A legion once formed had a perpetual existence; its vacancies were filled up as they occurred; and it is obvious that it must have consisted of respectable men of picked physique, mostly in the prime of life, and perfectly trained in all the qualities of a soldier. When not on actual campaign they were drilled once a day, and the recruits twice. They practised the hurling of spears and all the attitudes of attack with sword and pike, and of defence with the shield. Now and then there was a review or a sham fight. They learned how to fortify a camp, how to attack it or to defend it. Every month they put on full armour, marched out with steady Roman tramp for ten miles and back again to camp for the sake of practice. Meanwhile they were made useful in building the military roads, bridges, and walls. Add to this the strict Roman discipline, and it is difficult to conceive of any training more capable of turning a body of 6000 men into a stubborn and effective fighting machine. The half-naked German across the Rhine was physically as strong and as brave; the woad-dyed Celt of Britain was probably more dashing in his onset; the mounted Parthian across the Euphrates was more nimble in his movements; but neither German nor Celt cultivated the organisation or solidarity of action of the Roman, nor could the Parthian equal him for steady onward pressure or determined stand.

To each legion was given a number and also a name of its own, acquired by some distinguished feat or some conspicuous campaign, or adopted in vaunt or compliment. Thus it might be the "Victorious" Legion, the "Indomitable," or the "Spanish" Legion, or it might, for example, wear a crested lark upon its helmet and be called the Legion of the "Lark." The commander of the whole legion is a man of senatorial rank; its standard is a silver eagle on the top of a staff, commonly holding a thunderbolt in its claw. To each legion there are ten regiments, called "cohorts," averaging six hundred men, and every such regiment has its colonel, or, as the translation of the Bible calls Claudius Lysias, "its chief captain." The regiment in its turn consists of six companies or "hundreds," with a "centurion" at the head of each, and every pair of hundreds, if not every company, possesses a standard of its own, consisting of a pole topped with large medallions, metal disks, wreaths, an open hand, and other emblems.



Let us imagine a certain Scius to become a private soldier in a legion. He was born in Gaul, in the district of Lugdunum or Lyons, and he is either a full Roman or sufficiently romanized to rank with Romans. He is drafted to the Twentieth Legion, otherwise known as the "Victorious Valerian," and finds himself stationed in the island of Britain at that farthest camp of the north-west which has since grown into the city of Chester. On joining his company he is made to take a solemn oath that he will loyally obey all orders of his commander-in-chief, the emperor, as represented by that emperor's subordinates, his immediate officers. That oath he will repeat on each 1st of January and on the anniversary of the emperor's accession. For full military dress he will first put on a tunic reaching nearly to his knees, and, since he is serving in the northern cold, a pair of fustian breeches covering the upper leg. On his feet will be a pair of strong sandals, of which the thick soles are studded with hobnails. Over his breast, and with flaps over the shoulders, he will wear a corslet Of leather covered with hoop-like layers, or maybe scales, of iron or bronze. On his head will be a plain pot-like helmet or skull-cap of iron. For the rest he will possess also a thick cloak or plaid to be used as occasion needs. In his right hand he will carry the famous Roman pike. This is a stout weapon, over 6 feet in length, consisting of a sharp iron head fixed in a wooden shaft, and the soldier may either charge with it as with a bayonet, or he may hurl it like a javelin and then fight at close quarters with his sword. On the left arm is a large shield, which may be of various shapes. One common form is curved inward at the sides like a portion of a cylinder some 4 feet in length by 21/2 in width: another is six-sided—a diamond pattern, but with the points of the diamond squared away. Sometimes it is oval. In construction it is of wicker-work or wood, covered with leather, and embossed a blazon in metal-work, one particularly well known being that of a thunderbolt. The shield is not only carried by means of a handle, but may be supported by a belt over the right shoulder. In order to be out of the way of the shield, the sword—a thrusting rather than a slashing weapon, approaching 3 feet in length—is hung at the right side by a belt passing over the left shoulder. Though this arrangement may seem awkward to us, it is to be remembered that the sword is not required until the right hand is free of the pike, and that then, before drawing, the weapon can easily be swung round to the left by means of the suspending belt. On the left side the soldier wears a dagger at his girdle. The writer of the Epistle to the Ephesians is thinking of all this equipment when he bids the Christian put on "the whole armour of God," including the "belt of truth," the "breast-plate of righteousness," the "shield of faith," the "helmet of salvation" and the "sword of the spirit." The officer, of course, wears armour, cloak, and helmet of a more ornamental kind, and must have presented a very martial and imposing figure.



Our friend Scius goes through the drill, the exercises, and the hard work already mentioned. His pay will be somewhere about L8 a year, or a little over three shillings a week, and his food will consist mainly of wheaten porridge and bread, with salt, and a drink of thin sour wine little better than vinegar. His wheat—the price of which is deducted from his pay—is measured out to him every month, and it is his own business to grind it or get it ground and converted into bread. Vegetables he will procure as he likes or can; but meat, except a limited amount of bacon, he will commonly neither get nor very much desire. On one occasion indeed we find the soldiers complaining that they were being fed altogether too much upon meat. It deserves to be remarked that the results speak well for the wholesomeness of this simple diet of the legionary. For his quarters he will be one of ten sharing the same tent under the supervision of a kind of corporal. There are no married quarters. Not only are women not permitted in the camp, but the soldier cannot legally marry during his term of service.



Scius will meet with no gentle treatment while in his pupilage. The grim centurion, or commander of his company, is a man of iron, who has risen from the ranks; his methods are sharp and summary, and he carries a tough switch of vine-wood, with which he promptly belabours the idle or the stupid. Any neglect of duty or act of disobedience is inevitably Punished, sometimes by hard labour in digging trenches, sometimes by a fine, sometimes by stripping the soldier of his armour and making him stand for hours in civilian attire as a butt for ridicule in the middle of the camp, sometimes by a lowering of his rank corresponding to the modern taking away of a "man's stripes." If a soldier proves a hopeless case he is expelled with ignominy from the camp and army. If he deserts or plays the traitor he may either be decapitated or beaten to death with cudgels. If a whole company or regiment gets into disgrace, it may have to put up with barley instead of wheat for its rations, and if it is guilty of gross insubordination, or of some crime which cannot be sheeted home to the individual, it may be "decimated," or, in other words, every tenth man, drawn by lot, may be condemned to death. The last, of course, is an extreme measure, and is only mentioned here as belonging to extreme cases.



On the other hand, if Scius is a smart soldier he will gradually gain recognition as such. He may become the head man in his mess of ten; or be made an orderly, to carry the watchword round to the messes; or he may be chosen by the centurion as his subaltern. As he gains maturity and steadiness, and wins confidence, he may be elected to bear the of his company, in which case a bear's skin will be thrown over his shoulders, and the top of his helmet will be concealed beneath the head of that beast, worn as a hood. Being a saving man, and taking a pride in himself, he will gradually decorate his sword-belt and girdle, and perhaps his scabbard, with silver knobs and ornaments. Also behaving well in the victorious brushes with the Britons, he will acquire, besides occasional loot and booty-money, a number of metal medallions or disks, to be strung across his breast somewhat after the manner of the modern war-medals. Gradually, as he becomes a veteran, he may rise to be centurion, when he will wear a crest upon his helmet and greaves upon his shins, have his corslet of scale-armour covered with medallions, and will himself carry the vine-rod of authority. If he should ever succeed in becoming, not merely the centurion of his company, but the first or senior of all the sixty centurions belonging to the whole legion, he will rank practically as a commissioned officer, will retire on a competence if he does retire, and will in all probability be made a knight. In that case he may proceed to higher commands, as if he had been born in that order to which he has at last attained.



But all this promotion is yet a long way off. One morning, while Scius is still a private, he hears, not the "taratantara" of the long straight trumpet which calls to ordinary work, but the sound of the military horn, which means that the legion is to march. He helps to pack up the tent, the hand-mills, and other indispensable needments, and to place them on the mules, packhorses, or waggons. He then puts on his full armour, although, if it is hot, and if there is no immediate danger, he may sling his helmet over his shoulder, while his shield, marked with his name and company, may perhaps be stacked with others in a baggage-waggon. His food-supply for sixteen days—the Roman fortnight—is wrapped in a parcel, and this, together with his eating and drinking vessels and any other articles such as would appertain to a modern knapsack, is carried over his shoulder on a forked stick. It is known that to-night the army will be obliged to camp on the way, and it is a binding rule of the service that no camp arrangements shall be left to chance. Surveyors will ride on ahead with a body of cavalry, and will choose a suitable position easily defended and with water near. They will then outline the boundaries according to a certain scale, and will parcel out the interior, according to an almost invariable system, into blocks or sections to accommodate certain units. When the legion arrives, it marches in with a perfect understanding as to where each company of men and each part of the baggage-train is to quarter itself. Being in an enemy's country it is not enough simply to post sentries. A trench must be dug and a palisade erected round the camp, and for that purpose every soldier on the march has carried a couple of sharpened stakes and a sort of small pickaxe. It may therefore be readily understood that Scius is heavily laden. Besides the weight of his body-armour and his shield, pike, and sword, his orthodox burden is about forty-five English pounds.



