Hellenism in Politics

No department of human action or thought remained unaffected by this struggle between the old fashion and the new. Even political relations were largely influenced by it The whimsical project of emancipating the Hellenes, the well deserved failure of which has already been described, the kindred, likewise Hellenic, idea of a common interest of republics in opposition to kings, and the desire of propagating Hellenic polity at the expense of eastern despotism—the two principles that helped to regulate, for instance, the treatment of Macedonia—were fixed ideas of the new school, just as dread of the Carthaginians was the fixed idea of the old; and, if Cato pushed the latter to a ridiculous excess, Philhellenism now and then indulged in extravagances at least quite as foolish. For example, the conqueror of king Antiochus not only had a statue of him self in Greek costume erected on the Capitol, but also, instead of calling himself in good Latin -Asiaticus-, assumed the unmeaning and anomalous, but yet magnificent and almost Greek, surname of —Asiagenus—.(1) A more important consequence of this attitude of the ruling nation towards Hellenism was, that the process of Latinizing gained ground everywhere in Italy except where it encountered the Hellenes. The cities of the Greeks in Italy, so far as the war had not destroyed them, remained Greek. Apulia, about which, it is true, the Romans gave themselves little concern, appears at this very epoch to have been thoroughly pervaded by Hellenism, and the local civilization there seems to have attained the level of the decaying Hellenic culture by its side. Tradition is silent on the matter; but the numerous coins of cities, uniformly furnished with Greek inscriptions, and the manufacture of painted clay-vases after the Greek style, which was carried on in that part of Italy alone with more ambition and gaudiness than taste, show that Apulia had completely adopted Greek habits and Greek art.

But the real struggle between Hellenism and its national antagonists during the present period was carried on in the field of faith, of manners, and of art and literature; and we must not omit to attempt some delineation of this great strife of principles, however difficult it may be to present a summary view of the myriad forms and aspects which the conflict assumed.

The National Religion and Unbelief

The extent to which the old simple faith still retained a living hold on the Italians is shown very clearly by the admiration or astonishment which this problem of Italian piety excited among the contemporary Greeks. On occasion of the quarrel with the Aetolians it was reported of the Roman commander-in-chief that during battle he was solely occupied in praying and sacrificing like a priest; whereas Polybius with his somewhat stale moralizing calls the attention of his countrymen to the political usefulness of this piety, and admonishes them that a state cannot consist of wise men alone, and that such ceremonies are very convenient for the sake of the multitude.

Religious Economy

But if Italy still possessed—what had long been a mere antiquarian curiosity in Hellas—a national religion, it was already visibly beginning to be ossified into theology. The torpor creeping over faith is nowhere perhaps so distinctly apparent as in the alterations in the economy of divine service and of the priesthood. The public service of the gods became not only more tedious, but above all more and more costly. In 558 there was added to the three old colleges of the augurs, pontifices, and keepers of oracles, a fourth consisting of three "banquet-masters" (-tres viri epulones-), solely for the important purpose of superintending the banquets of the gods. The priests, as well as the gods, were in fairness entitled to feast; new institutions, however, were not needed with that view, as every college applied itself with zeal and devotion to its convivial affairs. The clerical banquets were accompanied by the claim of clerical immunities. The priests even in times of grave embarrassment claimed the right of exemption from public burdens, and only after very troublesome controversy submitted to make payment of the taxes in arrear (558). To the individual, as well as to the community, piety became a more and more costly article. The custom of instituting endowments, and generally of undertaking permanent pecuniary obligations, for religious objects prevailed among the Romans in a manner similar to that of its prevalence in Roman Catholic countries at the present day. These endowments—particularly after they came to be regarded by the supreme spiritual and at the same time the supreme juristic authority in the state, the pontifices, as a real burden devolving -de jure- on every heir or other person acquiring the estate—began to form an extremely oppressive charge on property; "inheritance without sacrificial obligation" was a proverbial saying among the Romans somewhat similar to our "rose without a thorn." The dedication of a tenth of their substance became so common, that twice every month a public entertainment was given from the proceeds in the Forum Boarium at Rome. With the Oriental worship of the Mother of the Gods there was imported to Rome among other pious nuisances the practice, annually recurring on certain fixed days, of demanding penny-collections from house to house (-stipem cogere-). Lastly, the subordinate class of priests and soothsayers, as was reasonable, rendered no service without being paid for it; and beyond doubt the Roman dramatist sketched from life, when in the curtain-conversation between husband and wife he represents the account for pious services as ranking with the accounts for the cook, the nurse, and other customary presents:—

-Da mihi, vir,—quod dem Quinquatribus Praecantrici, conjectrici, hariolae atquc haruspicae; Tum piatricem clementer non potest quin munerem. Flagitium est, si nil mittetur, quo supercilio spicit.-

The Romans did not create a "God of gold," as they had formerly created a "God of silver";(2) nevertheless he reigned in reality alike over the highest and lowest spheres of religious life. The old pride of the Latin national religion—the moderation of its economic demands—was irrevocably gone.

Theology

At the same time its ancient simplicity also departed. Theology, the spurious offspring of reason and faith, was already occupied in introducing its own tedious prolixity and solemn inanity into the old homely national faith, and thereby expelling the true spirit of that faith. The catalogue of the duties and privileges of the priest of Jupiter, for instance, might well have a place in the Talmud. They pushed the natural rule—that no religious service can be acceptable to the gods unless it is free from flaw—to such an extent in practice, that a single sacrifice had to be repeated thirty times in succession on account of mistakes again and again committed, and that the games, which also formed a part of divine service, were regarded as undone if the presiding magistrate had committed any slip in word or deed or if the music even had paused at a wrong time, and so had to be begun afresh, frequently for several, even as many as seven, times in succession.

Irreligious Spirit

This exaggeration of conscientiousness was already a symptom of its incipient torpor; and the reaction against it—indifference and unbelief—failed not soon to appear. Even in the first Punic war (505) an instance occurred in which the consul himself made an open jest of consulting the auspices before battle—a consul, it is true, belonging to the peculiar clan of the Claudii, which alike in good and evil was ahead of its age. Towards the end of this epoch complaints were loudly made that the lore of the augurs was neglected, and that, to use the language of Cato, a number of ancient auguries and auspices were falling into oblivion through the indolence of the college. An augur like Lucius Paullus, who saw in the priesthood a science and not a mere title, was already a rare exception, and could not but be so, when the government more and more openly and unhesitatingly employed the auspices for the accomplishment of its political designs, or, in other words, treated the national religion in accordance with the view of Polybius as a superstition useful for imposing on the public at large. Where the way was thus paved, the Hellenistic irreligious spirit found free course. In connection with the incipient taste for art the sacred images of the gods began as early as the time of Cato to be employed, like other furniture, in adorning the chambers of the rich. More dangerous wounds were inflicted on religion by the rising literature. It could not indeed venture on open attacks, and such direct additions as were made by its means to religious conceptions —e.g. the Pater Caelus formed by Ennius from the Roman Saturnus in imitation of the Greek Uranos—were, while Hellenistic, of no great importance. But the diffusion of the doctrines of Epichar and Euhemerus in Rome was fraught with momentous consequences. The poetical philosophy, which the later Pythagoreans had extracted from the writings of the old Sicilian comedian Epicharmus of Megara (about 280), or rather had, at least for the most part, circulated under cover of his name, saw in the Greek gods natural substances, in Zeus the atmosphere, in the soul a particle of sun-dust, and so forth. In so far as this philosophy of nature, like the Stoic doctrine in later times, had in its most general outlines a certain affinity with the Roman religion, it was calculated to undermine the national religion by resolving it into allegory. A quasi-historical analysis of religion was given in the "Sacred Memoirs" of Euhemerus of Messene (about 450), which, under the form of reports on the travels of the author among the marvels of foreign lands, subjected to thorough and documentary sifting the accounts current as to the so-called gods, and resulted in the conclusion that there neither were nor are gods at all. To indicate the character of the book, it may suffice to mention the one fact, that the story of Kronos devouring his children is explained as arising out of the existence of cannibalism in the earliest times and its abolition by king Zeus. Notwithstanding, or even by virtue of, its insipidity and of its very obvious purpose, the production had an undeserved success in Greece, and helped, in concert with the current philosophies there, to bury the dead religion. It is a remarkable indication of the expressed and conscious antagonism between religion and the new philosophy that Ennius already translated into Latin those notoriously destructive writings of Epicharmus and Euhemerus. The translators may have justified themselves at the bar of Roman police by pleading that the attacks were directed only against the Greek, and not against the Latin, gods; but the evasion was tolerably transparent. Cato was, from his own point of view, quite right in assailing these tendencies indiscriminately, wherever they met him, with his own peculiar bitterness, and in calling even Socrates a corrupter of morals and offender against religion.

