Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius

calm refinement of their country seats. But of the ordinary life of the provincial town we learn very little from Pliny. Indeed, the silence of Roman literature generally a

that borderland of Apulia, where, in the glades of Mount Vultur as a child, he drank inspiration from the witchery of haunted groves.1116 And Martial, the hardened man about town, never forgot the oak groves and iron foundries of Bilbilis.1117 But for the municipal system and life, the relations of its various social grades,

hey had a genuine love of the unspoilt countryside, with its simple natural pleasures, its husbandry of the olden time, its joyous plenty, above all its careless freedom and repose.1121 The great charm of a rural retreat was its distance from the "noise and smoke and wealth" of Rome. The escape from the penalties of fame, from the boredom of interminable dinners, the intrusive importunity of curious busybodies, the malice of jealous rivals, gives a fresh zest to the long tranquil days under the ilex [pg 198]shade among the Sabine hills.1122 Horace probably felt more keenly than Juvenal the charm of hill and stream and the scenes of rustic toils and gaiety. Yet the exquisite good sense of Horace would have recoiled from the declamatory extravagance with which Juvenal justifies his friend's retirement from the capital, by a realistic picture of all its sordid troubles and vices and absurdities.1123 "To love Rome at Tibur and Tibur at Rome" was the expression of the educated Roman's feelings in a form which he would have recognised to be as just as it was happy. In spite of the charm of the country, to any real man of letters or affairs, the fascination of Rome was irresistible. Pliny, and no doubt hundreds of his class, from Augustus to Theodosius, grumbled at the wasteful fashion in which their lives were frittered away by monotonous social duties, as imperious as they were generally vain.1124 Yet to Pliny, as to Symmachus, the prospect of never again seeing the city, so seductive and so wearying, would have been absolutely intolerable. Martial, when he retired to Bilbilis, seems to pity his friend Juvenal, wandering restlessly through the noisy Suburra,

transformation wrought by Roman rule in a century and a half seized the imagination of contemporaries such as the rhetor Aristides. And the mere wreck of that brilliant civilisation which now meets the traveller's eye, in regions that have long returned to waste, will not permit us to treat his eulogy of Rome as only a piece of rhetoric. Regions, once desert solitudes, are thickly dotted with flourishing cities; the Empire is a realm of cities. The world has laid the s

mense advance on the condition of the country at the time of the conquest. In the reign of Antoninus Pius, only 27 of these rural districts remained without an organised civic centre.1136 In Gaul, Julius Caesar impressed the stamp of Rome on the province of Narbo, by founding cities of the Roman type, and his policy was continued by Augustus. The loose cantonal system almost disappeared from the province in the south, although it lingered long in the northern regions of Gaul. Yet even in the north, on the borders of Germany, Cologne, from the reign of Claudius, became the envy of the barbarians across the Rhine,1137 and Trèves, from the days of Augustus, already anticipated its glory as a seat of empire from Diocletian to Gratian and Valentinian.1138 In the Agri Decumates, between [pg 201]the Rhine and Neckar, the remains of baths and aqueducts, the mosaics and bronzes and pottery, which antiquarian industry has collected and explored, attest the existence of at least 160 flourishing and civilised communities.1139 Baden was already a crowded resort for its healing waters when, in A.D. 69, it was given up to fire an

was built by the third legion, which for generations, almost as a hereditary caste, protected Roman civilisation against the restless tribes of the desert. The chief buildings were probably completed in 117. The preservation of so much, after eighteen centuries, is a proof that the work was well and thoroughly done. The ruts of carriage wheels can still be seen in the main street, which is spanned by a triumphal arch, adorned with marble columns. Porticoes and colonnades gave shelter from the heat to the passers-by, and two fountains played at the further end. Water, which is now invisible on the spot, was then brought in channels from the hills, and distributed at a fixed rate among private houses.1150 The forum was in the usual style, with raised side walks and porticoes, a basilica, a senate-house and rostrum, a shrine of Fortuna Augusta, and a crowd of statues to the emperors from M. Aurelius to Julian.1151 This petty place had its

