[Sidenote: The slaves.]

[Sidenote: Slavery.]

We cannot pass by, in this enumeration of the different classes of Roman society, the number and condition of slaves. A large part of the population belonged to this servile class. Originally introduced by foreign conquest, it was increased by those who could not pay their debts. The single campaign of Regulus introduced as many as a fifth part of the whole population. Four hundred were maintained in a single palace, at a comparatively early period. A freedman in the time of Augustus left behind him four thousand one hundred and sixteen. Horace regarded two hundred as the suitable establishment for a gentleman. Some senators owned twenty thousand. Gibbon estimates the number at about sixty millions, one half of the whole population. One hundred thousand captives were taken in the Jewish war, who were sold as slaves, and sold as cheap as horses. [Footnote: Wm. Blair, On Roman Slavery, Edinburgh, 1833; Robertson, On the State of the World at the Introduction of Christ.] Blair supposes that there were three slaves to one freeman, from the conquest of Greece to the reign of Alexander Severus. Slaves often cost two hundred thousand sesterces. [Footnote: Martial, xii. 62.] Every body was eager to possess a slave. At one time his life was at the absolute control of his master. He could be treated at all times with brutal severity. Fettered and branded he toiled to cultivate the lands of an imperious master, and at night he was shut up in subterranean cells. The laws did not recognize his claim to be considered scarcely as a moral agent. He was secundum hominum genus. He could acquire no rights, social or political. He was incapable of inheriting property, or making a will, or contracting a legal marriage. His value was estimated like that of a brute. He was a thing and not a person—"a piece of furniture possessed of life." He was his master's property, to be scourged, or tortured, or crucified. If a wealthy proprietor died, under circumstances which excited suspicion of foul play, his whole household was put to the torture. It is recorded, that, on the murder of a man of consular dignity by a slave, every slave in his possession was condemned to death. Slaves swelled the useless rabbles of the cities, and devoured the revenues of the state. All manual labor was done by slaves, in towns as well as the country. Even the mechanical arts were cultivated by the slaves. And more, slaves were schoolmasters, secretaries, actors, musicians, and physicians. In intelligence, they were on an equality with their masters. They came from Greece and Asia Minor and Syria, as well as from Gaul and the African deserts. They were white as well as black. All captives in war were made slaves, and unfortunate debtors. Sometimes they could regain their freedom; but, generally, their condition became more and more deplorable. What a state of society when a refined and cultivated Greek could be made to obey the most offensive orders of a capricious and sensual Roman, without remuneration, without thanks, without favor, without redress. [Footnote: Says Juvenal, Sat. vi., "Crucify that slave. What is the charge to call for such a punishment? What witness can you present? Who gave the information? Listen! Idiot! So a slave is a man then! Granted he has done nothing. I will it. I insist upon it. Let my will stand instead of reason." Read Martial, Juvenal, and Plautus.] What was to be expected of a class who had no object to live for. They became the most degraded of mortals, ready for pillage, and justly to be feared in the hour of danger. Slavery undoubtedly proved the most destructive canker of the Roman state. It destroyed its vitality. It was this social evil, more than political misrule, which undermined the empire. Slavery proved at Rome a monstrous curse, destroying all manliness of character, creating contempt of honest labor, making men timorous yet cruel, idle, frivolous, weak, dependent, powerless. The empire might have lasted centuries longer but for this incubus, the standing disgrace of the pagan world. Paganism never recognized what is most noble and glorious in man; never recognized his equality, his common brotherhood, his natural rights. There was no compunction, no remorse in depriving human beings of their highest privileges. Its whole tendency was to degrade the soul, and cause forgetfulness of immortality. Slavery thrives best, when the generous instincts are suppressed, and egotism and sensuality and pride are the dominant springs of human action.

[Sidenote: Degradation of woman.]

The same influences which tended to rob man of the rights which God has given him, and produce cruelty and heartlessness in the general intercourse of life, also tended to degrade the female sex. In the earlier age of the republic, when the people were poor, and life was simple and primitive, and heroism and patriotism were characteristic, woman was comparatively virtuous and respected. She asserted her natural equality, and led a life of domestic tranquillity, employed upon the training of her children, and inspiring her husband to noble deeds. But, under the emperors, these virtues had fled. Woman was miserably educated, being taught by a slave, or some Greek chambermaid, accustomed to ribald conversation, and fed with idle tales and silly superstitions. She was regarded as more vicious in natural inclination than man, and was chiefly valued for household labors. She was reduced to dependence; she saw but little of her brothers or relatives; she was confined to her home as if it were a prison; she was guarded by eunuchs and female slaves; she was given in marriage without her consent; she could be easily divorced; she was valued only as a domestic servant, or as an animal to prevent the extinction of families; she was regarded as the inferior of her husband, to whom she was a victim, a toy, or a slave. Love after marriage was not frequent, since she did not shine in the virtues by which love is kept alive. She became timorous, or frivolous, without dignity or public esteem. Her happiness was in extravagant attire, in elaborate hair-dressings, in rings and bracelets, in a retinue of servants, in gilded apartments, in luxurious couches, in voluptuous dances, in exciting banquets, in demoralizing spectacles, in frivolous gossip, in inglorious idleness. If virtuous, it was not so much from principle as from fear. Hence she resorted to all sorts of arts to deceive her husband. Her genius was sharpened by perpetual devices, and cunning was her great resource. She cultivated no lofty friendships; she engaged in no philanthropic mission; she cherished no ennobling sentiments; she kindled no chivalrous admiration. Her amusements were frivolous, her taste vitiated, her education neglected, her rights violated, her sympathy despised, her aspirations scorned. And here I do not allude to great and infamous examples which history has handed down in the sober pages of Suetonius and Tacitus, or that unblushing depravity which stands out in the bitter satires of the times. I speak not of the adultery, the poisoning, the infanticide, the debauchery, the cruelty of which history accuses the Messalinas and Agrippinas of imperial Rome. I allude not to the orgies of the Palatine Hill, or the abominations which are inferred from the paintings of Pompeii. But there was a general frivolity and extravagance among women which rendered marriage inexpedient, unless large dowries were brought to the husband. Numerous were the efforts of emperors to promote honorable marriages, but the relation was shunned. Courtesans usurped the privilege of wives, and with unblushing effrontery. A man was derided who contemplated matrimony, for there was but little confidence in female virtue or capacity. And woman lost all her fascination when age had destroyed her beauty. Even her very virtues were distasteful to her self-indulgent husband. And whenever she gained the ascendency by her charms, she was tyrannical. Her relations incited her to despoil her husband. She lived amid incessant broils. She had no care for the future, and exceeded men in prodigality. "The government of her house is no more merciful," says Juvenal, "than the court of a Sicilian tyrant." In order to render herself attractive, she exhausted all the arts of cosmetics and elaborate hair-dressing. She delighted in magical incantations and love-potions. In the bitter satire of Juvenal, we get an impression most melancholy and loathsome:—

