Race follows race, with an interval for the midday meal. During that time there will be interludes of acrobatic and other performances. One rider, for example, will stand upright on the back of two or more horses, and will spring continually from one to the other while they are at the gallop. Most of the company will take their refreshments where they are. When a man of some standing was reproached by Augustus for this rather undignified proceeding, he replied: "That is all very well for you, Sire, but your place is sure to be kept." We need not proceed further into details concerning the "events" in the Circus. It may however be worth while to add that the Romans cared nothing for the modern form of race by jockeys on single horses.

The Circus is quite a different thing from the oval amphitheatre, a structure for once of native Roman devising, without which no Roman town could consider itself complete. Though the Colosseum was not yet built, there already existed an amphitheatre in the Campus Martius, and such buildings were to be found in all considerable towns which contained a large Roman element. There is one, though of later date than Nero, still to be seen in fair preservation at Verona; the well-known amphitheatre at Pompeii was in full use in the year 64, and other cities—Capua, Puteoli, Nimes, Antioch, or Caesarea—were provided with the joys of the gladiatorial shows and the beast-fight. Only in the thoroughly Greek or thoroughly Oriental part of the empire was the amphitheatre absent. Where there was no fixed building of stone or wood, a temporary structure was erected and a company of gladiators would perform in the place at the expense of some local officer or of some wealthy citizen with social ambitions. Whatever may be thought of the Greeks in other respects, they felt no liking, but only an openly expressed repulsion, for the barbarous exhibitions of bloodshed in which the Roman revelled. Outside Jerusalem an amphitheatre was built by the romanizing Herod, but it was done to the horror of all orthodox Jews.



The performances were of two main kinds; fights between men and beasts—occasionally between two kinds of wild beast—and fights between men and men. There was no make-believe about these combats; they meant at least serious wounds, even when they did not mean death. Those who fought with beasts might in some cases be volunteers; in general they were captives or condemned criminals, and it perhaps hardly needs pointing out that, when St. Paul says he had "fought with beasts at Ephesus," he is merely speaking in metaphor adapted to the times. It was not intended that the criminal should escape death, but only that he should be able to make a fight for his life. Meanwhile the gladiators who fought with men and not with beasts were in the position of professionals, who might be slaves, condemned brigands, mutineers, prisoners of war, or volunteers. The picture drawn by Byron, although the so-called "Dying Gladiator" which inspired him is in reality no gladiator but a Gaulish warrior, perhaps fairly represents one class of combatant, but it represents only one. In the case of these "swordsmen" a number of successful fights might in the end secure freedom and something more for slave or prisoner, and a competence for the volunteer. It was not unnatural that men of courage and strength should frequently offer themselves for this service. Their physical training was indeed severe both in the way of exercise and of diet, and their personal treatment was harsh and ignominious; but their fame, such as it might be, was wide, and their rewards often solid. Contemporary writers also complain that, however brutal and ugly they were, there were always women ready to adore them and to consider them as beautiful as Adonis. At Pompeii a scribbling calls one of them "the sigh of the girls." Nevertheless no Roman with much self-respect, unless forced by a malignant emperor, would bear the stigma of having appeared as a gladiator, any more than in modern times one would choose to be known as a professional pugilist. Moreover these same heroes, after their glorious day in the arena, were carefully stripped of their showy armour, imprisoned in barracks, and, if disobedient or troublesome, chastised with the lash and put in irons or the stocks.

The prelude to a beast-fight was frequently rather a "hunt," amounting to a demonstration of skill in dealing with wild animals which could hardly be said to fight, but which were difficult to capture or kill. Success with javelins or arrows required somewhat more skill and daring than the "big game" shooting of modern times. To give a greater air of naturalness to the performance the arena was sometimes temporarily planted with shrubs and trees, and diversified with rock-work. After the beast "hunt" came the beast "fight," which might be against bisons or bulls, wild boars or wolves, lions or tigers, a rhinoceros or an elephant. In such contests the man commonly wore no body-armour. He took his sword or spear, swathed his right arm and his legs, and went out to meet the enemy in his tunic. The beasts were either let loose from the end of the arena, or, as later in the Colosseum, they were brought up in cages from their underground dens by means of lifts worked by pulleys. Indirectly, it may be observed, the mania for this sport produced one distinctly beneficial result, inasmuch as the more dangerous wild beasts became almost exterminated from the Roman world. The number killed was enormous, hundreds of lions or panthers being produced and slain during the shows of a single festival. It may be added that on the top of the wall or platform surrounding the arena there was placed—at least in the Colosseum—a metal grating or screen, of which the top bar revolved, so that if a wild beast managed to spring so high and take a grip, the feat was of no use to him. To keep him at a further distance a trench surrounded the arena and separated it from the platform.



But the great entertainment of the amphitheatre was the combats of men with men. After the beast-fights, which were held in the mornings, and amounted in estimation to a matinee, there followed the fights of the gladiators. Outside the building are being sold the books which catalogue the pairings, together with some record of the men, the name of their training-school, and a statement as to the weapons with which they will fight and as to whether they have made previous appearances. At the appointed time the procession enters from one end of the arena, and the combatants parade and salute the emperor, if he is present, or the presiding officer. Their weapons are examined, and there is a preliminary sham-fight, partly for exhibition of skill and to influence bets, partly for practice. The men then return to their places, a trumpet blows, and a pair commences the real fighting. Sometimes a man is in full and heavy armour from head to foot; sometimes he is lightly equipped with a half-shield and a spear; sometimes he carries only a sharp three-pronged spear and a casting-net, in which he endeavours to enmesh an enemy fully armed. Besides combats on foot, there may be fights upon horseback, or even in chariots of the kind then best known in Britain. To encourage the participants, and to lend more spirit to the scene, there is a blowing of horns and trumpets while the fight proceeds. All around the people are shouting their comments and their advice; they applaud and adjure and curse. "Get up to him!" "Kill him!" and the like are heard on every side. A man falls, not dead, but disabled, and the spectators shout "He has it." He holds up his finger in sign of defeat, but he utters no cry. Shall he be killed, or shall he not? The answer depends on the president or "giver" of the exhibition. He looks round, and if he perceives that the great majority are giving an upward flick of the thumb, and hears them call "Give him the steel!" the man is doomed; if, on the contrary, handkerchiefs are waved, his life is spared. A good fight or a good record may save him to fight again another day. The formal presentation of a wooden sword would mean that he was discharged for life from the necessity of further fighting. If his enemy's dagger must be pressed into his throat, or if he has been slain outright, there is a passage under the middle of the side of the amphitheatre through which the body will be dragged by a hook into the mortuary. Another combat follows between another pair—sometimes between two sides—and should the arena become too sodden with blood, it is raked over and fresh sand is scattered.

It is amazing in what a cold-blooded manner all this was carried out. When one reads the notices written up at Pompeii, that on such-and-such a date there will be exhibited so many pairs of gladiators, that "there will be a beast-hunt," and that "awnings will be provided and perfume sprinkled," it is difficult at first to realise that it means all that it does mean. To the credit of the Romans—so far as they deserve any at all—let it be stated that the presence of women was not encouraged at these shows; that if they appeared at all, it must be in the upper tier, as far as possible from the arena; and, strangely enough, that only the six Vestals, in virtue of their religious claims, could be placed in any position of honour. These sat upon the lowest platform, in line with the special seats of the emperor or president and the highest officials of the state, but it is probably a libel for an artist to depict them as so many Maenads lusting for the blood of the vanquished.

The only other form of public entertainment which it seems desirable to mention was that of a naval battle, in which the sea was either represented by flooding the amphitheatre, or by means of a permanent lake, such as that which Augustus created artificially across the Tiber. The proceedings bore all the appearance of reality. Ships were rammed, sunk, overturned, and boarded, and, so far as the men were concerned, the battle might be as grim and bloody as any other kind of gladiatorial contest.