Home and Foreign Superstition

Thus the old national religion was visibly on the decline; and, as the great trees of the primeval forest were uprooted the soil became covered with a rank growth of thorns and of weeds that had never been seen before. Native superstitions and foreign impostures of the most various hues mingled, competed, and conflicted with each other. No Italian stock remained exempt from this transmuting of old faith into new superstition. As the lore of entrails and of lightning was cultivated among the Etruscans, so the liberal art of observing birds and conjuring serpent? flourished luxuriantly among the Sabellians and more particularly the Marsians. Even among the Latin nation, and in fact in Rome itself, we meet with similar phenomena, although they are, comparatively speaking, less conspicuous. Such for instance were the lots of Praeneste, and the remarkable discovery at Rome in 573 of the tomb and posthumous writings of the king Numa, which are alleged to have prescribed religious rites altogether strange and unheard of. But the credulous were to their regret not permitted to learn more than this, coupled with the fact that the books looked very new; for the senate laid hands on the treasure and ordered the rolls to be summarily thrown into the fire. The home manufacture was thus quite sufficient to meet such demands of folly as might fairly be expected; but the Romans were far from being content with it. The Hellenism of that epoch, already denationalized and pervaded by Oriental mysticism, introduced not only unbelief but also superstition in its most offensive and dangerous forms to Italy; and these vagaries moreover had quite a special charm, precisely because they were foreign.

Worship of Cybele

Chaldaean astrologers and casters of nativities were already in the sixth century spread throughout Italy; but a still more important event—one making in fact an epoch in the world's history—was the reception of the Phrygian Mother of the Gods among the publicly recognized divinities of the Roman state, to which the government had been obliged to give its consent during the last weary years of the Hannibalic war (550). A special embassy was sent for the purpose to Pessinus, a city in the territory of the Celts of Asia Minor; and the rough field-stone, which the priests of the place liberally presented to the foreigners as the real Mother Cybele, was received by the community with unparalleled pomp. Indeed, by way of perpetually commemorating the joyful event, clubs in which the members entertained each other in rotation were instituted among the higher classes, and seem to have materially stimulated the rising tendency to the formation of cliques. With the permission thus granted for the -cultus- of Cybele the worship of the Orientals gained a footing officially in Rome; and, though the government strictly insisted that the emasculate priests of the new gods should remain Celts (-Galli-) as they were called, and that no Roman burgess should devote himself to this pious eunuchism, yet the barbaric pomp of the "Great Mother" —her priests clad in Oriental costume with the chief eunuch at their head, marching in procession through the streets to the foreign music of fifes and kettledrums, and begging from house to house—and the whole doings, half sensuous, half monastic, must have exercised a most material influence over the sentiments and views of the people.

Worship of Bacchus

The effect was only too rapidly and fearfully apparent. A few years later (568) rites of the most abominable character came to the knowledge of the Roman authorities; a secret nocturnal festival in honour of the god Bacchus had been first introduced into Etruria through a Greek priest, and, spreading like a cancer, had rapidly reached Rome and propagated itself over all Italy, everywhere corrupting families and giving rise to the most heinous crimes, unparalleled unchastity, falsifying of testaments, and murdering by poison. More than 7000 men were sentenced to punishment, most of them to death, on this account, and rigorous enactments were issued as to the future; yet they did not succeed in repressing the ongoings, and six years later (574) the magistrate to whom the matter fell complained that 3000 men more had been condemned and still there appeared no end of the evil.

Repressive Measures

Of course all rational men were agreed in the condemnation of these spurious forms of religion—as absurd as they were injurious to the commonwealth: the pious adherents of the olden faith and the partisans of Hellenic enlightenment concurred in their ridicule of, and indignation at, this superstition. Cato made it an instruction to his steward, "that he was not to present any offering, or to allow any offering to be presented on his behalf, without the knowledge and orders of his master, except at the domestic hearth and on the wayside-altar at the Compitalia, and that he should consult no -haruspex-, -hariolus-, or -Chaldaeus-." The well-known question, as to how a priest could contrive to suppress laughter when he met his colleague, originated with Cato, and was primarily applied to the Etruscan -haruspex-. Much in the same spirit Ennius censures in true Euripidean style the mendicant soothsayers and their adherents:

-Sed superstitiosi vates impudentesque arioli, Aut inertes aut insani aut quibus egestas imperat, Qui sibi semitam non sapiunt, alteri monstrant viam, Quibus divitias pollicentur, ab eis drachumam ipsi petunt.-

But in such times reason from the first plays a losing game against unreason. The government, no doubt, interfered; the pious impostors were punished and expelled by the police; every foreign worship not specially sanctioned was forbidden; even the consulting of the comparatively innocent lot-oracle of Praeneste was officially prohibited in 512; and, as we have already said, those who took part in the Bacchanalia were rigorously prosecuted. But, when once men's heads are thoroughly turned, no command of the higher authorities avails to set them right again. How much the government was obliged to concede, or at any rate did concede, is obvious from what has been stated. The Roman custom, under which the state consulted Etruscan sages in certain emergencies and the government accordingly took steps to secure the traditional transmission of Etruscan lore in the noble families of Etruria, as well as the permission of the secret worship of Demeter, which was not immoral and was restricted to women, may probably be ranked with the earlier innocent and comparatively indifferent adoption of foreign rites. But the admission of the worship of the Mother of the Gods was a bad sign of the weakness which the government felt in presence of the new superstition, perhaps even of the extent to which it was itself pervaded by it; and it showed in like manner either an unpardonable negligence or something still worse, that the authorities only took steps against such proceedings as the Bacchanalia at so late a stage, and even then on an accidental information.

Austerity of Manners Catos's Family Life

The picture, which has been handed down to us of the life of Cato the Elder, enables us in substance to perceive how, according to the ideas of the respectable burgesses of that period, the private life of the Roman should be spent. Active as Cato was as a statesman, pleader, author, and mercantile speculator, family life always formed with him the central object of existence; it was better, he thought, to be a good husband than a great senator. His domestic discipline was strict. The servants were not allowed to leave the house without orders, nor to talk of what occurred to the household to strangers. The more severe punishments were not inflicted capriciously, but sentence was pronounced and executed according to a quasi-judicial procedure: the strictness with which offences were punished may be inferred from the fact, that one of his slaves who had concluded a purchase without orders from his master hanged himself on the matter coming to Cato's ears. For slight offences, such as mistakes committed in waiting at table, the consular was wont after dinner to administer to the culprit the proper number of lashes with a thong wielded by his own hand. He kept his wife and children in order no less strictly, but by other means; for he declared it sinful to lay hands on a wife or grown-up children in the same way as on slaves. In the choice of a wife he disapproved marrying for money, and recommended men to look to good descent; but he himself married in old age the daughter of one of his poor clients. Moreover he adopted views in regard to continence on the part of the husband similar to those which everywhere prevail in slave countries; a wife was throughout regarded by him as simply a necessary evil. His writings abound in invectives against the chattering, finery-loving, ungovernable fair sex; it was the opinion of the old lord that "all women are plaguy and proud," and that, "were men quit of women, our life might probably be less godless." On the other hand the rearing of children born in wedlock was a matter which touched his heart and his honour, and the wife in his eyes existed strictly and solely for the children's sake. She nursed them ordinarily herself, or, if she allowed her children to be suckled by female slaves, she also allowed their children in return to draw nourishment from her own breast; one of the few traits, which indicate an endeavour to mitigate the institution of slavery by ties of human sympathy—the common impulses of maternity and the bond of foster-brotherhood. The old general was present in person, whenever it was possible, at the washing and swaddling of his children. He watched with reverential care over their childlike innocence; he assures us that he was as careful lest he should utter an unbecoming word in presence of his children as if he had been in presence of the Vestal Virgins, and that he never before the eyes of his daughters embraced their mother, except when she had become alarmed during a thunder-storm. The education of the son was perhaps the noblest portion of his varied and variously honourable activity. True to his maxim, that a ruddy-checked boy was worth more than a pale one, the old soldier in person initiated his son into all bodily exercises, and taught him to wrestle, to ride, to swim, to box, and to endure heat and cold. But he felt very justly, that the time had gone by when it sufficed for a Roman to be a good farmer and soldier; and be felt also that it could not but have an injurious influence on the mind of his boy, if he should subsequently learn that the teacher, who had rebuked and punished him and had won his reverence, was a mere slave. Therefore he in person taught the boy what a Roman was wont to learn, to read and write and know the law of the land; and even in his later years he worked his way so far into the general culture of the Hellenes, that he was able to deliver to his son in his native tongue whatever in that culture he deemed to be of use to a Roman. All his writings were primarily intended for his son, and he wrote his historical work for that son's use with large distinct letters in his own hand. He lived in a homely and frugal style. His strict parsimony tolerated no expenditure on luxuries. He allowed no slave to cost him more than 1500 -denarii- (65 pounds) and no dress more than 100 -denarii- (4 pounds: 6 shillings); no carpet was to be seen in his house, and for a long time there was no whitewash on the walls of the rooms. Ordinarily he partook of the same fare with his servants, and did not buffer his outlay in cash for the meal to exceed 30 -asses- (2 shillings); in time of war even wine was uniformly banished from his table, and he drank water or, according to circumstances, water mixed with vinegar. On the other hand, he was no enemy to hospitality; he was fond of associating both with his club in town and with the neighbouring landlords in the country; he sat long at table, and, as his varied experience and his shrewd and ready wit made him a pleasant companion, he disdained neither the dice nor the wine-flask: among other receipts in his book on husbandry he even gives a tried recipe for the case of a too hearty meal and too deep potations. His life up to extreme old age was one of ceaseless activity. Every moment was apportioned and occupied; and every evening he was in the habit of turning over in his mind what he had heard, said, or done during the day. Thus he found time for his own affairs as well as for those of his friends and of the state, and time also for conversation and pleasure; everything was done quickly and without many words, and his genuine spirit of activity hated nothing so much as bustle or a great ado about trifles. So lived the man who was regarded by his contemporaries and by posterity as the true model of a Roman burgess, and who appeared as it were the living embodiment of the—certainly somewhat coarse-grained—energy and probity of Rome in contrast with Greek indolence and Greek immorality; as a later Roman poet says:

-Sperne mores transmarinos, mille habent offucias. Cive Romano per orbem nemo vivit rectius. Quippe malim unum Catonem, quam trecentos Socratas.- (3)

Such judgments will not be absolutely adopted by history; but every one who carefully considers the revolution which the degenerate Hellenism of this age accomplished in the modes of life and thought among the Romans, will be inclined to heighten rather than to lessen that condemnation of the foreign manners.