"'T were long to tell what philters they provide, What drugs to set a son-in-law aside. Women, in judgment weak, in feeling strong, By every gust of passion borne along. To a fond spouse a wife no mercy shows; Though warmed with equal fires, she mocks his woes, And triumphs in his spoils; her wayward will Defeats his bliss and turns his good to ill. Women support the bar; they love the law, And raise litigious questions for a straw; Nay, more, they fence! who has not marked their oil, Their purple rigs, for this preposterous toil! A woman stops at nothing, when she wears Rich emeralds round her neck, and in her ears Pearls of enormous size; these justify Her faults, and make all lawful in her eye. More shame to Rome! in every street are found The essenced Lypanti, with roses crowned, The gay Miletan, and the Tarentine, Lewd, petulant, and reeling ripe with wine!"

[Sidenote: Condition of woman.]

In the sixth satire of Juvenal is found the most severe delineation of woman that ever mortal penned. Doubtless he is libellous and extravagant, for only infamous women can stoop to such arts and degradations, which would seem to be common in his time. But, with all his exaggeration, we are forced to feel that but few women, even in the highest class, except those converted to Christianity, showed the virtues of a Lucretia, a Volumnia, a Cornelia, or an Octavia. There was but a universal corruption. The great virtues of a Perpetua, a Felicitas, an Agnes, a Paula, a Blessilla, a Fabiola, would have adorned any civilization. But the great mass were, what they were in Greece, even in the days of Pericles, what they have ever been under the influence of Paganism, what they ever will be without Christianity to guide them, victims or slaves of man, revenging themselves by squandering his wealth, stealing his secrets, betraying his interests, and deserting his home.

[Sidenote: Games and festivals.]

Another essential but demoralizing feature of Roman society, were the games and festivals and gladiatorial shows, which accustomed the people to unnatural excitements, and familiarity with cruelty and suffering. They made all ordinary pleasures insipid. They ended in making homicide an institution. The butcheries of the amphitheatre exerted a fascination which diverted the mind from literature, art, and the enjoyments of domestic life. Very early it was the favorite sport of the Romans. Marcus and Decimus Brutus employed gladiators in celebrating the obsequies of their fathers, nearly three centuries before Christ. "The wealth and ingenuity of the aristocracy were taxed to the utmost, to content the populace and provide food for the indiscriminate slaughter of the circus, where brute fought with brute, and man again with man, or where the skill and weapons of the latter were matched against the strength and ferocity of the first." Pompey let loose six hundred lions in the arena in one day. Augustus delighted the people with four hundred and twenty panthers. The games of Trajan lasted one hundred and twenty days, when ten thousand gladiators fought, and ten thousand beasts were slain. Titus slaughtered five thousand animals at a time. Twenty elephants contended, according, to Pliny, against a band of six hundred captives. Probus reserved six hundred gladiators for one of his festivals, and massacred, on another, two hundred lions, twenty leopards, and three hundred bears. Gordian let loose three hundred African hyenas and ten Indian tigers in the arena. Every corner of the earth was ransacked for these wild animals, which were so highly valued that, in the time of Theodosius, it was forbidden by law to destroy a Getulian lion. No one can contemplate the statue of the Dying Gladiator which now ornaments the capitol at Rome, without emotions of pity and admiration. If a marble statue can thus move us, what was it to see the Christian gladiators contending with the fierce lions of Africa. The "Christians to the lions," was the watchword of the brutal populace. What a sight was the old amphitheatre of Titus, five hundred and sixty feet long, and four hundred and seventy feet wide, built on eighty arches, and rising one hundred and forty feet into the air, with its four successive orders of architecture, and inclosing its eighty thousand seated spectators, arranged according to rank, from the emperor to the lowest of the populace, all seated on marble benches, covered with cushions, and protected from the sun and rain by ample canopies! What an excitement when men strove not with wild beasts alone, but with one another, and when all that human skill and strength, increased by elaborate treatment, and taxed to the uttermost, were put forth in the needless homicide, and until the thirsty soil was wet and matted with human gore! Familiarity with such sights must have hardened the heart and rendered the mind insensible to refined pleasures. What theatres are to the French, what bull-fights are to the Spaniards, what horse-races are to the English, these gladiatorial shows were to the ancient Romans. The ruins of hundreds of amphitheatres attest the universality of the custom, not in Rome alone, but in the provinces.

[Sidenote: The circus.]

The sports of the circus took place from the earliest periods. The Circus Maximus was capable of containing two hundred and sixty thousand, as estimated by Pliny. It was appropriated for horse and chariot races. The enthusiasm of the Romans for races exceeded all bounds. Lists of the horses, with their names and colors, and those of drivers, were handed about, and heavy bets made on each faction. The games commenced with a grand procession, in which all persons of distinction, and those who were to exhibit, took part. The statues of the gods formed a conspicuous feature in the show, and were carried on the shoulders as saints are carried in modern processions. The chariots were often drawn by eight horses, and four generally started in the race.

The theatre was also a great place of resort. Scaurus built one capable of seating eighty thousand spectators. That of Pompey, near the Circus Maximus, could contain forty thousand. But the theatre had not the same attraction to the Romans that it had to the Greeks. They preferred scenes of pomp and splendor.

[Sidenote: The circus and theatre.]

[Sidenote: Baths.]