CHAPTER XVI

THE WOMEN: MARRIAGE, THE ROMAN MATRON, AND HER DRESS

We will assume that Silius is a married man, and that his wife is a typical Roman dame worthy of his station in life. Her name shall be Marcia, or, if she possesses more than one, Marcia Sabina. Marriage does not confer upon her the name of her husband, and if she requires further identification in connection with him, she will be referred to as "Silius's Marcia." At an earlier date a woman owned but a single name, but already practical convenience and pride of descent had combined to make it desirable that she should bear a second, which might be taken from the family either of her father or of her mother. Thus if Silius and Marcia themselves have a daughter, she may in her turn perhaps be called Silia Bassa, perhaps Silia Marcia.

If now we proceed to describe the position of Marcia in her conjugal and family relations, to speak of her way of life, and to suggest her probable character, it must be understood that the description would by no means necessarily fit every Roman matron. Women are said to be infinitely various, and in this respect the ancient world was precisely like the modern. And not only has it further to be borne in mind that there were several strata of Roman society, and that city life differed widely from country life; there was also an actual difference in the legal position of a wife, according to the terms upon which she had chosen to enter the state of wedlock. In other words, there were two forms of matrimony. According to the old-fashioned style a wife passed into the power of the husband; her legal position—though not, of course, her domestic standing—was the same as that of his daughter. Once on a time he had even possessed the right of putting her to death, but at our date that privilege no longer existed. It was enough that she should be subject to his authority. In that position she managed the home and family, and often managed him as well. How far this time-honoured style of marriage was still maintained among the lower classes of Roman society it is impossible to tell; our information is almost entirely restricted to the higher, or at least the wealthier, orders. It is, however, probable that among the artisans and labourers, where the dowry of a wife cannot have amounted to anything very considerable, this more stringent state of matrimony was the rule. Paterfamilias was the head and lord of the house, while materfamilias held in practice much the same position as she did in Anglo-Saxon households of two or three generations ago.

Meanwhile among the upper classes, but in no way legally limited to them, an alternative and easier form of marriage had become increasingly popular. It was one which gave to both parties the greatest amount of freedom of which a conjugal union could reasonably allow. The woman did not pass into the power of the man, and, short of actual infidelity, she lived her own life in her own way, although naturally conforming to certain recognised etiquette as a partner in a respectable Roman menage. If neither affection nor moral suasion could preserve harmony or proper courses, either party might formally repudiate the contract, and, after a short interval, seek better fortune in some other quarter. There was, of course, a public sentiment to be considered; there was family influence; there was the characteristic Roman pride; there was often a fair measure of mutual esteem and even affection; and there were obvious joint interests which made for stability; but beyond these considerations there was nothing to hamper the inclination of either husband or wife. Yet it is a grave mistake to imagine, because there was much, and sometimes appalling, looseness of life under a Nero, that the race of noble and virtuous Roman matrons—the Cornelias and Valerias and Volumnias—was extinct; and it is equally a mistake to suppose that Rome no longer produced its honourable gentlemen filled with a sense of their responsibilities to family and state. The satirist should not here, nor elsewhere, be our chief, much less our only, guide. The England of Charles II is not to be judged in its entirety by the comedies of the time nor by the Memoirs of Grammont. On this matter, however, it will be more convenient to touch in a later paragraph. It will be best to deal first with the system in vogue, and then to consider the sort of woman whom it produced.

It cannot be denied that at this date, though marriage was regarded as the normal and proper condition for men and women who desired to do their duty by the state, and though the wise emperors did everything in their power to encourage it, a very large proportion of the men of the upper classes regarded it as a burden and a vexatious interference with their liberty. It was not necessarily that they had any desire to be vicious, nor indeed would marriage be much of a hindrance to vice; it was that they desired to be free. The cause of their disinclination was the same as it is sometimes alleged to be now—the increasing demands of women, their increasing unwillingness to bear the natural responsibilities of matrimony, their extravagant expectations, and the impossibility of there being two masters in one house claiming equal authority. But whereas we recognise that love is a possible adjuster of all the difficulties, it was no tradition of the Romans that marriage should be based on love. With them it very seldom began with love, or even with direct personal choice, but was in most instances entirely a mariage de convenance and arranged for them as such. Even after marriage we are told by a contemporary writer that the proper feeling for a man to entertain for his wife is rational respect, not emotional affection. Experience has shown that the result was too often unsatisfactory.

It is unfortunate that the only satires or criticisms on married life which have come down to us were written by men; one would like to hear what the women might have said, if a woman had ever been a satirist. There is nearly always some basis of truth in a classic satire, but the question is "How much?" Juvenal belongs to a later generation than that of Nero, but what he says is doubtless equally applicable to that age. It is therefore interesting to note one or two of his objections to contemporary woman, regarded as a wife. In the first place she is too interfering and even dictatorial. "What madness is it," he asks of the man whom he supposes himself to be addressing, "that drives you to marry? How can you bear with a tyrannous woman, when there are so many good ropes in the world, when there are high windows to throw yourself out of, or when there is the bridge quite handy?" "Why should you be made to wear the muzzle?" "Why take into your house some one who will perhaps shut the door in the face of an old friend whom you have known ever since he was a boy?" "When you displease her, she weeps, for she keeps tears always ready to fall, but when you try to prevent her from displeasing you, she tells you it was agreed that each should have liberty, and that she is a human being." He goes on to attack her faithlessness, her extravagance, her superstition, her loquacity, and so forth. Let us by all means discount his fierce invectives; nevertheless we must take them as but a heightened way of putting circumstances which had a real and all too frequent existence, and which encouraged the growing fancy for bachelordom. We shall, however, soon look at a very different picture of domestic relations, and it is only fair to assume that these also were by no means uncommon.

A Roman girl with a reasonable dowry might expect to be married at any age from about 13 to 18. The Italian of the south, like the Greek, ripens early. The legal age was 12; on the other hand to be unmarried at 19 was to be distinctly an old maid. In the northern provinces of the empire maturity was less early, whereas south of the Mediterranean it was even earlier. The legal age for the bridegroom was that at which his father or guardian allowed him to put on the "toga of the man" and enter the Forum. Thus theoretically a Roman youth might become a benedict when about sixteen, and Nero was only at that age when he married his first wife Octavia. Generally speaking, however, if Marcia was as old as 16, Silius would hardly be under 26 or 27.

The marriage, as has been said already, would commonly be a matter of arrangement between families, sometimes effected by their own members, sometimes by an interested friend or some other go-between. "You ask me," writes Pliny to Mauricus, "to look out for a husband for your niece. There is no need to look far, for I know a man who might seem to have been provided on purpose. His name is Minicius. He is well-connected, and comes from Brescia, which you know to be a good old-fashioned place retaining the simple and modest manners of the country. He is a man of active energy and has held high public office. In appearance he is a gentleman, well-built, and with a wholesome ruddy complexion. His father has ample means, and though perhaps your family is not much concerned on that point, we have to remember that a man's income is one of the first considerations in the eyes, not only of our social system, but of the law."

A marriage of the full and regular type could only be contracted between free citizens. There were varying degrees of the morganatic about all others, such as marriage with a foreigner or emancipated slave. A non-Roman wife meant that the children were non-Roman. A man of the senatorial order could not marry a freedwoman, if he wished to have the union recognised; also no complete marriage could be contracted with a person labouring under degradation publicly inflicted by the authorities or degraded ipso facto by certain occupations. For this reason the actress on the "variety" stage could not aspire to become even an acknowledged Roman wife, much less a member of the order which more or less corresponded to our peerage. Nor could a Roman marry a relative within certain prohibited degrees. He might not, in fact, marry any woman whom he already possessed what was called "the right to kiss."

We are, however, dealing with two persons entirely beyond exception, namely Quintus Silius Bassus and Marcia Sabina. A match has been made between these parties, perhaps several years before the actual marriage can take place, and while the intended bride is a mere child of ten: even the future groom may be but a boy. When the go-between has done his or her work to the satisfaction of both families, there takes place a betrothal ceremony, of which the original purpose was, of course, to bind each party morally to carry out the contract, but which, by the year 64, might mean very little.