New Manners

The ties of family life became relaxed with fearful rapidity. The evil of grisettes and boy-favourites spread like a pestilence, and, as matters stood, it was not possible to take any material steps in the way of legislation against it. The high tax, which Cato as censor (570) laid on this most abominable species of slaves kept for luxury, would not be of much moment, and besides fell practically into disuse a year or two afterwards along with the property-tax generally. Celibacy—as to which grave complaints were made as early as 520—and divorces naturally increased in proportion. Horrible crimes were perpetrated in the bosom of families of the highest rank; for instance, the consul Gaius Calpurnius Piso was poisoned by his wife and his stepson, in order to occasion a supplementary election to the consulship and so to procure the supreme magistracy for the latter —a plot which was successful (574). Moreover the emancipation of women began. According to old custom the married woman was subject in law to the marital power which was parallel with the paternal, and the unmarried woman to the guardianship of her nearest male -agnati-, which fell little short of the paternal power; the wife had no property of her own, the fatherless virgin and the widow had at any rate no right of management. But now women began to aspire to independence in respect to property, and, getting quit of the guardianship of their -agnati- by evasive lawyers' expedients —particularly through mock marriages—they took the management of their property into their own hands, or, in the event of being married, sought by means not much better to withdraw themselves from the marital power, which under the strict letter of the law was necessary. The mass of capital which was collected in the hands of women appeared to the statesmen of the time so dangerous, that they resorted to the extravagant expedient of prohibiting by law the testamentary nomination of women as heirs (585), and even sought by a highly arbitrary practice to deprive women for the most part of the collateral inheritances which fell to them without testament. In like manner the exercise of family jurisdiction over women, which was connected with that marital and tutorial power, became practically more and more antiquated. Even in public matters women already began to have a will of their own and occasionally, as Cato thought, "to rule the rulers of the world;" their influence was to be traced in the burgess-assembly, and already statues were erected in the provinces to Roman ladies.

Luxury

Luxury prevailed more and more in dress, ornaments, and furniture, in buildings and at table. Especially after the expedition to Asia Minor in 564 Asiatico-Hellenic luxury, such as prevailed at Ephesus and Alexandria, transferred its empty refinement and its dealing in trifles, destructive alike of money, time, and pleasure, to Rome. Here too women took the lead: in spite of the zealous invective of Cato they managed to procure the abolition, after the peace with Cartilage (559), of the decree of the people passed soon after the battle of Cannae (539), which forbade them to use gold ornaments, variegated dresses, or chariots; no course was left to their zealous antagonist but to impose a high tax on those articles (570). A multitude of new and for the most part frivolous articles—silver plate elegantly figured, table-couches with bronze mounting, Attalic dresses as they were called, and carpets of rich gold brocade—now found their way to Rome. Above all, this new luxury appeared in the appliances of the table. Hitherto without exception the Romans had only partaken of hot dishes once a day; now hot dishes were not unfrequently produced at the second meal (-prandium-), and for the principal meal the two courses formerly in use no longer sufficed. Hitherto the women of the household had themselves attended to the baking of bread and cooking; and it was only on occasion of entertainments that a professional cook was specially hired, who in that case superintended alike the cooking and the baking. Now, on the other hand, a scientific cookery began to prevail. In the better houses a special cook was kept The division of labour became necessary, and the trade of baking bread and cakes branched off from that of cooking—the first bakers' shops in Rome appeared about 583. Poems on the art of good eating, with long lists of the most palatable fishes and other marine products, found their readers: and the theory was reduced to practice. Foreign delicacies—anchovies from Pontus, wine from Greece—began to be esteemed in Rome, and Cato's receipt for giving to the ordinary wine of the country the flavour of Coan by means of brine would hardly inflict any considerable injury on the Roman vintners. The old decorous singing and reciting of the guests and their boys were supplanted by Asiatic -sambucistriae-. Hitherto the Romans had perhaps drunk pretty deeply at supper, but drinking- banquets in the strict sense were unknown; now formal revels came into vogue, on which occasions the wine was little or not at all diluted and was drunk out of large cups, and the drink-pledging, in which each was bound to follow his neighbour in regular succession, formed the leading feature—"drinking after the Greek style" (-Graeco more bibere-) or "playing the Greek" (-pergraecari-, -congraecare-) as the Romans called it. In consequence of this debauchery dice-playing, which had doubtless long been in use among the Romans, reached such proportions that it was necessary for legislation to interfere. The aversion to labour and the habit of idle lounging were visibly on the increase.(4) Cato proposed to have the market paved with pointed stones, in order to put a stop to the habit of idling; the Romans laughed at the jest and went on to enjoy the pleasure of loitering and gazing all around them.

Increase of Amusements

We have already noticed the alarming extension of the popular amusements during this epoch. At the beginning of it, apart from some unimportant foot and chariot races which should rather be ranked with religious ceremonies, only a single general festival was held in the month of September, lasting four days and having a definitely fixed maximum of cost.(5) At the close of the epoch, this popular festival had a duration of at least six days; and besides this there were celebrated at the beginning of April the festival of the Mother of the Gods or the so-called Megalensia, towards the end of April that of Ceres and that of Flora, in June that of Apollo, in November the Plebeian games—all of them probably occupying already more days than one. To these fell to be added the numerous cases where the games were celebrated afresh—in which pious scruples presumably often served as a mere pretext—and the incessant extraordinary festivals. Among these the already-mentioned banquets furnished from the dedicated tenths(6) the feasts of the gods, the triumphal and funeral festivities, were conspicuous; and above all the festal games which were celebrated—for the first time in 505—at the close of one of those longer periods which were marked off by the Etrusco-Roman religion, the -saecula-, as they were called. At the same time domestic festivals were multiplied. During the second Punic war there were introduced, among people of quality, the already-mentioned banquetings on the anniversary of the entrance of the Mother of the Gods (after 550), and, among the lower orders, the similar Saturnalia (after 537), both under the influence of the powers henceforth closely allied—the foreign priest and the foreign cook. A very near approach was made to that ideal condition in which every idler should know where he might kill time every day; and this in a commonwealth where formerly action had been with all and sundry the very object of existence, and idle enjoyment had been proscribed by custom as well as by law! The bad and demoralizing elements in these festal observances, moreover, daily acquired greater ascendency. It is true that still as formerly the chariot races formed the brilliant finale of the national festivals; and a poet of this period describes very vividly the straining expectancy with which the eyes of the multitude were fastened on the consul, when he was on the point of giving the signal for the chariots to start. But the former amusements no longer sufficed; there was a craving for new and more varied spectacles. Greek athletes now made their appearance (for the first time in 568) alongside of the native wrestlers and boxers. Of the dramatic exhibitions we shall speak hereafter: the transplanting of Greek comedy and tragedy to Rome was a gain perhaps of doubtful value, but it formed at any rate the best of the acquisitions made at this time. The Romans had probably long indulged in the sport of coursing hares and hunting foxes in presence of the public; now these innocent hunts were converted into formal baitings of wild animals, and the wild beasts of Africa—lions and panthers—were (first so far as can be proved in 568) transported at great cost to Rome, in order that by killing or being killed they might serve to glut the eyes of the gazers of the capital. The still more revolting gladiatorial games, which prevailed in Campania and Etruria, now gained admission to Rome; human blood was first shed for sport in the Roman forum in 490. Of course these demoralizing amusements encountered severe censure: the consul of 486, Publius Sempronius Sophus, sent a divorce to his wife, because she had attended funeral games; the government carried a decree of the people prohibiting the bringing over of wild beasts to Rome, and strictly insisted that no gladiators should appear at the public festivals. But here too it wanted either the requisite power or the requisite energy: it succeeded, apparently, in checking the practice of baiting animals, but the appearance of sets of gladiators at private festivals, particularly at funeral celebrations, was not suppressed. Still less could the public be prevented from preferring the comedian to the tragedian, the rope-dancer to the comedian, the gladiator to the rope-dancer; or the stage be prevented from revelling by choice amidst the pollution of Hellenic life. Whatever elements of culture were contained in the scenic and artistic entertainments were from the first thrown aside; it was by no means the object of the givers of the Roman festivals to elevate—though it should be but temporarily—the whole body of spectators through the power of poetry to the level of feeling of the best, as the Greek stage did in the period of its prime, or to prepare an artistic pleasure for a select circle, as our theatres endeavour to do. The character of the managers and spectators in Rome is illustrated by a scene at the triumphal games in 587, where the first Greek flute-players, on their melodies failing to please, were instructed by the director to box with one another instead of playing, upon which the delight would know no bounds.