Before entering upon this description of service and armour of the legionary troops, it was stated that the legions made up but one-half of Roman army, the other half consisting of what were known as "auxiliaries." If there were in the whole Roman empire 150,000 soldiers of the kind described there were also about 150,000 of a different type. Just as it is a natural part of the British policy to raise bodies of Indian or African troops from among the non-British subjects of the empire, so it was an obvious course for the Romans to raise native troops in Africa, Syria, Spain, Gaul, Britain, or the German provinces on the western bank of the Rhine. And just as the British bring their non-British regiments into connection with the regular army, and put them under the command of British officers, so the Romans associated their "auxiliary" soldiery, mostly under Roman officers, with the regular force of the legions. To every legion of 6000 men there was attached, under the same general of division, a force of about 6000 men of non-Roman standing. The subject people of a province was called upon to recruit a certain quota of such troops, and, when so recruited, the soldiers of this class were required to serve for twenty-five years. At the expiration of their term they became Roman citizens, and their descendants ranked as such in the enjoyment of Roman opportunities. Such forces were not themselves formed into "legions" under an "eagle"; they served in separate regiments. Some of them were infantry almost indistinguishable from the Roman; others were armed in a different manner as to shield, spear, and sword; others were light skirmishing troops using their native weapons, such as javelins, slings, and bows. A very large proportion were cavalry, and whereas a legion possessed only 120 Roman horsemen, the auxiliary cavalry attached to it would number one or more regiments of dither 1000 or 500 men each. But it was also part of the Roman policy to employ such auxiliary troops, not in the region in which they were raised and among their own people, but elsewhere, and sometimes even at the opposite extremity of the empire. Thus in Britain might be found, not only Germans and Batavians, but Spaniards or Syrians, while in Syria there might be quartered Africans or Germans, and in Africa troops from the modern Austria. We cannot call this custom an invariable one, but it was usual, and obviously it was politic.



To these two co-operating forces—legions and auxiliaries—we must add the Imperial Guards, twelve regiments of 1000 men each, quartered in Italy, and generally congregated in a special camp just outside the gate at the top of the Quirinal and Viminal Hills beyond the modern railway station. Like other Guards, these were a picked body, containing many volunteers from Italy itself, while others came from the most romanized parts of Gaul or elsewhere. They enjoyed many privileges, wore a more gorgeous armour, served only sixteen years and received double pay. Frequently it came to be the case that this particular body of troops was the one which made and unmade emperors, chiefly under the influence of pecuniary promises or largess. Besides these, 6000 City Guards were in barracks inside the metropolis for the protection of the town; 7000 gendarmerie, already mentioned, served as night-watch and fire-brigade, but perhaps scarcely rank as soldiers. Here and there in the empire there also existed separate volunteer detachments of various dimensions serving on special duty, and it was to one of these that belonged the Cornelius of the Acts of the Apostles, who is there described as a centurion of the "Italian band."



It would carry us too far afield if we entered into detailed descriptions of Roman warfare—of Roman marches, Roman camps, and fortifications, Roman sieges, and military engines. Otherwise it would be highly interesting to watch the attack made upon an enemy's wall or gate by a band of men pushing in front of them a wicker screen covered with hide, or holding their shields locked together above their heads, so as to form a roof to shelter them from the spears, stones, firebrands, and pots of flame which rained down from the walls.



Or we might see moving up on wheels a shed, from the open front of which protrudes the great iron head of a ram affixed to a huge beam. If you were under the shed, you would see that the beam was perhaps as much as 60 feet in length, and that it was suspended on chains or ropes by which it could be swung, so that the head butted with a deadly insistence upon the masonry of the wall. Meanwhile the enemy from the ramparts are doing their best to set the shed on fire, to break off the ram's head with heavy stones, to pull it upwards by a noose, or to deaden the effect of the shock by lowering stuffed sacks or other buffer material between it and the wall. At another point, in place of the shed, there is rolled forward a lofty construction like a tower built in several stories. When this approaches the wall it will overtop it, and a drawbridge with grappling irons may be dropped upon the parapet. Elsewhere there is mining and countermining. From a safer distance the artillery of the time is hurling its formidable missiles. There is the "catapult," which shoots a giant arrow, sometimes tipped with material on fire, from a groove or half-tube to a distance of a quarter of a mile. The propelling force, in default of gunpowder or other explosive, is the recoil of strings of gut or hair which have been tightened by a windlass. There is also the heavier "hurler," which works in much the same manner, but which, instead of arrows, throws stones and beams of from 14 pounds to half a hundredweight, doing effective damage up to a distance of some 400 yards.



Scius joins his legion as a private infantry soldier. He is in the "hobnailed" service. But if our young noble, Publius Silius Bassus, enters upon a military career, he will probably become one of the 120 Roman horsemen attached to the legion, and will be serving as a "knight" or "gentleman," with servants to relieve him of his rougher work. The cavalrymen among whom he serves do not ride upon a saddle with stirrups, but on a mere saddlecloth. On their left arm is a round shield or buckler; they carry a spear of extreme reach, wear a longer sword than the infantrymen, and on their back is a quiver containing three broad-pointed javelins, very similar to assegais, which serve them as missiles. If by good service they obtain medallions like the infantry, they will fasten them to the bridles and breast-straps of their horses, and altogether will make a fine and jingling show. Through the influence of his family, Publius will most likely be taken under the personal supervision of the general in command, will frequently mess with him, and will perhaps act as a kind of honorary aide-de-camp. After a sufficient initiation into military business, he will be appointed what may be called colonel of an infantry regiment of auxiliaries, then colonel of a regiment of the legion, and subsequently, if he is following the profession, colonel of a regiment of the auxiliary cavalry. He does not at any time pass through the rank of centurion, any more than the British officer passes through that of sergeant-major. The class distinction is at least as great in the case of the Romans.

When the young noble has completed this series of services—although the whole of it is not absolutely necessary, and it will be sufficient if he has been six months titular colonel of a regiment of the legion—he may perhaps return to Rome, and at the age of twenty-five may enter upon his first public position, and so become himself a senator. His duties may be connected with the Treasury at Rome itself, or more probably he will accompany a proconsul who is on his way to govern a province for a year—perhaps Andalusia, or Macedonia, or Bithynia. To his chief he stands for that year in a kind of filial relation. His main business will be to supervise the financial affairs, to act as paymaster, and to keep the accounts of the province, but he will also, when required, administer justice in place of the governor. In this capacity he learns the methods of provincial government in readiness for the time when he himself may be made a governor, whether by the senate or by the emperor. His next step upward will be to the post of aedile, one of the officials who control the streets, public buildings, markets, and police of Rome. By the age of thirty he may arrive at the second highest step on the official ladder, in a position which qualifies him to preside over a court of law. Or it may bring with it no greater function than that of presiding over "games" in the circus or amphitheatre, and of spending a liberal sum of money of his own upon making them both magnificent and novel. After this he may receive from the emperor the command of a brigade—the 12,000 men composed of a legion and its auxiliaries—perhaps at Cologne or Mainz, perhaps at Caerleon-on-Usk, perhaps near Antioch. In this position his movements are subject to the authority of the governor of the province, who is the "lieutenant" or "deputy" of His Highness in the larger capacity, while he himself is but a "lieutenant" of Caesar as commanding one of his legions.

He may now himself be appointed governor to a province, but hardly yet to those which are the "plums" of the empire. There is still one highest post for him to fill. This is the consulship. Under the republic the two consuls had been the highest executive officers of the state, and the year was dated by their names. Nominally they were still in the same position, and the sane emperors made a point of treating them with all outward respect. They took precedence of all but "His Highness the Head of the State." But whereas under the republic there had been but two consuls holding joint office for the year, under the emperors the post had become to such a degree complimentary, and there were so many nobles who desired the honour or to whom the emperor was minded to grant it, that it became the custom to hold the position only for two months, so that twelve persons in each year might boast of being ex-consuls or having "passed the consul's chair."