etained their old laws, constitution, and judicial system.1156 They retained in some cases the names of magistracies, which recalled the days of independence: there were still archons at Athens, suffetes in African towns, demarchs at Naples. The title of medixtuticus still lingered here and there in old Oscan communities.1157 When she had crushed the national spirit, and averted the danger of armed revolt, Rome tolerated, and even fostered, municipal freedom, for more than a hundred years after the last shadowy pretence of popular government had disappeared from her own forum.1158 Central control and uniformity were established in those departments which affected the peace and welfare of the whole vast commonwealth. Although the interference of the provincial governor in local admin

curia the senate or the amplissimus et splendidissimus ordo; its magistrates sometimes bore the majestic names of praetor, dictator, or censor, in a few cases even of consul.1162 This almost ludicrous imitation of the great city is an example of the magical power which Rome always exercised on her most distant subjects, and even on the outer world of barbarism, down to the last days when her forces were ebbing away. The ease and rapidity of communication along the great routes, the frequent visits of proconsuls and procurators and generals, with the numerous tra

g the great roads.1167 The [pg 206]government post, which was first organised by Augustus on the model of the Persian, provided at regular intervals the means of conveyance for officials, or for those furnished with the requisite diploma. Private enterprise had also organised facilities of travel, and at the gates of country towns such as Pompeii, Praeneste, or Tibur, there were stations of the posting corporations (the cisiarii or jumentarii) where carriages could be hired, with change of horses at each stage.1168 The speed with which great distances were traversed in those days is at first sight rather startling. Caesar once travelled 100 miles a day in a journey from Rome to the Rhone.1169 The freedman Icelus in seven days carried the news of Nero's death to Galba in Spain,1170 the journey of 332 miles from Tarraco to Clunia having been made at the rate of nearly ten miles an hour. This of course was express speed. The ordinary rate of travelling is probably better represented by the leisurely journey of Horace and Maecenas to Brundisium, or that of Martial's book from Tarraco to Bilbilis.1171 About 130 miles a day was the average distance accomplished by sea. Vessels put out from Ostia or Puteoli for every port in the Mediterranean. From Puteoli to Corinth was a voyage of five days. About the same time was needed to reach Tarraco from Ostia. A ship might arrive at Alexandria from the Palus Maeotis in a fortnight.1172 Many a wandering sophist, like Dion Chrysostom or Apollonius of Tyana, traversed great distances on foot, or with a modest wallet on a m

1178 Where a country was still in the cantonal state, the villages or markets were grouped around a civic centre, and a municipal town, such as N?mes or Lyons, would thus become the metropolis of a considerable tract of territory. The colony of Vienne was the civic centre of the Allobroges.1179 In the settlement of the Alps many of the remote mountain ca

d like any other citizen.1185 From the remains at Lambaesis, it is now considered certain that, in the third century, the camp had ceased to be the soldier's home. The suttlers and camp-followers had long gathered in the neighbourhood of the camp, in huts which were called Canabae legionis. There, for a long time, the soldier, when off duty, sought his pleasures and amusements, and there, after the changes of Septimius Severus, he took up his abode. At first the Canabae of Lambaesis was only a vicus; it became, under Marcus Aurelius, a municipium-the Respublica Lambaesitanorum, with the civic constitution which is rendered familiar to us by so many inscriptions.1186 The Legionaries seem to have been happy and contented at Lambaesis; their sons were trained to arms and followed their fathers in the ranks;1187 the legion became to some extent a hereditary caste. Old veterans remained on the scene of their service, after receiving their discharge with a pension from the chest.1188 The

literature. From this source, also, we must seek the only authentic materials for the reconstruction of a municipality of the first century. The Album Canusii and the tablets containing the laws of Malaga and Salpensa have