No people probably abandoned themselves to pleasures more universally than the Romans, after war ceased to be the master passion. All classes alike pursued them with restless eagerness. Amusements were the fashion and the business of life. At the theatre, at the great gladiatorial shows, at the chariot races, senators and emperors and generals were always present in conspicuous and reserved seats of honor; behind them were the ordinary citizens, and in the rear of these, the people fed at the public expense. The Circus Maximus, the Theatre of Pompey, the Amphitheatre of Titus, would collectively accommodate over four hundred thousand spectators. We may presume that over five hundred thousand people were in the habit of constant attendance on these demoralizing sports. And the fashion spread throughout all the great cities of the empire, so that there was scarcely a city of twenty thousand people which had not its theatres, or amphitheatres, or circus. The enthusiasm of the Romans for the circus exceeded all bounds. And when we remember the heavy bets on favorite horses, and the universal passion for gambling in every shape, we can form some idea of the effect of these amusements on the common mind, destroying the taste for home pleasures, and for all that was intellectual and simple. What are we to think of a state of society, where all classes had leisure for these sports. Habits of industry were destroyed, and all respect for employments which required labor. The rich were supported by the contributions from the provinces, since they were the great proprietors of conquered lands. The poor had no solicitude for a living, for they were supported at the public expense. They, therefore, gave themselves up to pleasure. Even the baths, designed for sanatory purposes, became places of resort and idleness, and ultimately of improper intercourse. When the thermae came fully into public use, not only did men bathe together in numbers, but even men and women promiscuously in the same baths. In the time of Julius Caesar, we find no less a personage than the mother of Augustus making use of the public establishments; and in process of time the emperors themselves bathed in public with the meanest of their subjects. The baths in the time of Alexander Severus were not only kept open from sunrise to sunset, but even the whole night. The luxurious classes almost lived in the baths. Commodus took his meals in the bath. Gordian bathed seven times in the day, and Gallienus as often. They bathed before they took their meals, and after meals to provoke a new appetite. They did not content themselves with a single bath, but went through a course of baths in succession, in which the agency of air as well as water was applied. And the bathers were attended by an army of slaves given over to every sort of roguery and theft. "O furum optume balmariorum," exclaims Catullus, in disgust and indignation. Nor was water alone used. The common people made use of scented oils to anoint their persons, and perfumed the water itself with the most precious perfumes. Bodily health and cleanliness were only secondary considerations; voluptuous pleasure was the main object. The ruins of the baths of Titus, Caracalla, and Diocletian, in Rome, show that they were decorated with prodigal magnificence, and with every thing that could excite the passions—pictures, statues, ornaments, and mirrors. Says Seneca, Epistle lxxxvi., "Nisi parietes magnis et preciosis orbibus refulserunt." The baths were scenes of orgies consecrated to Bacchus, and the frescoes on the excavated baths of Pompeii still raise a blush on the face of every spectator who visits them. I speak not of the elaborate ornaments, the Numidian marbles, the precious stones, the exquisite sculptures, which formed part of the decorations of the Roman baths, but the demoralizing pleasures with which they were connected, and which they tended to promote. The baths became, according to the ancient writers, ultimately places of excessive and degrading debauchery.

"Balnea, vina, Venas corrumpunt corpora nostra."

[Sidenote: Dress and ornament.]

The Romans, originally, were not only frugal, but they dressed with great simplicity. In process of time, they became extravagantly fond of elaborately ornamented attire, particularly the women. They wore a great variety of rings and necklaces; they dyed their hair, and resorted to expensive cosmetics; they wore silks of various colors, magnificently embroidered. Pearls and rubies, for which large estates had been exchanged, were suspended from their ears. Their hair glistened with a network of golden thread. Their stolae were ornamented with purple bands, and fastened with diamond clasps, while their pallae trailed along the ground. Jewels were embroidered upon their sandals, and golden bands, pins, combs, and pomades raised the hair in a storied edifice upon the forehead. They reclined on luxurious couches, and rode in silver chariots. Their time was spent in paying and receiving visits, at the bath, the spectacle, and the banquet. Tables, supported on ivory columns, displayed their costly plate; silver mirrors were hung against the walls, and curious chests contained their jewels and money. Bronze lamps lighted their chambers, and glass vases, imitating precious stones, stood upon their cupboards. Silken curtains were suspended over the doors and from the ceilings, and lecticae, like palanquins, were borne through the streets by slaves, on which reclined the effeminated wives and daughters of the rich. Their gardens were rendered attractive by green-houses, flower-beds, and every sort of fruit and vine.

But it was at their banquets the Romans displayed the greatest luxury and extravagance. No people ever thought more of the pleasures of the table. And the prodigality was seen not only in the indulgence of the palate by the choicest dainties, but in articles which commanded, from their rarity, the highest prices. They not only sought to eat daintily, but to increase their capacity by unnatural means. The maxim, "Il faut manger pour vivre, et non pas vivre pour manger," was reversed. At the fourth hour they breakfasted on bread, grapes, olives, and cheese and eggs; at the sixth they lunched, still more heartily; and at the ninth hour they dined; and this meal, the coena, was the principal one, which consisted of three parts: the first—the gustus—was made up of dishes to provoke an appetite, shell-fish and piquant sauces; the second—the fercula—composed of different courses; and the third—the dessert, a mensae secundae—composed of fruits and pastry. Fish were the chief object of the Roman epicures, of which the mullus, the rhombus, and the asellus were the most valued. It is recorded that a mullus (sea barbel), weighing but eight pounds, sold for eight thousand sesterces. Oysters, from the Lucrine Lake, were in great demand. Snails were fed in ponds for the purpose, while the villas of the rich had their piscinae filled with fresh or salt-water fish. Peacocks and pheasants were the most highly esteemed among poultry, although the absurdity prevailed of eating singing-birds. Of quadrupeds, the greatest favorite was the wild boar, the chief dish of a grand coena, and came whole upon the table, and the practiced gourmand pretended to distinguish by the taste from what part of Italy it came. Dishes, the very names of which excite disgust, were used at fashionable banquets, and held in high esteem. Martial devotes two entire books of his "Epigrams" to the various dishes and ornaments of a Roman banquet. He refers to almost every fruit and vegetable and meat that we now use—to cabbages, leeks, turnips, asparagus, beans, beets, peas, lettuces, radishes, mushrooms, truffles, pulse, lentils, among vegetables; to pheasants, ducks, doves, geese, capons, pigeons, partridges, peacocks, Numidian fowls, cranes, woodcocks, swans, among birds; to mullets, lampreys, turbots, oysters, prawns, chars, murices, gudgeons, pikes, sturgeons, among fish; to raisins, figs, quinces, citrons, dates, plums, olives, apricots, among fruit; to sauces and condiments; to wild game, and to twenty different kinds of wine; on all of which he expatiates like an epicure. He speaks of the presents made to guests at feasts, the tablets of ivory and parchment, the dice-boxes, style-cases, toothpicks, golden hair-pins, combs, pomatum, parasols, oil-flasks, tooth-powder, balms and perfumes, slippers, dinner-couches, citron-tables, antique vases, gold-chased cups, snow-strainers, jeweled and crystal vases, rings, spoons, scarlet cloaks, table-covers, Cilician socks, pillows, girdles, aprons, mattresses, lyres, bath-bells, statues, masks, books, musical instruments, and other articles of taste, luxury, or necessity. The pleasures of the table, however, are ever uppermost in his eye, and the luxuries of those whom he could not rival, but which he reprobates:—