Nor was the evil confined to the corruption of Roman manners by Hellenic contagion; conversely the scholars began to demoralize their instructors. Gladiatorial games, which were unknown in Greece, were first introduced by king Antiochus Epiphanes (579-590), a professed imitator of the Romans, at the Syrian court, and, although they excited at first greater horror than pleasure in the Greek public, which was more humane and had more sense of art than the Romans, yet they held their ground likewise there, and gradually came more and more into vogue.

As a matter of course, this revolution in life and manners brought an economic revolution in its train. Residence in the capital became more and more coveted as well as more costly. Rents rose to an unexampled height. Extravagant prices were paid for the new articles of luxury; a barrel of anchovies from the Black Sea cost 1600 sesterces (16 pounds)—more than the price of a rural slave; a beautiful boy cost 24,000 sesterces (240 pounds)—more than many a farmer's homestead. Money therefore, and nothing but money, became the watchword with high and low. In Greece it had long been the case that nobody did anything for nothing, as the Greeks themselves with discreditable candour allowed: after the second Macedonian war the Romans began in this respect also to imitate the Greeks. Respectability had to provide itself with legal buttresses; pleaders, for instance, had to be prohibited by decree of the people from taking money for their services; the jurisconsults alone formed a noble exception, and needed no decree of the people to compel their adherence to the honourable custom of giving good advice gratuitously. Men did not, if possible, steal outright; but all shifts seemed allowable in order to attain rapidly to riches—plundering and begging, cheating on the part of contractors and swindling on the part of speculators, usurious trading in money and in grain, even the turning of purely moral relations such as friendship and marriage to economic account. Marriage especially became on both sides an object of mercantile speculation; marriages for money were common, and it appeared necessary to refuse legal validity to the' presents which the spouses made to each other. That, under such a state of things, plans for setting fire on all sides to the capital came to the knowledge of the authorities, need excite no surprise. When man no longer finds enjoyment in work, and works merely in order to attain as quickly as possible to enjoyment, it is a mere accident that he does not become a criminal. Destiny had lavished all the glories of power and riches with liberal hand on the Romans; but, in truth, the Pandora's box was a gift of doubtful value.



Notes for Chapter XIII

1. That —Asiagenus— was the original title of the hero of Magnesia and of his descendants, is established by coins and inscriptions; the fact that the Capitoline Fasti call him -Asiaticus- is one of several traces indicating that these have undergone a non-contemporary revision. The former surname can only he a corruption of —Asiagenus— —the form which later authors substituted for it—which signifies not the conqueror of Asia, but an Asiatic by birth.

2. II. VIII. Religion

3. [In the first edition of this translation I gave these lines in English on the basis of Dr. Mommsen's German version, and added in a note that I had not been able to find the original. Several scholars whom I consulted were not more successful; and Dr. Mommsen was at the time absent from Berlin. Shortly after the first edition appeared, I received a note from Sir George Cornewall Lewis informing me that I should find them taken from Florus (or Floridus) in Wernsdorf, Poetae Lat. Min. vol. iii. p. 487. They were accordingly given in the revised edition of 1868 from the Latin text Baehrens (Poet. Lat. Min. vol. iv. p. 347) follows Lucian Muller in reading -offucia-. —TR.]

4. A sort of -parabasis- in the -Curculio- of Plautus describes what went on in the market-place of the capital, with little humour perhaps, but with life-like distinctness.

-Conmonstrabo, quo in quemque hominem facile inveniatis loco, Ne nimio opere sumat operam, si quis conventum velit Vel vitiosum vel sine vitio, vel probum vel inprobum. Qui perjurum convenire volt hominem, ito in comitium; Qui mendacem et gloriosum, apud Cloacinae sacrum. [Ditis damnosos maritos sub basilica quaerito. Ibidem erunt scorta exoleta quique stipulari solent.] Symbolarum conlatores apud forum piscarium. In foro infumo boni homines atque dites ambulant; In medio propter canalem ibi ostentatores meri. Confidentes garrulique et malevoli supra lacum, Qui alteri de nihilo audacter dicunt contumeliam Et qui ipsi sat habent quod in se possit vere dicier. Sub veteribus ibi sunt, qui dant quique accipiunt faenore. Pone aedem Castoris ibi sunt, subito quibus credas male. In Tusco vico ibi sunt homines, qui ipsi sese venditant. In Velabro vel pistorem vel lanium vel haruspicem Vel qui ipsi vorsant, vel qui aliis, ut vorsentur, praebeant. Ditis damnosos maritos apud Leucadiam Oppiam.-

The verses in brackets are a subsequent addition, inserted after the building of the first Roman bazaar (570). The business of the baker (-pistor-, literally miller) embraced at this time the sale of delicacies and the providing accommodation for revellers (Festus, Ep. v. alicariae, p. 7, Mull.; Plautus, Capt. 160; Poen. i. a, 54; Trin. 407). The same was the case with the butchers. Leucadia Oppia may have kept a house of bad fame.

5. II. IX. The Roman National Festival

6. III. XIII. Religious Economy



CHAPTER XIV

Literature and Art

The influences which stimulated the growth of Roman literature were of a character altogether peculiar and hardly paralleled in any other nation. To estimate them correctly, it is necessary in the first place that we should glance at the instruction of the people and its recreations during this period.

Knowledge of Languages

Language lies at the root of all mental culture; and this was especially the case in Rome. In a community where so much importance was attached to speeches and documents, and where the burgess, at an age which is still according to modern ideas regarded as boyhood, was already entrusted with the uncontrolled management of his property and might perhaps find it necessary to make formal speeches to the assembled community, not only was great value set all along on the fluent and polished use of the mother-tongue, but efforts were early made to acquire a command of it in the years of boyhood. The Greek language also was already generally diffused in Italy in the time of Hannibal. In the higher circles a knowledge of that language, which was the general medium of intercourse for ancient civilization, had long been a far from uncommon accomplishment; and now, when the change of Rome's position in the world had so enormously increased the intercourse with foreigners and the foreign traffic, such a knowledge was, if not necessary, yet presumably of very material importance to the merchant as well as the statesman. By means of the Italian slaves and freedmen, a very large portion of whom were Greek or half-Greek by birth the Greek language and Greek knowledge to a certain extent reached even the lower ranks of the population, especially in the capital. The comedies of this period may convince us that even the humbler classes of the capital were familiar with a sort of Latin, which could no more be properly understood without a knowledge of Greek than the English of Sterne or the German of Wieland without a knowledge of French.(1) Men of senatorial families, however, not only addressed a Greek audience in Greek, but even published their speeches—Tiberius Gracchus (consul in 577 and 591) so published a speech which he had given at Rhodes—and in the time of Hannibal wrote their chronicles in Greek, as we shall have occasion to mention more particularly in the sequel. Individuals went still farther. The Greeks honoured Flamininus by complimentary demonstrations in the Roman language,(2) and he returned the compliment; the "great general of the Aeneiades" dedicated his votive gifts to the Greek gods after the Greek fashion in Greek distichs.(3) Cato reproached another senator with the fact, that he had the effrontery to deliver Greek recitations with the due modulation at Greek revels.

Under the influence of such circumstances Roman instruction developed itself. It is a mistaken opinion, that antiquity was materially inferior to our own times in the general diffusion of elementary attainments. Even among the lower classes and slaves there was much reading, writing, and counting: in the case of a slave steward, for instance, Cato, following the example of Mago, takes for granted the ability to read and write. Elementary instruction, as well as instruction in Greek, must have been long before this period imparted to a very considerable extent in Rome. But the epoch now before us initiated an education, the aim of which was to communicate not merely an outward expertness, but a real mental culture. Hitherto in Rome a knowledge of Greek had conferred on its possessor as little superiority in civil or social life, as a knowledge of French perhaps confers at the present day in a hamlet of German Switzerland; and the earliest writers of Greek chronicles may have held a position among the other senators similar to that of the farmer in the fens of Holstein who has been a student and in the evening, when he comes home from the plough, takes down his Virgil from the shelf. A man who assumed airs of greater importance by reason of his Greek, was reckoned a bad patriot and a fool; and certainly even in Cato's time one who spoke Greek ill or not at all might still be a man of rank and become senator and consul. But a change was already taking place. The internal decomposition of Italian nationality had already, particularly in the aristocracy, advanced so far as to render the substitution of a general humane culture for that nationality inevitable: and the craving after a more advanced civilization was already powerfully stirring the minds of men. Instruction in the Greek language as it were spontaneously met this craving. The classical literature of Greece, the Iliad and still more the Odyssey, had all along formed the basis of that instruction; the overflowing treasures of Hellenic art and science were already by this means spread before the eyes of the Italians. Without any outward revolution, strictly speaking, in the character of the instruction the natural result was, that the empirical study of the language became converted into a higher study of the literature; that the general culture connected with such literary studies was communicated in increased measure to the scholars; and that these availed themselves of the knowledge thus acquired to dive into that Greek literature which most powerfully influenced the spirit of the age —the tragedies of Euripides and the comedies of Menander.

