Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero by W. Warde Fowler

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Less than twenty-five years after Cicero's death, in the imagination
of the greatest of Roman poets, Jupiter was once more brought before
the Roman world, and now in a form comprehensible by all educated men,
whether or no they had dabbled in philosophy. What are we to say of
the Jupiter of the _Aeneid_? We do not need to read far in the first
book of the poem to find him spoken of in terms which remind us of
Varro: "O qui res hominumque deumque Aeternis regis imperiis," are the
opening words of the address of Venus; and when she has finished,

Olli subridens hominum sator atque deorum
Vultu, quo caelum tempestatesque serenat,
Oscula libavit natae, dehine talia fatur;
"Parce metu, Cytherea, manent immota tuorum
Fata tibi."

Jupiter is here, as in Varro's system, the prime cause and ruler of
all things, and he also holds in his hand the destiny of Rome and the
fortunes of the hero who was to lay the first foundation of Rome's
dominion. It is in the knowledge of his will that Aeneas walks, with
hesitating steps, in the earlier books, in the later ones with assured
confidence, towards the goal that is set before him. But the lines
just quoted serve well to show how different is the Jupiter of Virgil
from the universal deity of the Roman Stoic. Beyond doubt Virgil had
felt the power of the Stoic creed; but he was essaying an epic poem,
and he could not possibly dispense with the divine machinery as it
stood in his great Homeric model. His Jupiter is indeed, as has been
lately said,[569] "a great and wise god, free from the tyrannical and
sensuous characteristics of the Homeric Zeus," in other words, he is a
Roman deity, and sometimes acts and speaks like a grave Roman consul
of the olden time. But still he is an anthropomorphic deity, a purely
human conception of a personal god-king; in these lines he smiles on
his daughter Venus and kisses her. This is the reason why Virgil has
throughout his poem placed the Fates, or Destiny, in close relation to
him, without definitely explaining that relation. Fate, as it appears
in the Aeneid, is the Stoic [Greek: eimarmenae] applied to the idea of
Rome and her Empire; that Stoic conception could not take the form of
Jupiter, as in Varro's hands, for the god had to be modelled on the
Homeric pattern, not on the Stoic. It is perhaps not going too far to
say that the god, as a theological conception, never recovered from
this treatment; any chance he ever had of becoming the centre of a
real religious system was destroyed by the Aeneid, the _pietas_ of
whose hero is indeed nominally due to him, but in reality to the
decrees of Fate.[570]

While philosophers and poets were thus performing intellectual and
imaginative feats with the gods of the State, the strong tendency to
superstition, untutored fear of the supernatural, which had always
been characteristic of the Italian peoples, so far from losing power,
was actually gaining it, and that not only among the lower classes. As
Lucretius mockingly said, even those who think and speak with contempt
of the gods will in moments of trouble slay black sheep and sacrifice
them to the Manes. This feeling of fear or nervousness, which lies at
the root of the meaning of the word _religio_,[571] had been quieted
in the old days by the prescriptions of the pontifices and their jus
divinum, but it was always ready to break out again; as we have seen,
in the long and awful struggle of the Hannibalic war, it was necessary
to go far beyond the ordinary pharmacopoeia within reach of the
priesthoods in order to convince the people that all possible means
were being taken for their salvation. Again, in this last age of the
Republic, there are obvious signs that both ignorant and educated
were affected by the gloom and uncertainty of the times. Increasing
uncertainty in the political world, increasing doubt in the world of
thought, very naturally combined to produce an emotional tendency
which took different forms in men of different temperament. We can
trace this (1) in the importance attached to omens, portents, dreams;
(2) in a certain vague thought of a future life, which takes a
positive shape in the deification of human beings; (3) at the close of
the period, in something approaching to a sense of sin, of neglected
duty, bringing down upon State and individual the anger of the gods.

1. If we glance over the latter part of the book of prodigies,
compiled by the otherwise unknown writer Julius Obsequens from the
records of the pontifices quoted in Livy's history, we can get a fair
idea of the kind of portent that was troubling the popular mind.
They are much the same as they always had been in Roman
history,--earthquakes, monstrous births, temples struck by lightning,
statues overthrown, wolves entering the city, and so on; they are
extremely abundant in the terrible years of the Social and Civil Wars,
become less frequent after the death of Sulla, and break out again
in full force with the murder of Caesar. They were reported to the
pontifices from the places where they were supposed to have occurred,
and if thought worthy of expiation were entered in the pontifical
books. We may suppose that they were sent in chiefly by the
uneducated. But among men of education we have many examples of this
same nervousness, of which two or three must suffice. Sulla, as we
know from his own Memoirs, which were used directly or indirectly by
Plutarch, had a strong vein of superstition in his nature, and made
no attempt to control it. In dedicating his Memoirs to Lucullus he
advised him "to think no course so safe as that which is enjoined
by the [Greek: daimon] (perhaps his genius) in the night";[572]
and Plutarch tells us several tales of portents on which he acted,
evidently drawn from this same autobiography. We are told of him that
he always carried a small image of Apollo, which he kissed from time
to time, and to which he prayed silently in moments of danger.[573]
Again, Cicero tells us a curious story of himself, Varro, and Cato,
which shows that those three men of philosophical learning were quite
liable to be frightened by a prophecy which to us would not seem to
have much claim to respect.[574] He tells how when the three were
at Dyrrachium, after Caesar's defeat there and the departure of the
armies into Thessaly, news was brought them by the commander of the
Rhodian fleet that a certain rower had foretold that within thirty
days Greece would be weltering in blood; how all three were terribly
frightened, and how a few days later the news of the battle at
Pharsalia reached them. Lastly, we all remember the vision which
appeared to Brutus on the eve of the battle of Philippi, of a huge and
fearsome figure standing by him in silence, which Shakespeare has made
into the ghost of Caesar and used to unify his play. According to
Plutarch, the Epicurean Cassius, as Lucretius would have done,
attempted to convince his friend on rational grounds that the vision
need not alarm him, but apparently in vain.[575]

2. Lucretius had denied the doctrine of the immortality of the soul,
as the cause of so much of the misery which he believed it to be his
mission to avert. Caesar, in the speech put into his mouth by Sallust,
in the debate on the execution of the conspirators on December 5, 63,
seems to be of the same opinion, and as Cicero alludes to his words in
the speech with which he followed Caesar, we may suppose that Sallust
was reporting him rightly.[576] The poet and the statesman were not
unlike in the way in which they looked at facts; both were of clear
strong vision, without a trace of mysticism. But such men were the
exception rather than the rule; Cicero probably represents better the
average thinking man of his time. Cicero was indeed too full of life,
too deeply interested in the living world around him, to think much
of such questions as the immortality of the soul; and as a professed
follower of the Academic school, he assuredly did not hold any
dogmatic opinion on it. He was at no time really affected by
Pythagoreanism, like his friend Nigidius Figulus, whose works, now
lost, had a great vogue in the later years of Cicero's life, and much
influence on the age that followed. In the first book of his Tusculan
Disputations Cicero discusses the question from the Academic point of
view, coming to no definite conclusion, except that whether we are
immortal or not we must be grateful to death for releasing us from the
bondage of the body. This book was written in the last year of his
life; but ten years earlier, in the beautiful myth, imitated from the
myths of Plato, which he appended to his treatise _de Republica_, he
had emphatically asserted the doctrine. There the spirit of the elder
Scipio appears to his great namesake, Cicero's ideal Roman, and
assures him that the road to heaven (caelum) lies open to those who do
their duty in this life, and especially their duty to the State. "Know
thyself to be a god; as the god of gods rules the universe, so the god
within us rules the body, and as that great god is eternal, so does an
eternal soul govern this frail body."[577]

The _Somnium Scipionis_ was an inspiration, written under the
influence of Plato at one of those emotional moments of Cicero's
life which make it possible to say of him that there was a religious
element in his mind.[578] Some years later the poignancy of his grief
at the death of his daughter Tullia had the effect of putting him
again in a strong emotional mood. For many weeks he lived alone at
Astura, on the edge of the Pomptine marshes, out of reach of all
friends, forbidding even his young wife and her mother to come near
him; brooding, as it would seem, on the survival of the godlike
element in his daughter. These sad meditations took a practical form
which at first astonishes us, but is not hard to understand when we
have to come to know Cicero well, and to follow the tendencies of
thought in these years. He might erect a tomb to her memory,--but
that would not satisfy him; it would not express his feeling that the
immortal godlike spark within her survived. He earnestly entreats
Atticus to find and buy him a piece of ground where he can build a
_fanum_, i.e. a shrine, to her spirit. "I wish to have a shrine built,
and that wish cannot be rooted out of my heart. I am anxious to avoid
any likeness to a tomb ... in order to attain as nearly as possible to
an apotheosis."[579] A little further on he calls these foolish ideas;
but this is doubtless only because he is writing to Atticus, a man
of the world, not given to emotion or mysticism. Cicero is really
speaking the language of the Italian mind, for the moment free from
philosophical speculation; he believes that his beloved dead lived
on, though he could not have proved it in argument. So firmly does
he believe it that he wishes others to know that he believes it, and
insists that the shrine shall be erected in a frequented place![580]

Though the great Dictator did not believe in another world, he
consented at the end of his life to become Jupiter Julius, and after
his death was duly canonised as Divus, and had a temple erected to
him. But the many-sided question of the deification of the Caesars
cannot be discussed here; it is only mentioned as showing in another
way the trend of thought in this dark age of Roman history. Whatever
some philosophers may have thought, there cannot be a doubt that the
ordinary Roman believed in the godhead of Julius.[581]

3. We saw in an earlier chapter with what gay and heedless frivolity
young men like Caelius were amusing themselves even on the very eve of
civil war. In strange contrast with this is the gloom that overspread
all classes during the war itself, and more especially after the
assassination of the Dictator. Caesar seemed irresistible and godlike,
and men were probably beginning to hope for some new and more stable
order of things, when he was suddenly struck down, and the world
plunged again into confusion and doubt; and it was not till after
the final victory of Octavian at Actium, and the destruction of the
elements of disunion with the deaths of Antony and Cleopatra, that
men really began to hope for better times. The literature of those
melancholy years shows distinct signs of the general depression, which
was perhaps something more than weariness and material discomfort;
there was almost what we may call a dim sense of sin, or at least of
moral evil, such a feeling, though far less real and intense, as that
which their prophets aroused from time to time in the Jewish people,
and one not unknown in the history of Hellas.

The most touching expression of this feeling is to be found in the
preface which Livy prefixed to his history--a wonderful example of the
truth that when a great prose writer is greatly moved, his language
reflects his emotion in its beauty and earnestness. Every student
knows the sentence in which he describes the gradual decay of all that
was good in the Roman character: "donec ad haec tempora, quibus nec
vitia nostra nec remedia pati possumus, perventum est"; but it is
not every student who can recognise in it a real sigh of despair, an
unmistakable token of the sadness of the age.[582] In the introductory
chapters which serve the purpose of prefaces to the _Jugurtha_ and
_Catiline_ of Sallust, we find something of the same sad tone, but
it does not ring true like Livy's exordium; Sallust was a man of
altogether coarser fibre, and seems to be rather assuming than
expressing the genuine feeling of a saddened onlooker. In one of his
earliest poems, written perhaps after the Perusian war of 41 B.C.[583]
even the lively Horace was moved to voice the prevailing depression,
fancifully urging that the Italian people should migrate, like the
Phocaeans of old, to the far west, where, as Sertorius had been told
in Spain, lay the islands of the blest, where the earth, as in the
golden age, yields all her produce untilled:

Iuppiter ilia piae secrevit litora genti
Ut inquinavit aere tempus aureum;
Aere, dehinc ferro duravit saecula, quorum
Piis secunda vate me datur fuga.

It may be, as has recently been suggested, that the famous fourth
Eclogue of Virgil, "the Messianic Eclogue," was in some sense meant as
an answer to this poem of Horace. "There is no need," he seems to say
in that poem, written in the year 39, "to seek the better age in a
fabled island of the west. It is here and now with us. The period upon
which Italy is now entering more than fulfils in real life the dream
of a Golden Age. A marvellous child is even now coming into the world
who will see and inaugurate an era of peace and prosperity: darkness
and despair will after a while pass entirely away, and a regenerate
Italy,--regenerate in religion and morals as in fertility and
wealth,--will lead the world in a new era of happiness and good
government."[584]

But the Golden Age, so fondly hoped for, so vaguely and poetically
conceived, was not to come in the sense in which Virgil, or any other
serious thinker of the day, could dream of it. I may conclude this
chapter with a few sentences which express this most truly and
eloquently. "When there is a fervent aspiration after better things,
springing from a strong feeling of human brotherhood, and a firm
belief in the goodness and righteousness of God, such aspiration
carries with it an invincible confidence that some how, some where,
some when, it must receive its complete fulfilment, for it is prompted
by the Spirit which fills and orders the Universe throughout its whole
development. But if the human organ of inspiration goes on to fix the
how, the where, and the when, and attributes to some nearer object the
glory of the final blessedness, then it inevitably falls into such
mistakes as Virgil's, and finds its golden age in the rule of the
Caesars (which was indeed an essential feature of Christianity),
or perhaps, as in later days, in the establishment of socialism or
imperialism. Well for the seer if he remembers that the kingdom of God
is within us, and that the true golden age must have its foundation in
penitence for misdoing, and be built up in righteousness and loving
kindness."[585]

EPILOGUE

These sketches of social life at the close of the Republican period
have been written without any intention of proving a point, or any
pre-conceived idea of the extent of demoralisation, social, moral, or
political, which the Roman people had then reached. But a perusal of
Mr. Balfour's suggestive lecture on "Decadence" has put me upon making
a very succinct diagnosis of the condition of the patient whose life
and habits I have been describing. The Romans, and the Italians, with
whom they were now socially and politically amalgamated, were not in
the last two centuries B.C. an old or worn-out people. It is at any
rate certain that for a century after the war with Hannibal Rome and
her allies, under the guidance of the Roman senate, achieved an amount
of work in the way of war and organisation such as has hardly been
performed by any people before or since; and even in the period dealt
with in this book, in spite of much cause for misgiving at home, the
work done by Roman and Italian armies both in East and West shows
beyond doubt that under healthy discipline the native vigour of the
population could assert itself. We must not forget, however severely
we may condemn the way in which the work was done, that it is to
these armies, in all human probability, that we owe not only the
preservation of Graeco-Italian culture and civilisation, but the
opportunity for further progress. The establishment of definite
frontiers by Pompeius and Caesar, and afterwards by Augustus and
Tiberius, brought peace to the region of the Mediterranean, and with
it made possible the development of Roman law and the growth of a new
and life-giving religion.

But peoples, like individuals, if offered opportunities of doing
themselves physical or moral damage, are only too ready to accept
them. Time after time in these chapters we have had to look back to
the age following the war with Hannibal in order to see what those
opportunities were; and in each case we have found the acceptance
rapid and eager. We have seen wealth coming in suddenly, and misused;
slave-labour available in an abnormal degree, and utilised with
results in the main unfortunate; the population of the city increasing
far too quickly, yet the difficulties arising from this increase
either ignored or misapprehended. We have noticed the decay of
wholesome family life, of the useful influence of the Roman matron, of
the old forms of the State religion; the misconception of the true end
of education, the result partly of Greek culture, partly of political
life; and to these may perhaps be added an increasing liability to
diseases, and especially to malaria, arising from economic blunders
in Italy and insanitary conditions of life in the city. All these
opportunities of damage to the fibre of the people had been freely
accepted, and with the result that in the age of Cicero we cannot
mistake the signs and symptoms of degeneracy.

But it would be a mistake to jump to the conclusion that this
degeneracy had as yet gone too far to be arrested. It was assuredly
not that degeneracy of senility which Mr. Balfour is inclined to
postulate as an explanation of decadence. So far as I can judge, the
Romans were at that stage when, in spite of unhealthy conditions of
life and obstinate persistence in dangerous habits, it was not too
late to reform and recover. To me the main interest of the history of
the early Empire lies in seeking the answer to the question how far
that recovery was made. If these chapters should have helped any
student to prepare the ground for the solution of this problem their
object will have been fully achieved.

[Illustration: _Stanfords Geog. Estab. London_]

INDEX

Accius
_Aedicula_
Aediles, the
Aemilia, Via. _See_ Via Aemilia
Aemilius, Pons. See Pons Aemilius
Aeneas
Aerarium, the
Aesopus, the actor
Afranius
Africa, province of
Agrippa
Alexandria
Alexis (Atticus's slave)
Amafinius
_Ambitu, lex de_
Anio, the river
Anna Perenna, festival of
_Annona_
Antioch
Antiochus (the physician)
Antium, Cicero's villa at
Antony
_Apodyterium_
Apollinares, Ludi. _See_ Ludi Apollinares
Apollonia
Appia, Via. _See_ Via Appia
Appius Claudius Caecus
Aqua Appia
Aqua Tepula
Aqueducts
Ara maxima
Ara Pacis
_Argentarii_
Argiletum, the
Arpinum, Cicero's villa at
_Ars amatoria_ (Ovid's)
Arval brothers, the
Arx, the
Asia, province of
Astura, Cicero's villa at
_Atellanae, fabulae_. See _Fabulae Atellanae_
_Atrium_
_sutorium_,
Vestae
Atticus
house of,
wealth of,
as money-lender,
the sister of,
the slave of,
Cicero's letters to, _passim_,
Augury
Augustus
alleged proposal of, to remove the capital,
attitude of towards _plebs urbana_,
water-supply under,
the grandfather of,
as a social reformer,
marriage laws of,
furthers public comfort,
restoration of temples by,
attempts at religious revival,
Aventine hill

Baiae
Balbus, Cornelius, the younger
Bankruptcy laws
Basilicae, the
Baths, public
Bath-rooms
Bauli
Bithynia, province of
_Blanditia_
Bona Dea, festival of
Boscoreale
_Brutus_ (Cicero's)
Brutus, Decimus
_Bulla_
Byzantium

Caecilius
Caelian hill
Caelius Autipater
Caelius (M.) Rufus
Caesar, Julius
alleged proposal of, to remove the capital
extends one of the Basilicae,
reduces
corn gratuities;
regulations of, for the government of the city;
debts of;
character of;
as historian;
joined by Caelius;
restores credit in Italy;
and Cleopatra;
clemency of;
sale of prisoners by;
dismisses surrendered armies;
foundation at Corinth by;
entertained by Cicero;
habits of;
as aedile;
summons Publilius to Rome;
as Pontifex Maximus;
speech of, in Sallust;
consents to be deified;
and _passim_
_Calceus_
_Caldarium_
Calvus
Camillus
Campagua, the
Campania
Campus Martius
Caninius
Capena, Porta. _See_ Porta Capena
Capital at Rome
Capitol, the
Capitoline hill
Capua
_Carceres_, the
Carinae, the
Carmentalis, Porta. _See_ Porta Carmentalis
_Castella_
Castor, temple of
Catiline
Cato major
Cato minor
Catullus
Catulus the elder
_Cena_
Censor, the
_Censoria locatio_
Ceres
Ceriales, Ludi. _See_ Ludi Ceriales
Cethegus
Chariot-racing
Chrysippus
Cicero, birthplace of;
house of;
borrows money;
as a man of business;
and the publicani;
relation of, to the governing aristocracy;
letters of;
as a philosopher;
and Clodia;
views on education;
influence of philosophers upon;
and the slave question;
and the use of slaves for seditious purposes;
villas of;
undertakes the Ludi Romani;
religious views of;
and _passim_
Cicero, Marcus
Cicero, Quintus
Cilician pirates
Circus Flaminius
Circus Maximus
Cleopatra
Clients
Clivus Capitolinus
Clivus sacer
Cloaca maxima
Clodia
Clodius
Cluvius
_Coemptio_
_Coenaculum_
Coinage
_Collegia_
Colline gate, Sulla's victory at the,
Colosseum, the
Columella
Comedy
_Comissatio_
Comitium, the
_Commercii, ius_
_Compluvium_
Concordia, temple of
_Conducticii_
_Confarreatio_
_Coniugalia praecepta_ (Plutarch's)
_Connubii, ius_
Constantine, arch of
Consul, the
Consus, altar of
_Contubernium_
_Convivium_
_Copa_ ("Virgil's")
Corfinium
Cornelia
Cornelius
Crassus
Cumae, Cicero's villa at
Curia, the
Curio

Debtors
_Declamatio_
_Deductio_
Democritus
_Deorum, De Natura_ (Cicero's)
Diana, temple of
_Die natali, De_ (Censorinus's)
_Diffarreatio_
Diomedes, villa of
Dionysius of Halicarnassus
Dionysus, worship of
Di Penates. _See_ Penates
Diphilus, the actor
Divorce
_Dolia_
_Domus_
_Dos_
Drama, the
Dyrrhachium, importation of corn
into; battle of

Egypt
Emetics, use of
Ennius
Epicureanism
Epicurus
_Epulum Jovis_
Equester, Ordo. _See_ Ordo equester
Equirria
Equites. _See_ Ordo equester
_Ergastula_
Esquiline hill
Etruscans, the
Evander
_Exedra_

Fabius, arch of
_Fabri ferrarii_
_Fabulae Atellanae_; palliatae;
_togatae_
_Familiae urbanae_
Fate
_Fercula_
_Feriae_
_Festa_
_Figuli_
Figulus, Nigidius
Flaccus, Verrius
Flamen Dialis;
Quirinalis
Flaminius
_Flammeum_
Florales, Ludi. _See_ Ludi Florales
_Foeneratores_
_Foenus_
Formiae, Cicero's villa at
Forum Boarium
Forum Romanum
Friedlaender
Frontinus
_Fullones_
Funeral games
Furrina, the grove of

Gabinius
Gellius, Aulus
Genseric
Gilds. _See_ Collegia
Gladiators
Gracchus, Gaius
Gracchus, Tiberius
_Grammaticus_
_Grassatores_
Greeks

Hannibal
Hercules
Hirtius
_Honorum, ius_
Horace
Hortensius
Horti Caesaris

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