire and also on those of provinces or natural groups of provinces, not as part of any protective system, since the empire is all one, but as a means of raising money from commodities. In Italy there was a duty of 2-1/2 per cent. Luxuries from India and Arabia via Red Sea ports were specially taxed at 25 per cent. If you sold a slave, you would pay from 2 to 4 per cent on the purchase-money. Occasionally there was a tax on bachelors. In Italy, but not elsewhere, 5 per cent legacy duty was paid when the recipient was not a near relative, and when the legacy was not under L1000.

Add to these revenues the rents of state pastures, state forests, and state mines. Into the treasury came also unclaimed property and the property of certain classes of condemned criminals.

So much for the nature of the taxation. In point of government, the Romans were singularly liberal. When a province was conquered or annexed, the Senate sent out a commission of ten persons, who carefully considered the existing state of things, the laws and forms of administration actually in vogue, and drew up a constitution for the province, embodying as much of these as was possible or at all commendable; as much, in fact, as was compatible with the Roman connection. This constitution, when sanctioned by the Senate, was binding, whatever governor might be appointed by Rome to the province. Such a governor might interpret the law; he could not alter it.

But though a province was a unit in so far as it was under one governor, the Romans were firm believers in strictly local administration. Their policy in this, as in conquest, was "divide and rule." It did not suit their ends to make any large part of the empire conscious of a corporate existence. The unit of administration was, therefore, a town and its district—a "community." In Gaul there were about sixty such divisions, each roughly corresponding in size to a modern French "department." Such a community had its own local council and officials, who were ultimately responsible to the governor. So long as they performed their municipal or communal functions correctly and honestly they were not interfered with. The chief principle upon which Rome insisted was that their local government should be aristocratic, or rather that office should be based on wealth. The governor, of course, stepped in when he felt it to be his duty. He was required to suppress all secret societies or political unions. A strike of the bakers in one city of Asia Minor was promptly put down by the governor as interfering with social order and social needs.

The communities made their own by-laws, they collected the land-tax of their own district and handed it over to the financial representative of the Roman government. This was done by men of their own people, often of a low class, known in the Gospels as the "publicans," who were so commonly associated with sinners. St. Matthew had been one of the minor agents for such collection in Galilee. Other taxes—those which were indirect—might be collected by the great tax-farming companies of Roman "knights," who offered a lump sum for them to the government, and made what they could out of the bargain.

One incidental consequence of this systematic division into communes was that there spread throughout the empire a strong municipal patriotism, especially in the Greek world. This was followed by liberal local expenditure on the part of rich provincials in beautifying their centres with public buildings and works of art, chiefly, no doubt, given for the sake of the local honours with which they were repaid, but given nevertheless.

Most of the towns or communities throughout the empire were in the position described. Some communities, however, such as Thessalonica, though situated inside a province, were for some special service in the past exempted from the interference of the governor, and were allowed to exercise their own laws to the full, even upon Roman citizens who might happen to reside there. These were called "free" towns. In other cases the community, having come into voluntary alliance with Rome at an earl; date and before conquest, was still treated as an "allied" state, and was exempted from either interference or taxation, so long as it supplied its quota of soldiers when called upon. Such cities, however, were distinctly the exception, and most of them in the end preferred to come directly within the Roman sphere of administration. They often found their burdens smaller and less capricious than when they taxed themselves through their own authorities.

* * * * *

The function of the governor was to see that the various local bodies did their work, kept within their rights, and paid their taxes. He also, either in person or by his deputies, administered justice wherever the Roman laws were concerned. Where they were not concerned, he necessarily acted as Gallio did with the Jewish charges against Paul at Corinth; he dismissed the case as not demanding his jurisdiction. Said Gallio: "If it were a question of a misdemeanour or a crime, I should be called upon to bear with you; but if they are questions of (mere) words and names and of your (Jewish) law, you must see to it yourselves." When the Greeks who were standing by proceeded to beat the chief of Paul's Jewish accusers, the governor shut his eyes to the matter. This may have been a laxity, but it would almost appear as if Gallio liked their behaviour.

For the purposes of justice a province was divided into "Assize Districts," and the governor or his deputies went on circuit. In the court he sat upon a platform in his official chair and with his lictors in attendance. The official language of the court and of its records was of course Latin, but in the Eastern half of the empire the bench cannot always have pretended not to understand Greek. Since it would not, however, understand Hebrew, the Jews would need to speak through a representative who knew Latin, and this is apparently the reason for the appearance of Tertullus against St. Paul at Caesarea. A Roman citizen—that is, a person possessed of full Roman rights—if he either denied the jurisdiction or was in danger of being condemned to capital punishment, might, unless he had been caught red-handed in certain heinous crimes, appeal to Caesar and claim to be sent to Rome. Unless the governor had been expressly entrusted with exceptional powers, or unless the case was so self-evident that he had nothing to fear from refusing, he had no alternative but to send the appellant on to the metropolis. Arrived there, the prisoner was taken to the guardrooms or cells in the barracks of a special prefect who had charge of such arrivals from abroad, and his case would in due course be taken either by the emperor himself, if it was sufficiently important, or by magistrates to whom the emperor delegated his powers for the purpose.

Meanwhile, provincials other than full Roman citizens enjoyed no such privilege. They could make no appeal. The governor was supreme judge, and his verdict or sentence was carried out. In matters of doubt, whether administrative or judicial, the governor might refer to the emperor for direction or advice, and we have at a somewhat later date a considerable collection of letters and their replies which passed in this manner between Pliny and the Emperor Trajan.