"Nor mullet delights thee, nice Betic, nor thrush; The hare with the scut, nor the boar with the tusk; No sweet cakes or tablets, thy taste so absurd, Nor Libya need send thee, nor Phasis, a bird. But capers and onions, besoaking in brine, And brawn of a gammon scarce doubtful are thine. Of garbage, or flitch of hoar tunny, thou'rt vain; The rosin's thy joy, the Falernian thy bane." [Footnote: Martial, b. iii. p. 77.]

[Sidenote: A poet's dinner.]

He thus describes a modest dinner, to which he, a poet, invites his friend Turanius: "If you are suffering from dread of a melancholy dinner at home, or would take a preparatory whet, come and feast with me. You will find no want of Cappadocian lettuces and strong leeks. The tunny will lurk under slices of egg; a cauliflower hot enough to burn your fingers, and which has just left the garden, will be served fresh on a black platter; white sausages will float on snow-white porridge, and the pale bean will accompany the red-streaked bacon. In the second course, raisins will be set before you, and pears which pass for Syrian, and roasted chestnuts. The wine you will prove in drinking it. After all this, excellent olives will come to your relief, with the hot vetch and the tepid lupine. The dinner is small, who can deny it? but you will not have to invent falsehoods, or hear them invented; you will recline at ease, and with your own natural look; the host will not read aloud a bulky volume of his own compositions, nor will licentious girls, from shameless Cadiz, be there to gratify you with wanton attitudes; but the small reed pipe will be heard, and the nice Claudia, whose society you value even more than mine." [Footnote: Ibid. b. v. p. 78.]

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

[Sidenote: Expensive furniture.]

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

[Sidenote: Money making.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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



CHAPTER XI.

THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE.

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

[Sidenote: Prosperity deceptive.]

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

[Sidenote: The empire had fulfilled its mission.]

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

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

[Sidenote: War the instrument of punishment.]

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Illustrated by the history of nations.]

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

[Sidenote: Wars over-ruled.]

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

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

[Sidenote: The Celtic nations.]

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

Thus wars are not an unmixed calamity, since the evils are overruled in the ultimate good of nations. But they are a great calamity for the time, and they are sent when nations most need chastisement.

[Sidenote: Conquest of the Celts.]

The Romans triumphed, by their great and unexampled energy and patience and heroism, over all the world, and erected their universal empire upon the ruins of all the states of antiquity. They were suffered to increase and prosper, that great ends might be accomplished, either by the punishment of the old nations, or the creation of a new civilization.

But they, in their turn, became corrupted by prosperity, and enervated by peace. They had been guilty of the most heartless and cruel atrocities for eight hundred years. Their empire was built upon the miseries of mankind. They also must needs suffer retribution.

It was long delayed. It did not come till every conservative influence had failed. The condition of society was becoming worse and worse, until it reached a depravity and an apathy fatal to all genius, and more disgraceful than among those people whom they stigmatized as barbarians. Then must come revolution, or races would run out and civilization be lost.

[Sidenote: Barbaric conquests.]

God sent war—universal, cruel, destructive war, at the hands of unknown warriors; and they effected a total eclipse of the glory of man. The empire was resolved into its original elements. Its lands were overrun and pillaged; its cities were burned and robbed; and unmitigated violence overspread the earth, so that the cry of despair ascended to heaven, from the Pillars of Hercules to the Caspian Sea. Indeed, the end of the world was so generally believed to be at hand, on this universal upturning of society, that some of the best men fled to caves and deserts; and there were more monks that sought personal salvation by their austerities, than soldiers who braved their lives in battle.

It is this great revolution which I seek to present, this great catastrophe to which the Romans were subjected, after having conquered one hundred and twenty millions of people. It was probably the most mournful, in all its aspects, ever seen on the face of this earth since the universal deluge. Never, surely, were such calamities produced by the hand of man. The Greeks and Romans, when they had conquered a rebellious or enervated nation, introduced their civilization, and promoted peace and general security. They brought laws, science, literature, and arts, in the train of their armies; they did not sweep away ancient institutions; they left the people as they found them, only with greater facilities of getting rich; they preserved the pictures, the statues, and the temples; they honored the literature and revered the sages who taught it; they may have brought captives to their capitals as slaves, but they did not root out every trace of cultivation, or regarded it with haughty scorn. But, when their turn of punishment came, the whole world was filled with mourning and desolation, and all the relations of society were reversed.

[Sidenote: Infatuation of the Romans.]

It was a sad hour in the old capital of the world, when its blinded inhabitants were aroused from the stupendous delusion that they were invincible; when the crushing fact stared every one in the face, that the legions had been conquered, that province after province had been overrun, that proud and populous cities had fallen, that the barbarians were advancing, treading beneath their feet all that had been deemed valuable, or rare, or sacred, that they were advancing to the very gates of Rome,—that her doom was sealed, that there was no shelter to which they could fly, that there was no way by which ruin could be averted, that they were doomed to hopeless poverty or servitude, that their wives and daughters would be subject to indignities which were worse than death, and that all the evils their ancestors had inflicted in their triumphant march, would be visited upon them with tenfold severity. The Romans, even then, when they cast their eyes upon external nature, saw rich corn-fields, smiling vineyards, luxurious gardens, yea, villas and temples and palaces without end; and how could these be destroyed which had lasted for centuries? How could the eternal city, which had not seen a foreign enemy near its gates since the invasion of the Gauls, which had escaped all dangers, so rich and gay, how could she now yield to naked barbarians from unknown forests? They still beheld the splendid mechanism of government, the glitter and the pomp of armies, triumphal processions, new monuments of victory, the proud eagles, and all the emblems of unlimited dominion. What had they to fear? "Nihil est, Quirites, quod timere possitis."