In a similar way greater importance came to be attached to instruction in Latin. The higher society of Rome began to feel the need, if not of exchanging their mother-tongue for Greek, at least of refining it and adapting it to the changed state of culture; and for this purpose too they found themselves in every respect dependent on the Greeks. The economic arrangements of the Romans placed the work of elementary instruction in the mother-tongue—like every other work held in little estimation and performed for hire—chiefly in the hands of slaves, freedmen, or foreigners, or in other words chiefly in the hands of Greeks or half-Greeks;(4) which was attended with the less difficulty, because the Latin alphabet was almost identical with the Greek and the two languages possessed a close and striking affinity. But this was the least part of the matter; the importance of the study of Greek in a formal point of view exercised a far deeper influence over the study of Latin. Any one who knows how singularly difficult it is to find suitable matter and suitable forms for the higher intellectual culture of youth, and how much more difficult it is to set aside the matter and forms once found, will understand how it was that the Romans knew no mode of supplying the desideratum of a more advanced Latin instruction except that of simply transferring the solution of this problem, which instruction in the Greek language and literature furnished, to instruction in Latin. In the present day a process entirely analogous goes on under our own eyes in the transference of the methods of instruction from the dead to the living languages.

But unfortunately the chief requisite for such a transference was wanting. The Romans could, no doubt, learn to read and write Latin by means of the Twelve Tables; but a Latin culture presupposed a literature, and no such literature existed in Rome.

The Stage under Greek Influence

To this defect was added a second. We have already described the multiplication of the amusements of the Roman people. The stage had long played an important part in these recreations; the chariot-races formed strictly the principal amusement in all of them, but these races uniformly took place only on one, viz. the concluding, day, while the earlier days were substantially devoted to stage- entertainments. But for long these stage-representations consisted chiefly of dances and jugglers' feats; the improvised chants, which were produced on these occasions, had neither dialogue nor plot.(5) It was only now that the Romans looked around them for a real drama. The Roman popular festivals were throughout under the influence of the Greeks, whose talent for amusing and for killing time naturally rendered them purveyors of pleasure for the Romans. Now no national amusement was a greater favourite in Greece, and none was more varied, than the theatre; it could not but speedily attract the attention of those who provided the Roman festivals and their staff of assistants. The earlier Roman stage-chant contained within it a dramatic germ capable perhaps of development; but to develop the drama from that germ required on the part of the poet and the public a genial power of giving and receiving, such as was not to be found among the Romans at all, and least of all at this period; and, had it been possible to find it, the impatience of those entrusted with the amusement of the multitude would hardly have allowed to the noble fruit peace and leisure to ripen. In this case too there was an outward want, which the nation was unable to satisfy; the Romans desired a theatre, but the pieces were wanting.

Rise of a Roman Literature

On these elements Roman literature was based; and its defective character was from the first and necessarily the result of such an origin. All real art has its root in individual freedom and a cheerful enjoyment of life, and the germs of such an art were not wanting in Italy; but, when Roman training substituted for freedom and joyousness the sense of belonging to the community and the consciousness of duty, art was stifled and, instead of growing, could not but pine away. The culminating point of Roman development was the period which had no literature. It was not till Roman nationality began to give way and Hellenico-cosmopolite tendencies began to prevail, that literature made its appearance at Rome in their train. Accordingly from the beginning, and by stringent internal necessity, it took its stand on Greek ground and in broad antagonism to the distinctively Roman national spirit. Roman poetry above all had its immediate origin not from the inward impulse of the poets, but from the outward demands of the school, which needed Latin manuals, and of the stage, which needed Latin dramas. Now both institutions—the school and the stage—were thoroughly anti-Roman and revolutionary. The gaping and staring idleness of the theatre was an abomination to the sober earnestness and the spirit of activity which animated the Roman of the olden type; and—inasmuch as it was the deepest and noblest conception lying at the root of the Roman commonwealth, that within the circle of Roman burgesses there should be neither master nor slave, neither millionnaire nor beggar, but that above all a like faith and a like culture should characterize all Romans—the school and the necessarily exclusive school-culture were far more dangerous still, and were in fact utterly destructive of the sense of equality. The school and the theatre became the most effective levers in the hands of the new spirit of the age, and all the more so that they used the Latin tongue. Men might perhaps speak and write Greek and yet not cease to be Romans; but in this case they accustomed themselves to speak in the Roman language, while the whole inward being and life were Greek. It is not one of the most pleasing, but it is one of the most remarkable and in a historical point of view most instructive, facts in this brilliant era of Roman conservatism, that during its course Hellenism struck root in the whole field of intellect not immediately political, and that the -maitre de plaisir- of the great public and the schoolmaster in close alliance created a Roman literature.

Livius Andronicus

In the very earliest Roman author the later development appears, as it were, in embryo. The Greek Andronikos (from before 482, till after 547), afterwards as a Roman burgess called Lucius(6) Livius Andronicus, came to Rome at an early age in 482 among the other captives taken at Tarentum(7) and passed into the possession of the conqueror of Sena(8) Marcus Livius Salinator (consul 535, 547). He was employed as a slave, partly in acting and copying texts, partly in giving instruction in the Latin and Greek languages, which he taught both to the children of his master and to other boys of wealthy parents in and out of the house. He distinguished himself so much in this way that his master gave him freedom, and even the authorities, who not unfrequently availed themselves of his services—commissioning him, for instance, to prepare a thanksgiving-chant after the fortunate turn taken by the Hannibalic war in 547—out of regard for him conceded to the guild of poets and actors a place for their common worship in the temple of Minerva on the Aventine. His authorship arose out of his double occupation. As schoolmaster he translated the Odyssey into Latin, in order that the Latin text might form the basis of his Latin, as the Greek text was the basis of his Greek, instruction; and this earliest of Roman school-books maintained its place in education for centuries. As an actor, he not only like every other wrote for himself the texts themselves, but he also published them as books, that is, he read them in public and diffused them by copies. What was still more important, he substituted the Greek drama for the old essentially lyrical stage poetry. It was in 514, a year after the close of the first Punic war, that the first play was exhibited on the Roman stage. This creation of an epos, a tragedy, and a comedy in the Roman language, and that by a man who was more Roman than Greek, was historically an event; but we cannot speak of his labours as having any artistic value. They make no sort of claim to originality; viewed as translations, they are characterized by a barbarism which is only the more perceptible, that this poetry does not naively display its own native simplicity, but strives, after a pedantic and stammering fashion, to imitate the high artistic culture of the neighbouring people. The wide deviations from the original have arisen not from the freedom, but from the rudeness of the imitation; the treatment is sometimes insipid, sometimes turgid, the language harsh and quaint.(9) We have no difficulty in believing the statement of the old critics of art, that, apart from the compulsory reading at school, none of the poems of Livius were taken up a second time. Yet these labours were in various respects norms for succeeding times. They began the Roman translated literature, and naturalized the Greek metres in Latium. The reason why these were adopted only in the dramas, while the Odyssey of Livius was written in the national Saturnian measure, evidently was that the iambuses and trochees of tragedy and comedy far more easily admitted of imitation in Latin than the epic dactyls.

But this preliminary stage of literary development was soon passed. The epics and dramas of Livius were regarded by posterity, and undoubtedly with perfect justice, as resembling the rigid statues of Daedalus destitute of emotion or expression—curiosities rather than works of art.

But in the following generation, now that the foundations were once laid, there arose a lyric, epic, and dramatic art; and it is of great importance, even in a historical point of view, to trace this poetical development.

Drama Theatre

Both as respects extent of production and influence over the public, the drama stood at the head of the poetry thus developed in Rome. In antiquity there was no permanent theatre with fixed admission-money; in Greece as in Rome the drama made its appearance only as an element in the annually-recurring or extraordinary amusements of the citizens. Among the measures by which the government counteracted or imagined that they counteracted that extension of the popular festivals which they justly regarded with anxiety, they refused to permit the erection of a stone building for a theatre.(10) Instead of this there was erected for each festival a scaffolding of boards with a stage for the actors (-proscaenium-, -pulpitum-) and a decorated background (-scaena-); and in a semicircle in front of it was staked off the space for the spectators (-cavea-), which was merely sloped without steps or seats, so that, if the spectators had not chairs brought along with them, they squatted, reclined, or stood.(11) The women were probably separated at an early period, and were restricted to the uppermost and worst places; otherwise there was no distinction of places in law till 560, after which, as already mentioned,(12) the lowest and best positions were reserved for the senators.

Audience

The audience was anything but genteel. The better classes, it is true, did not keep aloof from the general recreations of the people; the fathers of the city seem even to have been bound for decorum's sake to appear on these occasions. But the very nature of a burgess festival implied that, while slaves and probably foreigners also were excluded, admittance free of charge was given to every burgess with his wife and children;(13) and accordingly the body of spectators cannot have differed much from what one sees in the present day at public fireworks and -gratis- exhibitions. Naturally, therefore, the proceedings were not too orderly; children cried, women talked and shrieked, now and then a wench prepared to push her way to the stage; the ushers had on these festivals anything but a holiday, and found frequent occasion to confiscate a mantle or to ply the rod.