* * * * *

A glance at the map will show some provinces named in heavy type and some in italics. Those in italics are the provinces to which the Senate has the right to appoint the governors, in this case called "proconsuls." Of course His Highness the Head of the State is graciously pleased to approve the choice of the Senate; which means that the Senate will not attempt any appointment which the emperor would dislike. The revenues of these provinces go into a treasury controlled by the Senate. Of those named in heavy type the emperor is himself the governor or proconsul. Theoretically he is made governor of all these simply because they contain, or may need, armies, and he is the commander-in-chief of those armies. But since he is at Rome, and in any case cannot be everywhere at once, he governs all such provinces by means of his deputies, whom he appoints for himself. They are his lieutenants, and are so called—to wit, "lieutenants of Caesar" and "deputies of the commander." The revenues of these imperial provinces are collected by an "agent" or "factor" of Caesar, and go into a treasury controlled by the emperor. In any one of his provinces the emperor would be its governor, and would exercise the usual military and civil powers of a governor. His lieutenant to each province simply acts in his place, receives the same powers, and is the governor of that province exactly as the proconsul sent by the Senate is governor in his. But whereas the governors in the senatorial provinces wear the garb of peace, and are appointed, like other civil officers, for one year only, the "deputies of Caesar," the commander-in-chief, wear the military garb, and are kept in office just so long as their superior thinks fit. It is as if in modern times the governor of the one kind of province made his public appearances in civilian dress, and the governor of the other kind in uniform.

The actual outcome of this system was that the provinces of the emperor were on the whole better administered than those of the Senate. In the latter, changes were too frequent, and a governor might sometimes strain a point to enrich himself quickly. But it must on no account be imagined that at this date a governor could with impunity be extortionate or oppress the provincials, as he too often did in the good old days of the republic. He was paid his salary, which might be anything up to L10,000; his allowances and power of making requisitions, such as of salt, wood, and hay when travelling, were strictly defined by law; any pronounced extortion, oppression, or dishonesty laid him open to impeachment; and such a charge was tolerably certain to be brought. Among so many governors it was inevitable that a number should have been impeached. We know of twenty-seven instances, resulting in twenty condemnations and only seven acquittals. The emperors at least looked sharply to their own provinces; nor would they readily tolerate any gross irregularity in those other provinces which were nominally controlled by the Senate. On leaving his province every governor must make out duplicate copies of his accounts, one to be left in the province, one to be forwarded to Rome.

In the Acts of the Apostles we have mention of two governors of senatorial provinces—in other words, two "proconsuls"—Gallio in Achaia (or Greece), and Sergius Paulus in Cyprus. It is instructive to compare the lenient and common sense attitude of these trained Roman aristocrats with that of the turbulent local mobs who dealt with St. Paul in Asia Minor, Judaea, or Greece. Of the minor governors of smaller provinces—styled "agents" or "factors" of Caesar—we meet with Pontius Pilate, Felix, and Festus.

It remains only to remark that, while the Senate's treasury, which received the revenues from the senatorial provinces, paid the expenses of their management and also of the administration of Italy, the emperor's treasury, which received the revenues from the other provinces, provided for their administration, for the pay of the army, for the corn and water of Rome, for public buildings, for the great military roads, and for the imperial post. Nevertheless the emperor could handle all this latter money exactly as he chose, and it is upon this chest that Nero was drawing for all his lavish prodigalities and his undeserved and wasteful bounties. Yet even Nero was scarcely so bad as Caligula, who managed to spend L22,000,000 in less than one year.



CHAPTER VII

ROME: THE IMPERIAL CITY

In the year 64 the capital of the Roman Empire was, it is true, a large and splendid city and an "epitome of the world," but it had not yet reached either its zenith of splendour or its maximum, of size. Many of the largest and most sumptuous structures of which we possess the records, and in most cases the ruins, were not yet built or even contemplated. There was no Colosseum; there were no Baths of Trajan, Caracalla, or Diocletian. The Column of Trajan, still soaring in the Foro Traiano, and of Marcus Aurelius, now so conspicuous in the Piazza Colonna, are of a later date. So also are the three great triumphal arches which are still standing—those of Titus, Severus, and Constantine. The Mausoleum of Hadrian, now stripped of its outward magnificence of marble and sculpture, and known as the Castle of Sant' Angelo, was not built for two generations. On the Palatine Hill the palaces of the Caesars were wide and lofty, but not more than half so spacious and imposing as they became by the end of the following century.

Down in the Forum there stood no Basilica of Constantine; the place of several later temples and shrines was occupied by edifices of less dignity; many columns and statues, and much ornament of gilt or marble, were still to come. Beside and beyond the two embellished public places which had been added to the public comfort and convenience by Julius Caesar and Augustus, and which were known respectively as the Julian and the Augustan Forum, lay only the houses of citizens or streets of shops. Up from the Forum towards the later Arch of Titus and the Colosseum, the "Upper Sacred Way" ran as but a narrow road between buildings for the most part of ordinary character, principally shops catering for luxury. It was later by two centuries and a half that this street was converted into a broad avenue forming a worthy approach to the "hub of the universe."