Publius Silius, we may suppose, passes up each step of the ladder, or what was called the "career of honours," and becomes senatorial governor of no less important a province than "Asia"—that nearer portion of Asia Minor which contained flourishing cities like Smyrna, Ephesus, and Rhodes. In that office, as in any other which he may hold, it behoves him to comport himself with caution and modesty. If he is a man of unusual influence or popularity he will do well to keep the fact concealed. There must be nothing in his demeanour or his speech to lay him open to a charge of becoming dangerous to the emperor. That emperor is Nero; and even stronger and saner emperors than Nero watched suspiciously the behaviour of aspiring men.



CHAPTER XIX

ROMAN RELIGION—STATE AND INDIVIDUAL

To undertake to set forth with any definiteness the "religious ideas of a Roman" of A.D. 64 would be an extremely difficult task. Those ideas would differ with the individual, being determined or varied by a number of considerations and influences—by locality, education, and temperament. Silius would not hold the views of Scius and probably not those of Marcia. We may speak of the "State religion" of Rome, as distinct from various other religions tolerated and practised in different parts of the empire, but it is scarcely possible to define the contents of that "State religion." There were certain special priests and priestly bodies who saw to it that certain rites and ceremonies should be perfortied scrupulously in a prescribed manner and on prescribed dates; but these were officers of the state, whose knowledge and functions were confined to the ritual observances with which they had to deal. They were not persons trained in a system of theology, nor were they preachers of a code of doctrines or morals; they had no "cure of souls," and belonged to no church; they had no credo and no Bible or corresponding authority to which to refer. Though most well-informed persons could have told the names of the prominent deities in the calendar—such as Jupiter, Mars, Apollo, and Ceres—perhaps scarcely any one but an encyclopaedist or antiquarian could have named one-half of the total. It is not merely that the deities on the list were so numerous. There were other reasons for ignorance or vagueness. In the first place, the line between the operations of one deity and those of another was often too fine to draw, and deities originally more or less distinct came to be confused or identified. Secondly, it was often hard, if not impossible, to make up one's mind whether a so-called deity—such as Virtue, Peace, or Health—was supposed to have a real existence, or whether it was simply the personification of an abstract quality. Thirdly, many of the ancient divinities had fallen out of fashion, and to a large extent out of memory, while many new ones—Isis and Serapis for example—had come, or were coming, into vogue.

The state possessed its old-established calendar of days sacred to a number of deities, and its code of ritual to be performed in their honour. There were ancient prescriptions as to what certain priests should wear, what they should do or avoid in their priestly character, what victims—ox, sheep, or pig—they should sacrifice, what instruments they should use for the purpose, and in what formula of words they should pray in particular connections. There was a standing commission, with the Pontifex Maximus—at this date that excellent religious authority, the emperor Nero—at its head, to safeguard the state religion, to see that its requirements were carried out, and that no one ventured to commit an outrage towards it. But the state could not have told you with any precision that you must believe in just so many deities and no others; it could not have told you precisely what notions to entertain concerning those deities whom it did officially recognise; it dictated no theological doctrines; neither did it dictate any moral doctrines beyond those which you would find in the secular law. It reserved the right to prevent the introduction of foreign or new divinities if it found sufficient cause; but so long as the temples, the rites and ceremonies, the cardinal moral axioms of the Roman "religion," and the basic principles of Roman society were respected, the state practised no sort of inquisition into your beliefs or non-beliefs, and in no way interfered with your particular selection of favourite deities.

Polytheism in an advanced community is always tolerant, because it is necessarily always indefinite. What it does not readily endure is an organised attack upon the entire system, whether openly avowed or manifestly implied. Even undisguised unbelief in any deity at all it is often willing to tolerate, so long as the unbelief is rather a matter of dialectics than anything else, and makes no attempt at a crusade. When a state so disposed is found to interfere with a novel religion, it will generally be easy to perceive that the jealousy is not on behalf of the deities nor of a creed, but on behalf of the community in its political, economic, or social aspect. This, however, is perhaps to anticipate. Let us endeavour to realise as best we can the religious situation among the Roman or romanized portion of the population.

Though we are not here directly concerned with the steps by which the Roman religion had come to be what it was, we can scarcely hope to understand the position without some comprehension of that development. The Romans were a conservative people, and many of the peculiarities of their worship were due to the retention of old forms which had lost such spirit as they once possessed.

In the infant days of the nation there had been no such things as gods in human shape, or in recognisable shape at all. There were only "powers" or "influences" superior to mankind, by whose aid or concurrence man must work out his existence. The early Romans and such Italian tribes as they became blended with were, as they still are, extremely superstitious. In a pre-scientific age they, like other peoples, were at a loss to understand what produced thunder and lightning, rain, the fertility or failure of crops, the changes of the seasons, the flow or cessation of springs and streams, the intoxication or exhilaration proceeding from wine, and a multitude of other phenomena. Fire was a perplexing thing; so was wind: the woods were full of mysterious sounds and movements. They could comprehend neither birth nor death, nor the fructification of plants. The consequence was a feeling that these things were due to unseen agencies; and the attempt was made to bring those powers into some sort of relation with mankind, either by the compulsion of magical operations and magical formulae, or by sacrifices and offerings of propitiation, or by promises. A superhuman power might be placed under a spell, or placated with food and drink, or persuaded by a vow. Such "powers" were exceedingly numerous. Greatest of all, and recognised equally by all, was the power working in the sky with the thunder and the rain. Its presence was everywhere alike, and its operations most palpable at every season. Countless others were concerned with particular localities or with particular functions. Every wood, if not every tree, and also every fountain, was controlled by some such higher "power"; every manifestation or operation of nature came from such an "influence." There was no kind of action or undertaking, no new stage of life or change of condition, which did not depend for help or hindrance upon a similar power. At first the "powers" bore no distinctive names, and were conceived in no definite shapes. They were not yet gods. The human being who sought to work upon them to favour him could only do, say, and offer such things as he thought likely to move them. But in process of time it became inevitable that these superhuman agencies should be referred to under some sort of title, and the title literally expressed the conception. Hence a multitude of names. Not only was there the ever-prominent Jupiter or "sky-father"; there a veritable multitude of powers with provinces great and small. Among the larger conceptions the power concerned with the sowing of seed was Saturn that with the growth of crops was Ceres, that with the blazing of fire was Vesta. Among the smaller the power which taught a babe to eat was Edulia that which attended the bringing home of a bride was Domiduca. The ability to speak or to walk was supposed to be imparted by separate agencies named accordingly. Flowers depended on Flora and fruits on Pomona.



But to assign a name is a great step towards creating a "power" into a "god," and such agencies began to take shape in the mind of those who named them. This was the second stage. Jupiter, Ceres, Saturn, and almost all the rest became "gods." The powers in the woodlands—a Silvanus or Faunus—became embodied, like the more modern gnomes and kobbolds. Once imagine a shape, and the tendency is to give it visible form in an image "like unto man," and to honour it with an abode—a temple or shrine. The earliest Romans known to us erected no images or temples, but they were not long in creating them. Particularly rapid was the reducing of a god to human form when they came into close contact with the Etruscans and the Greeks. For all the important deities poetry and art combined to evolve an appropriate bodily form, which gradually became conventional, so that the ordinary notion of a Jupiter, a Juno, a Mercury, or a Ceres was approximately that which had been gathered from the statue thus developed. This trouble was not taken with all the most ancient divinities. Many of the old rural and local deities, and many of those with quite minor provinces, were left vague and unrealised. They were represented in no temples and by no statues. Naturally as the Roman state grew from a set of neighbouring farms into a great city, and from a small settlement into a vast empire, the little local gods fell into the background. The deities which concerned the state, and to which it erected temples, were those with the more far-reaching operations—such as the gods identified with the sky and its thunders, with war, with fertility, with the sea, with the hearth-fire of all Rome. The rest might well be left to localities or to domestic worship.

From the early days of Rome there existed a calendar for festivals to certain divinities important to the little growing town, and a code of ceremonies to be performed in their honour, and of formulae of prayer to be offered to them. The later Romans, in their characteristic conservatism, adhered to those festivals, to that ritual, and to those formulae, even when some of the deities had ceased to be of appreciable account, and when neither the meaning of the ritual nor the sense of the old words was any longer understood by the very priests who used them.