The introduction of the Greek drama increased the demands on the dramatic staff, and there seems to have been no redundance in the supply of capable actors: on one occasion for want of actors a piece of Naevius had to be performed by amateurs. But this produced no change in the position of the artist; the poet or, as he was at this time called, the "writer," the actor, and the composer not only belonged still, as formerly, to the class of workers for hire in itself little esteemed,(14) but were still, as formerly, placed in the most marked way under the ban of public opinion, and subjected to police maltreatment.(15) Of course all reputable persons kept aloof from such an occupation. The manager of the company (-dominus gregis-, -factionis-, also -choragus-), who was ordinarily also the chief actor, was generally a freedman, and its members were ordinarily his slaves; the composers, whose names have reached us, were all of them non-free. The remuneration was not merely small—a -honorarium- of 8000 sesterces (80 pounds) given to a dramatist is described shortly after the close of this period as unusually high—but was, moreover, only paid by the magistrates providing the festival, if the piece was not a failure. With the payment the matter ended; poetical competitions and honorary prizes, such as took place in Attica, were not yet heard of in Rome—the Romans at this time appear to have simply applauded or hissed as we now do, and to have brought forward only a single piece for exhibition each day.(16) Under such circumstances, where art worked for daily wages and the artist instead of receiving due honour was subjected to disgrace, the new national theatre of the Romans could not present any development either original or even at all artistic; and, while the noble rivalry of the noblest Athenians had called into life the Attic drama, the Roman drama taken as a whole could be nothing but a spoiled copy of its predecessor, in which the only wonder is that it has been able to display so much grace and wit in the details.

That only one piece was produced each day we infer from the fact, that the spectators come from home at the beginning of the piece (Poen. 10), and return home after its close (Epid. Pseud. Rud. Stich. Truc. ap. fin.). They went, as these passages show, to the theatre after the second breakfast, and were at home again for the midday meal; the performance thus lasted, according to our reckoning, from about noon till half-past two o'clock, and a piece of Plautus, with music in the intervals between the acts, might probably occupy nearly that length of time (comp. Horat. Ep. ii. i, 189). The passage, in which Tacitus (Ann. xiv. 20) makes the spectators spend "whole days" in the theatre, refers to the state of matters at a later period.

Comedy

In the dramatic world comedy greatly preponderated over tragedy; the spectators knit their brows, when instead of the expected comedy a tragedy began. Thus it happened that, while this period exhibits poets who devoted themselves specially to comedy, such as Plautus and Caecilius, it presents none who cultivated tragedy alone; and among the dramas of this epoch known to us by name there occur three comedies for one tragedy. Of course the Roman comic poets, or rather translators, laid hands in the first instance on the pieces which had possession of the Hellenic stage at the time; and thus they found themselves exclusively(17) confined to the range of the newer Attic comedy, and chiefly to its best-known poets, Philemon of Soli in Cilicia (394?-492) and Menander of Athens (412-462). This comedy came to be of so great importance as regards the development not only of Roman literature, but even of the nation at large, that even history has reason to pause and consider it.

Character of the Newer Attic Comedy

The pieces are of tiresome monotony. Almost without exception the plot turns on helping a young man, at the expense either of his father or of some -leno-, to obtain possession of a sweetheart of undoubted charms and of very doubtful morals. The path to success in love regularly lies through some sort of pecuniary fraud; and the crafty servant, who provides the needful sum and performs the requisite swindling while the lover is mourning over his amatory and pecuniary distresses, is the real mainspring of the piece. There is no want of the due accompaniment of reflections on the joys and sorrows of love, of tearful parting scenes, of lovers who in the anguish of their hearts threaten to do themselves a mischief; love or rather amorous intrigue was, as the old critics of art say, the very life-breath of the Menandrian poetry. Marriage forms, at least with Menander, the inevitable finale; on which occasion, for the greater edification and satisfaction of the spectators, the virtue of the heroine usually comes forth almost if not wholly untarnished, and the heroine herself proves to be the lost daughter of some rich man and so in every respect an eligible match. Along with these love-pieces we find others of a pathetic kind. Among the comedies of Plautus, for instance, the -Rudens- turns on a shipwreck and the right of asylum; while the -Trinummus- and the -Captivi- contain no amatory intrigue, but depict the generous devotedness of the friend to his friend and of the slave to his master. Persons and situations recur down to the very details like patterns on a carpet; we never get rid of the asides of unseen listeners, of knocking at the house-doors, and of slaves scouring the streets on some errand or other. The standing masks, of which there was a certain fixed number—viz., eight masks for old men, and seven for servants—from which alone in ordinary cases at least the poet had to make his choice, further favoured a stock-model treatment. Such a comedy almost of necessity rejected the lyrical element in the older comedy—the chorus—and confined itself from the first to conversation, or at most recitation; it was devoid not of the political element only, but of all true passion and of all poetical elevation. The pieces judiciously made no pretence to any grand or really poetical effect: their charm resided primarily in furnishing occupation for the intellect, not only through their subject-matter —in which respect the newer comedy was distinguished from the old as much by the greater intrinsic emptiness as by the greater outward complication of the plot—but more especially through their execution in detail, in which the point and polish of the conversation more particularly formed the triumph of the poet and the delight of the audience. Complications and confusions of one person with another, which very readily allowed scope for extravagant, often licentious, practical jokes—as in the -Casina-, which winds up in genuine Falstaffian style with the retiring of the two bridegrooms and of the soldier dressed up as bride—jests, drolleries, and riddles, which in fact for want of real conversation furnished the staple materials of entertainment at the Attic table of the period, fill up a large portion of these comedies. The authors of them wrote not like Eupolis and Aristophanes for a great nation, but rather for a cultivated society which spent its time, like other clever circles whose cleverness finds little fit scope for action, in guessing riddles and playing at charades. They give us, therefore, no picture of their times; of the great historical and intellectual movements of the age no trace appears in these comedies, and we need to recall, in order to realize, the fact that Philemon and Menander were really contemporaries of Alexander and Aristotle. But they give us a picture, equally elegant and faithful, of that refined Attic society beyond the circles of which comedy never travels. Even in the dim Latin copy, through which we chiefly know it, the grace of the original is not wholly obliterated; and more especially in the pieces which are imitated from Menander, the most talented of these poets, the life which the poet saw and shared is delicately reflected not so much in its aberrations and distortions as in its amiable every day course. The friendly domestic relations between father and daughter, husband and wife, master and servant, with their love-affairs and other little critical incidents, are portrayed with so broad a truthfulness, that even now they do not miss their effect: the servants' feast, for instance, with which the -Stichus- concludes is, in the limited range of its relations and the harmony of the two lovers and the one sweetheart, of unsurpassed gracefulness in its kind. The elegant grisettes, who make their appearance perfumed and adorned, with their hair fashionably dressed and in variegated, gold- embroidered, sweeping robes, or even perform their toilette on the stage, are very effective. In their train come the procuresses, sometimes of the most vulgar sort, such as one who appears in the -Curculio-, sometimes duennas like Goethe's old Barbara, such as Scapha in the -Mostettaria-; and there is no lack of brothers and comrades ready with their help. There is great abundance and variety of parts representing the old: there appear in turn the austere and avaricious, the fond and tender-hearted, and the indulgent accommodating, papas, the amorous old man, the easy old bachelor, the jealous aged matron with her old maid-servant who takes part with her mistress against her master; whereas the young men's parts are less prominent, and neither the first lover, nor the virtuous model son who here and there occurs, lays claim to much significance. The servant- world—the crafty valet, the stern house-steward, the old vigilant tutor, the rural slave redolent of garlic, the impertinent page—forms a transition to the very numerous professional parts. A standing figure among these is the jester (-parasitus-) who, in return for permission to feast at the table of the rich, has to entertain the guests with drolleries and charades, or, according to circumstances, to let the potsherds be flung at his head. This was at that time a formal trade in Athens; and it is certainly no mere poetical fiction which represents such a parasite as expressly preparing himself for his work by means of his books of witticisms and anecdotes. Favourite parts, moreover, are those of the cook, who understands not only how to boast of unheard-of sauces, but also how to pilfer like a professional thief; the shameless -leno-, complacently confessing to the practice of every vice, of whom Ballio in the -Pseudolus- is a model specimen; the military braggadocio, in whom we trace a very distinct reflection of the free-lance habits that prevailed under Alexander's successors; the professional sharper or sycophant, the stingy money-changer, the solemnly silly physician, the priest, mariner, fisherman, and the like. To these fall to be added, lastly, the parts delineative of character in the strict sense, such as the superstitious man of Menander and the miser in the -Aulularia- of Plautus. The national-Hellenic poetry has preserved, even in this its last creation, its indestructible plastic vigour; but the delineation of character is here copied from without rather than reproduced from inward experience, and the more so, the more the task approaches to the really poetical. It is a significant circumstance that, in the parts illustrative of character to which we have just referred, the psychological truth is in great part represented by abstract development of the conception; the miser here collects the parings of his nails and laments the tears which he sheds as a waste of water. But the blame of this want of depth in the portraying of character, and generally of the whole poetical and moral hollowness of this newer comedy, lay less with the comic writers than with the nation as a whole. Everything distinctively Greek was expiring: fatherland, national faith, domestic life, all nobleness of action and sentiment were gone; poetry, history, and philosophy were inwardly exhausted; and nothing remained to the Athenian save the school, the fish-market, and the brothel. It is no matter of wonder and hardly a matter of blame, that poetry, which is destined to shed a glory over human existence, could make nothing more out of such a life than the Menandrian comedy presents to us. It is at the same time very remarkable that the poetry of this period, wherever it was able to turn away in some degree from the corrupt Attic life without falling into scholastic imitation, immediately gathers strength and freshness from the ideal. In the only remnant of the mock-heroic comedy of this period—the -Amphitruo- of Plautus—there breathes throughout a purer and more poetical atmosphere than in all the other remains of the contemporary stage. The good-natured gods treated with gentle irony, the noble forms from the heroic world, and the ludicrously cowardly slaves present the most wonderful mutual contrasts; and, after the comical course of the plot, the birth of the son of the gods amidst thunder and lightning forms an almost grand concluding effect But this task of turning the myths into irony was innocent and poetical, as compared with that of the ordinary comedy depicting the Attic life of the period. No special accusation may be brought from a historico- moral point of view against the poets, nor ought it to be made matter of individual reproach to any particular poet that he occupies the level of his epoch: comedy was not the cause, but the effect of the corruption that prevailed in the national life. But it is necessary, more especially with a view to judge correctly the influence of these comedies on the life of the Roman people, to point out the abyss which yawned beneath all that polish and elegance. The coarsenesses and obscenities, which Menander indeed in some measure avoided, but of which there is no lack in the other poets, are the least part of the evil. Features far worse are, the dreadful desolation of life in which the only oases are lovemaking and intoxication; the fearfully prosaic atmosphere, in which anything resembling enthusiasm is to be found only among the sharpers whose heads have been turned by their own swindling, and who prosecute the trade of cheating with some sort of zeal; and above all that immoral morality, with which the pieces of Menander in particular are garnished. Vice is chastised, virtue is rewarded, and any peccadilloes are covered by conversion at or after marriage. There are pieces, such as the -Trinummus- of Plautus and several of Terence, in which all the characters down to the slaves possess some admixture of virtue; all swarm with honest men who allow deception on their behalf, with maidenly virtue wherever possible, with lovers equally favoured and making love in company; moral commonplaces and well-turned ethical maxims abound. A finale of reconciliation such as that of the -Bacchides-, where the swindling sons and the swindled fathers by way of a good winding up all go to carouse together in the brothel, presents a corruption of morals thoroughly worthy of Kotzebue.