In theory the Roman law required the consent of both participants; a father could not absolutely force son or daughter to marry a particular person, nor, indeed, any person at all. But on the other hand, according to the Roman law, neither sons nor daughters were free to act independently of the father's will, nor to possess independent property, so long as the father lived, or until he chose to "emancipate." It naturally follows that paternal pressure was the chief factor in determining a marriage, and only those men or women whose fathers were dead, or who had been formally freed from tutelage, were in a position absolutely to please themselves. We need not suppose either that sons were always very amenable, or that parents were invariably self-willed and autocratic, but it is obvious that marriages based on mutual attraction must have been extremely few. We will suppose that Silius is his own master, while Marcia has a father or a guardian still alive.

At the betrothal ceremony the friends of both houses are in attendance, a regular form of words is interchanged between Silius and the father of Marcia, a ring is given by the man to his fiancee, to be worn on the fourth finger of her left hand, and he adds some other present, most probably some form of that jewellery of which the Roman women were and still are so extraordinarily fond. A feast naturally follows.

You would think this performance sufficiently binding, and binding no doubt it was from a moral point of view, so long as there was reasonably good behaviour on either side, or so long as neither Silius nor Marcia's father was prepared wantonly to flout general opinion or to offend a whole connection by simply changing his mind. On the other hand, there was no legal compulsion whatever to carry out the contract. The Roman world knew nothing of actions for breach of promise. If either party chose to repudiate the engagement, they were free so to do. In that case they were said to "send back a refusal" or to "send a counter-notice." A family dispute, a breath of suspicion, a change of circumstances, and even an improved prospect might be sufficient excuse, or no excuse need be offered at all.

In the present instance, however, no such ugly missive passes between the house of Silius on the Caelian Hill and that of Marcius on the Aventine, the wedding takes place in due course. It will not be in May nor in early March or June, nor on certain other dates which, for reasons mostly long forgotten, were regarded as inauspicious. It is a social ceremony, and neither state nor priest will have anything to do with sanctioning or blessing it. The pillars at the sides of the vestibules of both houses are wreathed with leaves and boughs, and the friends and clients of both families proceed in festal array to the house of the bride. If Marcia is very young she has taken her playthings—dolls and the like—and has dedicated them to the household gods as a sign that she now puts away childish things and devotes herself to the serious tasks of life. She has then been carefully dressed for the occasion. Her hair, however she may have worn it before or may wear it afterwards, is for to-day made up into six plaits or braids, which are wound into a coil on the top of her head. As an initial rite it is parted by means of an instrument resembling a spear, a survival of the time when a bride was a prize of war, and when her long locks were actually divided by a veritable spear in token of her subjection. Round this coiffure is placed a bridal wreath, made of flowers which she must have gathered with her own hands, and over her head is thrown a veil—more strictly a cloth—of some orange-yellow or "flame-coloured" material, which does not, however, like the Grecian or Oriental veil, conceal her face. On her feet are low yellow shoes. Meanwhile the bridegroom arrives, escorted by his friends, and he also wears a festal garland. As with all other important undertakings of Roman life, a professional seer will be in attendance to take care that the auspices are favourable. Peculiar portents, very unpropitious behaviour of nature, a very strange appearance in the entrails of a sacrificial victim, are omens which no properly constituted Roman can afford to overlook. The auspices being favourable—and there is reason to believe that no undue insistence was laid on their unpropitious aspects—the bride is led into the reception-hall, and the contract of marriage is signed and sealed. That there should be a dowry, and a considerable one, goes without saying. In some cases it is actually settled on the husband, who is to all intents and purposes purchased by it; but in most it is available for his use only so long as the marriage continues unbroken. For the rest, the wife's property is and remains her own. Her guardian is still her father and not her husband: her legal connection is still with her own family and not with his. She is a Marcia and not a Silia. If the marriage is dissolved, at least without sufficient demonstrable provocation on her part, her father will see that her dower is paid back. To such terms as these the parties affix their names and seals, and a certain number of friends add their signatures as witnesses.

This done, one of the younger married women present takes the bride and leads her across to Silius who holds her right hand in his. Both repeat a prescribed formula of words, and all the company present exclaims "Good luck to you!" and offers such other congratulations as seem fit. A wedding-dinner is held, generally, but not necessarily, in the house of the bride, and a wedding-cake, served upon bay-leaves, is cut up and divided among the guests. It is now evening, and a procession is formed to bring Marcia home to the house of Silius. In front will march the torchbearers and what we should call "the band," consisting in these circumstances of a number of persons playing upon the flageolet. Silius goes through a pretence of carrying off Marcia by force—another practice reminiscent of the ancient time when men won their brides by methods similar to those of the Australian aborigine with his waddy. Both groom and bride are important people, and along the streets there is many a decoration; many a window and doorway is filled with spectators; shouts, not always of the most discreet, are heard from all sides, and loud above all rings the regular Io Talasse—whatever that may have meant, for no man now knows, and almost certainly no one knew then. In the midst of the procession Marcia, followed by bearers of her spindle and distaff, is being led by two pretty boys, while a third carries a torch; Silius meanwhile is scattering nuts or walnuts, or confetti made like them, to the crowd. Arrived on the Caelian, the bride is once more seized and lifted over the threshold; when inside the hall, Silius presents her with fire and water in token of her common share in the household and its belongings; and she offers prayers to various old-fashioned goddesses who are supposed to preside over the introduction to married life.

If we have given with some particularity the orthodox proceedings of a fashionable wedding, it must again be remembered that not all weddings were fashionable, and that one or other of these details might be omitted as taste or circumstances required. Among the poorer folk there must often have been practically no ceremony at all beyond the "bringing home." And if there are certain items which appear to us trivial and meaningless, it is probably unfamiliarity which breeds our contempt. Perhaps a far-off generation may wonder how civilised folk in the twentieth century could perform absurd antics with rice and slippers.

Marcia is now what was known as a "matron." Her position is far more free than it could ever have been in Greece or the Orient, more free indeed than it would be in any civilised country at the present time. The Romans had at all times placed the matron in a position of dignity and responsibility, and to this is now added the greatest liberty of action. Her husband salutes her in public as "Madam." Since he is a senator, and it is beginning to be the vogue to call such men "The Most Illustrious," she also shares that title in polite reference to herself. She is not confined to any particular portion of the house, nor, within the limits of decorum, is she excluded from masculine company. She is the mistress of the establishment, controlling, not only the female slaves, but also the males, in so far as they are engaged in the work of the household. She keeps the keys of the store-rooms. Theoretically at least she has been trained in all the arts of the housekeeper, and thoroughly understands domestic management, together with the weaving and spinning which her handmaids are to perform. The merits of the wife, as summed up in the epitaphs of the middle classes, are those of "good counsellor good manager, and good worker in wool." She walks or is carried abroad at her pleasure, attends the public games in the Circus, and goes with her husband to dinner-parties, where she reclines at the meal just as he does. When her tutelage is past she can take actions in the law-courts, or appear as witness or surety. Her property is at her own disposal, and she instructs her own agent or attorney. It is only necessary that she should guard the honour of her husband. So long as he trusts her he will not interfere. It is only a very tyrannical spouse who will insist that her litter or sedan-chair shall have the curtains drawn when in the streets. We will assume that Marcia is a lady of the true Roman self-respect and dignity, and that Silius and she live a life of reasonable harmony.

But though there were many such Marcias, there were other women of a very different character. There is, for instance, Flavia, who has a perfect frenzy for "manly" sports, and practises all manner of athletic exercises, wrestling and fencing like any man, and perhaps becoming infatuated and practically running away with some brawny but hideous gladiator. She also indulges frankly in mixed bathing. There is Domitia, who is too fond Of promenading in the colonnades and temples, where a cavaliere servente, ostensibly her business man—though he does not look like it—may regularly be seen carrying her parasol. When at home, she neglects her attire and plasters her face with dough in order to smooth out the wrinkles, so that she may give to anybody but her own family the benefit of her beauty. There is the ruinously extravagant Pollia, whose passion for jewels and fine clothes runs her deeply into debt, for which, fortunately, her husband is not responsible. There is Canidia, who is shrewdly suspected of having poisoned more than one husband and who has either divorced or been divorced by so many that she has had eight of them in five years, and dates events by them instead of in the regular way by the consulships: "Let me see. That was in the year in which I was married to So-and-So." There is Asinia, whose selfishness is so great, and her affection so frivolous, that she will weep over a sparrow and "let her husband die to save her lap-dog's life." All these women are most likely childless, and many a noble Roman house threatens to become extinct.