rst rank is assigned to thirty-nine patrons, who have held imperial office, or who are senators or knights. Next come the local magnates who have been dignified by election to any of the four great municipal magistracies. Last in order are the pedani, that is, the citizens possessing the requisite qualification, who have not yet held any municipal office. At the bottom of the list stand twenty-five praetextati, who were probably the sons of the more distinguished citizens, and who, like the sons of senators of the Republic, were silent witnesses of the proceedings in the Curia. From this body, and from all the magistracies, all persons engaged in certain mean or disgraceful occupations were expressly excluded, along with the great mass of the poorer citizens, the tenuiores. The taint of servile birth, the possession of libertinae opes, was an indelible blot. In countless inscriptions this gradation of rank is sharply accentuated. If a man leaves a bequest for an annual feast, with a distribution of money, the rich patron or the decurio will receive perhaps five times the amount which is doled out to the simple plebeian.1191 The distinction of rank, even in punishment

nsa, in which the most elaborate provisions are made for a free and uncontaminated election by the whole people.1197 And we can still almost hear the noise of election days among the ruins of Pompeii.1198 Many of the inscriptions of Pompeii are election placards, recommending particular candidates. There, in red letters painted on the walls, we can read that "the barbers wish to have Trebius as aedile," or that "the fruit-sellers, with one accord, support the candidature of Holconius Priscus for the duumvirate." The porters, muleteers, and garlic dealers have each their favourite. The master ful

ays the competition for office was undoubtedly keen, and the candidates were numerous. In the year A.D. 4, the year of the death of C. Caesar, the grandson of Augustus, so hot was the rivalry that the town of Pisa was left without magistrates owing to serious disturbances at the elections.1204 But it is an ominous fact that the law of Malaga, in the reign of Domitian, makes provision for the contingency of a failure of candidates. In such a case the presiding duumvir was to nominate the required number, they in turn an equal number, and the combined nominees had to designate a third set equal in number to themselves. The choice of the people was then restricted to these involuntary candidates. The city has evidently advanced a stage towards the times of the Lower Empire, when the magistrates were appointed by the Curia f

e Curia, they proposed questions for their deliberation, and carried the decrees into effect. They had civil jurisdiction up to a certain amount, and their criminal jurisdiction, which, in the third century, had been transferred to imperial functionaries, was, according to the most probable opinion, undiminished at least down to the end of the first century.1211 This judicial power, however, was limi

ck of candidates for admission. Every five years the roll of the Curia was revised and drawn up afresh by the quinquennales. The conditions were those for holding a magistracy, including a property qualification, which varied in different places.1216 The number of ordinary members was generally 100.1217 But it was swelled by patrons and other extraordinary members. The quinquennales, in framing the list, took first the members on the roll of the previous term, and then those who had been elected to magistracies since the last census. If any vacancies were still left, they were filled up from the

l which surrounds a democratic despotism. And even the ordinary [pg 215]decurio had some badges to mark him off from the crowd. The pompous honorific titles of the Lower Empire, indeed, had not come into vogue. But the Curial had a place of honour at games and festivals, a claim to a larger share in the distributions of money by private benefactors, exemption, as one of the honestiores, from the more degrading forms of punishment, the free supply of water from the public sources,1221 and other perquisites and honours, which varied in different localities. The powers of the Curia were also very considerable. The duumvirs indeed possessed extensive prerogatives which strong men may have sometime

6 In particular, the army contributed many new knights to the society of the provincial towns. A veteran, often of humble birth, who had risen to the first place among the sixty centurions of a legion, was, on his discharge with a good pension, sometimes raised to equestrian rank. He frequently returned to his native place, where he became a personage of some mark. Such men, along with old officers of [pg 216]higher grade, frequently appear in

in the provincial towns it was a plebeian institution for the cult of Augustus, and succeeding emperors, modelled on the aristocratic order of the Sodales Augustales, which was established by Tiberius in the capital.1231 The Augustales were elected by vote of the local curia, without regard to social rank, although probably with due respect to wealth, and they included the leaders of the great freedman class, whose emergence is one of the most striking facts in the social history of the