[Sidenote: Fatal security of the Romans.]

Nor to the eye of contemporaries was the great change, which had gradually taken place since the reign of Trajan, apparent. Cowardice and weakness were veiled from the view of men. In proportion to the imbecility of the troops, were the richness of their uniform, and the insolence of their manners. It was the day of boasts and pomps. All forms and emblems had their ancient force. All men partook of the vices and follies which were praised. In their levity and delusion, they did not see the real emptiness and hollowness of their institutions. A blinded generation never can see the signs of the times. Only a few contemplative men hid themselves in retired places, but were denounced as croakers or evil minded. Every body was interested in keeping up the delusion. Panics seldom last long. The world is too fond of its ease to believe the truths which break up repose and gains. All felt safe, because they had always been protected. Ruin might come ultimately, but not in their day. "Apres moi le deluge" No one would make sacrifices, since no one feared immediate danger. Moreover, public spirit and patriotism had fled. If their cities were in danger, they said, better perish here with our wives and children than die on the frontiers after having suffered every privation and exposure. There must have been a universal indifference, or the barbarians could not have triumphed. The Romans had every inducement which any people ever had to a brave and desperate resistance. Not merely their own lives, but the security of their families was at stake. Their institutions, their interests, their rights, their homes, their altars, all were in jeopardy. And they were attacked by most merciless enemies, without pity or respect, and yet they would not fight, as nations should fight, and do sometimes fight, when their country is invaded. Why did they offer no more stubborn resistance? Why did the full-armed and well-trained legions yield to barbaric foes, without discipline and without the most effective weapons? Alas, dispirited and enervated people will never fight. They prefer slavery to death. Thus Persia succumbed before Alexander, and Asia Minor before the Saracen generals. Martial courage goes hand in hand with virtue. Without elevation of sentiment there will be no self-sacrifice. There is no hope when nations are abandoned to sensuality or egotism.

[Sidenote: Weakness of the empire.]

We must believe in a most extraordinary degeneracy of society, or Rome would not have fallen. With any common degree of courage, the empire should have resisted the Goths and Vandals. They were not more numerous than those hordes which Marius and Caesar annihilated even in their own marshes and forests. It was not like the Macedonians, with their impenetrable phalanx, and their perfected armor, contending with semi- barbarians. It was not like the Spaniards, marching over Peru and Mexico. It was not like the English, with all the improved weapons of our modern times, firing upon a people armed with darts and arrows. But it was barbarians, without defensive armor, without discipline, without prestige, attacking legions which had been a thousand years learning the art of war. Proh Pudor! The soldiers of the empire must have lost their ancient spirit. They must have represented a most worthless people. We lose our pity in the strength of our indignation and disgust. A civilized nation that will yield to barbarians must deserve their fate. Noble as were the elements of character among the Germanic tribes, they were yet barbarians in arts, in manners, in knowledge, in mechanisms. They had nothing but brute force. Science should have conquered brute force; but it did not. We cannot but infer a most startling degeneracy. It is to be regretted that we have no more satisfactory data as to the precise state of society. I am inclined to the opinion that society was much more degraded than it is generally supposed. When for two centuries the whole empire scarcely produced a poet, or a philosopher, or an historian; when even the writings of famous men in the time of Augustus were lost or unread; when, from Trajan to Honorius, a period of three hundred and fifty years, scarcely a work of original genius appeared, it must be that society was utterly demoralized, and all life and vigor had fled.

[Sidenote: Conquerors of Rome.]

Then it was time for the empire to fall. And it is our work to sketch the ruin—and such a ruin. The bloody conquerors were Goths and Vandals, and other Teutonic tribes—Franks, Sueves, Alans, Heruli, Burgundians, Lombards, Saxons. They came originally from Central Asia, in the region of the Caspian Sea, and were kindred to the Medes and Persians. They drove before them older inhabitants, probably Celtic nations, and ultimately settled in the vast region between the Baltic and the Danube, the Rhine and the Vistula, embracing those countries which are now called Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Germany.

[Sidenote: The Germanic nations.]

All these tribes were probably similar in manners, habits, tastes, and natural elements of character. Tacitus has furnished us with the most authentic record of their customs and peculiarities. [Footnote: Tacitus, De Moribus Germanorum.] Their eyes were stern and blue, their hair red, their bodies large, their strength great. They were ruled by kings, but not with unlimited power. The priests had also an extraordinary influence, which they shared with the women, who were present in battles, and who were characterized for great purity and courage. Even the power to predict the future was ascribed to women. The Germans were superstitious, and were given to divinations by omens and lots, by the flight of birds and the neighing of horses. They transacted no business, public or private, without being armed. They were warlike in all their habits and tastes, and the field of battle was the field of glory. Their chief deity was an heroic prince. Odin, the type-man of the nation, was a wild captain, who taught that it was most honorable to die in battle. They hated repose and inactivity, and, when not engaged in war, they pursued with eagerness the pleasures of the chase; yet, during the intervals of war and hunting, they divided their time between sleeping and feasting. They loved the forests, and dangerous sports, and adventurous enterprises. They abhorred cities, which they regarded as prisons of despotism. A rude passion for personal independence was one of their chief characteristics, as powerful as veneration for the women and religious tendency of mind. They would brook no restraint on their wills or their passions. Their wills were stern and their passions impetuous. They only yielded to the voice of entreaty or of love. They were ordinarily temperate, except on rare occasions, when they indulged in drunken festivities. Chastity was a virtue which was rigorously practiced. There were few cases of adultery among them, and the unfaithful wife was severely punished. Men and women, without seductive spectacles or convivial banquets, were fenced around with chastity, and bound together by family ties. Polygamy was unknown, and the marriage obligation was sacred. The wife brought no dowry to her husband, but received one from him, not frivolous presents, but oxen, a caparisoned steed, a shield, spear, and sword, to indicate that she is to be a partner in toil and danger, to suffer and to dare in peace and war. Hospitality was another virtue, extended equally to strangers and acquaintances, but, at the festive board, quarrels often took place, and enmities once formed were rarely forgiven. Vindictive resentments were as marked as cordial and frank friendships. They drank beer or ale, instead of wine, at their feasts, although their ordinary drink was water. Their food was fruits, cheese, milk, and venison. They had an inordinate passion for gambling, and would even stake their very freedom on a throw. Slavery was common, but not so severe and ruthless as among the Romans. They had but little commerce, and were unacquainted with the arts of usury. Their agriculture was rude, and corn was the only product they raised. They had the ordinary domestic animals, but their horses were neither beautiful nor swift.