There are others, again, whose foibles are more innocent. Baebia, for example, is merely a victim to superstition. She is always consulting the astrologers, the witches, and the dream-readers; she is devoted to the mystic worship of the Egyptian Isis, with its secret rites of purification, or she is a proselyte to the pestilent notions of the Jews. She is too much under the influence of some squalid Oriental who carries his pedlar's basket, or whose business is to buy broken glass for sulphur matches Meanwhile Corellia is a blue-stocking, as bad as a precieuse with a salon. As soon as you sit down to table she begins to quote Homer and Virgil and to compare their respective merits. She cultivates bright conversation in both Greek and Latin, and her tongue goes loudly and incessantly like a bell or gong. Her poor husband is never permitted to indulge in an expression which is not strictly grammatical. Worse still, she probably even writes little poems of her own. She may keep a tame tutor in philosophy, but she makes no scruple about interrupting his lesson on morals while she writes a little billet-doux. Pomponia is an ambitious woman, whose mania is to interfere in elections by bringing to bear upon the senators what has been called in recent times the "duchesses'" influence. If her husband becomes governor of a province, she will endeavour to be the power behind the throne, and her meddling will in any case prove harmful to the strict administration of justice.

The remedy in such cases was divorce. In the lower orders of society a mild personal castigation was quite legal and probably not uncommon; but then in these lower orders divorce was by no means so convenient. Among the upper classes its frequency made it scarcely a matter of remark. Nothing like it has been seen until modern America. There was no need of an appeal to the courts or of a decree nisi; there was not even need of a specific plea, although naturally one would be offered in most cases. The husband or wife (or the wife's father, if she had one), might send a formal and witnessed notice declaring the marriage dissolved, or, as it was called, "breaking the marriage lines." The man had only to take this step and say with due deliberation "Take your own property"—or, as the satirist puts it, "pack up your traps"—"give up the keys, and begone." The woman on her side need only give similar notice and "take her departure." The only check lay in family considerations, in public opinion, which was extremely lenient, in financial convenience, or in the possibility of particularly wanton conduct being so disapproved in high quarters that a senator or a knight might perhaps find his name missing from the list of his order at the next revision.

It has appeared necessary to give this darker side of the social picture, for, though assuredly not so lurid as might be gathered from the moralists, it was dark enough. For obvious reasons it is desirable not to elaborate. It is perhaps more profitable, as well as refreshing, to consider the brighter side. That there were noble women and good wives, and that the froth and scum and dregs of idle town-life did not make up the existence of the contemporary Roman world, may be seen from passages like the following, which are either quoted or condensed from a letter of Pliny concerning a lady named Arria. The events belong to the reign of Nero's predecessor Claudius. Pliny writes: "Her husband, Caecina Paetus, was ill; so also was her son; and it was expected that both would die. The son, an extremely handsome and modest youth, succumbed. His mother arranged for his funeral and carried it out, the husband meanwhile being kept in ignorance. Not only so, but every time she came into his room she pretended that the son was alive and better, and very often, when he asked how the boy was getting on, she answered, 'He has slept well, and shown a good appetite.' Then, when the tears which she had so long kept back proved too much for her, she used to leave the room and give herself up to grief. When at last she had dried her eyes and composed her countenance she returned to the room. When her husband had taken part in an intended revolt against Claudius, he was to be carried as a prisoner across the Adriatic to Rome. He was on the point of embarking, when Arria begged the soldiers to take her on board with him. 'I presume,' she said, 'you mean to allow an ex-consul a few attendants of some kind, to give him his food, and to put on his clothes and shoes. I will do all that myself.'" Her request being refused, "she hired a fishing-smack and followed the big vessel in this tiny one." When Claudius ordered the husband to put himself to death, Arria took a dagger, stabbed herself in the breast, drew the weapon out, and handed it to him with the words: "Paetus, it does not hurt. It is what you are about to do that hurts."

Arria doubtless is a rare type of heroine. But also of the quiet domesticated wife we have a description from the same writer. Unfortunately the letter is one of the most priggish of all the rather self-complacent epistles written by that thoroughly respectable and estimable man; but that fact takes nothing from the information for which we are looking. Pliny is writing to his own wife's aunt. "You will be very glad to learn that Calpurnia is turning out worthy of her father, of yourself, and of her grandfather. She has admirable sense and is an excellent housekeeper; she is fond of me, which speaks well for her character. Through her affection for me she has also developed a taste for literature. She possesses my books and is always reading them; she even learns them by heart. When I am to make a speech in court, she is all anxiety; when I have made it, she is all joy. She arranges a string of messengers to let her know what effect I produce, what applause I win, and what result I have obtained. If I give a reading, she sits in the next room behind a curtain and listens greedily to the compliments paid to me. She even sets my verses to music and sings them to the harp, with no professional to teach her, but only love, who is the best of masters. I have therefore every reason to hope that our harmony will not only last but grow greater every day."

And all this time, away in the country homestead and cottage, the good Marsian or Sabine mother is a veritable pattern of domestic probity and discipline. If she possesses handmaids, she teaches them their work in the kitchen or at the loom; if she possesses none, she brings up her big daughters in the right ways of modesty, frugality, and obedience to the gods; and her tall sons religiously obey her when she sends them out to chop the firewood in the rain and cold of the mountain-side.

One subject of perpetual interest where women are concerned is that of dress and personal appearance. The Roman woman emphatically pursued the cult of beauty and personal adornment. Perhaps the first prayer which a mother offered for an expected daughter was that she should be beautiful. Whether she proved so or not, no pains were spared to correct or supplement the work of nature. It is true that fashion, except in the dressing of hair, underwent none of those rapid and astonishing changes which perplex the unsophisticated male of to-day. Above all, there were no hats. But all that gold and jewels, colours—blue, green, yellow, violet—and varied stuffs—woollen, linen, muslin, and silk—could do for dress was done by every typical woman of means; and every device for improving the complexion, the teeth, the hair, the height, and the figure—which, by the way, never sought the wasplike waist—was fully exploited. We need not go too closely into details. It will be enough to describe the ordinary attire and the ordinary methods of beautification.



The conventional indoor dress consisted of, first, an inner tunic, short and sleeveless, with a band passing over or under the breast, so as to produce something resembling what is called the Empire figure; second, an outer tunic of linen or half-silk, less often of whole silk, which fell to the feet. The outer tunic was fastened on the shoulders with brooches; it had sleeves over the upper arm, and, in the case of adults but not of young girls, a flounce or furbelow at the bottom. A girdle produced a fold under the breast. The garment was commonly white, but might be bordered with coloured fringes and embroidery; for ladies of senatorial rank it bore the broad stripe worked in purple or gold. On the feet sandals were often worn, but for out-of-doors these were replaced by soft shoes of white, coloured or gilded leather, sometimes studded with pearls or other gems.



When a lady left the house she threw over the indoor dress a large mantle or shawl, much resembling the toga of the men, except that its colour was apparently what she pleased. This article was passed over the left shoulder and under the right arm, which was left free; it then fell in graceful folds to the feet. Works of art show that a fold of the shawl was frequently laid over the top and back of the head, for which no less becoming covering had yet been introduced.