possessed landed property, and had their common places of burial.1236 But their expenditure and their interests were by no means limited to their own immediate society. They regarded themselves, and were generally treated as public officials, ranking next to the magistrates of the Curia. They had the right to wear the purple-bordered toga, and to have lictors attending them in the streets.1237 Places of honour were reserved for them at the games and festivals. Although as a class they were not eligible for a seat in the Curia, or for the municipal magistracies, yet the ornamenta, the external badges and honours attached to these offices, were sometimes granted even to freedmen who had done service to the community. Thus an Augustal who had paved a road at Cales received the ornamenta of a decurio.1238 And another, for his munificence to Pompeii, by a decree of the Curia, was awarded the use of the bisellium, a seat of honour which was usually reserved for the highest dignitaries.1239 But the or

an income from the public baths,1243 from the rent of shops and stalls in the public places, from the supply of water to private houses or estates, and from port dues and tolls. A very considerable item of revenue must have been found in the fee which all decurions, Augustales, and magistrates paid on entering on their office or dignity. Since the reign of Nerva, th

medical treatment is scanty, it is pretty clear that the community was, in the Antonine age, beginning to recognise a duty in making provision for both. Vespasian first gave a public endowment to professors of rhetoric in the capital.1248 The case of Como, described in Pliny's Letters, was probably not an isolated one. Finding that the youth of that town were compelled to resort to Milan for higher instruction, Pliny, as we have seen, proposed to the parents to establish by general subscription a public school, and he offered himself to contribute one-third of the sum required for the foundation, the rest to be provided by the townsfolk, who were to have the management and selection of teachers in their hands.1249 The Greek cities had public physicians 500 years before Christ,1250 and Marseilles and some of the Gal

same for Prusa, and found many signs of loose and reckless finance, and probable malversation.1259 Nicaea had spent ￡80,000 on a theatre, which, from some faults either in the materials or the foundation, was settling, with great fissures in the walls.1260 The city had also expended a large sum in rebuilding its gymnasium on a sumptuous scale, but the fabric had been condemned by a new architect for radical defects of structure. Nicomedia has squandered ￡40,000 on two aqueducts which have either fallen or been abandoned.1261 In authorising the construction of a third the emperor might well emphatically order the responsibility for such blunders to be fastened on the proper [pg 221]persons.1262 In the same city, when a fire of a most devastating kind had recently occurred, there was no engine, not even a bucket ready, and the inhabitants stood idly by as spectators.1263 Pliny was most assiduous in devising or promoting engineering improvements for the health and convenience of the province, and often called for expert assistance from Rome. Irregularities in the working of the civic constitutions also gave him much trouble. The ecdicus or defensor has demanded repayment of a largess made to one Julius Piso from the treasury of Amisus, which the decrees of Trajan now forbade.1264 Just as Pliny had suggested that members of a curia should be forced to accept loans from the State, so we can see ominous

he management of its finances; but the control is rather invited than imposed. At any rate, it has become necessary, owing to malversation or incompetence.1270 Nothing could be more striking than the contrast between the civic bungling exposed by Pliny, and the clear, patient wisdom of the distant emperor. And in another point we can see that the municipalities have entered on that disastrous decline which was to end in the ruin of the fifth century. Wasteful finance is

boast of any great capitalists among its citizens. Its harbour, at the mouth of the Sarno, was the outlet for the trade of Nola and Nuceria. [pg 223]There were salt works in a suburb near the sea. The fish sauces of Umbricius Scaurus had a great celebrity.1274 The vine and the olive were cultivated on the volcanic offshoot from Vesuvius; but the wine of Pompeii was said by the elder Pliny to leave a lingering headache. Mill-stones were made from the lava of the volcano. The market gardeners drove a flourish