[Sidenote: The native elements of character of the barbarians.]

It is easy to see that, in their manners and traits, they had a great resemblance to the Celts, before they were subdued and civilized, but were not so passionate, nor impulsive, nor thoughtless, nor reckless as they. Nor were they so much addicted to gluttony and drunkenness. They were more persevering, more earnest, more truthful, and more chaste. Nor were they so much enslaved by the priesthood. The Druidical rule was confined to the Celts, yet, like the Celts, they worshiped God in the consecrated grove. Their religion was pantheistic: they saw God in the rocks, the rain, the thunder, the clouds, the rivers, the mountains, the stars. He was supposed to preside everywhere, and to be a supreme intelligence. Their view of God was quite similar to the early Ionic philosophers of Greece: "Regnator omnium deus, coetera subjecta atque parentia." They Were never idol-worshipers; they worshiped nature, and called its wonders gods. But this worship of nature was modified by the worship of a hero. In Odin they beheld strength, courage, magnanimity, the attributes they adored. To be brave was an elemental principle of religion, and they attributed to the Deity every thing which could inspire horror as the terrible,—the angry god who marked out those destined to be slain. Hence their groves, where he was supposed to preside, were dark and mysterious. We adore the gloom of woods, the silence which reigns around. "Lucos atque in iis silentia, ipsa adoremus." While the priests of this awful being were not so despotic as the Druids, they still exercised a great ascendency: they conjured the storms of internal war; they pronounced the terrible anathema; they imparted to military commanders a sacred authority; and they carried at the head of their armies the consecrated banner of the Deity. In short, they wielded those spiritual weapons which afterward became thunderbolts in the hands of the clergy, and which prepared the way for the autocratic reign of the popes, in whom the Germanic nations ever recognized the vicegerent of their invisible Lord. They were most preeminently a religious people, governed by religious ideas—by which I mean they recognized a deity to whose will they were to be obedient, and whose favor could only be purchased by deeds of valor or virtue. Their morality sprung out of veneration for the Great Unseen, in whose hands were their destinies.

This trait is the most remarkable and prominent among the Germans, next to their fierce passion for war, their veneration for woman, and their love of personal independence, to which last Guizot attaches great importance. The feeling one's self a man in the most unrestricted sense, was the highest pleasure of the German barbarian. There was a personality of feeling and interest hostile to social forms and municipal regulations. They cared for nothing beyond the gratification of their inclinations. To be unrestrained, to be free in the wildest sense, to do what they pleased under the impulse of the moment, this was their leading characteristic. Who cannot see that such a trait was hostile to civilization, and would prevent obedience to law—would make the uncultivated warrior unsocial and solitary, and lead him, in after- times, when he got possession of the lands of the conquered Romans, to build his castle on inaccessible heights and rugged rocks? Hence isolated retreats, wild adventures, country life, the pleasures of the chase, characterized the new settlers. They avoided cities, and built castles.

[Sidenote: National traits.]

[Sidenote: Character of the Germanic nations.]

This passion for liberty, accompanied with the spirit of daring, adventure, and war, would have been fatal but for the rule of priests, and the great influence of woman. In this latter element of character, the barbarians from Scandinavia stand out in interesting contrast with the civilized nations whom they subverted. They evidently had a greater respect for woman than any of the nations of antiquity, not excepting the Jews. In her they beheld something sacred and divine. In her voice was inspiration, and in her presence there was safety. There was no true enthusiasm for woman in Greece even when Socrates bowed before the charms of Aspasia. There was none at Rome when Volumnia screened the city from the vengeance of her angry son. But the Germans worshiped the fair, and beheld in her the incarnation of all virtue and loveliness. And thus, among such a race, arose the glorious old institution of chivalry, which could not have existed among the Romans or the Greeks, even after Christianity had softened the character and enlarged the heart. In the baronial mansion of the Middle Ages this natural veneration was ripened into devotion and gallantry. Among the knights, zeal for God and the ladies was enjoined as a single duty; and "he who was faithful to his mistress," says Hallam, "was sure of salvation, in the theology of castles, if not of cloisters." This devotion was expressed in the rude poetry of barbarous ages, in the sports of the tournament and tilt, in the feasts of the castle, in the masculine pleasures of the chase, in the control of the household, in the education of children, in the laws which recognized equality, in the free companionship with man, in the trust reposed in female honor and virtue, in the delicacy of love, and in the refinements of friendship. This trait alone shows the superior nature of the Germanic races, especially when taught by Christianity, and makes us rejoice that the magnificent conquests of the Romans were given to them for their proud inheritance.

Such were the men who became the heirs of the Romans,—races never subdued by arms or vices, among whom Christianity took a peculiar hold, and gradually developed among them principles of progress such as were never seen among the older nations. Can we wonder that such men should prevail?—men who loved war as the Romans did under the republic; men who gloried in their very losses, and felt that death in the field would secure future salvation and everlasting honor; men full of hope, energy, enthusiasm, and zeal; men who had, what the old races had not,—a soul, life, uncorrupted forces.

Yet, when they invaded the Roman world, it must not be forgotten that they were rude, ignorant, wild, fierce, and unscrupulous. They were held in absolute detestation, as the North American Indians, whom they resembled in many important respects, were held in this country two hundred years ago. Their object was pillage. They roamed in search of more fruitful lands and a more congenial sky. They were bent on conquest, rapine, and violence. They were called the Northern Hordes— barbarians—and even their vices were exaggerated. They were, indeed, most formidable and terrific foes; and when conquered in battle would rally their forces, and press forward with renewed numbers.

[Sidenote: The Goths.]