The hair alone was subject to innumerable vagaries either of fashion or of individual taste. It might have a parting or no parting; it might be plaited over the head and fastened by jewelled tortoise-shell combs, or by pins of ivory, silver, or bronze with jewelled heads, as varied and ornamental as the modern hatpin; it might be carried to the back and rest in a knot on the neck, where it was bound with ribbons; it might be piled into a huge pyramid or "towers of many stories," so that a woman often looked tall in front and appeared quite a different person at the back; it might be encased in a coloured cloth or in a net of gold thread, for which poorer people substituted a bladder. But in all cases it was preferred that the hair should be wavy, and this was a matter which was attended to by a special coiffeur kept among the slaves. No handmaid had a harder or more ungrateful task than the tiring-woman, who built up and fastened the reluctant locks while the mistress contemplated the effect in her bronze or silver mirror. There was no rule for a woman's treatment of herself in this respect. "Consult your mirror," is the advice of the poet Ovid, who has hopelessly lost all count of styles, since they were "more numerous than the leaves on the oak or the bees on Hybla." To full dress belonged a coronal or tiara, consisting of a band of gold and precious stones.

But who shall dare to speak of the jewellery that bedecked a Roman matron en grande tenue—of the pearl and pendant earrings, the necklaces of pearl and diamonds, the gold snake armlets with their emerald eyes, the bangles and finger-rings, the brooches and buckles on the shoulders and down the sleeves, the gems scattered among the hair, the chains and chatelaines strung with all manner of glittering articles? Says one who lived at the time: "I have seen Lollia Paulina covered with emeralds and pearls gleaming all over her head, hair, ears, neck, and fingers to the value of over L300,000." If Rome is the eternal city, it is eternal in this respect at least as much as in any other.

Who, still more bold, shall pry into her apparatus for the beautification of her person, examining her patch-box and the innocent little pots of rouge, vermilion, and white lead for the complexion, and of soot to rub under the eyes? Who shall scrutinise too closely that delicate blue which tinges her temples? Who shall dare to question whether that yellow hair of the most approved tone, then best seen in Germany, grew where you find it or came from some head across the Rhine? Who shall venture to ask whether that smooth skin was preserved by her wearing last night a mask of meal, which she washed off this morning with asses' milk? Petronius, indeed, says that the "lady takes her eyebrows out of a little box," and probably Petronius knew. For her artificial teeth there is an obvious and sensible excuse, and it is no reproach to her if, as the poet declared, "she puts her teeth aside at night, just as she does her silks." Probably she scents herself far too heavily, but there are many Roman men who are just as bad.

She is ready now for all emergencies, and we may leave her, sitting in her long-backed cushioned chair, waving in one hand a fan of peacock's feathers or of thin wood covered with gold-leaf, and holding in the other a ball of amber or glass to keep her hands cool and dry.



CHAPTER XVII

CHILDREN AND EDUCATION

Unlike too many couples of the same class, Silius and Marcia are blessed with children. We will assume that there are two, a boy, whose full name shall be Publius Silius Bassus, and a girl, who is to be called Silia Bassa. It is perhaps to be regretted that there is not a third, for in that case the father would enjoy to the full certain privileges granted by law to parents who so far do their duty by the state. As it is, he will in the regular course of things receive preference over childless men, when it comes to candidature for a public office or to the allotting of a governorship. The decline in the birthrate had become so startling at the close of the republic that the first emperor, Augustus, had decided that it was necessary on the one side to penalise persons who remained either unmarried or childless, and on the other to grant fixed concessions to all who were the parents of three. A bachelor could not, for instance, receive a legacy from any one but a near relative; a married man without children could only receive half of such a legacy; a man with three children could not only enjoy his legacy in full, but could take the shares forfeited by any bachelor or childless legatee who figured in the same will. It does not appear that the law produced any great effect, and, to make it still more futile, the later emperors began to bestow what was called the "privilege of three children" on persons who actually had either fewer or none at all.

The power of the father over the children is theoretically almost absolute. Even when a son is grown up and married he legally belongs to his father; so does all his supposed property. The same is the case with a daughter, unless she becomes a Vestal Virgin, or unless she marries according to the stricter of the two kinds of matrimony already described. In the older days of Rome the father could, and sometimes did, put his children to death if he chose. Though too free an exercise of so extreme an authority was no longer recognised, it was still quite legal to make away with an infant which was badly deformed. Says Seneca, in the most matter-of-fact way, "We drown our monstrosities." It was quite legal also to expose a child, and leave it either to perish or to be taken up by whosoever chose. In most such instances doubtless the child became the slave of the finder. Not only was this allowable at Rome and in the romanized part of the empire; it was a frequent practice throughout the Greek or Eastern portion. Again, a father might sell his child as a slave, particularly for continual disobedience. All these things the parent might legally do; but it is extremely difficult to discover how far they were actually done, inasmuch as our information in this respect hardly touches the lower classes, while among the upper classes there was naturally far less temptation to be rid of the burden of maintaining such few children as most families produced. On the whole it appears highly improbable that in the truly Roman part of the empire there was any considerable destruction of infant life or exposure of infants. It does not follow that, because the strict law does not prevent you from doing a thing, you will therefore do it, in the face of public disapproval and of all the promptings of natural affection. In their family relations the ancient Romans possessed at least as much natural feeling as is commonly shown in modern times. The fact is that in matters of law the Romans were eminently conservative; they left as much as possible to the silent working of social opinion. In the oldest times the patriarchal system existed in the family, and new Roman legislation interfered with parental power only just so far as experience had loudly demanded such intervention. There can have been no very pronounced abuse of the powers of the father, and, as the discipline of the family was regarded as essential to the discipline of the state, the law was always unwilling to weaken in any way the hold of such family discipline. The strictly legal authority of the father was therefore maintained, while its abusive exercise was limited by the risk, if not the certainty, that it would meet with both public and private censure.

Nevertheless, to return to the point which called for this explanation, it is quite in the power of Silius to expose or sell little Publius or little Silia. But for a man in his position to do anything of the kind would bring the scorn of all Roman society about his ears; and, among other humiliations, almost undoubtedly his name would be expunged from the senatorial list. Moreover Silus, though a pagan, is a human being, and his affection for his children would certainly be no less warm than that of the average Christian man of to-day.

Immediately after birth there is a little ceremony. The babe is brought and laid upon the hearth or floor before the household gods for the father to inspect it. As has been said already, if it is a monstrosity, he may order it to be made away with. Otherwise it is still open to him either to acknowledge the infant or to refuse to have anything to do with it. The act of acknowledgment consists in stooping down and lifting up the child from the ground. For this reason the expression used for acknowledging and undertaking to rear a child was "lifting" or "picking up." In our instance the little son and daughter are, of course, not only picked up, but welcomed as the young hopes of the proud house of Silii Bassi.

On the ninth day in case of the boy, or the eighth in that of the girl, the child is named, after certain ceremonies of purification. The whole proceeding bears much resemblance to a christening, except that there is no calling in of the services of a church. The relations and friends gather in the hall, each bringing his present, and even the slaves make their little inexpensive offerings. The gifts are chiefly little trinkets of gold, silver, and ivory—rings, miniature hands, axes, swords, or crescents—which are to be strung across the baby's breast. The original purpose of all these objects was to act as charms against the blighting of the child by evil powers, or, more definitely, by the "evil eye," that malignant influence which still troubles so many good Italians, both ignorant and learned. With the same intention the father hangs upon the child's neck a certain object which it will carry till it comes of age. If a few years later you met the boy Publius in the Roman streets, you would find him wearing a round case or locket in gold, some two inches in diameter and resembling the modern cased watch. Inside is shut his protecting amulet. When he is sixteen and puts on the man's toga, his amulet will be laid aside. In the case of the little Silia it will be worn until she marries. Poorer folk, for whom gold is too expensive, will enclose the amulet in a case of leather.

The naming over, the child is registered. The Romans were adepts in the art of utilising a religious or superstitious practice for purposes of state, and the development of the registration of births and deaths is but one instance. In older times it had been a custom, on the occasion of a birth, to pay a visit to the shrine of "Juno the Birth-Goddess," and to leave a small coin by way of offering. It is easy for a state to convert an already established general custom into a rule; and at our date this shrine of Juno had become practically a registration office, where a small fee was paid and the name of the child entered upon the rolls.