osed to have been a cloth market. In a niche stood a marble statue, dedicated by the fullers of Pompeii to Eumachia, a priestess of the city. And Eumachia herself has left a record that she and her son had erected the building at their own expense.1277 The dedication probably belongs to the reign of Tiberius. The visitor who leaves the forum by the arch, at the north-east corner, and turns into the broadest thoroughfare of the town, soon reaches the small temple of Fortuna Augusta, erected in the reign of Augustus. Both the site and the building were [pg 224]the gift of one M. Tullius, who had, like M. Holconius, borne all the honours which the city could bestow.1278 The amphitheatre in the south-east corner of the town, the scene of so many gladiatorial combats recorded in the inscriptions, was erected by two men o

tical kind-a library, a school endowment, a foundation for the nurture of poor children, a temple of Ceres, with spacious colonnades to shelter the traders who came for the great fair.1282 A great lady, Ummidia Quadratilla, known to us not altogether favourably in Pliny's letters, built a temple and amphitheatre for Casinum.1283 From the elder Pliny we learn that the distinguished court physicians, the two Stertinii, whose professional income is said to have ranged from ￡2000 to ￡5000 a year, exhausted their ample fortune in their benefactions to [pg 225]the city of Naples.1284 A private citizen bore the cost of an a

eminently to Athens. He gave an aqueduct to Canusium and Olympia, a racecourse to Delphi, a roofed theatre to Corinth.1290 He provided sulphur baths at Thermopylae for the visitors from Thessaly and the shores of the Maliac gulf. He aided in the restoration of Oricum in Epirus, and liberally recruited the resources of many another decaying town in Greece. He was certainly benevolent, but he had also a passion for splendid fame, and cherished an ambition to realise the dream of Nero, by cutting a canal across the Corinthian Isthmus.1291 But Attica, where he was born, and where he had a princely house on the Ilissus, was

The objects of this liberality are as various as the needs of the community-temples, theatres, bridges, markets, a portico or a colonnade, the relaying of a road or pavement from the forum to the port, the repair of an aqueduct, above all the erection of new baths or the restoration of old ones, with perhaps a permanent foundation to provide for the free enjoyment of this greatest luxury of the south. The boon was extended to all citizens of both sexes, and in some cases, even to strangers and to slaves.1294 There is an almost monotonous sameness in the stiff, conventional record of this vast mass of lavish generosity. It all seems a spontaneous growth of the social system. One monument is erected by the senate and people of Tibur to a man who had borne all its honours, and had left the town his sole heir.1295 On another, an Augustal of Cales, who had recei

nd open spaces.1304 Vespasian, on his accession, found the treasury loaded with a debt of ￡320,000,000. Yet the frugal emperor did not hesitate to begin at once the restoration of the Capitol, and all the other ruins left by the great struggle of A.D. 69 from which his dynasty arose.1305 He even undertook some new [pg 228]works on a great scale, the temple of Peace and the amphitheatre, on the plans projected by Augustus. Titus completed the Colosseum, and erected the famous baths.1306 Domitian once more restored the Capitol, and added many new buildings, temples to his "divine" father and brother, with many shrines of his special patroness Minerva; a stone stadium for 30,000 people, and an Odeum for an audience of 10,000.1307 Trajan was lauded by Pliny for his frugal administration of the treasury, combined with magnificence in his public works.1308 Nor was the encomium undeserved. He made docks and erected warehouses at Ostia; he ran a new road through the Pomptine marshes; he lavished money on aqueducts and baths.1309 His most imposing construction was a

, like the sumptuous seat of Caninius Rufus at Como, had enormous banquet halls for such popular repasts.1314 The Trimalchio of Petronius desires himself to be sculptured on his tomb in the character of such a lavish host.1315 There was in that age no more popular and effective way of testifying gratitude for the honours bestowed by the popular voice, or of winning them, than by a great feast to the whole commune, generally accompanied by a distribution of money, according to social or official grade. It was also the most popular means of prolonging one's memory to bequeath a foundation for the perpetual maintenance of such repasts in honour of the dead.1316 One P. Lucilius of Ostia had held all the great offices of his town, and had rewarded his admirers with a munificence apparently more than equivalent to the official honours they had bestowed. He had paved a long road from the forum to the arch, restored a temple of Vulcan, of which he was the curator, and the temples of Venus, Spes, and Fortuna; he had provided standard weights for the meat market, and a tribunal