The first of these Teutonic barbarians who made successful inroads were the Goths. I do not now allude to the Celtic nations who were completely subdued and incorporated with the empire before the accession of the emperors. Nor do I speak of the Teutons whom Marius defeated one hundred years before the Christian era, nor yet of the Germanic tribes who made unsuccessful inroads during the reigns of the earlier emperors. Augustus must have had melancholy premonitions of danger when his general, Varus, suffered a disgraceful defeat by the sword of Arminus in the dark recesses of the Teuto-burger Wald, even as Charlemagne covered his face with his iron hands when he saw the invasion of his territories by the Norman pirates. For three centuries there was a constant struggle between the Roman armies and the barbarians beyond the Rhine. In the reign of Marcus Antoninus they formed a general union for the invasion of the Roman world, but they were signally defeated, and the great pillar of Marcus Aurelius describes his victories on the Danube, who died combating the Vandals, A.D. 180. In the year 241 A.D., the great Aurelian is seen fighting the Franks near Mayence, who, nevertheless, pressed forward until they made their way into Spain.

[Sidenote: Invasion of the Goths.]

The most formidable of the enemies of Rome were the Goths. When first spoken of in history they inhabited the shores of the Baltic. They were called by Tacitus, Gothones. In the time of Caracalla they had migrated to the coast of the Black Sea. Under the reign of Alexander Severus, 222-235, A.D., they threatened the peace of the province of Dacia. Under Philip, A.D. 244-249, they succeeded in conquering that province, and penetrated into Mosia. In the year 251, they encountered a Roman army under Decius, which they annihilated, and the emperor himself was slain. Then they continued their ravages along the coasts of the Euxine until they made themselves masters of the Crimea. With a large fleet of flat- boats they sailed to all the northern parts of the Euxine, took Pityus and Trapezus, attacked the wealthy cities on the Thracian Bosphorus, conquered Chalcedon, Nicomedia, and Nice, and retreated laden with spoil. The next year, with five hundred boats—they cannot be called ships,—they pursued their destructive navigation, destroyed Cyzicus, crossed the Aegean Sea, and landed at Athens, which they plundered. Thebes, Argos, Corinth, and Sparta were unable to defend their dilapidated fortifications. They advanced to the coasts of Epirus and devastated the whole Illyrian peninsula. In this destructive expedition they destroyed the famous temple of Diana at Ephesus, with its one hundred and twenty-seven marble columns sixty feet in height, and its interior ornamented with the choicest sculptures of Praxiteles. But they at length got wearied of danger and toil, and returned through Mosia to their own settlements. Though this incursion was a raid rather than a conquest, yet what are we to think of the military strength of the empire and the condition of society, when, in less than three hundred years after Augustus had shut the temple of Janus, fifteen thousand undisciplined barbarians, without even a leader of historic fame, were allowed to ravage the most populous and cultivated part of the empire, even the classic cities which had resisted the Persian hosts, and retire unmolested with their spoils? The Emperor Gallienus, one of the most frivolous of all the Caesars, received the intelligence with epicurean indifference, and abandoned himself to inglorious pleasures; and as Nero is said to have fiddled while his capital was in ashes, so he, in this great emergency, consumed his time in gardening and the arts of cookery, and was commended by his idolatrous courtiers as a philosopher and a hero.

In fact, this invasion of the Goths was not contemplated with that alarm which it ought to have excited, but rather as an accidental evil, like a pestilence or a plague. Moreover, it was lost sight of in the general misery and misfortunes of the times. The Emperor Valerian had just been defeated and taken prisoner by Sapor. Pretenders had started up in nineteen different places for the imperial purple. Banditti had spread devastation in Sicily. Alexandria was disturbed by tumults. Famine and the plague raged for ten years in nearly all parts of the empire. Rome lost by the pestilence five thousand daily, while half the inhabitants of Alexandria were swept away. Soldiers, tyrants, barbarians, and the visitation of God threatened the ruin of the Roman world.

But the ruin was staved off one hundred years by the labors and genius of a series of great princes, who traced their origin to the martial province of Illyricum. And all that was in the power of the emperors to do was done to arrest destruction. No empire was ever ruled by a succession of better and greater men than the calamities of the times raised up on the death of Gallienus, A.D. 268. But what avail the energy and talents of rulers when a nation is doomed to destruction? We have the profoundest admiration for the imperial heroes who bore the burdens of a throne in those days of tribulation. They succeeded in restoring the ancient glories—but glories followed by a deeper shame. They attempted impossibilities when their subjects were sunk in sloth and degradation.

[Sidenote: Success and the defeat of the Goths.]

Claudius, one of the generals of Gallienus, was invested with the purple at the age of fifty-four. He restored military discipline, revived law, repressed turbulence, and bent his thoughts to head off the barbaric invasions. The various nations of Germany and Sarmatia, united under the Gothic standard, and in six thousand vessels, prepared once more to ravage the world. Sailing from the banks of the Dniester, they crossed the Euxine, passed through the Bosphorus, anchored at the foot of Mount Athos, and assaulted Thessalonica, the wealthy capital of the Macedonian provinces. Claudius advanced to meet these three hundred and twenty thousand barbarians. At Naissus, in Dalmatia, was fought one of the most memorable and bloody battles of ancient times, but not one of the most decisive. Fifty thousand Goths were slain in that dreadful fight. Three Gothic women fell to the share of every imperial soldier. The discomfited warriors fled in consternation, but their retreat was cut off by the destruction of their fleet; and on the return of spring the mighty host had dwindled to a desperate band in the inaccessible parts of Mount Hemus.

[Sidenote: Victories of Claudius.]

Claudius survived his victory but two years, and was succeeded, A.D. 270, by a still greater man—his general Aurelian, whose father had been a peasant of Sirmium. Every day of his short reign was filled with wonders. He put an end to the Gothic war; he chastised the Germans who invaded Italy; he recovered Gaul, Spain, and Britain, from the hands of an usurper; he destroyed the proud monarchy which Zenobia had built up in the deserts of the East; he defeated the Alemanni who, with eighty thousand foot and forty thousand horse, had devastated the country from the Danube to the Po; and, not least, he took Zenobia herself a prisoner —one of the most celebrated women of antiquity, equaling Cleopatra in beauty, Elizabeth in learning, and Artemisia in valor—a woman who blended the popular manners of the Roman princes with the stately pomp of oriental kings.

Zenobia, queen of Palmyra, the widow of Odenatus, ruled a large portion of Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, and with a numerous army she advanced to meet the imperial legions. Conquered in two disastrous battles, she retired to the beautiful city which Solomon had built, shaded with palms, ornamented with palaces, and rich in oriental treasure. Then again, attacked by her persevering enemy, she mounted the fleetest of her dromedaries, but was overtaken on the banks of the Euphrates, and brought a captive to the tent of the martial emperor, while Palmyra, her capital, with all its riches, fell into the hands of the conqueror.

[Sidenote: Successes of Aurelian.]

Aurelian, with the haughty queen who had presumed to rise up in arms against the empire, returned to successes of Rome, and then was celebrated the most magnificent triumph which the world had seen since the days of Pompey and of Caesar. And since the foundation of the city, no conqueror more richly deserved a triumph than this virtuous and rugged soldier of fortune. And as the august procession, with all the pomp and circumstance of war, moved along the Via Sacra, up the Capitoline Hill, and halted at the Temple of Jupiter, to receive the benediction of the priests, and to deposit within its sacred walls the treasures of the East, it would seem that Rome was destined to surmount the ordinary fate of nations, and reign as mistress of the world per secula seculorum.

But this grand pageant was only one of the last glories of the setting sun of Roman greatness. Aurelian had no peace or repose. "The gods decree," said the impatient emperor, "that my life should be a perpetual warfare." He was obliged to take the field a few months after his triumph, and was slain, not in battle, but by the hands of assassins— the common fate of his predecessors and successors—"the regular portal" through which the Caesars passed to their account with the eternal Judge. He had boasted that public danger had passed—"Ego efficiam ne sit aliqua solicitudo Romana. Nos publicae necessitates teneant; vos occupent voluptates." But scarcely had this warlike prince sung his requiem to the agitations of Rome before new dangers arose, and his sceptre descended to a man seventy-five years of age.

Tacitus, the new emperor, was however worthy of his throne. He was selected as the most fitting man that could be found. Scarcely was he inaugurated, before he was obliged to march against the Alans, who had spread their destructive ravages over Pontus, Cappadocia, Cilicia, and Galatia. He lost his life, though successful in battle, amid the hardships of a winter campaign, and Probus, one of his generals, who had once been an Illyrian peasant, was clothed with the imperial purple, A.D. 278.

[Sidenote: The successes of Probus.]

This vigorous monarch was then forty-five years of age, in the prime of his strength, popular with the army, and patriotic and enlarged in his views. He reigned six years, and won a fame equal to that of the ancient heroes. He restored peace and order in every province of the empire; he broke the power of the Sarmatian tribes; he secured the alliance of the Gothic nation; he drove the Isaurians to their strongholds among the mountains; he chastised the rebellious cities of Egypt; he delivered Gaul from the Germanic barbarians, who again inundated the empire on the death of Aurelian; he drove back the Franks into their morasses at the mouth of the Rhine; he vanquished the Burgundians, who had wandered in quest of booty from the banks of the Oder; he defeated the Lygii, a fierce tribe from the frontiers of Silesia, and took their chieftain Semno alive; he passed the Rhine and pursued his victories to the Elbe, exacting a tribute of corn, cattle, and horses, from the defeated Germans; he even erected a bulwark against their future encroachments—a stone wall of two hundred miles in length, across valleys and hills and rivers, from the Danube to the Rhine—a feeble defense indeed, but such as to excite the wonder of his age; he, moreover, dispersed the captive barbarians throughout the provinces, who were afterward armed in defense of the empire, and whose brethren were persuaded to make settlements with them, so that, at length, "there was not left in all the provinces," says Gibbon, "a hostile barbarian, a tyrant, or even a robber."

After having destroyed four hundred thousand barbarians, the victor returned to Rome, and, like Aurelian, celebrated his successes in one of those gorgeous triumphs to which modern nations have no parallel. Then he again, like the conqueror of Zenobia, mounted the Pisgah of hope, and descried the Saturnian ages which, in his vision of Peace, he fancied were to follow his victories. "Respublica orbis terrarum, ubique secura, non arma fabricabit. Boves habebuntur aratro; equus nasciter ad pacem. Nulla erunt bella; nulla captivitas. Aeternes thesauros haberet Romana respublica." But scarcely had the paeans escaped him, before, in his turn, he was assassinated in a mutiny of his own troops—a man of virtue and abilities, although his austere temper insensibly, under military power, subsided into tyranny and cruelty.

Without the approbation of the Senate, the soldiers elected a new emperor, and he too was a hero. Carus had scarcely assumed the purple, A.D. 282, before he marched against the Persians, through Thrace and Asia Minor, in the midst of winter, and the ambassadors of the Persian king found the new emperor of the world seated on the grass, at a frugal dinner of bacon and pease, in that severe simplicity which afterward marked the early successors of Mohammed. But before he could carry his victorious arms across the Tigris, he suddenly died in his tent, struck, as some think, by lightning. His son Carinus was unworthy of the throne to which he succeeded, and his reign is chiefly memorable for the magnificence of his games and festivals. His reign, and that of his brother Numerian, was however short, and a still greater man than any who had mounted the throne of the Caesars since Augustus, took the helm at the most critical period of Roman history, A.D. 285.

[Sidenote: Diocletian.]

This man was Diocletian, rendered infamous in ecclesiastical history, as the most bitter persecutor the Christians ever had; a man of obscure birth, yet of most distinguished abilities, and virtually the founder of a new empire. He found it impossible to sustain the public burdens in an age so disordered and disorganized, when every province was menaced by the barbarians, and he associated with himself three colleagues who had won fame in the wars of Aurelian and Carus, and all of whom had rendered substantial services—Galerius, Maximian, and Constantius. These four Caesars, alive to the danger which menaced the empire, took up their residence in the distant provinces. They were all great generals; and they won great victories on the banks of the Rhine and the Danube, in Africa and Egypt, in Persia and Armenia. Their lives were spent in the camp; but care, vexation, and discontent pursued them. The barbarians were continually beaten, but they continually advanced. Their progress reminds one of the rising tide on a stormy and surging beach. Wave after wave breaks upon the shore, recedes, returns, and nothing can stop the gradual advance of the waters. So in the hundred years after Gallienus, wave after wave of barbaric invasion constantly appeared, receded, returned, with added strength. The heroic emperors were uniformly victors; but their victories were in vain. They were perpetually reconquering rebellious provinces, or putting down usurpers, or punishing the barbarians, who acquired strength after every defeat, and were more and more insatiable in their demands, and unrelenting in their wills. They were determined to conquer, and the greatest generals of the Roman empire during four hundred years could not subdue them, although they could beat them.