We need not follow with any closeness the infancy of either boy or girl till the seventh year. The ancient world was very much like the modern. Suffice it to glance at them cutting their teeth on the teeth of wolves or horses, rocked in cradles decorated with gold and purple, or running about and calling their parents by the time-honoured mamma, tata—words, if we can call them words, which came from those small Roman mouths precisely as they have come from time immemorial from so many others. Their slave nurse, who is a Greek and talks Greek to them, tells them the old wives' tales and fables. They play with rattles, balls, and little carts, with pet birds and monkeys, and the girl with dolls of ivory or wax or of painted terra-cotta. They have swings, and ride on sticks and build houses. When bigger, the boy has his tops and hoops, with or without bells, and he plays marbles with nuts. Meanwhile attempts are made, somewhat after the kindergarten pattern, to teach them their alphabet by means of letters shaped in wood or ivory. Whether or not it is modern kindergarten method to tempt children to learn by offers of sugar-plums, that course was often adopted in the world of both Greece and Rome.

On the whole the life of the child, though strictly governed, appears to have been pleasant enough until schooldays began. Though many children were taught at home by a more or less learned slave acting as private tutor, the great majority, at least of the boys, were sent to school. There was at this date no compulsory education; the state dictated nothing and provided nothing in connection with the matter; many children must have received no education at all, and many only the barest elements. Nevertheless the average parent realised the practical utility of at least reading, writing, and simple arithmetic, and schools of the elementary type sprang up according to the demand. What the higher education was like will be set forth in its place.

The ideal education, as understood in the older days of Rome, was a training which should fit a man for his duty to the gods, the state, and the family. It was above all things a moral and practical training. A man has certain domestic, political, and religious functions to perform: let him learn how best to perform these. Under this system there was little room for accomplishments or for purely intellectual pursuits. Little by little, however, such liberal elements, artistic and philosophical, struggled into the sphere of Roman education, but never to the extent or with the intellectual effect which belonged to them in Greece. Even by A.D. 64 the education of a Roman boy was very narrow, and, in the direction in which it sought some liberality, it often went sadly astray. The clearest course will be for us to take young Publius Silius through a course typical of the time. We will assume that he does not receive all his lessons at home, but that, through an old-fashioned preference on the part of his father, he goes to a school, along with boys who are mostly but not necessarily of the same social standing with himself.

We have unfortunately almost no information as to any social grading of schools, or as to their size. All we know is that some schools were taught entirely by one man, while others employed an undermaster or several. In some cases the school is entirely a private enterprise, the master charging a monthly fee—amounting in the elementary schools to a penny or twopence a week—together with small money presents on certain festivals. The more select establishments naturally charged more. Probably most of the schools in Rome and the larger towns were upon this private footing. In other instances a number of parents in a smaller town would club together and subscribe sufficient money to provide the salary of a schoolmaster for their children. In yet others some benefactor, generally a wealthy local magnate, had given or bequeathed an endowment fund, from which a school was either wholly or partially financed. At a rather later date Pliny writes a letter, of which the following is a passage, interesting in this connection. "When I was lately in my native part of the country (that is to say, at Como), a boy—the son of a fellow townsman—came to pay his respects. I said, 'Are you at school?' 'Yes,' he replied. 'Where?' 'At Milan.' 'And why not here?' At this his father said, 'Because we have no teachers here.' 'And why have you none? It is of the greatest importance to any of you who are fathers—and it happened that several fathers were listening—that your children should be taught here rather than anywhere else.... How small a thing it is to put money together and engage teachers and to apply to their salary the amount which you now spend on lodgings, travelling expenses, and the articles that have always to be purchased when one is away from home.'" Whereupon he proceeds himself to offer to contribute one-third of whatever sum the parents collect. He does not believe in giving the whole, because experience has taught him that endowments of this kind are commonly misused. The parents must themselves retain an interest in preventing corruption; and this will be the case so long as they are themselves paying their share. In this instance we are, however, to think rather of a high school or school of rhetoric than of the primary school. Como would not lack a primary school, nor would parents send very young children to lodge in Milan. There is no trace of real boarding-schools.

To whatever school Publius goes he will be accompanied by a sedate slave, generally elderly and also generally a Greek, whom you may call his "guardian," or his "governor," or his "mentor," according to your fancy. The function of this worthy is to look after the morals and behaviour of the boy when in the streets, and also to supervise his manners when at home. Publius will not be free of this incubus until the day when he puts on the adult's toga; and he must be prepared to accept, at least in his younger days, not only scolding, but also corporal punishment from him. In poorer families the mother corrected her children with a slipper. The "guardian" of Publius is nevertheless a slave, and will carry the young master's books and school requisites for him, while the sons of poorer parents are marching along, freer and happier, with their tablets and writing-case slung over their left arm. When, in the New Testament, we are told that the "Law hath been our schoolmaster unto Christ," the word employed does not at all mean schoolmaster. It means this slave who keeps the pupil under salutary discipline until he reaches the schoolmaster, and who superintends his conduct until he is of age.



School age regularly begins at seven for the elementary stage, which commonly includes writing, reading, and arithmetic. The first lessons in writing are done upon wax tablets, which correspond to our slate. For school purposes they are flat pieces of wood, with a rim, their surface being covered with a thin layer of wax. The pupil takes a "style," or metal stiletto, pointed at one end and flat at the other; with the point he scratches, or "ploughs" as the Romans called it, the writing in the wax; with the other end he flattens the wax and so makes the necessary erasures when he desires to correct a word or to "clean his slate."

His first efforts will probably consist either of tracing letters through a stencil, or of forming them from a copy while the master guides his hand. He will next write a series of words—the good old copybook method with the good old copybook maxims. It is only when he has gained some proficiency that he will be allowed to write upon paper or parchment with ink and with a split reed for pen. In such a case the backs of useless documents come in handy, and particularly serviceable are the rolls containing the poems of the numerous authors whom no one wants to read, but whose books thus find one of their ultimate uses, another being to wrap up spices or salt fish. His arithmetic will be merely such as will enable him to make up accounts. The Roman numerals did not lend themselves easily to the method now adopted of calculating on paper, and the Roman pupil therefore reckoned partly with his fingers, partly by means of counters laid or strung upon a board. At this he became remarkably proficient, and at mental arithmetic there is reason to believe that he could beat the modern boy hollow. Along with the reckoning he would also necessarily learn his tables of weights and measures. "Two-and-a-half feet one step; two steps one pace; a thousand paces one mile." So he said or sang, and a mile—mille, "a thousand" paces—remains our own word to this day, even though it has come to signify an eccentric 1760 yards.

That Roman boys bore no love to school or schoolmaster is little wonder. Perhaps Publius may be fortunate; but if his schoolmaster is of the ordinary type he will be an irascible loud-voiced person, who bawls and scolds and thrashes. It will be a common thing to find, as Seneca puts it, a man "in a violent passion teaching you that to be in a passion is wrong." The doctrine went that "he who is not flayed is not educated." The methods of the military centurion may have had something to do with creating this behaviour, but there is perhaps another excuse to be found for the Roman pedagogue. His school, if of the inferior kind, is like any other shop, a place open to the street, whether on the ground floor or in the balcony-like entresol. There is no cloistered privacy about his instruction. To such a place at a very early hour come the boys "creeping unwillingly." When the days are short the school opens before daybreak, and the smoky lamps and lanterns create an evil smell and atmosphere in the raw and chilly morning. That is no time to be amiable towards inattention or stupidity. There were many other circumstances to try the temper, and the Roman temper, except among the highest classes, was, as it is, quick and loud. No real boy who had been a Roman school but knew what it was to have ears pinched and to take his punishment on his hands with the cane or the tawse. Many had been "horsed," in the way depicted in the illustration.