s both as hostesses and guests on these occasions. Caesia Sabina of Veii, on the day on which her husband was entertaining all the citizens, invited the female relatives of the decurions to dinner, with the additional luxury of a gratuitous bath.1322 It is curious to observe that at the festivities in which women are entertained, the sharp demarcation of ranks is maintained as strictly as it is among their male relations. Thus, in a distribution at Volceii, the decurions, augustales, and vicani, receive

on the other, drew all classes together by the strong bond of fellowship in a common social life. There has probably seldom been a time when wealth was more generally regarded as a trust, a possession in which the community at large has a right to share. There never was an age in which the wealthy more frankly, and even recklessly, recognised this imperious claim. It would indeed be difficult to resolve into its elements the complicated mass of motives which impelled the rich burgher to undertake such enormous, and often ruinous, expenditure for the common good or pleasure. There was of course much of mere selfish ambition and love of popularity. The passion for prominence was probably never stronger. Direct or even veiled corruption of the electors was, indeed, strictly prohibited by law.1324 But it was a recognised [pg 232]principle of public life that the city should honour its benefactors, and that those whom she had raised to her highest distinctions should manifest their gratitude by some contribution to the comfort or the enjoyments of the people. But, when we have admitted all vulgar motives of munificence, a man would show himself a very unobservant, or else a very cynical student of the time, if he failed to recognise that, among these countless benefactors, there were many animated, not only by a sense of duty, b

ree enjoyment of sumptuous baths, of good water from the Atlas, the Apennines, or the Alban Hills, the right to sit at ease with one's fellows when the Pseudolus or the Adelphi was put upon the boards, the pleasure of strolling in the shady colonnades of the forum or the market, surrounded by brilliant marbles and frescoes, with fountains shedding their coolness around; the good fellowship which, for the time, levelled all ranks, in many a simple communal feast, with a coin or two distributed at the end to recall or heighten the pleasure-all these things tended to make the city a true home, to some extent almost a great family circle. There was much selfishness and grossness, no doubt, in all this civic life. Which later age can cast the first stone? Yet a study of the inscriptions of the Antonine age leaves the impression that, amid all the sharply drawn distinctions of rank, with all the petty ambition and self-assertion, or the fawning and expectant servility, there was also a genuine patriotic benevo

ntly ominous. The number of days which were annually given up to games and spectacles at Rome rose from 66 in the reign of Augustus, to 135 in the reign of M. Aurelius, and to 175, or more, in the fourth century. In this reckoning no account is taken of extraordinary festivals on special occasions.1326 The Flavian amphitheatre was inaugurated by Titus with lavish exhibitions extending over 100 days.1327 The Dacian triumphs of Traj

fed on. [pg 235]From father to son, for nearly seven centuries, the Roman character became more and more indurated under the influence of licensed cruelty. The spectacle was also surrounded by the emperors, even the greatest and best, for politic reasons, with ever growing splendour. The Flavian amphitheatre, which remains as a monument of the glory of the Empire and of its shame, must have been a powerful corruptor. There, tier above tier, was gathered the concentrated excitability and contagious enthusiasm of 87,000 spectators. The imperial circle and the emperor himself, members of high senatorial houses, the great officers of state, the priests, the vestal virgins, gave an impressive national dignity to the inhuman spectacle. A

hese displays.1334 A humane magistrate of Vienne, one Trebonius Rufinus, in the reign of Trajan, having autocratically abolished them in his city, was called upon to [pg 236]defend his conduct before the emperor, and Junius Mauricus had the courage to express before the council a wish that they could be abolished also at Rome.1335 Augustus had, by an imperial edict, restrained the cruel exhibitions of the father of Nero.1336 Vespasian, according to Dion Cassius,1337 had little pleasure in the shows of the arena. But the emperors generally, and not least Vespa