In the ruins which lie on the Palatine Hill, or along the valley of the Forum below, or up the Sacred Slope towards the Colosseum, or across where the streets wind round from the "Roman" Forum through the Forum of Trajan to the Corso, the modern visitor to the Eternal City does not behold simply the remnants of the temples, halls, squares, and arches which actually existed in the days of Nero. We must not say of these places that St. Paul trod the very paving-stones or gazed on the very walls which we now find in their worn and broken state. In a few cases it may be so; in most it is certainly otherwise. Either the building was not there, or what we now behold is part of a reconstruction or an enlargement. Fire, flood, earthquake and the wear and tear of time called for many a rebuilding or restoration. In the very year upon which we have fixed, there swept over all this part of the city perhaps the most disastrous fire that it ever experienced. Another only a little less destructive occurred in A.D. 283, and when we say that the remains of the glory of ancient Rome are still visible in the excavated Forum, we must recognise that the glory which they represent is the glory of the place as restored after that year.

This does not mean that the general plan and appearance were markedly different under Nero, nor that there was any lack of magnificence; it is only meant by way of caution against a frequent misconception.



If there was no Arch of Severus in the Forum, there was an Arch of Augustus, near the Temple of Castor, surmounted by his statue in the four-horsed chariot of the conqueror, and there was an Arch of Tiberius near the temple of Saturn. If to the north there was as yet no bridge or "castle" of Sant' Angelo to celebrate the dead Hadrian, there was, on the near side of the Tiber, not far from the modern Piazza del Popolo, a splendid Mausoleum of the deified Augustus and his family. In the chief Forum the Temples of Vesta, of Julius Caesar, of Castor, Saturn, and Concord existed under Nero in the same spots and in much the same style as they did through all the remainder of Roman history. Above them towered the Capitoline Hill, with its resplendent Temple of Jupiter on the one summit and its great shrine of Juno on the other. Beyond, in the "Field of Mars"—the site of the densest part of modern Rome—was an almost continuous cluster of public buildings and resorts, of theatres, temples—including the first form of that incomparable edifice, the Pantheon, the only building of ancient Rome which still remains practically whole—of baths, porticoes, and enclosed promenades.



Away in the opposite direction stretched the Appian Way, and in the year 64 the beautiful tomb of Caecilia Metella, which is so familiar in picture, stood as perhaps the noblest among the multitude of patrician tombs. The Apostle Paul certainly passed close by it on his way from Puteoli. The aqueduct, of which so many arches still meet the eye as you cross the Campagna, was the work of Nero's predecessor, Claudius, and it still bears his name—the Aqua Claudia. Where now you go out of the gate to St. Paul's Outside-the-Walls there stood—more free and visible than now—that pyramid of Cestius, close to whose shadow lie the graves of the English Shelley and Keats. There was no gate at this spot in the days of Nero, for the great wall, of which so many portions—more or less restored—are still conspicuous, had no existence till a much later date, when the empire was already tottering to its fall, and when Aurelian was driven to recognise that the heart of the empire, after remaining secure for centuries, must at last look to be assailed. There was, it is true, an inner wall of ancient date (to be seen upon the plan) which had enclosed the "Seven Hills" before Rome was mistress of more than her own small environment. But the city had long ago overflowed this boundary, and the newer quarters lay as open to the country as do our own modern cities.

How far the suburbs stretched, or precisely how far Rome proper extended, in the days of Nero, is no easy matter to decide. We shall in all probability be near the mark if we accept the line of the later wall of Aurelian as practically the limit of what might be included in the "Metropolitan Area." The total circumference of the whole city would be about twelve English miles, a circuit which fell somewhat short of that of Alexandria and probably of Antioch, although in actual importance these cities took but the second and third rank respectively.

Some parts within this line were thickly inhabited, in some the houses must have been but sparse. Particularly along the upper slopes of the hills—of the Pincian, Quirinal, Esquiline, Caelian, and Aventine—were the spacious houses and gardens of the wealthy. The Palatine was almost, though not completely, monopolised by the emperors' palaces and sundry temples. The Campus Martius was mostly a region of public buildings and grounds for promenade and exercise, although some of the finest shops stood very close to where they stand to-day, in that Flaminian Way which is now called the Corso of Humbert. On one side below the Palatine Hill, space was taken up by the vast Circus or racing-ground; on the other lay the public places known as the Fora. It was left for the poorer inhabitants to crowd themselves into the valleys of the town, either between the Forum and the spurs of the several hills which trend towards the centre—up under Quirinal, Viminal, Esquiline, or Caelian—to the left behind the buildings as you now go from the bottom of the Forum to the Colosseum; or between the Forum and the Tiber in the low-lying ground called the Velabrum and there-abouts; or else across the river in that "Transtiberine" region which still bears the name of Trastevere.

If, therefore, it is asked what may have been the Population of Neronian Rome, it need cause no surprise if the number should appear comparatively small to one who is accustomed to our huge modern towns. Rome had never been a seat of manufactures. Its wealth and luxury came almost wholly from its empire, and it was emphatically a city for the rich and ruling classes. In Nero's day it was still growing, and even in its fullest times it is doubtful if the population ever exceeded or even reached a million and a quarter. Perhaps for the year 64 we may most safely put it down at about 750,000.