There is also no cause for surprise that boys often shammed illness and did little things to their eyes so that mother or father might keep them from their books for a while. There were of course academies of a better class than these schools open to the street, and probably Publius Silius would be taken to one where his "guardian" waits with others in an antechamber, while he is himself being taught in a room where the walls are pictured with historical or mythological scenes, or with charts or maps, and where there stand busts of eminent writers. The boys are seated on benches or forms, and the master on a high-backed chair. When the pupil is called upon to repeat a lesson, he stands up before the teacher; when the whole class is to deliver a dictated passage it rises and delivers it all together, in orthodox sing-song style.



Somewhere towards eleven o'clock there is an interval, and the boys go home for lunch or buy something from the seller of rissoles or sausages in the street. In the afternoon—when the schoolmaster has taken his own luncheon and probably his short siesta—they return to school, putting in altogether about six hours of lessons in the day.

That boys and girls went to the same elementary schools is not absolutely provable from any explicit statement to that effect; but there are one or two passages in literature which point almost certainly to that conclusion. It is at least undeniable that girls, and even big girls, went to school, and that in those schools they were taught by men. One schoolmaster is addressed by the poet as "detestable to both boys and girls." We have seen that in maturity the Roman woman lived in no sort of seclusion; and it is reasonable to suppose that as a girl she was treated in much the same way as girls in a mixed school of to-day. Nevertheless it is also almost certain that such mixed schools were only those of the common people, or of the lower middle classes: the daughters of the better-circumstanced would be instructed at home by private tutors. There they would learn to read and write both Greek and their native Latin, to play upon the lyre or harp, to dance—Roman dancing being more a matter of gesture with hands and body than of movement with the feet—and to carry themselves with the bearing fit for a Roman lady. To teach the household duties was the function of the mother.

At Rome, as with us, there was, first, a primary education, pure and simple, given in the schools of those who would nowadays be registered as teachers of primary subjects. Next there was what we should call a secondary or high-school education, given by a "grammar master," in which the education was almost wholly literary. The same school might doubtless employ a special arithmetic master, and also a teacher of music, but mainly the business of such an establishment was theoretically to prepare the boy for a proper and effective use of language, whether for social or for public purposes. In the Rome of the republic a man of affairs or ambitions required above all things to be an accomplished speaker, and this tradition had not weakened under the empire. Moreover, for the training of the intellectual faculties as such, the Romans had no better resource than grammatical and literary study. Science was purely empirical, mathematics was mainly arithmetic and mensuration, and there was no room in these subjects for that exercise of discernment and acumen as well as of taste which was provided by well-directed study of the best authors. In the secondary education, therefore, the chief object sought was "the knowledge of right expression," and the acquirement of "correct, clear, and elegant diction." This was to be achieved by the most painstaking study of both the Greek and the Latin poets; and it is worth noting that the Romans had the good sense to begin with the best. Every boy must know his Homer, and steep himself in the easy style and sound sentiments of Menander; he must also know his Virgil and his Terence. He must know how to read a passage with proper intonation and appreciation of the sense, and he must learn large quantities of such poetry by heart. In the early stages the master's part is first to read aloud a certain passage what he thinks to be the right articulation and expression; he then explains the meaning or the allusions, and does whatever else he considers necessary for the understanding and appreciation of the piece. It is then the pupil's turn to stand up and repeat the passage so as to show that he has caught the true sense and can impart the true intonation. No doubt there were bad and indifferent teachers as well as good ones, and doubtless there was much mere parroting on the part of the learner. It was then, as it is now, chiefly a question of the sort of teacher. It is probable that in many schools the action of the mental faculty as well as of the voice became pure sing-song. Julius Caesar once made the comment: "If you are singing, you are singing badly; if you are reading, you are singing."

The more advanced stage of this higher education was that of the "school of oratory." The pupil has already acquired a correct grammatical style, and a reasonable amount of literary information; he now trains himself for the actual practice of the law-courts or the deliberative assembly. He is to learn how to argue a case; how to arrange his matter; by what devices of language to make it most effective; and how to deliver it. At a later date there were to be public professorships of this art, endowed by the emperor, but there are none of these at Rome itself under Nero. The "professor of oratory" receives his fee of some L20 or so per annum from each pupil. At this stage the study of the great prose-writers is substituted for that of the poets; themes are set for essays to be written upon them; and those essays will then be delivered as speeches. Sometimes a familiar statement or maxim from a poet is put forward to be refuted or supported, or for you to argue first against it and then for it. Or some historical situation may be proposed, and the student asked to set forth the wisest or most just course in the circumstances. "Hannibal has beaten the Romans at Cannae: shall he or shall he not proceed directly to attack Rome? Examine the question as if you were Hannibal." Much of this appears theoretically sound enough. Unfortunately the subjects were generally either hopelessly threadbare or possessed no bearing upon real life. "We are learning," says Seneca, "not for life, but for the school." The only novelty which could be given to the treatment of old abstract themes or puerile questions was novelty of phrase, and the one great mark of the literature of this time is therefore the pursuit of the striking expression, of something epigrammatic or glittering. A speech was judged by its purple patches of rhetoric, not by the soundness of its thoughts. Prizes, apparently of books, were offered in these Roman schools, and a prize would go to the youth who could tell you in the most remarkable string of brilliant language what was your duty towards your country, or what were the evils of anger, or for what reasons it is right for a father to disown his son. Meanwhile parents would look in at the school from time to time and listen to the boys declaiming, and it is easy to see with the mind's eye the father listening, like the proud American parent at a "graduation" day, to his gifted offspring "speaking a piece."

Education commonly stopped at this point. If the rhetorical training is taken early, the boy is now about sixteen; but there was nothing to prevent the oratorical course from following instead of preceding the "coming of age." In this case we will suppose that it has preceded. The youth has now received a good literary training and considerable practice in the art of speech-making. He knows enough of elementary arithmetic to keep accounts, or, in special cases—where he is intended for certain professional careers—he may understand some geometry and the principles of mechanics and engineering. He may or may not have learned to sing, and enough of music to play creditably on lyre or harp. Unlike the young Greek, he will not necessarily have been made to recognise that gymnastic training is an essential part of education. He may indulge in such exercises by way of pastime or for health; he may, and generally will, have been taught athletics; but he does not acknowledge that they have any practical bearing upon his aptitude for either warfare or civil life.

It is hard to gauge the intellect of the average Roman youth of sixteen; all we know is that, while the best of literature, science, art, and philosophy was left to be undertaken by Greeks, the Romans seized upon whatever learning had an appreciable practical bearing, and that, as men capable of administering and directing, they left their intellectual and artistic superiors far behind.

Up till this time the boy has worn a toga with a purple edge, and also the gold amulet-case round his neck. The time has, however, come for him to be regarded as a man—not indeed free of his father's authority, but free to walk about without a bear-leader, to marry, if his father so desires, or to decide upon a career. Accordingly, on the 17th of March by preference, he will put away the outward insignia of boyhood, dedicate his amulet to the household gods, and will don the all-white toga of a man. The relatives, friends, and clients will gather at the house, and, after offering their congratulations, will escort the youth to the Capitol, and thence down to the Forum, where his appearance in this manner will be accompanied by introductions and a recognition on all sides that he is now "of age." At the Record Office the name of "Publius Silius Bassus, son of Quintus," is recorded with due fulness of description, and he ranks henceforth as one of the citizens of Rome.