ry was displayed most glaringly the not unusual combination of cruelty and voluptuousness. The remains of Pompeii furnish us with the most vivid and authentic materials for a study of the sporting tastes of a provincial town. It is significant that the amphitheatre of Pompeii, which was capable of holding 20,000 people, was built fifty years before the first stone amphitheatre erected by Statilius Taurus at Rome.1343 It is also remarkable that, although Pompeii is mentioned only twice by Tacitus, one of the references is to a bloody riot [pg 237]arising out of the games of the amphitheatre.1344 In the year 59 A.D. a Roman senator in disgrace, nam

the walls by a professional advertiser, one Aemilius Celer, "by the light of the moon."1347 They announce that a duumvir or aedile or flamen will exhibit twenty or thirty pairs of combatants on the calends of May or the ides of April. There will also be a hunt, athletic [pg 238]games, a distribution of gifts, and awnings will be provided. Programmes were for sale in advance, with a list of the events. The contents of one can still be read scratched on a wall, with marginal notes of the results of the competition. In one conflict, Pugnax, in the Thracian arms, had beaten Murranus the Myrmillo, fighting in the arms of Gaul, with the fish upon his helmet; and the fate of Murranus is chronicled in one tragic letter p. (periit). Two others fought in chariots in old British fashion. And the Publius Ostorius who won was, as his name may suggest, a freedman, now fighting as a voluntary combatant, according to the inscription, in his fifty-first conflict.1348 The tomb of Umbricius Scaurus, on the highway outside the Herculaneum gate, was adorned in stucco relief with animated scenes from the arena of hunting and battle. Hunters with sword an

ng the death or mutilation of 50,000 spectators.1353 An augustal of Praeneste endowed his town with a school of gladiators, and received a statue for this contribution to the pleasures of the populace.1354 A. Clodius Flaccus of Pompeii, in his first duumvirate, on the Apollinaria, gave an exhibition in the forum of bull-fighting, pugilism, and pantomime. He signalised his second tenure of the office by a show of thirty-five pairs of gladiators, with a hunting scene of bulls, boars, and bears.1355 At Minturnae, a monument reminds "the excellent citizens" that, in a show lasting for four days, eleven of the foremost of Campanian gladiators had died before their eyes, along with ten ferocious bears.1356 At Compsa in Samnium, a place hardly ever heard of, the common people erected a statue to a priest of Magna Mater, who had given them a splendid show, and he in turn rewarded their gratitude by a feast to both sexes, which lasted over two days.1357 Similar records of misplaced munificence might be produced from Bovianum and Beneventum, from Tibur and Perusia, and many another obscure Italian town. But the brutal insensibility

c regions of the north and Greece were almost the only provinces in which the bloody games were not popular. The one Greek town where the taste for them was fully developed was the mongrel city of Corinth, which was a Roman colony. In the novel of Apuleius we meet a high Corinthian magistrate travelling through Thessaly to collect the most famous gladiators for his shows.1361 Yet even in Greece, even at Athens, which had been the home of kindly pity from the days of Theseus, the cruel passion was s

left a capital sum of more than ￡10,000 to the community. The interest on two-fifths of this bequest, perhaps amounting to ￡500, was to be spent in giving a general feast on the birthday of the founder's son. The accumulated interest of the remaining three-fifths, amounting, perhaps, to ￡4000, was to be devoted to a quinquennial exhibition of gladiators.1366 An aedile in Petronius is going to spend between ￡3000 and ￡4000 on a three days' show.1367 The cost of these exhibitions, however, must have widely varied. We hear of one in the second century B.C. which cost over ￡7000.1368 The number of pairs engaged appears from the inscriptions to have ranged from five to thirty