Roman Comedy Its Hellenism a Necessary Result of the Law

Such were the foundations, and such the elements which shaped the growth, of Roman comedy. Originality was in its case excluded not merely by want of aesthetic freedom, but in the first instance, probably, by its subjection to police control. Among the considerable number of Latin comedies of this sort which are known to us, there is not one that did not announce itself as an imitation of a definite Greek model; the title was only complete when the names of the Greek piece and of its author were also given, and if, as occasionally happened, the "novelty" of a piece was disputed, the question was merely whether it had been previously translated. Comedy laid the scene of its plot abroad not only frequently, but regularly and under the pressure of necessity; and that species of art derived its special name (-fabula palliata-) from the fact, that the scene was laid away from Rome, usually in Athens, and thai the -dramatis personae- were Greeks or at any rate not Romans. The foreign costume is strictly carried out even in detail, especially in those things in which the uncultivated Roman was distinctly sensible of the contrast, Thus the names of Rome and the Romans are avoided, and, where they are referred to, they are called in good Greek "foreigners" (-barbari-); in like manner among the appellations of moneys and coins, that occur ever so frequently, there does not once appear a Roman coin. We form a strange idea of men of so great and so versatile talents as Naevius and Plautus, if we refer such things to their free choice: this strange and clumsy "exterritorial" character of Roman comedy was undoubtedly due to causes very different from aesthetic considerations. The transference of such social relations, as are uniformly delineated in the new Attic comedy, to the Rome of the Hannibalic period would have been a direct outrage on its civic order and morality. But, as the dramatic spectacles at this period were regularly given by the aediles and praetors who were entirely dependent on the senate, and even extraordinary festivals, funeral games for instance, could not take place without permission of the government; and as the Roman police, moreover, was not in the habit of standing on ceremony in any case, and least of all in dealing with the comedians; the reason is self-evident why this comedy, even after it was admitted as one of the Roman national amusements, might still bring no Roman upon the stage, and remained as it were banished to foreign lands.

Political Neutrality

The compilers were still more decidedly prohibited from naming any living person in terms either of praise or censure, as well as from any captious allusion to the circumstances of the times. In the whole repertory of the Plautine and post-Plautine comedy, there is not, so far as we know, matter for a single action of damages. In like manner—if we leave out of view some wholly harmless jests—we meet hardly any trace of invectives levelled at communities (invectives which, owing to the lively municipal spirit of the Italians, would have been specially dangerous), except the significant scoff at the unfortunate Capuans and Atellans (18) and, what is remarkable, various sarcasms on the arrogance and the bad Latin of the Praenestines.(19) In general no references to the events or circumstances of the present occur in the pieces of Plautus. The only exceptions are, congratulations on the course of the war(20) or on the peaceful times; general sallies directed against usurious dealings in grain or money, against extravagance, against bribery by candidates, against the too frequent triumphs, against those who made a trade of collecting forfeited fines, against farmers of the revenue distraining for payment, against the dear prices of the oil-dealers; and once—in the -Curculio- —a more lengthened diatribe as to the doings in the Roman market, reminding us of the -parabases- of the older Attic comedy, and but little likely to cause offence(21) But even in the midst of such patriotic endeavours, which from a police point of view were entirely in order, the poet interrupts himself;

-Sed sumne ego stultus, qui rem curo publicam Ubi sunt magistratus, quos curare oporteat?-

and taken as a whole, we can hardly imagine a comedy politically more tame than was that of Rome in the sixth century.(22) The oldest Roman comic writer of note, Gnaeus Naevius, alone forms a remarkable exception. Although he did not write exactly original Roman comedies, the few fragments of his, which we possess, are full of references to circumstances and persons in Rome. Among other liberties he not only ridiculed one Theodotus a painter by name, but even directed against the victor of Zama the following verses, of which Aristophanes need not have been ashamed:

-Etiam qui res magnas manu saepe gessit gloriose, Cujus facta viva nunc vigent, qui apud gentes solus praestat, Eum suus pater cum pallio uno ab amica abduxit.-

As he himself says,

-Libera lingua loquemur ludis Liberalibus,-

he may have often written at variance with police rules, and put dangerous questions, such as:

-Cedo qui vestram rem publicam tantam amisistis tam cito?-

which he answered by an enumeration of political sins, such as:

-Proveniebant oratores novi, stulti adulescentuli.-

But the Roman police was not disposed like the Attic to hold stage- invectives and political diatribes as privileged, or even to tolerate them at all. Naevius was put in prison for these and similar sallies, and was obliged to remain there, till he had publicly made amends and recantation in other comedies. These quarrels, apparently, drove him from his native land; but his successors took warning from his example—one of them indicates very plainly, that he has no desire whatever to incur an involuntary gagging like his colleague Naevius. Thus the result was accomplished—not much less unique of its kind than the conquest of Hannibal—that, during an epoch of the most feverish national excitement, there arose a national stage utterly destitute of political tinge.

Character of the Editing of Roman Comedy Persons and Situations

But the restrictions thus stringently and laboriously imposed by custom and police on Roman poetry stifled its very breath, Not without reason might Naevius declare the position of the poet under the sceptre of the Lagidae and Seleucidae enviable as compared with his position in free Rome.(23) The degree of success in individual instances was of course determined by the quality of the original which was followed, and by the talent of the individual editor; but amidst all their individual variety the whole stock of translations must have agreed in certain leading features, inasmuch as all the comedies were adapted to similar conditions of exhibition and a similar audience. The treatment of the whole as well as of the details was uniformly in the highest degree free; and it was necessary that it should be so. While the original pieces were performed in presence of that society which they copied, and in this very fact lay their principal charm, the Roman audience of this period was so different from the Attic, that it was not even in a position rightly to understand that foreign world. The Roman comprehended neither the grace and kindliness, nor the sentimentalism and the whitened emptiness of the domestic life of the Hellenes. The slave-world was utterly different; the Roman slave was a piece of household furniture, the Attic slave was a servant. Where marriages of slaves occur or a master carries on a kindly conversation with his slave, the Roman translators ask their audience not to take offence at such things which are usual in Athens;(24) and, when at a later period comedies began to be written in Roman costume, the part of the crafty servant had to be rejected, because the Roman public did not tolerate slaves of this sort overlooking and controlling their masters. The professional figures and those illustrative of character, which were sketched more broadly and farcically, bore the process of transference better than the polished figures of every-day life; but even of those delineations the Roman editor had to lay aside several—and these probably the very finest and most original, such as the Thais, the match-maker, the moon-conjuress, and the mendicant priest of Menander —and to keep chiefly to those foreign trades, with which the Greek luxury of the table, already very generally diffused in Rome, had made his audience familiar. If the professional cook and the jester in the comedy of Plautus are delineated with so striking vividness and so much relish, the explanation lies in the fact, that Greek cooks had even at that time daily offered their services in the Roman market, and that Cato found it necessary even to instruct his steward not to keep a jester. In like manner the translator could make no use of a very large portion of the elegant Attic conversation in his originals. The Roman citizen or farmer stood in much the same relation to the refined revelry and debauchery of Athens, as the German of a provincial town to the mysteries of the Palais Royal. A science of cookery, in the strict sense, never entered into his thoughts; the dinner-parties no doubt continued to be very numerous in the Roman imitation, but everywhere the plain Roman roast pork predominated over the variety of baked meats and the refined sauces and dishes of fish. Of the riddles and drinking songs, of the Greek rhetoric and philosophy, which played so great a part in the originals, we meet only a stray trace now and then in the Roman adaptation.