After this little ceremony of coming of age, a number of the young men apparently did nothing. The sons of poorer parents have long ago gone to their work in their various trades. Those of the more well-to-do may—and, if they are afterwards to seek public office, they must—now undertake military service amid the conditions which are to be described in the next chapter. Others, being of a more studious turn, will proceed to complete their education by going abroad to one or other of the great seats of philosophic study which corresponded to our universities. Philosophy meant to the Roman a guide to the direction of life. Roman religion, upon which we shall hereafter dwell in some detail, consisted of a number of forms and ceremonies, or acts of recognition paid to the deities; it embodied certain traditional principles of duty to family and state; but otherwise it exercised very little influence on the conduct of life. So far as such guidance was supplied at all, it was by moral philosophy, the treatment of which, as it was understood at this date, is bound up with that of religion and must wait till we reach that subject. It is true that there were professional teachers of philosophy at Rome itself, but the metropolis was not their chief resort, any more than, until recently, London would have been recognised as a seat of university learning of the front rank. It is also true that many great houses maintained a domestic philosopher, who not only helped in moulding the tone of the master of the house and afforded him intellectual company, but might act as private philosophic tutor to his son. But for the most part this highest instruction was rather to be sought in cities specially noted for their assemblage of professors and lecturers. Chief among these figured Athens, Rhodes, Tarsus, Antioch, Alexandria, and Marseilles. At Naples also might be found a large number of men of learning, but they were chiefly persons who had retired from professional life, and who chose that city because of its pleasant climate and surroundings, and because they could there enjoy each other's society. In some of the cities named—particularly Athens and Alexandria—there were endowed professorships (though not endowed by the Roman emperors) of which the benefit was enjoyed, not only by the local student but also by those from other parts of the Roman world who chose to resort to such established teachers. This does not mean that such students paid no fee, nor that there was any lack of lecturers unendowed. The student was free to take his choice. Where there was endowment, as at Athens, there was control by the local authorities over the behaviour of students and also of their teachers; but it is evident that a professor's audience was by no means always a very well-ruled or docile body. As in the German universities, the visiting students were men, and some of them fairly advanced in years, and, also as in Germany, they followed their own tastes in study and changed from university to university at will. They, as it were, "sampled" the professors and made their own election. The teacher not only lectured to them, but also lectured them; while, on their side, they were entitled to catechise, and in a sense "badger," the lecturer, to propound difficulties, and to make more or less pronounced exhibition of their sentiments.

In the philosophic lecture-room the student, possessing his share of the vivacity and excitability of the south, would stamp, spring from his seat, shout and applaud, calling out in Greek "splendid!" "inimitable!" "capital!" "prettily said!" and so forth. Plutarch writes a little essay on the proper manner of behaving in the lecture-rooms, and he tells us: "You should sit in a proper manner and not lounge; you should keep your eyes on the speaker and show a lively interest; maintain a composed countenance and show no annoyance or irritation, nor look as if you were thinking of other things." Such an attitude was the ideal and orthodox; but he tells us also that there were some who "scowled; their eyes wandered; they sprawled, crossed their legs, nodded and whispered to their neighbour, smiled, yawned sleepily, and let their heads droop." This was not necessarily because the lecturer was dull, but because he might be giving lessons which were unwelcome to some among his audience. The cap fitted them too well, as it sometimes does when offered by a modern preacher. But, says the same Plutarch, if you did not like these direct and rough-tongued monitors, you could find other professors, poseurs, who were all suavity; gentlemen whose philosophical stock-in-trade was grey hair, a pleasant voice and delivery, graceful language, and much self-appreciation. These were the Reverend Charles Honeymans of the period, and their following was like unto the following of that popular pulpiteer.



Since mention has been made more than once of reading and libraries, it is well to realise the form commonly taken by books. We must not think of the modern bound volume standing on its shelf or open in the hand. At our date any books made up in the form of leaves—or what the Romans called "tablet" form—consisted only of some four or six pages. The regular shape for a book was that of a roll, or, if the work was a large one, it might consist of several such "rolls" or "sections." The material was either paper—in its original sense of papyrus—or the skin known as parchment. Papyrus was naturally the cheaper and the less durable. Prepared sheets of a given length and breadth—the "pages"—were written upon and then pasted to each other side by side until a long stretch was formed. The last sheet was then attached to a thin roller, commonly of wood, answering to that used in a modern wall-map. Round a roll of any pretensions there was wrapped a cover of coloured parchment, red, yellow, or purple. The ends of the roll were rubbed smooth with pumice-stone and dyed, and a tag or label was affixed to bear the name of the author and the work. A number of such rolls, related in subject or authorship, were placed on end in a round box, with the labels upwards ready for inspection. In the library such a box would stand in a pigeon-hole or section of shelf, from which it might be carried where required. Sometimes the rolls themselves lay in a heap horizontally in a pigeon-hole without a box, but this manifestly a less convenient practice. To keep the bookworms cedar-oil was rubbed upon them, giving them a yellowish tinge. The reader, taking the body of the roll in one hand, begins to unwind the long strip with the other. After reading the first column or page thus exposed, he mechanically re-winds that portion, while the width of another page is pulled into view. The writing itself was done by means of a reed, sharpened and split like a quill-pen, and dipped in ink made in various ways, but mostly less "biting" than our own. This made it comparatively easy to sponge out what was written, and to use the same roll over again—as a "palimpsest"—for some work more desired. It is perhaps needless to say that the writing was regularly to be found upon one side only. If the back was used, it was for economy, for unimportant notes, or as an exercise book for schoolboys. We may imagine a fine library copy, or edition de luxe, of Virgil as consisting of a number of rolls, each a long strip of the best parchment rolled round a staff of ivory with gilded ends. Its "cover" is a wrapper of parchment richly dyed and bearing coloured bands of leather to serve as fasteners. From the smoothed and dyed end stands out a scarlet label, marked "Virgil Aeneid Book I." (or as the case may be). When opened, the first page will reveal a painted portrait of the poet, and the writing will be found to be in a beautifully clear and even calligraphy. Beside the shelf on which the work is placed there likely stands a lifelike bust of Virgil in marble in bronze.



CHAPTER XVIII

THE ARMY: MILITARY SERVICE: PUBLIC CAREER

In the older days of Roman history the fighting forces had been a "citizen army," called out for so long as it was needed, and levied from full and true Roman citizens. In the imperial times with which we are here dealing it had become a standing army. Soldiering was a profession, for which the men volunteered, and, so far as Roman citizens were concerned, it was now seldom, if ever, the case that military service required to be made compulsory on their part. It is true that a young man of the higher classes who proposed to follow a public career, leading to higher and higher offices of state, must have gone through some amount of military training, but no other Roman was actually obliged to serve. The empire was so vast and the total of the standing forces comparatively so small that it was always possible to fill up the legions with those who had some motive or inclination that way. Theoretically the state possessed a claim upon every able-bodied man, but the population of the empire was probably a hundred millions, and to collect a total of some 320,000 soldiers, made up of Roman or romanized "citizens" and of provincial subjects in about equal shares, was a sufficiently easy task, and the recruiters could therefore afford to pick and choose. Above all we must clear our minds of the notion that the Roman soldiers necessarily came from Rome, or even from Italy. They were drawn from the empire at large, and a legion posted in Spain, for example, might be recruited from a special class of Spaniards.

Roughly speaking, the regular army, extending along the frontiers from Chester to Jerusalem and from Jerusalem to Algeria, was composed of two main divisions, called respectively the "legions" and the "auxiliaries." Other special or detached forces—such as the twelve regiments of Imperial Guards and the six of the City Guard—came under neither of these headings, and we may leave them out of the question for the present.

A legion was a brigade of about 6000 infantry, with 120 horsemen attached to it. It was recruited from any convenient part of the empire, but only from men already enjoying the rights of Roman citizens, or else from those other provincials who were considered sufficiently homogeneous with the Roman civilisation to stand shoulder to shoulder with such citizens. In being permitted to serve on these terms a man regularly becomes ipso facto a citizen. The qualifications required were that you should be free-born—that is to say, neither slave nor ex-slave—your physique must be good, and your height about 5 feet 10 inches: there must be nothing serious against your record or character as viewed from the Roman standpoint; and, if you were not already a citizen, you must belong to one of those organised communes which were the units of administration and of taxation within the empire. You undertake to serve for twenty years, after which time you will receive an honourable discharge and either a sum of money—at this date apparently about L50—or a grant of land. By ability and character you may rise from private soldier to centurion, that is to say, commander of a hundred, but in ordinary circumstances you can climb no further up the military ladder. If at the end of your term you are still robust and are considered useful, you may, if you choose, continue to serve in a special detachment of "veterans," with lighter duties and with exemption from common drill. The Roman legions would thus be made up for the most part of troops from about 18 to 38 years of age, although a considerable number might be somewhat older.