* * * * *

Now suppose yourself to be standing at F in the recognised centre of Roman life, the "Roman Forum." Here, before we begin our rapid exploration of the city, it is well to clear our minds of one false notion which too commonly prevails. Think of any modern town you please, and remember that, whatever may be the accumulation of architectural magnificence around any given spot, the people of that town treat it all with familiarity and without any waste of sentiment. They will set up their shops or stalls wherever they are allowed; they will carry on their traffic and their amusements; they will saunter and sit on steps and misbehave without feeling oppressed by any appreciable awe of their surroundings. So was it, and even more so, in ancient Rome. The fact that there were shrines or public buildings on all sides did not prevent the Romans from loitering and loafing in the Forum, from sitting on the steps of a temple or a basilica, or leaning against its columns or statues, or playing at a sort of draughts or of backgammon on its marble platforms—the lines to put the "men" upon are here and there still visible upon the pavements—or even scratching a name or a drawing on a pillar. In certain parts the Forum was alive with the bustle of financial business and, doubtless under certain limitations, with the traffic of the pedlar. Curiosities were exhibited, the crier shouted his advertisements, and, in short, the place was almost as freely used for the vulgar purposes of ordinary life as for the dignified gatherings and ceremonies which to our minds appear so much more appropriate to it. Though we are not yet dealing with the social life of Rome, whether indoor or outdoor, it seems advisable to make this observation before proceeding.



Let us now stand at F and look about us toward the Capitol, noting only the chief features of the scene. The reader would do well to consider the plan along with the frontispiece to this book. We are upon an open space paved with marble slabs, round which stand sundry honorary statues and various minor monuments into which we need not now enquire. Facing us, toward the far end, is a platform about 80 feet long and 11 feet in height, with marble facing. A trellis-work rail, or pierced screen, runs along it at either side, and also extends along the front for one-third of the distance from either end. The one-third in the middle of the front is open. This platform is approached by a flight of steps at the back, while in the sheer face are set as ornaments rows of bronze "beaks" or "rams" cut from ships captured in war. From these "beaks" the platform obtains its name—the Rostra. It is the platform for harangues delivered to the Roman people—the Roman citizens who are politely assumed to be the body politic—and the open space on the front is the position for the orator. It is from this stand that important announcements are made to the people at large. An emperor or his nominee may speak from it; a magistrate may deliver some pronouncement; a political exhortation may be uttered; in the case of a public funeral, or even of the private obsequies in some eminent family, an oration over the deceased may be spoken with that finished and animated elocution which the Romans so zealously cultivated, and which the Italians still affect with no little success. It is not indeed the same platform as was used by Cicero and the orators of the republic: this stood elsewhere, and doubtless the substance of public speaking had declined deplorably since that day. Nevertheless many a torrent of rich and sonorous Latin must have streamed over the Forum from that noble standing-place, and it must still have been worth while for a Roman to develop both his speaking voice and his oratorical art. Still further back, to the right behind the Rostra, there stands the Temple of Concord, where the Senate in older times gathered on more than one occasion to listen to Cicero, and where the emperors have formed practically a gallery of works of art; to the left is the Temple of Saturn, long used as the Roman Treasury, of which eight pillars still remain as perhaps the most conspicuous feature among the existing ruins. Another object in the background to the left, at the rear of the Rostra, will be a stone pillar coated with gilded bronze, upon which the first emperor, Augustus, inscribed the names of the great roads leading out from Rome into the length and breadth of the empire, with a list of the chief towns to which those roads would take you, and their distances. The name of this pillar is the "Golden Milestone." Behind these objects, running along the high face of the Capitoline Hill, are visible the arcades of the Record Office, of which the greater portion still exists, though stripped of its architectural graces and built over and about in more modern times, in the state represented in FIG. 18. Still higher on the summit to the left, with its gilded tiles glistening in the sun—at least they were gilded within the next few years—rises the most sacred structure of all, the building most closely identified in the Roman mind with the eternity of the empire. This is the splendid temple of Jove, Supreme and Most Benign. Of this edifice nothing considerable except its platform now remains, its site being occupied by an object of which the existence would have been inconceivable to the ancient Roman—to wit, the German Embassy. On the other summit, a fortified citadel to your right stands the temple of the consort of Jupiter. In this shrine she was known as Juno Moneta, and since, attached to her temple in this citadel, was the office of the Roman coinage, her name Moneta has become familiar to modern mouths in the form of "the Mint." If you seek the place of this temple now, you must look for it under the Church of Santa Maria in Ara Coeli.



Next, instead of looking up at the hill, glance to your left, and you will see running along that side of the Forum, beside the Sacred Way, a spacious public building known as the Basilica of Julius, that is to say, of Julius Caesar. It is an edifice of a type familiar in cities of the Roman world. You mount the steps from the Sacred Way and find yourself under an outer two-storied arcade suitable for lounging or promenading while discussing business or gossip with your friends. Passing from this inwards you are in a building which consists of a covered colonnade, or nave, about 270 feet in length, with a row of pillars on either hand. On each side is a gallery, or upper floor, from which spectators may look down upon the interior, or, from the outer side, upon the open Forum. At the far end is a recess with a raised tribunal, shut off, if necessary, by railings. In other basilicas there may be an apse at this point, similarly enclosed. This serves as a court of justice, round which the curious may stand, or upon which listening spectators may gaze from the ends of the galleries above. Meanwhile up and down the open space of the nave all kinds of verbal business may be transacted by appointment, exactly as such business used to be carried on in old St. Paul's Cathedral in London or in churches elsewhere. In what may be called the inner side-aisle are situated offices of various kinds, including those of sundry public corporations, boards, or commissions. The whole of this great hall is paved with coloured marbles; its pillars are coated with marble; its ceiling is adorned with painting and gilt; it is embellished with statues; and it is lighted from above by a clerestory. Though the question has been debated, it is almost certain that it was mainly from buildings like this, or from rooms similarly constructed in palatial houses, that the early Church developed its basilicas—with their nave, aisles, and clerestory, and with their railed apse at the end, where was placed the chair of the bishop on its dais. Across the Forum on the opposite side, to your right, lies another structure of the same kind, in artistic respects more excellent. In this, the Basilica Aemilia, the chief business was that of the bankers and money-changers, although it served various other purposes according to convenience.

If you could see round the farther end of this basilica to the right, you would perceive the beginning of one of the busiest streets in Rome—the Argiletum—chiefly known to fame as a favourite quarter of the booksellers, who fasten on their door-posts, or on the pillars which support a balcony or upper floor, the lists of the newest or most popular publications to be bought within. And where that street enters the Forum, though standing back a little from your line of vision—perhaps you can catch sight of the top of it over the corner of the Basilica—is the temple-like Senate-House with its offices. Here is the meeting-place of the six hundred who nominally govern jointly with the emperor. If you visit Rome to-day you will find the greater part of the actual chamber, though miserably despoiled, bearing the name of the church of S. Adriano.



The little building, half arch, half shrine, which you observe standing free where the roads converge upon the Forum, is the famous sanctuary of Janus, of which the doors are never shut unless there is complete peace throughout the Roman world. So long as Rome is anywhere engaged in a great or little war, the open doors of Janus tell the fact to a people which might otherwise be unconscious of so slight or remote a circumstance.

* * * * *



We need not describe in detail the temple of Castor, or rather of the "Twin Brethren," which stands immediately to your left, or that of the deified Julius Caesar, which is just behind you, on the spot where the body of the great dictator was burned. It is perhaps more interesting to note the ordinary—though not by any means the only—form of the Roman temple in general. Those who have seen the so-called Maison Carree at Nimes will possess a fair notion of the commonest or most typical shape and arrangement. For the most part we have a rather lofty platform, mounted from one end by steps, which are flanked by walls or balustrades, often bearing at their extremities equestrian statues or other appropriate figures. Upon the platform stands the temple proper, consisting of a chamber containing the statue of the god. Where more than one deity are combined in the same temple—as in that of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill, where the supreme deity has Juno and Minerva to left and right of him—there may either be as many separate chambers or as many chapel-like bays as there are deities. The altar for sacrifice stands outside opposite the entrance, being placed either upon the top of the main platform or more commonly on a minor platform of its own in the middle of the steps. In most cases the chamber stands back behind a row, in some instances two rows, of columns, which support the characteristic entablature seen in the illustrations. In the case of the more grandiose temples a series of columns may run all round the building, carrying an extension of the roof, under which is thus formed a covered colonnade. More commonly the sides and back of the chamber have only what are known as "engaged" columns, as it were half-embedded in the wall. The roof is gabled and tiled, with ornaments along the eaves. The front has an embellished entablature, with its triangle of masonry called the "pediment," consisting of a cornice overhanging a sunken surface decorated with a sculptured group. Over each angle, right, left, and summit, is a base of stone supporting some conspicuous ornament, such as a statue, an eagle, or a figure in a chariot. In the middle of the front of the building, behind the columns of the portico, are double doors, commonly made of decorated bronze, with an open grating of the same metal above them. The whole is outwardly of marble, either all white or with colour in the pillars, but the core of at least the platform is commonly made of the immensely strong Roman concrete, or else of blocks of the less beautiful and costly kinds of stone.

In point of architectural style the Romans of this date—who in artistic matters were but imitators of the Greeks and far less certain in taste than their masters—affected the Corinthian, as being the most florid. Even this they could not leave in its native purity, but for the most part converted it into Graeco-Roman or composite varieties. A prime fault of the Roman taste was then, as it has always been, a love of gorgeousness, of excessive and obtrusive ornament. In almost any Roman church of to-day we find the walls and pillars stuck about with figures, slabs, and so-called decorations to such an extent that the finer lines and proportions are often ruined, The ancient Roman likewise was commonly under the impression that the more decoration you added, the more magnificent was the building. There were doubtless many buildings in simpler and purer taste, probably executed by Greek artists under the authority of some Roman who happened to possess a finer judgment or less self-assertiveness. Nevertheless the fault of over-elaboration is distinctly Roman.



We must not omit to say that, besides temples of this typical rectangular form, there were others of a round shape, encircled by columns, like that graceful structure at Tivoli commonly, though mistakenly, known as the temple of the Sibyl, and that small building which still exists in an impoverished condition near the Tiber, and which used to bear the erroneous title of the temple of Vesta. Others again were simply round and domed, like the true temple of Vesta in the Forum, or the superb and impressive Pantheon in the Campus Martius. So far as the bare round was broken in these cases, it was either by a pillared portico, as with the Pantheon, or by engaged columns and ornament, as with the true temple of Vesta.

The mention of the temple of Vesta reminds us that it is time to face about, and, passing behind the temple of Julius, to look in the opposite direction, from V. Before us lies this circular shrine, a form gradually developed from the primitive round hut which once served as house to the prehistoric ancestors of the Roman stock. As it was the duty of the maiden daughters of that ancient tribe to keep alight the fire upon the domestic hearth, so through all the history of Rome it was the duty of certain chosen virgins to keep perpetually burning the hearth-fire of the city. The roof of the temple is open in the middle, and you may perhaps see the smoke issuing from it. But if you are a male, you may not enter. No man, except the chief Pontifex, may set foot inside the shrine of the virgin goddess, who is attended by virgin priestesses. Close behind the temple stands the house of these Vestals. They are in a large measure the ancient prototype of the modern nun, and their house is the prototype of the convent. Six nobly-born young women, sworn to chastity, and dressed in a ritual garb, live in an edifice of much magnificence under the rule of one who is the chief Vestal, a sort of Mother Superior. Many pedestals of the statues of such chief priestesses still remain, and we can clearly trace the arrangement of their abode, with its open court—once containing a garden and cool cisterns of pure water—its separate room for each Vestal, its baths, and its resources of considerable comfort and even luxury.



If, as you face this way, you look up to your right, you will perceive the Palatine Hill rising steeply above you, with its summit crowned by the lofty palaces and gardens constructed by the Caesars. At the side and corner which look down upon the Forum stands the part built by Caligula, the epileptic who thought himself no less than a god, and who in consequence not only turned the temple of Castor into a lower vestibule to his own house, but also built a bridge across the valley over the temple of Augustus and the Basilica of Julius to the Capitoline Hill, so that he might visit and converse with Jupiter, his only compeer. From the top of the Basilica he occasionally threw money into the Forum to be scrambled for by people who crushed each other to death in the process. It would require too much space if we climbed the sloping road which leads on to the Palatine and examined the various structures upon that hill. As we now see it in its ruins it is perhaps the most mysteriously impressive place in the world. But many alterations and enlargements of the palaces were made after the date of Nero, and we cannot now be sure of the precise aspect of the hill-top in his day. Suffice it that, overlooking the Forum, overlooking the Velabrum Valley which leads from the Forum to the Tiber, and overlooking the middle of the valley where the vast Circus or race-ground separated the imperial hill from the Aventine, there were portions of the huge imperial abodes, rising in several stories gleaming with marble, and enjoying the purest air and the widest views obtainable within the city. Nero himself, it is true, was not content with such mere human housing. After the great fire of this year 64, he proceeded to make for himself what he called "a home fit for a man," and so built—though he never finished—that famous or infamous "Golden House," which ran from the Palatine all across the upper Sacred Way and the hollow now occupied by the Colosseum far on to the opposite hills—a house of countless chambers, with three miles of colonnade, enclosed gardens large enough to be called a park, and a statue of himself 120 feet in height. The epigram went that the people of Rome must migrate, inasmuch as what had once been a city was now but a private house. This, however, had not yet occurred, and we have rather to think of palaces and gardens rich indeed, but by no means occupying the whole of the Palatine Hill alone. There were, of course, numerous buildings more or less connected with the imperial establishment, among them being quarters for the officers and soldiers of the guard. There were also a number of temples, one of which, the magnificent shrine of Apollo, the god of light and learning, stood in a court marvellously enriched with sculptured masterpieces, while connected with it were libraries filled with Greek and Latin books and adorned with the busts and medallion-portraits or statues of great authors.

If we proceeded now to walk up the Sacred Way, along the narrow street edged by jewellers' and other shops, we should meet as yet with no Arch of Titus, nor in descending beyond should we see any Colosseum, but only a block of ordinary dwellings, to be swept away later in this year by the fire which made room here for the ornamental waters of Nero's Golden House. Turning to the right along the valley between the Palatine and Caelian Hills, we should not have to pass under any Arch of Constantine; but, after glancing up to the left at the great unfinished temple of Claudius and going under the Claudian aqueduct which carries water to the Palatine, we should proceed between private houses and gardens till we reached a famous gate in the ancient wall and found ourselves on that noted Appian Way, which would take us to Capua and thence over the Apennines to Brindisi and the East. Just outside the gate we should find the livery-stables, with their vehicles and horses or mules waiting to be hired for the stage which would carry us as far as the slope on the southern edge of the Alban Hills.

But we will not proceed in this direction. From our stand at V in front of the temple of Vesta we will turn back, walk over the Forum to the right of the Rostra, between the sanctuary of Janus and the front of the Senate-House. Thence we will cross an enclosed forum, or public place, erected by Julius Caesar, with its temple of "Venus the Mother" in the middle, and so enter the Forum of Augustus. This is worth a pause. As you pass to-day up the narrow Via Bonella and perceive near the Pantani Arch a few imposing columns and a patch of rather depressing bare wall, it requires much effort to realise that here was once a noble space enclosed by marble-covered walls 100 feet in height, and that those walls contained in a series of niches a gallery of statues of all the military heroes and patriots of Roman history from Aeneas downwards. Meanwhile the few columns at your side are the sole survivors of the number which surrounded the splendid temple of Mars the Avenger, the shrine which was identified in imperial times with the military power of Rome, and which received the standards captured from the enemy, just as captured flags are to be seen in many a modern church.

Leaving this Forum, we will not bear to the right to find ourselves amid the dense population of the Subura and its neighbourhood, but we will turn to the left and pass between the Capitoline and Quirinal Hills, which then met more steeply and closely than they did fifty years later, when Trajan had cut away the rising ground and levelled an open space which must have been an incalculable advantage to the convenience of the city. It is perhaps well to observe here that the piling up of fallen ruins and the deliberate levellings and gradings, both in ancient and modern times, have greatly altered the appearance of the often-mentioned hills of Rome, especially of the Quirinal, Viminal, and Esquiline.



Emerging from this too narrow passage-way and proceeding a short distance, we enter that straight Flaminian Road which has been replaced by the modern Corso beginning at the Piazza Venezia. For the first part of its course it was also known as "Broadway." We are now in that more open part of Rome which lies outside the ancient wall, and which is commonly spoken of loosely as the Campus Martius. Here again, it is impossible to inspect all the various sights visible in the year 64. A few examples must suffice. As you walk along this straight thorough-fare—the commencement of the road which would eventually carry you to the North of Italy—you will find but few buildings of any note on your right. Lying to your left is a long and wide cloistered space which contains not only certain public offices and a pillared promenade, but also the richest shops in Rome, where are sold gold and silver work, objects of art, tapestries, and fine fabrics from Alexandria, Syria, and farther East. The place is, in fact, mainly a huge bazaar. Up the Flaminian Way beyond this enclosure we go under a triumphal arch erected by the late Emperor Claudius to record his conquest of Britain, where he subdued "eleven kings" without Roman loss. Keeping straight on we pass, this time on our right, another large enclosure surrounded by arcades, where is now the east side of the Piazza Colonna. In and about this locality are carried on not only promenades and saunterings but also various athletic exercises, including feats of horsemanship. Farther on still, and you will see to your left the Mausoleum of Augustus, rising some 220 feet into the air. Its base, coated with sculptured marble, contains one grand sepulchral chamber for Augustus himself, and fourteen smaller chambers for members of his family. Above this base towers a conical mound of earth planted with evergreen trees, and on the summit is a colossal statue of the first emperor. Close by is a paved space, where the bodies of the Caesars are cremated before their ashes are placed in the Mausoleum. From this spot a ready faith saw their immortal part carried up to heaven by the eagle, messenger of Jove.

Turning back and passing across the Campus we arrive at the public baths erected by Nero, and then at the Pantheon. This building, though shorn of many of its decorative splendours both within and without, still stands structurally intact, at least as it was restored and enlarged two generations later than our date. It is scarcely possible to say how far its shape was altered at its restoration under Hadrian, but we may provisionally treat the edifice as already belonging to our period. It is still, after all these centuries, an entirely noble pile, and forms a fit receptacle for the tomb, not only of Victor Emanuel, but of Raphael. Its form is that of a rotunda, with walls of concrete 20 feet in thickness and with a dome of concrete cast in a solid mass. The middle of the dome is open to the sky, and by that means the building is lighted in a manner most perfectly suited to it. Could we behold it fully restored and at its best, we should see above its portico, which is supported by huge marble pillars each made of a single stone, large bronze reliefs of gods and giants. To one side of the doors would be a colossal statue of Augustus; on the other a colossal statue of the builder Agrippa, the son-in-law of that emperor. Inside there is a series of niches for colossal effigies of Mars, Venus, and other deities connected with the Julian family. The marble pillars dividing the niches have capitals of fine bronze, and the coffered ceiling of the dome, now bare and colourless, shines with gilt on blue, like the sky lit up with stars. The doors, which have mysteriously remained entire, are also of noble bronze; the roof consists of tiles of bronze thinly plated with gold. The gold has naturally vanished, after passing into Saracen hands; of the bronze nearly half a million pounds weight has been stripped from the building, some to make cannon for the defence of the Castle of St. Angelo, some to form the twisted columns which now support the giant baldacchino under St. Peter's dome.

At a short distance behind this magnificent temple Agrippa—who was in charge of the aqueducts and water-supply—had also built the first great public baths. It would probably be incorrect to found any detailed description of them upon what we know of the stupendous structures of Caracalla and Diocletian, which were perhaps the most amazing exhibitions of public luxury ever seen in the world. Of these we know how huge and splendid were the halls, with their coloured marbles, their mosaic floors, their colossal masterpieces of statuary, their elaborate arrangements of baths—cold, tepid, hot and dry-sweating—their conversation-rooms and reading-rooms. But we cannot pretend to say how far the Agrippan and Neronian baths of the year 64 corresponded in magnificence to these. We shall be safer in simply assuming that, since the baths of Pompeii were in full swing in the year in question, Home must have possessed establishments of a similar kind but on a larger and more sumptuous scale.



Leaving without further mention the various temples of Minerva, Isis, Serapis, and other deities which might be found about the Campus Martius, we note an undistinguished stone amphitheatre, the only resort of the kind as yet possessed by the metropolis. In this were exhibited the sanguinary combats of gladiators with each other, and the fights with wild beasts performed by trained professionals or by criminals selling their lives as dearly as possible. Of these "sports" we have to treat in a later chapter. Coming nearer to the Tiber, while returning towards the city proper, we pass in succession the three great theatres, lofty semicircular constructions of stone and concrete faced with marble, one computed to hold 40,000 spectators, but probably accommodating not more than 25,000, and the others some 20,000 and 12,000 respectively. In these matters we must allow both for Roman exaggeration and Roman close-packing. The theatres rise in three stories, of which the outward sides consist of open arcades adorned with pillars in varied styles, while round their bases are shops for the sale of sweetmeats, beverages, perfumes, and other articles which the theatre-goer or the loitering public may require. What a theatrical Performance was like is a matter belonging to the question of spectacles and amusements. At the back of the largest theatre—that of Pompey—lies a large square surrounded by colonnades of a hundred pillars, where sycamores form avenues and fountains play, while statues of finished workmanship stand where they produce the best effect. Particularly grateful to the Roman lounger were the seats in the large semi-circular bays, so placed as to offer full protection from too hot a sun or too cold a wind.



By the time that we have passed the last theatre of the three we have arrived at the river end of the low valley leading into the Forum between the Capitoline Hill and the Palatine, a place which had once been a cattle-market but had now become an open place surrounded by dwellings of the humbler sort. It still, however, bore the name of "Cattle-Market." If from this point we followed the river bank, we should come to the wharves, to which the smaller ships bring up the Tiber the freights of grain transhipped from the larger vessels from Alexandria or Carthage, or of marble from the quarries of Numidia, Greece, and Phrygia, or of granite and porphyry from Upper Egypt. All along this bank are the offices and storehouses of such cargoes, and here too is performed much of the shaping of those blocks which Rome is using in such astonishing profusion. Along the river by the stone embankment the ships are moored, with their cables passed through huge stone corbels or sculptured lions' mouths. No busier part of Rome could be found than this, but we have no time to proceed further in this direction.

In front of us rises the Aventine Hill, another quarter of the wealthy, but otherwise chiefly distinguished by its temples of Juno the Queen and of Diana. Turning our eyes from the Aventine to the left we see lying in the valley between Aventine and Palatine—where now are the Jewish Cemetery and the grimy Gasworks—the vast Circus Maximus or Hippodrome. This structure, devoted chiefly to chariot-racing, is some 700 yards in length and 135 in width, and will at a pinch hold nearly a quarter of a million spectators. In all probability it would seat 150,000. It consists, as the illustration will show, of long tiers of seats sweeping down the sides and round the curved end of an oblong space. As with the theatres, its outside view presents three tiers of marble arches, and through the lowest tier are numerous staircases leading to the various sections of the seats within. Those seats themselves are laid upon large vaults of concrete; the lower rows are of marble, the upper ones are as yet of wood. How the chariot-races were run, and what is meant by the "sports of the circus," will naturally require a separate narration.

Coming back from the entrance of this mammoth place of amusement and turning up the Velabrum Valley, we pass by a temple of Augustus, to which is attached a public library, and issue by the temple of Castor into the Forum to our first standing-point at F.



CHAPTER VIII

STREETS, WATER-SUPPLY, AND BUILDING MATERIAL

After this rapid walk through the more interesting parts of the capital, we may consider one or two connected topics of natural interest.

Amid all this splendour and spaciousness of public buildings, what is the aspect of the ordinary streets? In this respect Rome was by no means fortunate. As in Old London, Old Paris, or Old New York, the streets had for the most part grown up as chance circumstances would have it. There were very few thoroughfares laid out straight from the first like the Flaminian or "Broad" Road. Alexandria and Antioch were the creations of monarchs who began with a clear field and a consistent scheme. Their straight, broad streets might well be the envy of the capital. The Romans, then as now, possessed the engineering genius, but they could not well undo the work of a struggling past, which had necessitated the crowding of population, within the defences of a wall. They knew how to supply the city abundantly with water, and how to drain it with sewers of great capacity and strength. The chief of such sewers—the Cloaca Maxima—which passed underneath the Forum to the Tiber and was laid down more than twenty-five centuries ago, is still in working order. But no republican or imperial government ever took it in hand to Hansmannise the city, even after one of those devastating conflagrations which might seem to have cleared the way. It is true that all traffic of vehicles, except for special processions, for Vestal Virgins, and a few other cases—was forbidden for ten hours in the day. All through the morning and afternoon there were no wheels in the Roman streets, unless some public building imperatively demanded its load of stones or timber, or unless the few privileged persons were proceeding in their carriages to some festival. Nevertheless the rich men and women in their litters or sedan-chairs, attended by their servants or their clients; the porters carrying their heavy loads; the itinerant hucksters; and the ordinary man on errand or other business bent, made up crowds which were often difficult to pass through.

Another consequence of the old compression within narrow walls was that, as population increased, the houses grew more lofty. How high the Romans built, or were allowed to build, in republican times we cannot tell. The tendency was certainly to build higher and higher, and sky-scrapers would perhaps have become the rule if the ancient Roman had understood the use of materials both sufficiently light and sufficiently strong, or if he had been forced to establish his work on secure foundations. In point of fact there had been, and there continued to be, too much of jerry-building. Houses sometimes collapsed, and many were unsubstantially shored up. A flood or an earthquake was apt to find them out, and there was frequent peril in the streets. The majority of the abodes of people of humble means were not like those in smaller towns, such as Pompeii, still less like those in the country. They were "tenement houses," large blocks let out in rooms and flats, and it was natural that landlords should make haste to run them up and to increase the number of their stories. When Augustus became emperor he enacted what may be called a Metropolitan Building Act, which insisted on firmer foundations and limited the height to 70 feet. That act was apparently still in force in the age of Nero, and we may take it that along the more frequented streets the houses commonly ran to a height of four or five stories. They looked the taller because of the narrowness of the street itself. While it is perhaps, though not necessarily, an exaggeration for the epigrammatist—who lived "up three pair of stairs, and high ones"—to say that he could touch his opposite neighbour with his hand, it is at least an indication of the truth. Some of the narrower lanes between blocks cannot have been more than a few feet across.