Construction of the Plot

The havoc, which the Roman editors were compelled in deference to their audience to make in the originals, drove them inevitably into methods of cancelling and amalgamating incompatible with any artistic construction. It was usual not only to throw out whole character- parts of the original, but also to insert others taken from other comedies of the same or of another poet; a treatment indeed which, owing to the outwardly methodical construction of the originals and the recurrence of standing figures and incidents, was not quite so bad as it might seem. Moreover the poets, at least in the earlier period, allowed themselves the most singular liberties in the construction of the plot. The plot of the -Stichus- (performed in 554) otherwise so excellent turns upon the circumstance, that two sisters, whom their father urges to abandon their absent husbands, play the part of Penelopes, till the husbands return home with rich mercantile gains and with a beautiful damsel as a present for their father-in-law. In the -Casina-, which was received with quite special favour by the public, the bride, from whom the piece is named and around whom the plot revolves, does not make her appearance at all, and the denouement is quite naively described by the epilogue as "to be enacted later within." Very often the plot as it thickens is suddenly broken off, the connecting thread is allowed to drop, and other similar signs of an unfinished art appear. The reason of this is to be sought probably far less in the unskilfulness of the Roman editors, than in the indifference of the Roman public to aesthetic laws. Taste, however, gradually formed itself. In the later pieces Plautus has evidently bestowed more care on their construction, and the -Captivi- for instance, the -Pseudolus-, and the -Bacchides- are executed in a masterly manner after their kind. His successor Caecilius, none of whose pieces are extant, is said to have especially distinguished himself by the more artistic treatment of the subject.

Roman Barbarism

In the treatment of details the endeavour of the poet to bring matters as far as possible home to his Roman hearers, and the rule of police which required that the pieces should retain a foreign character, produced the most singular contrasts. The Roman gods, the ritual, military, and juristic terms of the Romans, present a strange appearance amid the Greek world; Roman -aediles- and -tresviri- are grotesquely mingled with -agoranomi- and -demarchi-; pieces whose scene is laid in Aetolia or Epidamnus send the spectator without scruple to the Velabrum and the Capitol. Such a patchwork of Roman local tints distributed over the Greek ground is barbarism enough; but interpolations of this nature, which are often in their naive way very ludicrous, are far more tolerable than that thorough alteration of the pieces into a ruder shape, which the editors deemed necessary to suit the far from Attic culture of their audience. It is true that several even of the new Attic poets probably needed no accession to their coarseness; pieces like the -Asinaria- of Plautus cannot owe their unsurpassed dulness and vulgarity solely to the translator. Nevertheless coarse incidents so prevail in the Roman comedy, that the translators must either have interpolated them or at least have made a very one-sided selection. In the endless abundance of cudgelling and in the lash ever suspended over the back of the slaves we recognize very clearly the household-government inculcated by Cato, just as we recognize the Catonian opposition to women in the never-ending disparagement of wives. Among the jokes of their own invention, with which the Roman editors deemed it proper to season the elegant Attic dialogue, several are almost incredibly unmeaning and barbarous.(25)

Metrical Treatment

So far as concerns metrical treatment on the other hand, the flexible and sounding verse on the whole does all honour to the composers. The fact that the iambic trimeters, which predominated in the originals and were alone suitable to their moderate conversational tone, were very frequently replaced in the Latin edition by iambic or trochaic tetrameters, is to be attributed not so much to any want of skill on the part of the editors who knew well how to handle the trimeter, as to the uncultivated taste of the Roman public which was pleased with the sonorous magnificence of the long verse even where it was not appropriate.

Scenic Arrangements

Lastly, the arrangements for the production of the pieces on the stage bore the like stamp of indifference to aesthetic requirements on the part of the managers and the public. The stage of the Greeks—which on account of the extent of the theatre and from the performances taking place by day made no pretension to acting properly so called, employed men to represent female characters, and absolutely required an artificial strengthening of the voice of the actor—was entirely dependent, in a scenic as well as acoustic point of view, on the use of facial and resonant masks. These were well known also in Rome; in amateur performances the players appeared without exception masked. But the actors who were to perform the Greek comedies in Rome were not supplied with the masks—beyond doubt much more artificial—that were necessary for them; a circumstance which, apart from all else in connection with the defective acoustic arrangements of the stage,(26) not only compelled the actor to exert his voice unduly, but drove Livius to the highly inartistic but inevitable expedient of having the portions which were to be sung performed by a singer not belonging to the staff of actors, and accompanied by the mere dumb show of the actor within whose part they fell. As little were the givers of the Roman festivals disposed to put themselves to material expense for decorations and machinery. The Attic stage regularly presented a street with houses in the background, and had no shifting decorations; but, besides various other apparatus, it possessed more especially a contrivance for pushing forward on the chief stage a smaller one representing the interior of a house. The Roman theatre, however, was not provided with this; and we can hardly therefore throw the blame on the poet, if everything, even childbirth, was represented on the street.

Aesthetic Result

Such was the nature of the Roman comedy of the sixth century. The mode in which the Greek dramas were transferred to Rome furnishes a picture, historically invaluable, of the diversity in the culture of the two nations; but in an aesthetic and a moral point of view the original did not stand high, and the imitation stood still lower. The world of beggarly rabble, to whatever extent the Roman editors might take possession of it under the benefit of the inventory, presented in Rome a forlorn and strange aspect, shorn as it were of its delicate characteristics: comedy no longer rested on the basis of reality, but persons and incidents seemed capriciously or carelessly mingled as in a game of cards; in the original a picture from life, it became in the reproduction a caricature. Under a management which could announce a Greek agon with flute-playing, choirs of dancers, tragedians, and athletes, and eventually convert it into a boxing-match;(27) and in presence of a public which, as later poets complain, ran away en masse from the play, if there were pugilists, or rope-dancers, or even gladiators to be seen; poets such as the Roman composers were—workers for hire and of inferior social position—were obliged even perhaps against their own better judgment and their own better taste to accommodate themselves more or less to the prevailing frivolity and rudeness. It was quite possible, nevertheless, that there might arise among them individuals of lively and vigorous talent, who were able at least to repress the foreign and factitious element in poetry, and, when they had found their fitting sphere, to produce pleasing and even important creations.

Naevius

At the head of these stood Gnaeus Naevius, the first Roman who deserves to be called a poet, and, so far as the accounts preserved regarding him and the few fragments of his works allow us to form an opinion, to all appearance as regards talent one of the most remarkable and most important names in the whole range of Roman literature. He was a younger contemporary of Andronicus—his poetical activity began considerably before, and probably did not end till after, the Hannibalic war—and felt in a general sense his influence; he was, as is usually the case in artificial literatures, a worker in all the forms of art produced by his predecessor, in epos, tragedy, and comedy, and closely adhered to him in the matter of metres. Nevertheless, an immense chasm separates the poets and their poems. Naevius was neither freedman, schoolmaster, nor actor, but a citizen of unstained character although not of rank, belonging probably to one of the Latin communities of Campania, and a soldier in the first Punic war.(28) In thorough contrast to the language of Livius, that of Naevius is easy and clear, free from all stiffness and affectation, and seems even in tragedy to avoid pathos as it were on purpose; his verses, in spite of the not unfrequent -hiatus- and various other licences afterwards disallowed, have a smooth and graceful flow.(29) While the quasi-poetry of Livius proceeded, somewhat like that of Gottsched in Germany, from purely external impulses and moved wholly in the leading-strings of the Greeks, his successor emancipated Roman poetry, and with the true divining-rod of the poet struck those springs out of which alone in Italy a native poetry could well up —national history and comedy. Epic poetry no longer merely furnished the schoolmaster with a lesson-book, but addressed itself independently to the hearing and reading public. Composing for the stage had been hitherto, like the preparation of the stage costume, a subsidiary employment of the actor or a mechanical service performed for him; with Naevius the relation was inverted, and the actor now became the servant of the composer. His poetical activity is marked throughout by a national stamp. This stamp is most distinctly impressed on his grave national drama and on his national epos, of which we shall have to speak hereafter; but it also appears in his comedies, which of all his poetic performances seem to have been the best adapted to his talents and the most successful. It was probably, as we have already said,(30) external considerations alone that induced the poet to adhere in comedy so much as he did to the Greek originals; and this did not prevent him from far outstripping his successors and probably even the insipid originals in the freshness of his mirth and in the fulness of his living interest in the present; indeed in a certain sense he reverted to the paths of the Aristophanic comedy. He felt full well, and in his epitaph expressed, what he had been to his nation: