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

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But all these futilities, and much of the same kind outside of the
senate, together with the quarrels of individuals, the chances and
incidents of elections, and all such gossip as forms the staple
commodity of the society papers of to-day, were a source of infinite
delight to another type of pleasure-loving public man, the last to be
illustrated here.

If the older noble families were apathetic and idle, there were plenty
of young men, rising most often from the class below, whose minds were
intensely active--active in the pursuit of pleasure, but pleasure in
the comparatively harmless form of amusement and excitement. One of
these, the son of a banker at Puteoli, Marcus Caelius Rufus, stands
out as a living portrait in his own letters to Cicero, of which no
fewer than seventeen are preserved.[192] Of his early years too we
know a good deal, told us in the speech in defence of him spoken by
Cicero in the year 56; and these combined sources of information make
him the most interesting figure in the life of his age. M. Boissier
has written a delightful essay on him in his _Ciceron et ses amis_,
and Professor Tyrrell has done the like in the introduction to the
fourth volume of his edition of Cicero's letters; but they have
treated him less as a type of the youth of his day than as the friend
and pupil of Cicero. Caelius will always repay fresh study; he was
amusing and interesting to his contemporaries, and so he will be for
ever to us. He is a veritable Proteus--you never know what shape he
will take next;

Omnia transformat sese in miracula rerum----

we can trace no less than six such transformations in the story of
his life. And this instability, let us note at once, was not the
restlessness of a jaded _roue_, but the coruscation of a clever mind
wholly without principle, intensely interested in his _monde_, in the
life in which he moved, with all its enjoyment and excitement.

Caelius' father brought his son to Cicero, as soon as he had taken
his toga virilis, to study law and oratory, and Cicero was evidently
attracted by the bright and lively boy; he never deserted him, and
the last letter of Caelius to his old preceptor was written only just
before his own sad end. But Cicero was not the man to keep an unstable
character out of mischief; he loved young men, especially clever ones,
and was apt to take an optimistic view of them, as he did of his own
son and nephew. Caelius, always attracted by novelty, left Cicero and
attached himself to Catiline; and for this vagary, as well as for his
own want of success in controlling his pupil, Cicero rather awkwardly
and amusingly apologises in the early chapters of his speech in his
defence. Wild oats must be sown, he says; when a youth has given full
fling to his propensities to vice, they will leave him, and he may
become a useful citizen,--a dangerous view of a preceptor's duty,
which reminds us of the treatment, of the boy Nero by his philosopher
guardian long afterwards.[193]

Caelius escaped the fate of Catiline and his crew only to fall into
the hands of another clique not less dangerous for his moral welfare.
He became one of a group of brilliant young men, among whom were
probably Catullus and Calvus the poets, who were lovers, and
passionate lovers, of the infamous Clodia; they were needy, she found
them money, and they hovered about her like moths about a candle. In
such a life of passion and pleasure quarrels were inevitable. If the
Lesbia of Catullus be Clodia, as we may believe, she had thrown the
poet over with a light heart. It was apparently of his own free will
that Caelius deserted her: in revenge she turned upon him with an
accusation of theft and attempt to poison. What truth there was in the
charges we do not really know, but Cicero defended him successfully,
and in this way we come to know the details of this unsteady life.

In gratitude, and possibly in shame, Caelius now returned to his old
friend, and abandoned the whole ring of his vicious companions for
diligent practice in the courts, where he obtained considerable fame
as an orator. A fragment of a speech of his preserved by Quintilian
shows, as Professor Tyrrell observes, wonderful power of graphic
and picturesque utterance.[194] Cicero, writing of him after his
death,[195] says that he was at this time on the right side in
politics, and that as tribune of the plebs in 56 he successfully
supported the good cause, and checked revolutionary and seditious
movements. All was going well with him until Cicero went as governor
to Cilicia in 51. Cicero seems to have felt complete confidence
in him, and invited him to become his confidential political
correspondent; fifteen out of his seventeen letters were written in
this capacity. These letters show us the man as clearly as if we had
his diary before us. Caelius is no idle scamp or lazy Epicurean; his
mind is constantly active: nothing escapes his notice: the minutest
and most sordid things delight him. He is bright, happy, witty,
frivolous, and doubtless lovable. It is amusing to see how Cicero
himself now and again catches the infection, and tries (in vain) to
write in the same frivolous manner.[196] Caelius has some political
insight; he sees civil war approaching, but he takes it all as a game,
and on the eve of events which were to shake the world he trifles
with the symptoms as though they were the silliest gossip of the
capital.[197] In none of these letters is there the smallest vestige
of principle to be found. On the very eve of civil war he tells
Cicero[198] that as soon as war breaks out the right thing to do is to
join the stronger side. Judging Caesar's side to be the stronger, he
joined it accordingly, and did his best to induce Cicero to do the
same. As M. Boissier happily says, he never cared to "menager ses
transitions."

He had, however, to discover that if to change over to Caesar was the
safer course, to turn a political somersault once more, to try and
undermine the work of the master, meant simply ruin. We have the story
of his sixth and last transformation from Caesar himself, who was not,
however, in Italy at the time.[199] Credit in Italy had been seriously
upset by the outbreak of Civil War, and Caesar had been at much pains
to steady it by an ordinance which has been alluded to in the last
chapter.[200] In 48 Caelius was praetor; in the master's absence he
suddenly took up the cause of the debtors, and tried to evoke appeals
against the decisions of his colleague Trebonius,--a great lawyer and
a just man. Failing in this, he started as a downright revolutionary,
proposing first the abolition of house-rent, and finally the abolition
of all debts; and Milo, in exile at Massilia, was summoned to help
him to raise Italy against Caesar. This was too much, and both were
quickly caught and killed as they were stirring up gladiators and
other slave-bands among the latifundia of South Italy.

Caelius' letters give us a chance of seeing what that life of the
Forum really was which so fascinated the young men of the day, and
some of the old, such as Cicero himself. We can see these children
playing on the very edge of the crater, like the French noblesse
before the Revolution. In both cases there was a semi-consciousness
that the eruption was not far off,--but they went on playing. What was
it that so greatly amused and pleased them?

What Caelius is always writing of is mainly elections and canvassing,
accusations and trials, games and shows. Elections he treats as pure
sport, as a kind of enjoyable gambling, or as a means of spiting some
one whom you want to annoy. With elections accusations were often
connected: if a man were accused before his election he could not
continue to stand; if condemned after it he was disqualified; here
were ways in which personal spite might deprive him of success at the
last moment.[201] Accusations, too were of course the best means by
which an ambitious young man could come to the front. The whole number
of trials mentioned by Caelius is astonishing; sometimes there is such
a complication of them as is difficult to follow. Every one is ready
to lay an accusation, without the smallest regard for truth. Young
Appius Claudius accuses Servilius, and makes a mess of the attack,
while the praetor mismanages the conduct of the trial, so that nothing
comes of it; but finally Appius is himself accused by the Servilii
_de vi_, in order to keep him from further attacks on Servilius![202]
Appius the father quarrelled with Caelius and egged on others to
accuse him, though he was curule aedile at the time. "Their impudence
was so boundless that they secured that an information should be
laid against me for a very serious crime (under the Scantinian law).
Scarcely had Pola got the words out of his mouth, when I laid an
information under the same law against the censor, Appius. I never saw
a more successful stroke!"[203]

Of the games, and the panthers to be exhibited at them, about which
Caelius is for ever worrying his friend in Cilicia, we shall see
something in another chapter. There is plenty of other gossip in these
letters, and gossip often about unsavoury matters which need not be
noticed here. It lets in a flood of light upon the causes of the
general incompetence and inefficiency; the life of the Forum was a
demoralising one:

Uni se atque eidem studio omnes dedere et arti
uerba dare ut caute possint, pugnare dolose:
blanditia certare, bonum simulare uirum se:
insidias facere, ut si hostes sint omnibus omnes.[204]

From what has been said in this sketch it should be clear that we have
in the aristocracy of this period a complicated society, the various
aspects of which can hardly be united in a single picture. It is
partly a hereditary aristocracy, with all the pride and exclusiveness
of a group of old families accustomed to power and consequence. It is
in the main a society of gentlemen, dignified in manner, and kindly
towards each other, and it is also a society of high culture and
literary ability, though poor in creative genius, and unimaginative.
On the other hand, it is a class which has lost its interest in
the State, and is energetic only when pursuing its own interests:
pleasure-loving, luxurious, gossiping, trifling with serious matters,
short-sighted in politics because anxious only for personal advance.
"Rari nantes in gurgite vasto" are the men who are really in earnest,
but they are there; we must not forget that in Lucretius and Cicero
this society produced one of the greatest poets and one of the most
perfect prose writers that the world treasures; in Sulpicius a lawyer
of permanent value to humanity, and in Caesar not only an author and a
scholar but a man of action unrivalled in capacity and industry.

CHAPTER V

MARRIAGE: AND THE ROMAN LADY

In order to appreciate the position of women of various types in the
society we are examining, it is necessary to make it clear what Roman
marriage originally and ideally meant. In any society, it will be
found that the position and influence of woman can be fairly well
discerned from the nature of the marriage ceremony and the conditions
under which it is carried out. At Rome, in all periods of her history,
a _iustum matrimonium_, i.e. a marriage sanctioned by law and
religion, and therefore entirely legal in all its results, was a
matter of great moment, not to be achieved without many forms and
ceremonies. The reason for this elaboration is obvious, at any rate
to any one who has some acquaintance with ancient life in Greece or
Italy. As we shall see later on, the house was a residence for the
divine members of the family, as well as the human; the entrance,
therefore, of a bride into the household,--of one, that is, who had no
part nor lot in that family life--meant some straining of the relation
between the divine and human members. The human part of the family
brings in a new member, but it has to be assured that the divine part
is willing to accept her before the step taken can be regarded as
complete. She has to enter the family in such a way as to be able to
share in its sacra, i.e. in the worship of the household spirits,
the ancestors in their tombs, or in any special cult attached to the
family. In order to secure this eligibility, she was in the earliest
times subjected to a ceremony which was clearly of a sacramental
character, and which had as its effect the transference of the bride
from the hand (manus) of her father, i.e. from absolute subjection to
him as the head of her own family, to the hand of her husband, i.e. to
absolute subjection to him as the head of her new family.

This sacramental ceremony was called _confarreatio_, because a sacred
cake, made of the old Italian grain called _far_, and offered to
Jupiter Farreus,[205] was partaken of by bride and bridegroom, in the
presence of the Pontifex Maximus, the Flamen Dialis, and ten other
witnesses. At such a ceremony the auspices had of course been taken,
and apparently a victim was also slain, and offered probably to Ceres,
the skin of which was stretched over two seats (sellae), on which the
bride and bridegroom had to sit.[206] These details of the early form
of patrician marriage are only mentioned here to make the religious
character of the Roman idea of the rite quite plain; in other words,
to prove that the entrance of a bride into a family from outside was
a matter of very great difficulty and seriousness, not to be achieved
without special aid and the intervention of the gods. We may even
go so far as to say that the new materfamilias was in some sort
a priestess of the household, and that she must undergo a solemn
initiation before assuming that position. And we may still further
illustrate the mystical religious nature of the whole rite, if
we remember that throughout Roman history no one could hold the
priesthood of Jupiter (flaminium diale), or that of Mars or Quirinus,
or of the Rex sacrorum, who had not been born of parents wedded by
confarreatio, and that in each case the priest himself must be married
by the same ceremony.[207] This last mentioned fact may also serve to
remind us that it was not only the family and its sacra, its life and
its maintenance, that called for the ceremonies making up a iustum
matrimonium, but also the State and its sacra, its life and its
maintenance.[208] As confarreatio had as its immediate object the
providing of a materfamilias fully qualified in all her various
functions, and as its further object the providing of persons legally
qualified to perform the most important sacra of the state; so
marriage, in whatever form, had as its object at once the maintenance
of the family and its sacra and the production of men able to serve
the State in peace and war. To be a Roman citizen you must be the
product of a iustum matrimonium. From this initial fact flow all the
_iura_ or rights which together make up citizenship; whether the
private rights, which enable you to hold and transfer and to inherit
property under the shelter of the Roman law,[209] or the public
rights, which protect your person against violence and murder, and
enable you to give your vote in the public assembly and to seek
election to magistracies.[210]

Marriage then was a matter of the utmost importance in Roman life, and
in all the forms of it we find this importance marked by due solemnity
of ritual. In two other forms, besides confarreatio, the bride could
be brought under the hand of her husband, viz., _coemptio_ and _usus_,
with which we are not here specially concerned; for long before the
last century of the Republic all three methods had become practically
obsolete, or were only occasionally used for particular purposes. In
the course of time it had been found more convenient for a woman to
remain after her marriage in the hand of her father, or if he were
dead, in the "tutela" of a guardian (tutor), than to pass into that
of her husband; for in the latter case her property became absolutely
his. The natural tendency to escape from the restrictions of marital
_manus_ may be illustrated by a case such as the following: a woman
under the _tutela_ of a guardian wishes to marry; if she does so, and
passes under the _manus_ of her husband, her _tutor_ loses all control
over her property, which may probably be of great importance for
the family she is leaving; he therefore naturally objects to such a
marriage, and urges that she should be married without _manus_.[211]
In fact the interests of her own family would often clash with those
of the one she was about to enter, and a compromise could be effected
by the abandonment of marriage _cum manu_.

Now this, the abandonment of marriage _cum manu_, means simply that
certain legal consequences of the marriage ceremony were dropped,
and with them just those parts of the ceremony which produced these
consequences. Otherwise the marriage was absolutely as valid for all
purposes private and public as it could be made even by confarreatio
itself. The sacramental part was absent, and the survival of the
features of marriage by purchase, which we may see in the form of
coemptio, was also absent; but in all other respects the marriage
ceremony was the same as in marriage _cum manu_. It retained all
essential religious features, losing only a part of its legal
character. It will be as well briefly to describe a Roman wedding of
the type common in the last two centuries of the Republic.

To begin with, the boy and girl--for such they were, as we should look
on them, even at the time of marriage--have been betrothed, in all
probability, long before. Cicero tells us that he betrothed his
daughter Tullia to Calpurnius Piso Frugi early in 66 B.C.; the
marriage took place in 63. Tullia seems to have been born in 76, so
that she was ten years old at the time of betrothal and thirteen at
that of marriage. This is probably typical of what usually happened;
and it shows that the matter was really entirely in the hands of the
parents. It was a family arrangement, a _mariage de convenance_,
as has been and is the practice among many peoples, ancient and
modern.[212] The betrothal was indeed a promise rather than a definite
contract, and might be broken off without illegality; and thus if
there were a strong dislike on the part of either girl or boy a way of
escape could be found.[213] However this may be, we may be sure that
the idea of the marriage was not that of a union for love, though it
was distinguished from concubinage by an "affectio maritalis" as well
as by legal forms, and though a true attachment might, and often did,
as in modern times in like circumstances, arise out of it. It was the
idea of the service of the family and the State that lay at the root
of the union. This is well illustrated, like so many other Roman
ideas, in the _Aeneid_ of Virgil. Those who persist in looking on
Aeneas with modern eyes, and convict him of perfidy towards Dido,
forget that his passion for Dido was a sudden one, not sanctioned by
the gods or by favourable auspices, and that the ultimate union with
Lavinia, for whom he forms no such attachment, was one which would
recommend itself to every Roman as justified by the advantage to the
State. The poet, it is true, betrays his own intense humanity in
his treatment of the fate of Dido, but he does so in spite of his
theme,--the duty of every Roman to his family and the State. A Roman
would no doubt fall in love, like a youth of any other nation, but his
passion had nothing to do with his life of duty as a Roman. This idea
of marriage had serious consequences, to which we shall return later
on.

When the day for the wedding arrives, our bride assumes her bridal
dress, laying aside the toga praetexta of her childhood and dedicating
her dolls to the Lar of her family; and wearing the reddish veil
(_flammeum_) and the woollen girdle fastened with a knot called the
knot of Hercules,[214] she awaits the arrival of the bridegroom in
her father's house. Meanwhile the auspices are being taken;[215] in
earlier times this was done by observing the flight of birds, but now
by examination of the entrails of a victim, apparently a sheep. If
this is satisfactory the youthful pair declare their consent to the
union and join their right hands as directed by a pronuba, i.e. a
married woman, who acts as a kind of priestess. Then after another
sacrifice and a wedding feast, the bride is conducted from her old
home to that of her husband, accompanied by three boys, sons of living
parents, one carrying a torch while the other two lead her by either
hand; flute-players go before, and nuts are thrown to the boys. This
_deductio_, charmingly described in the beautiful sixty-fifth poem of
Catullus, is full of interesting detail which must be omitted here.
When the bridegroom's house is reached, the bride smears the doorposts
with fat and oil and ties a woollen fillet round each: she is
then lifted over the threshold, is taken by her husband into the
partnership of fire and water--the essentials of domestic life--and
passes into the atrium. The morrow will find her a materfamilias,
sitting among her maids in that atrium, or in the more private
apartments behind it:

Claudite ostia, virgines
Lusimus satis. At boni
Coniuges, bene vivite, et
Munere assiduo valentem
Exercete iuventam.

Even the dissipated Catullus could not but treat the subject of
marriage with dignity and tenderness, and in this last stanza of his
poem he alludes to the duties of a married pair in language which
would have satisfied the strictest Roman. He has also touched another
chord which would echo in the heart of every good citizen, in the
delicious lines which just precede those quoted, and anticipate the
child--a son of course--that is to be born, and that will lie in
his mother's arms holding out his little hands, and smiling on his
father.[216] Nothing can better illustrate the contrast in the mind
of the Roman between passionate love and serious marriage than a
comparison of this lovely poem with those which tell the sordid
tale of the poet's intrigues with Lesbia (Clodia). The beauty and
_gravitas_ of married life as it used to be are still felt and still
found, but the depths of human feeling are not stirred by them. Love
lies beyond, is a fact outside the pale of the ordered life of the
family or the State.

No one who studies this ceremonial of Roman marriage, in the light of
the ideas which it indicates and reflects, can avoid the conclusion
that the position of the married woman must have been one of
substantial dignity, calling for and calling out a corresponding type
of character. Beyond doubt the position of the Roman materfamilias was
a much more dignified one than that of the Greek wife. She was far
indeed from being a mere drudge or squaw; she shared with her husband
in all the duties of the household, including those of religion, and
within the house itself she was practically supreme.[217] She lived in
the atrium, and was not shut away in a women's chamber; she nursed her
own children and brought them up; she had entire control of the female
slaves who were her maids; she took her meals with her husband, but
sitting, not reclining, and abstaining from wine; in all practical
matters she was consulted, and only on questions political or
intellectual was she expected to be silent. When she went out arrayed
in the graceful _stola matronalis_, she was treated with respect,
and the passers-by made way for her; but it is characteristic of
her position that she did not as a rule leave the house without the
knowledge of her husband, or without an escort.[218]

In keeping with this dignified position was the ideal character of the
materfamilias. Ideal we must call it, for it does not in all respects
coincide with the tradition of Roman women even in early times; but
we must remember that at all periods of Roman history the woman whose
memory survives is apt to be the woman who is not the ideal matron,
but one who forces herself into notice by violating the traditions of
womanhood. The typical matron would assuredly never dream of playing
a part in history; her influence was behind the scenes, and therefore
proportionally powerful. The legendary mother of Coriolanus (the
Volumnia of Shakespeare), Cornelia the mother of the Gracchi, Aurelia,
Caesar's mother, and Julia his daughter, did indirectly play a far
greater part in public life than the loud and vicious ladies who have
left behind them names famous or infamous; but they never claimed the
recognition of their power.

This peculiar character of the Roman matron, a combination of dignity,
industry, and practical wisdom, was exactly suited to attract the
attention of a gentle philosopher like Plutarch, who loved, with
genuine moral fervour, all that was noble and honest in human nature.
Not only does he constantly refer to the Roman ladies and their
character in his _Lives_ and his _Morals_, but in his series of more
than a hundred "Roman questions" the first nine, as well as many
others, are concerned with marriage and the household life; and in
his treatise called _Coniugalia praecepta_ he reflects many of
the features of the Roman matron. From him, in Sir Thomas North's
translation, Shakespeare drew the inspiration which enabled him to
produce on the Elizabethan stage at least one such typical matron. In
Coriolanus he has followed Plutarch so closely that the reader may
almost be referred to him as an authority; and in the contrast between
the austere and dignified Volumnia and the passionate and voluptuous
Cleopatra of the later play, the poet's imagination seems to have been
guided by a true historical instinct.

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