Reflect a moment on this situation. First, we have a number of deities of the first rank, housed in temples, embodied in statues, and recognised in all the Roman world; next a number of minor divinities whose operations and worship may be remotely rural or otherwise local, and whose functions are by no means always distinguishable from those of the greater gods; then a series of more or less unintelligible ceremonials carried out by ancient rule in honour of divinities often practically forgotten; outside these a number of vague powers presiding over small domestic and other actions; finally, a peculiar Roman tendency—in keeping with the last—to erect into divinities, and to symbolise in statue housed in temples, all manner of abstract qualities and states, such as Hope, Harmony, Peace, Wealth, Health, Fame, and Youth.



Reflect again that, when the Romans, as they spread, came into contact with Greeks, Egyptians, or other foreigners, they met with deities whose provinces were necessarily often identical with or closely akin to their own. Then remember that there is no church and no official document to define the complete list of Roman gods. Does it not follow, as a matter of course, on the one hand, that the importation of new gods was an easy matter, and on the other, that no individual Roman could draw the line as to the number of even the old-established deities in whom he should or should not believe?

The guardians of the public religion were satisfied if the due rites were paid by the state to those deities, on those dates, and precisely in that manner, which happened to be prescribed in the official religious books. For the rest they left matters to the individual.

So much it has been necessary to say in order to account for existing attitudes. We must use the plural, since the attitude of the state officials is but one of several, and, inasmuch as the state officials themselves were not a theological caste but only secular servants of the community administering the regulations for external worship as laid down in the records, it often happened that their official attitude had nothing to do with their individual beliefs. Often they did not know or care whether there was a real religious efficacy in the acts which they performed; sometimes all that they knew was that they were doing what the state required to be done properly by some one.

Cicero quotes a dictum of a Pontifex Maximus that there was one religion of the poet, another of the philosopher, and another of the statesman. This is true, but it is hardly adequate. We must at least add that of the common people. A well-known statement of more modern birth puts the case—rather too strongly—that at our period all religions were regarded by the people as equally true, by the philosopher as equally false and by the statesman as equally useful. We may begin with the ordinary people of whatever station, who were not poets nor thinkers nor magistrates. It is an error to suppose that such Romans of the first century were either atheistic or indifferent to religion. Their fault was rather that they were too superstitious, ready to believe too much rather than too little, but to believe without relating their belief to conduct. They did not question the existence of the traditional gods, nor the characters attributed to them; they were ready to perform their dues of worship and to make their due offerings, but all this had no bearing upon their own morality. They believed with the terror of the superstitious in omens and portents, and in rites of expiation and purification to avert the threatened evil. They were alarmed by thunder and lightning, earthquakes, bad dreams, ravens seen on the wrong side of the road, and other evil tokens. They commonly accepted the existence of malign spirits, including ghosts. They were prepared to believe that on occasion a statue had bled or turned round on its base; that an ox had spoken in human language; or that there had been a rain of blood. There were doubtless exceptions, and superstition was less dire and oppressive than once it was. More than fifty years before our date Cicero had said that even old women no longer shuddered at the terrors of an underworld, and fifty years after it the satirist asserts the same of children. But both writers are speaking somewhat hyperbolically. Doubtless it had been wondered how two augurs could look at each other without a smile, but there is nothing to show that even a minority of augurs were acutely conscious of anything to smile at.



In the multiplicity of deities the ordinary people were prepared to accept as many more as you chose to offer them, especially if the worship attaching to them contained mystic or orgiastic ceremonies. By this date the populace had become exceedingly mixed, especially in the capital, and the cool hard-headed Roman stock had been largely replaced or leavened by foreign elements, especially from the East. The official worship of the state was formal and frigid; it offered nothing to the emotions or the hopes. Many among the people felt an instinct for something more sacramental, and especially attractive was any form of worship which promised a continued existence, and probably a happier existence, after death. Even the mere mysteriousness of a form of worship had its allurements. Hence a tendency to Judaism, still more to the Egyptian worship of Isis and Osiris. The latter made many proselytes, particularly among the women, and contained ideas which are by no means ignoble but to our modern minds far more truly "religious" than anything to be found in the native Roman cults. To pass through purification, to practise asceticism, to feel that there was a life beyond the grave apportioned to your deserts, to go through an impressive form of worship held every day, and to have the emotions thus worked upon—all this supplied something to the moral nature which was lacking in the chill sacrifices and prayers to Jupiter and the other national divinities. In vain had the authorities, in their doubt as to the moral effects, tried on several occasions to suppress this foreign worship; it always revived, and it now held its established place both in the imperial city and in the provinces, particularly near the sea, for it was especially a sailors' religion. Rome, like Pompeii, had its temple of Isis and her daily celebrations. There was, however, no necessary conflict between this worship and the official religion. It was quite possible to accept Isis while accepting Jupiter. Nor, though this particular cult has required mention, must it be taken as belonging to more than a section of the Roman population. Most Romans would look upon it and other deviations with acquiescence, some with contempt, and perhaps some with a shake of the head, while themselves satisfied with an indifferent conformity to the more established customs of the state.

Setting aside the devotees of the mystic, the more ordinary point of view was that between Romans and the established gods of Rome there is an understanding. The gods will support Rome so long as Rome pays to them their dues of formal recognition. Their ritual must not be neglected by the authorities; it is not necessary for an individual member of the community to concern himself further in the matter. The state, through its appointed ministers, will make the necessary sacrifices and say the necessary words; the citizen need not put in an appearance or take any part. He will not do or say anything disrespectful towards the deities in question, and he will enjoy the festivals belonging to them. If remarkable portents and disasters occur, he will agree that there is something wrong in the behaviour of the state, and that there must be some public purification or other placation of the gods. If the state orders such a proceeding, he will perform whatever may be his share in it. So far he is loyal to the "religion of the state."



In his private capacity he has his own wants, fears, and hopes. He therefore betakes himself to whatever divinity he considers most likely to help him; he makes his own prayers and vows an offering if his request is granted. Reduced to plain commercial language his ordinary attitude is—no success, no payment. A cardinal difference between the religion of the Romans and our own is to be seen in the nature of their prayers. They always ask for some definite advantage—prosperity, safety, health, or the like. They never pray for a clean heart or for some moral improvement. Of more importance than the man's moral condition will be his scrupulous observance of the right external practices. Unlike the Greek, he will cover his head when he prays. He will raise his hand to his lips before the statue, or, if he is appealing to the celestial deities, he will stretch his palms upwards above his head; if to the infernal powers, he will hold them downwards. These are the things that matter.

At home, if he belongs to the better type of representative citizen, our Roman has his household shrine and his household divinities, whom he never neglects. If he is very pious, he may pray to them every morning, or at least before every enterprise. In any case he will remember them with a small offering when he dines. There are the "gods of the stores"—his "penates"—certain deities whom he has selected as guardians of his belongings, and who have their little images by the hearth in the kitchen. There is the household "protector," or more commonly there are two, who may be painted under the form of lightly-stepping youths in a little niche or shrine above a small altar. To these he will offer fruits, flowers, incense, and cakes. And there is the "Genius" of the master of the house, who is also painted on the wall, or who may be represented by his own portrait bust or by the picture of a snake. That "Genius" means the power presiding over his vitality and health and wellbeing. If he is an artisan and belongs to a guild, he will pay special worship to the patron god or goddess of that guild—to Vesta, if he is a baker, to Minerva, if he is a fuller. Out of doors he will find a street shrine in the wall at a crossing, pertaining to the tutelary god of what may be called his "parish," and this he will not neglect. Like all other orthodox Romans he will not undertake any new enterprise—betrothal, marriage, journey, or important business—without ascertaining that the auspices are favourable.

In a general way he has a notion that the gods are displeased at certain forms of crime, and that they approve of justice and the carrying out of compacts. The gods overlook the state, because the state engages them so to do, and therefore to break the laws of the state is to anger the gods of the state. But this is rather subtle for the common man, and there is generally no understood immediate relation between these gods and his moral conduct, unless he has sworn an oath by one or other of them. The purpose of calling a god to witness is to bring upon a perjurer the anger of the offended deity. But he entertains no such conception as the modern one of "sin" or of "remorse for sin." "Sin" is either a breach of the secular law or breach of a contract with a deity and "remorse" is but fear of or regret for the consequences.

His morality is determined by the laws of the state, family discipline, and social custom. For that reason his vices on the positive side will mostly be those of his appetites, and on the negative side a want of charity and compassion. He may be guiltless of lying and stealing, murder and violence; he may be honest and law-abiding; but there is nothing to make him temperate, continent, or gentle. His avowed code is "duty," and duty is defined by law and tradition.

If this is the religious condition of the common-place man or woman—a blend of superstition, formalism, and tolerance—it is by no means that of the educated thinker. Such persons were for the most part freethinkers. Many of them, finding no better guide to conduct, conform to the "religion" of the state without any real belief in its gods or attaching any importance to its ceremonies. They do not feel called upon to propagate any other views, and they probably think the current notions are at least as good for the ignorant as any others. If they are poets, like Horace or Lucan, they will dress up the mythology, mostly from Greek models, and write fluently about Jupiter and Juno, Venus and Mercury, either attributing to them the recognised characters and legends, or varying them so as to make them more picturesque and interesting—perhaps even improving them—but all the time believing no more in the stories they are telling, or in the deities themselves, than Tennyson need have believed in King Arthur and Guinevere. The gods are good poetic material and are sure to afford popular, or at least inoffensive, reading. The poets doubtless do something to humanise and beautify the popular conception of a deity, but they seldom deliberately set out with any such purpose. If the educated are not poets, but public men of affairs, they may believe just as little, and yet regard the established cult of the gods as an excellent discipline for the vulgar and the best known means of upholding the national principle of "duty." If they are philosophers they may not, and the Epicureans in reality do not, believe in the gods at all—certainly not as they are generally conceived—and will openly discuss in speech and in writing the question of their existence or non-existence, and of their character and nature if they do exist. They will endeavour to substitute for the barren formalism of rites and ceremonies, or the inconsistent or incomplete traditional morality of duty, another set of principles as a sounder guide to life and conduct. Some are monotheists, some are simply in doubt. Says Nero's own tutor, Seneca, "Do you want to propitiate the gods? Then be good. The true worshipper of the gods is he who acts like them." "Better," remarks Plutarch, "not believe in a God at all than cringe before a god who is worse than the worst of men." In the actual worship of images none of them believe. One conspicuous writer of the time says: "To look for a form and shape to a god, I consider to be a mark of human feebleness of mind." Concerning the schools of thought and in particular the tenets of those Stoics and Epicureans whom St. Paul met at Athens, and whom he could meet in educated circles all over the Roman Empire, we shall have to speak in a following chapter, when summing up the intellectual and moral condition of the time. Meanwhile it should be understood that, though a profound or anything approaching a professional study of philosophy was discouraged among the true Romans—more than once the professional philosophers were banished from the capital—there were few cultivated persons who did not to some extent dabble in it, and even go so far as to profess an adherence to one school or another. None of these men believed in the "Roman religion" as administered by the state, although many of them were administering it themselves. The same man could one day freely discuss the gods in conversation or a treatise, and the next he might be clad in priestly garb and officially seeing that the rites of sacrifice were being religiously carried out in terms of the books, or that the auspices were being properly taken.

It does not, however, follow at all that because poet or public man cared nothing for the pantheon and all its mythology, he was therefore without his superstitions. He might still tremble at signs and portents, at comets, at dreams, and at the unpropitious behaviour of birds and beasts. He might believe in astrology and resort to its professors, called the "Chaldaeans." On the other hand he might laugh at such things. It was all a matter of temperament. It certainly was not every man who dared to act like one of the Roman admirals. When it was reported that the omens were unpropitious to an imminent battle because the sacred chickens "would not eat," he ordered them to be thrown into the sea so that at least they might drink. The freethinkers were in advance of their times. "Science" in the modern sense hardly existed, and until phenomena are explained it is hard to avoid a perplexity or astonishment which is equivalent to superstition.

Consider now these various states of mind—that of the people, ready to add almost any deity to the large and vague number already recognised; that of the poet, who finds the deities such useful literary material; that of the magistrate or public man, who, without enthusiasm or necessary belief, regards religion as a thing useful to society; and that of the philosopher, who thinks all the current religious conceptions unsound, if not absurd, and morally almost useless.

Manifestly a society so composed will be one of unusual tolerance. The Romans had no disposition to force their religion on the subject provinces of the empire. Their religion was the Roman religion; the religion of the Greeks might be left Greek, the Jewish religion Jewish, and the Egyptian religion Egyptian. Any nation had a right to the religion of its fathers. Nay, the Jews had such peculiar notions about a Sabbath day and other matters that a Jew was exempted from the military service which would have compelled him to break his national laws. All religions were permitted, so long as they were national religions. Also all religious views were permitted to the individual, so long as they were not considered dangerous to the empire or imperial rule, or so long as they threatened no appreciable harm to the social order. If a Jew came to Rome and practised Judaism well and good. It was, in the eyes of the Romans, a narrow-minded and uncharitable religion, marked by many strange and absurd practices and superstitions, but if a misguided oriental people liked to indulge in it, well and good. Even if a Roman became a proselyte to Judaism, well and good, so long as he did not flout the official religion of his own country. If the Egyptians chose to worship cats, ibises, and crocodiles, that was their affair, so long as they let other people alone. In Gaul, it is true, the emperor Claudius, predecessor of Nero, had put down the Druids. Earlier still the Druids had already been interfered with; but that was because the Druids—those weird old white-sheeted men with their long beards and strange magic—were performing human sacrifices—burning men alive in wicker frames—and such conduct was not only contrary to the secular law of Rome, but even to natural law. And when Claudius finally suppressed them, or drove the remnant out of Gaul into Britain, it was not simply because they worshipped non-Roman gods and performed non-Roman rites, but because they were, as they had always notoriously been, a dangerous political influence interfering with the proper carrying out of the Roman government.

And when we come to Christianity it must be remarked that, so long as that nascent religion was regarded as merely a variety of Judaism, it was actually protected by the Roman power, and owes no little of its original progress to the fact. In the Acts of the Apostles it is always from the Roman governor that St. Paul receives, not only the fairest, but the most courteous treatment. It is the Jews who persecute him and work up difficulties against him, because to them he is a renegade and is weaning away their people. To the philosophers at Athens he appears as the preacher of a new philosophy, and they think him a "smatterer" in such subjects. To the Roman he is a man charged by a certain community with being dangerous to social order, to wit, causing factious disturbances and profaning the temple; and since he refuses to let the local authorities judge his case, and has exercised his citizen privilege by appealing to Caesar, to Caesar he is sent. And, when a prisoner in somewhat free custody at Rome, note that he is permitted to speak "with all freedom," and that in the first instance he is acquitted.

True, but the fact remains that Nero burnt Christians in his gardens after the great fire of Rome, and that certain later emperors are found punishing Christians merely for avowing themselves such. Why was Christianity thus singled out? It was not through what can be reasonably called "religious intolerance," for, as has been said, the Romans did not seek to force Roman religion on other peoples nor did they make any inquisition into the beliefs of Romans themselves. The reasons for singling out Christianity for special treatment are obvious enough. The question is not whether the reasons were sound, whether the Romans properly understood or tried to understand, whether they could be as wise before the event as we are after it, but whether the motive was what we should call a "religious" one. To allow Epicureans to deny the existence of gods at all, and to make scornful concessions to the peculiar tenets of Jews, could not be the action of a people which was bigoted. If there was bigotry and intolerance, it was political or social bigotry and intolerance, not religious. To prevent any possible misconception let the present writer say here that he considers the principles of Christianity, as laid down by its Founder and as spread by St. Paul, to have been the most humanizing and civilising influence ever brought to bear upon society. But that is not the point. The early Christians were treated as they were, not because they held non-Roman views, but because they held anti-Roman views; not because they did not believe in Jupiter and Venus, but because they refused to let any one else believe in them; not because they threatened to weaken Roman faith, but because they threatened to weaken and even to wreck the whole fabric of Roman society; not because they were known to be heretics, but because they were supposed to be disloyal; not because they converted men, but because they appeared to convert them into dangerous characters. As it has been put, the Christians were regarded as the "Nihilists" of the period. We are apt to judge the Romans from the standpoint of Christianity dominant and understood; it is fairer to judge them from the standpoint of a dominant pagan empire looking on at a strange new phenomenon altogether misunderstood and often deliberately misrepresented. Moreover—and the point is worth more attention than it commonly receives—we have only to read the Epistles to the Corinthians, to perceive that the early Christian gatherings were by no means always such meek, pure, and model assemblages as they are almost always assumed to have been. Some of the members, for instance, quarrelled and "were drunken." There were evidently many unworthy members of the new communion, and of course there were also many manifestations of insulting bigotry on their part. The class of society to which the Christians belonged was closely associated in the Roman mind with the rabble and the slave, if not with criminals. What the pagan observer saw in the new religion was "a pestilent superstition," "hatred of the human race," "a malevolent superstition." He thought its practices to be connected with magic. The intransigeant Christian refused to take the customary oath in the law courts, and therefore appeared to menace a trustworthy administration of the law. He took no interest in the affairs of the empire, but talked of another king and his coming kingdom, and he appeared to be an enemy to the Roman power. He held what appeared to be secret meetings, although the empire rigidly suppressed all secret societies. He weakened the martial spirit of the soldier. He divided families—the basis of Roman society—against themselves. He was a socialist leveller. He threatened with ruin all the trades connected with either the established worship—as amongst the silversmiths at Ephesus—or with the luxuries and amusements of life. Those amusements in circus or amphitheatre he hated, and therefore appeared misanthropic. He not only stood aloof from the religious observances of the state and the household, but treated them with contempt or abhorrence.

Moreover, at this date, he refused to acknowledge the one great symbol of the imperial authority. This was the statue of the emperor. When that statue was set up in every town it was not understood by any intelligent man that the emperor was actually a god, or that, when incense was burnt before the statue, it was being burned to the emperor himself as deity. But just as every householder had his attendant "Genius"—the power determining his vital functions and well-being—which was often represented as a bust with the man's own features, so the statue of the Augustus, "His Highness," represented the Genius of that Head of the State, and the offering of incense was meant as an appeal to the Genius to keep the emperor and the imperial power "in health and wealth long to live." The man who refused to make such an offering was necessarily considered to be ill-disposed to the majesty and welfare of the Head of the State, and therefore of the state itself. The Roman attitude towards the early Christians was partly that of a modern government towards Nihilists, and partly that of a generation or two ago to a blend of extreme Radical with extreme atheist.

We are not here concerned with the whole story of the persecution of the Christians, but only with the situation at and immediately after the date we have chosen. It is at least quite certain that when Nero burned the Christians in the year 64 he was treating them, not as the adherents of a religion, but as social criminals or nuisances. How far his notions of Christianity may have been influenced by Poppaea we do not know. At least he believed he was pleasing the populace.



CHAPTER XX

STUDY AND SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE AMONG THE ROMANS

In describing the education of a Roman youth, and also in setting forth the various religious attitudes of the time, mention has been made of the pursuit of philosophy. Religion supplied no real guide to moral conduct, and education provided little exercise for the cultivation of the higher intellectual faculties. It was left for philosophy to fill these blanks as best it could. Unlike the Greeks, the Romans, great as they were in law-making and administration, had little natural gift or taste for abstract thought. All the philosophic sects had been founded and continued by Greeks, and it was still to the Greek half of the empire that the contemporary world looked for the best schools and teachers of philosophy. The genuine Roman spirit at all times felt some mistrust of such studies, especially if they tended to carry the student away from practical life into the "shade" and the "corner," or if they tended to subvert the traditional notions of "duty" as inculcated by Roman law, Roman custom, and the religion of the state. Nevertheless, not only did many Romans, even of mature years, resort to the philosophic "Universities" of the time, but wealthy houses often maintained a domestic philosopher, whose business it was to supply moral teaching and intellectual companionship to his employer. Some, indeed, preferred merely a savant, who might "post" them with information concerning Greek writers, explain difficulties, and act in general as a literary vade mecum. In many cases, if not in most, the Roman aristocrat or plutocrat treated such a retainer as a social inferior.

The Roman attitude towards thought and learning too often reminds one of a certain modern type which has been irreverently described as being "death on culture." While the Greek and graecized oriental loved research, discussion, dialectics, ethical and scientific conversation, and literary coteries for their own sake, the Roman more commonly regarded such things as means for sharpening his abilities and for imparting distinction in social intercourse. Doubtless there were, and had been, exceptions. No Greek philosopher could be more in earnest than Lucretius, the Roman poet of the later republic, and doubtless there were no few Romans unknown to fame who both grappled seriously with Greek philosophy and also endeavoured to carry it religiously into practice. Yet for the most part the Roman, even when he is a writer upon such subjects, carries with him the unmistakable air of the amateur or the dilettante. In reading Seneca, as in reading Cicero, we feel that we are dealing with an able man possessed of an excellent gift for popular exposition or essay-writing, but hardly with a man of original philosophic endeavour or of strong practical conviction. And when we read the letters of the younger Pliny, we perceive a genuine admiration for men of thought and a genuine liking for "things of the mind," but we also discern that his dealing with philosophers and philosophy is strictly such as he deems "fit for a gentleman."

In his own way and for his own ends the Roman could be intensely studious. He was eager to know and to possess information; but his native taste was for information of a positive kind, for definite facts more or less encyclopaedic—the facts of history, of science, of art, of literature, or even of grammar. His natural bent was not towards pure speculation. The elder Pliny was in his prime in the later days of Nero, and though he is perhaps an extreme type, he is nevertheless a type worth contemplating. His nephew writes a letter to a friend in which he gives a formidable list of works which the uncle had written or rather compiled, culminating in that huge miscellany known as his Natural History—a book dealing, not only with geography, anthropology, physiology, zoology, botany, mineralogy, but also with fine art. How did he lead the ordinary Roman official life and yet accomplish all this before he was fifty-six? Here is the explanation. "He had a keen intellect, incredible zeal, and the greatest capacity for wakefulness. The end of August had not come before he began to work by lamplight long before dawn; in winter he began as early as one or two o'clock in the morning. It is true that he could readily command sleep, which visited and left him even during his studies. Before daylight he used to go to the emperor Vespasian—who also worked before day—and thence to his appointed duty. Returning home he gave the remainder of his time to his studies. After his dejeuner—which, like any other food that he took in the daytime, was light and digestible in the old-fashioned style—if it was summer, some leisure moments were spent in lying in the sun; a book was read, and he marked passages or made extracts. He never read anything without making excerpts, for he used to say that no book was so bad as to contain no part that was useful. After sunning himself he generally took a cold bath. He then took a snack and a very brief siesta, subsequently reading till dinner-time as if it were a new day. During dinner a book was read and marked, all very rapidly. I recall an occasion on which a certain passage had been badly delivered by his reader, whereupon one of the company stopped him and made him read it again. Said my uncle, 'I suppose you had caught the meaning?' The friend nodded. 'Then why did you call him back? We have lost more than ten lines by this interruption of yours.' So economical was he of time. In summer he rose from dinner while it was still light, and in winter within an hour after dark, as if compelled by some law. Such was his day amid all his work and the roar of the city. But when on holiday the only time he was not I studying was bath-time. By bath I mean when he I was actually right inside; for while he was under scraper and towel he would be read to or dictate. When travelling he thought of nothing else: at his side was a shorthand writer with a book and his tablets. In winter the writer's hands were protected by mittens, so that not even the sharpness of the weather should rob him of a moment. For the same reason even at Rome he used to ride in a sedan-chair (and not in a litter). I remember how he once took me to task for walking. Said he, 'You need not have wasted these hours;' for he considered as wasted all hours not spent upon study. It was by application like this that he completed all those volumes and also left to me a hundred and sixty note-books full of selections, written in very small hand on both sides of the paper. He used himself to say that, when he was the emperor's financial agent in Spain, he could have sold these note-books to Largius Licinus for L3000, and at that time they were considerably less numerous." ... "And so," writes the nephew, "I always laugh when certain people call me studious, for, compared to him, I am a most indolent person."

And yet what does this "most indolent person" himself do in the course of a lifetime? After a complete oratorical education of the typical Roman kind he enters upon a full public career. He undergoes his minimum military service with the legions in Syria. He returns to Rome and passes right up to the consulship, acquiring particular ability in connection with the Treasury. Often he acts as adviser to other officers. Apart from his public position he is a pleader before the courts. He takes a prominent part in the debates of the senate. He belongs to one of the priestly bodies. He does his share in providing the public games. He is appointed "Minister for the regulation of the Tiber and of the Sewerage." He is afterwards made governor of Bithynia, which has fallen into financial disorder and requires reorganisation. He possesses numerous estates and has many tenants to deal with. He writes speeches, occasional poems, and a large number of letters carefully phrased with a view to publication. His social or complimentary duties are numerous and exacting. One day he goes out hunting wild boar on one of his estates, and kills three of them. How, think you, does he pass the time while the beaters are driving the animals towards the net? He is thinking up a subject and making notes, and actually finds the silence and solitude helpful. He concludes his short letter on the subject by advising his friend "when you go hunting, take my advice and carry your writing-tablets as well as your luncheon-basket and flask: you will find that Minerva roams the hills no less than Diana." Pliny the Younger is writing, it is true, a generation after Nero, but there had been no appreciable change in Roman intellectual tastes during that short interval.

The Roman may have had little inclination towards abstract thinking, but he was not an idle-minded man. Even the emperors often cultivated the muse. Nero we have seen, wrote verses, while his predecessor Claudius bore a strangely near resemblance to our own James I., not only in respect of his weakness of character, but also of his pretensions to erudition and authorship. We can hardly read the literature of this and the next half-century without being amazed at the number of names of writers who gained or sought some share of repute, although few of them have left works important enough to have been kept alive till now. It is true that through all the writing of this time there runs what has been called the "falsetto" note, a fact which is due partly to the absence of live national questions or the freedom to discuss them, and partly to the false principles of the rhetorical training already described. The general desire was to show cleverness, wide reading, and information; there was no impulse to great creation or to exhibitions of profound feeling. Epigram and "point" are no less compassed in the overstrained epic of Lucan, and in the philosophic essays of Seneca, than in the satires of Persius. It is probable that what have been called intellectual "interests" were never more widely spread than in the pax Romana of the first and second centuries A.D. We gather from literature that books innumerable were produced on subjects often as special and minute as those selected for a German thesis, and that almost every town worth the name, at least in the Greek-speaking part of the empire, produced an author of sorts. But when we look into the symposia or chat of Plutarch or Aulus Gellius, we cannot fail to note that a large proportion of this intellectual and literary activity was being frittered away on questions either stereotyped and threadbare, or of no appreciable utility either to knowledge or conduct. As for dilettante production at Rome itself Pliny remarks in one letter: "This year has produced a large crop of poets: there was scarcely a day in the whole month of April on which some one did not give a reading." During the generation into which Nero was born and that which followed him, we meet with no great creative work in either prose or poetry, no great contribution to the progress of science or thought. The most generally interesting writer of the whole period was the Greek Plutarch, but though the Parallel Lives which he was preparing are immortal in their kind, and though his Moral Essays are often most excellent reading, it cannot be said that he is a profound original thinker or a creator of anything more than a taking literary form. Next to him in value, earlier in date, stands Seneca, who, like Plutarch, is a lively thinker and a deft essayist, with the same love for a quotation and the same wide interests, but assuredly not a considerable enlarger of the field of human thought. To those who know Montaigne, the best notion of Seneca and Plutarch will be formed by remembering that his essays are admitted by himself to be "wholly compiled of what I have borrowed from them." The elder Pliny supplies us with extracts and summaries of the knowledge or the notions then extant, and we have writings on agriculture by Columella. The youthful and rather awkward satirist Persius sees the life which he criticises rather through the medium of books than through his own eyes. Such works of the period as have gained any kind of immortality are certainly interesting and often instructive, but they indicate a period in which reading is chiefly cultivated amusement, and knowledge rather sought as a pastime and an accomplishment than as a power. The favourite reading must contain matter or sense, not too deep or exacting; and it must possess a style. Perhaps writers as various as Dryden, Pope, Horace Walpole, Samuel Johnson, De Quincey, Macaulay, or, on a lower platform, the authors of collections like the Curiosities of Literature would have been quite at home in this period: but it would have produced no Shakespeare, Milton, or Wordsworth. The agreeable poem, the well-expressed essay, are the approved reading for men of indolent bent: the informative collection for the more curious, serious, or practical-minded. If the early empire is "despotism tempered by epigram," it is perhaps not altogether untrue that the contemporary literature was pedantry tempered by epigram, or at least by quotation.

Science, though its matter was attractive enough to the practical Roman, was at a standstill. So far as it existed it was Greek. The Greeks had done almost all that could be done by sheer brain-power and acumen. They could hardly proceed further without those finer instruments which we possess, but which they did not. Though they knew of certain magnifying glasses, they had no real telescopes or microscopes, no mariner's compass or chronometers, no very delicate balances. They possessed a magnificent thinking apparatus and put it to admirable use. The modern scientist has generally nothing but admiration for their keen insight, and for the brilliant hypotheses which they invented and which were frequently but unverified anticipations or partial anticipations of theories now in vogue. Where they stopped short was at experiment in test of hypothesis. Of all exploits of pure thinking in the domain of science perhaps the greatest has been the conception that the earth, instead of being a flat disk, is a sphere. This theory was held before the age of Nero by ancient astronomers and geographers, who had derived the notion partly from the eclipses of the moon—of which they well understood the cause—and partly from the rising of objects above the horizon. They understood also that in a sphere there was gravitation to the centre, and were able so to comprehend the level surface of water on the globe. The geographer Strabo, more than a generation before our chosen date, readily conceives that, if one sailed straight westward out of the Mediterranean through the Straits of Gibraltar, he would ultimately come back round the world by way of the East—that is to say, by India. It was not left for Columbus to invent that doctrine. It is true that in calculating the circumference of the earth they had made it as much as one-seventh too large, but the wonder is that they came so near as they did. In regard to the distance of the moon they were not more than 1/12th from the modern estimate. The possibility of error in dealing with the sun was much greater, and their 51,000,000 miles is little more than half of what it should have been. Exactly how far this doctrine of the sphericity of the earth was popularly entertained we cannot tell; it was probably almost confined to those directly interested in the question. A theory, anticipating Galileo, that it is the earth which moves round the sun, had been mooted, but certainly had very little currency. Nor was speculation confined to such astronomical conclusions. In the region of physical geography rational attempts were made to account for various phenomena, such as the existence of deltas or the risings of the Nile, or the appearance of sea-shells high on dry land. Strabo, in dealing with the Black Sea, has his theories of the elevation or subsidence of land. He also suggests previous volcanic conditions of certain districts which had been quiescent from before the memory or tradition of the inhabitants.



Sound methods of discovering latitude and longitude were not yet in use, and therefore a map of the world according to ideas current in the first century would present a strange aspect to us. There is much error in the placing of towns or districts upon their parallels; and coasts or mountain ranges, particularly, of course, on the outskirts of the empire or in the less familiar lands beyond its bounds, are perhaps made to run north instead of north-west, or east instead of south-east. It follows that measurements of distances especially across the wider seas, were often very inaccurate, although within and about the Mediterranean there was so much traffic and such close observation of the stars that the errors were gradually reduced. The mariner, when he did not follow the coast and guide his course by familiar landmarks, steered by the stars, but of these he had a very intimate knowledge, to which he joined a close observation of the prevailing direction of the winds at the various seasons. There was a well-ordered system of lighthouses, and charts and mariners' guides were not wanting. In the winter months navigation over long distances was regularly suspended, and ships waited in port for the spring.

So far as acquaintance with the world was concerned, we have sufficient evidence that the trader knew his way very well down the African coast as far as Zanzibar, and along the southern shores of Asia as far as Cape Comorin. With Ceylon his acquaintance was vague, and only by tradition did he know of Further India by way of the sea and of China by way of the land. In the interior of Africa the caravans reached the Oases, and by way of Nile or caravan there was trade with the Soudan. Outside the Straits of Gibraltar, the Canary Islands and Madeira—known indiscriminately as the "Fortunate Isles," or "Isles of the Blest"—were in touch with the port of Cadiz. The shape of Great Britain beyond England was indefinite, although it was known to be an island, with the Shetlands lying beyond. Ireland was also recognised as an island and its relative size was not greatly misconceived. The chief misconception in this corner of Europe was that of orientation, Britain being placed either far too near or far too parallel to Spain (through a large error as to the shape of the Bay of Biscay). Meanwhile the coast of the Netherlands and Germany was made to run in a line much too closely parallel to the eastern shores of Britain. Scandinavia was known from navigating explorers and from the amber trade, but was commonly regarded as a large island. Knowledge of the Baltic did not extend beyond about the modern Riga, and of the whole region thence to the Caspian only the dimmest notions were entertained.

From what has been said concerning the calculation of the earth's diameter and of the distances of the sun and moon, it may be readily understood that the ancient mathematician had arrived at great proficiency in the geometrical branch of mathematics. This should cause no surprise when we remember what is meant by "Euclid." That eminent genius had lived at Alexandria three centuries and a half before the age of Nero, and he by no means represents all that was known of such mathematics at the latter date. The ancients were quite sufficiently versed in the solution of triangles to have made the necessary calculations in geography and astronomy, if they had but possessed the right instruments. Perhaps only an expert should deal—even in the few sentences required for our purpose—with such matters as the calculation of the capacity and proportional relations of cylinders, or with the mechanics and hydrostatics of Archimedes. That philosopher so far understood the laws of applied force that he had boasted: "Give me a place to stand on and I will move the world." What he and others had learned concerning fluid pressure, or concerning pulleys, levers, and other mechanical devices, had not been lost by the Greeks and had been borrowed from them for full practical use by the Romans. They knew how to lift huge weights, and how to hurl heavy missiles by the artillery previously mentioned. Experiments had been made at Alexandria in the use of steam-power, but had led to nothing practical. It is obvious also from their buildings and works of engineering, even without explicit statement, that they well understood the distribution of weight and the laws of stability. The laws of acoustics were understood with sufficient clearness to make them applicable with success to theatres. In practical mensuration—a daily necessity for men who were perpetually allotting lands or marking out camps—the Romans were experts. In pure arithmetic the contemporary world had made some considerable advance, such as in the extraction of square-roots and cube-roots; but, as has been already said, the Roman interest was virtually confined to such arithmetic or mathematics as appeared to possess some bearing on actual use.

Of chemistry, in the modern scientific sense, the ancients knew almost nothing. Empirically they were aware of certain properties exhibited by substances, and could perform certain manipulations; but, like moderns down to a very recent time, they had no real understanding of the quantitative or qualitative relations of elements. Long ago Greek philosophy, followed by the Epicurean school, had set forth an "atomic theory," which on the surface is surprisingly like the modern chemical hypothesis; but this contained strange and illogical features and had no connection with actual practice. In this department the chief proficiency of the world of this date lay in metallurgy, in which the processes empirically discovered, chiefly by Egyptians and Phoenicians, were closely similar to those now employed. They thoroughly understood the smelting of ores, but could render no scientific account of the processes. Botany was in a very crude condition, scarcely extending beyond such knowledge as was required on the one hand for farming and horticulture, and on the other for the vegetable medicines used by contemporary physicians.

The doctoring of the time was also, of course, largely empirical, but assuredly hardly more so than it was a century or so ago, and distinctly more rational than it became in the Middle Ages. We cannot conceive of a reputable doctor at Rome prescribing the nauseous mediaeval absurdities. Practical surgery must have been surprisingly advanced, and there is scarcely a modern surgeon who does not exclaim in admiration of the instruments discovered at Pompeii and now preserved in the Naples Museum (see FIG. 69). In physic it is, of course, tolerably certain that many of the remedies or methods of treatment were of the sound and simple kind discovered by the long experience of mankind and often put in use by our grandmothers. The defect contemporary medicine was that it was almost wholly empirical. The ancient surgeon could doubtless perform ordinary operations—amputations and excisions—with neatness, and the ancient physician knew perfectly well what to do with the ordinary complaints—the fevers and agues, the bilious attacks, the gout, or the dropsy—but he was baffled by any new conditions. Moreover, if he could diagnose and cure, he could seldom prevent, inasmuch as he had little understanding of the causes of maladies. He had everything to learn in regard to sanitation and the preventing of infection. A plague would sometimes kill half the people in a town or district, and the loss of 30,000 persons in the metropolis would probably appear to most Romans as a visitation of the gods, nor is it certain that the doctors would generally disagree with that view. Though there were many quacks, it is not the case that the reputable medical men—most of them Greek, some of them Romans, who borrowed a Greek name because it "paid"—lacked the scientific spirit or such knowledge as the time afforded. They went to the medical school at Alexandria or elsewhere, and studied their treatises on physic and anatomy, but, at least in the latter subject, they were sadly hampered. Dissection of human bodies was forbidden by law as being a desecration of the dead, and though it might sometimes be practised sub rosa, it was the general custom to perform the dissections on other animals, particularly monkeys, and to argue thence erroneously to mankind.



CHAPTER XXI

PHILOSOPHY—STOICS AND EPICUREANS

With such an unsatisfactory equipment of science, and with such a vague and morally inoperative religion, it was no wonder that the higher minds of the contemporary world turned to the study of philosophy. Of such studies there had been many schools or sects, but at this date we have chiefly to reckon with two—the Stoics and Epicureans. There were, it is true, the Academics, who disputed everything, and held no doctrine to be more true than its contrary. There were Eclectics, who picked and chose. But the majority of those who affected a positive philosophy attached themselves either to the Stoic or else to the Epicurean system, not necessarily with orthodox rigidity on every point, but as a general guide—at least in theory—to the conduct of life. Where we belong to a certain religious denomination or church, and "sit under" a certain class of preachers, they belonged to a certain school of philosophy, and attended the lectures of certain of its expounders. Instead of a chaplain or parish clergyman they engaged or associated with an expert in their special system. But just as the Frenchman remarked, "Je suis catholique, mais je ne pratique pas," so might one be in principle a good Stoic without much exercise of the accepted doctrines. The distinction between the tenets of the two great schools was wide, but within each school itself individuals might differ as widely as "Broad Church" from whatever its opposite may be called. The choice between the two schools was mainly a matter of temperament. Persons of the sterner type of mind, caring comparatively little for the physical comforts and gracious amenities of life, and possessed of a strong sense of duty and decorum—inclined, perhaps, not only to piety and self-abnegation, but also to be somewhat dour and uncompromising—were naturally attracted to Stoicism. Those of the complementary character preferred the doctrines of Epicurus. The Stoics were the Pharisees, the Epicureans the Sadducees, of pagan philosophy. As the Pharisees were the most Hebraic of the Hebrews, so it was Stoicism that came to be the characteristic Roman creed. The ordinary Roman had been brought up in the tradition of obeying the law of the state and the claims of duty; he had high notions of personal dignity and a leaning to the heroic virtues. Give him a strong, consistent, and elevating religion and he would be normally a pious man. Stoicism supplied him with a standard which was in keeping with such tendencies. About Epicureanism there was nothing heroic or elevating.

Put briefly, and therefore crudely, the Epicurean doctrine was that happiness is the end of life. What men seek, and have a right to seek, is the most pleasant existence. Our conduct should secure for us as much real pleasure as possible. Now at first sight this looks like what it was opprobriously called by its enemies, "the philosophy of the pig-sty." It by no means meant this to its founder. For what is "pleasure"? Not by any means necessarily the gratification of the moment, physical or otherwise. A present pleasure may mean future pain, either of body or of mind. Wrong actions and bestial enjoyments bring their own penalty. You must choose wisely, and so direct your life that you suffer least and enjoy most consistently. Temperance and wisdom are therefore virtues necessary to a true Epicurean. You desire health; therefore you will live, as Epicurus lived, on simple and wholesome food. You desire tranquillity or peace of mind; therefore you will abstain from all perverse acts and gratifications, desires and emotions, which disturb that peace. In short the thing to be sought is nothing else but this grateful composure of mind—a thing which you cannot have if you are always wanting this or that and either abusing or misusing your bodily or mental functions, or needlessly mortifying yourself. To the plain man this apparently meant "Take life easily and keep free of worry." Naturally the plain man's ideas of taking life easily became those of taking pleasures as they come, indolently accepting the agreeables of life and feeling no call to make much of its duties. It is all very well for a high-minded philosopher to avoid a pleasure in order to avoid its pain, and to realize that a pleasure of the mind is worth more than a pleasure of the body, but one cannot expect the ordinary pupil—the homme moyen sensuel—to comprehend this attitude with heartiness sufficient to put it into practice. It followed therefore that the Epicurean tended, not only to become lazy, but to become vicious, or to make light of vices. This was not indeed true Epicureanism, and Epicurus is not to blame for it; it simply shows that Epicureanism, whatever its logical or other merits, provided no sufficient stimulus to a right life. As regards theology the position of the school was that there might very well be such things as higher beings—there was nothing in physical philosophy to make them any more impossible than a man or a fish—but that, if they existed, they were not concerned with man's affairs; his moral conduct, like his sacrifices and prayers, was not matter for their consideration. No need, therefore, to let superstition worry you, or to trouble about future punishment. Conduct your life according to the same principles laid down, and let the gods—if there be any—look to themselves. Naturally the result of such a position is that ceasing to regard the gods means ceasing to believe in them, and, as a Roman writer says: "In theory it leaves us the gods, in practice it abolishes them."