him to endure unflinchingly scourging, burning, or death.1376 His barracks were a closely guarded prison, and, although his fare was necessarily good, his training was entirely directed to the production of a fine fighting animal, who would give good sport in the arena. Yet the profession must have had some powerful attractions. Some of the emperors,1377 Titus and Hadrian, themselves took a pleasure in the gladiatorial exercises. Commodus, as if to confirm the scandal about his parentage, actually descended into the arena,1378 and imperial example was followed by men of high rank, and even, according to the satirist, by matronly viragoes.1379 The splendour of the arms, the ostentatious pomp of the scene of combat, the applause of thousands of spectators on the crowded benches, the fascination of danger, all this invested the cruel craft with a false glory.1380 The mob of all ages are ready to make a hero of the man who can perform rare feats of

us grades according to skill or length of service, and a man might rise in the end to be trainer of a troop. Gladiators, like all other callings in the second century, had their colleges. We have the roll of one of these, in the year 177 A.D., a college of Silvanus.1387 The members are divided into three decuries, evidently accordi

atural and affectionate as that of any other class; wives and daughters lamenting good husbands and fathers in the usual phrases, and fathers in turn mourning innocent young lives, cut short by the cruelty of the gods.1389 Sometimes the veteran gladiator might be tempted to return to the old s

social prestige, the municipal law as to the age for magisterial office was frequently disregarded, and even mere infants were sometimes raised to the highest civic honours.1394 The position of patron seems to have been greatly prized, as it was heavily paid for. A great man with a liberal soul might be patron of several towns,1395 and sometimes women of rank had the honour conferred on them.1396 The ornamenta or external badges of official rank were frequently bestowed on people who were not eligible by law for the magistracy. A resident alien (incola), [pg 245]or an augustal, might be co-opted into the "splendid order" of the Curia, or he might be allowed to wear its badges, or those of some office which he could not actually hold.1397 But it is plain that such distinctions had to be purchased or repaid. The city seldom made any other return for generous devotion, unless it were the space for a grave or the pageant of a public funeral.

ed to his birthplace in later years, and was enrolled among its patrons. We may be sure that many a successful man, like the Stertinii of Naples, paid "nurture fees" in the most generous way. But already in the reign of Domitian, as we have seen, legal provision had to be made for the contingency of an insufficient number of candidates for the municipal magistracies. Already, in the reign of Trajan, the cities of Bithynia are compelling men to become members of the Curia, and lowering the age of admission to official rank.1404 Plutarch laments that many provincials are turning their backs on their native cities and suing for lucrative offices at the doors of great Roman patrons.1405 Apollonius of Tyana was indignant to find citizens of Ionia, at one of their great festivals, masquerading in Roman names.1406 The illustrious son of Chaeronea, with a wistful backward glance at the freedom and the glories of the Periclean age, frankly recognises that, under the shadow of the Roman power, the civic horizon has drawn in.1407 It is a very different thing to hold even the highest magistracy at Thebes or Athens from what it was in the great days of Salamis or Leuctra. But Plutarch accepts the Empire as inevitable. He appreciates its blessings as much as Aristides or Dion Chrysostom. He has none of the revolutionary rage which led Apollonius to cast reproaches at Vespasian, or to boast of his complicity [pg 247]in the overthrow of Nero.1408 He has little sympathy with philosophers like Epictetus, who would sink the interests of everyday politics in the larger life of th

ns of Hadrian or Trajan.1411 These officers, who were always unconnected with the municipality, took over the financial control, which had previously belonged to the duumvirs and quaestors. They were often senators or equites of high rank, and a single curator sometimes had the supervision of several municipalities. The case of Caere is peculiarly instructive and interesting.1412 There, an imperial freedman, named Vesbinus, proposed to erect at his own cost a club-house (phretrium), for the augustales, and asked the municipal authorities for a site close to the basilica. At a formal meeting of the Curia, the ground was granted to him, subject to the approval of Curiatius Cosanus, the curator, with a vote of thanks for his liberality. A letter to that official was drawn up, stating the whole case, and asking for his sanction. The

eely accepted and lavishly performed. Nor was this expenditure all devoted to mere selfish gratification. The helplessness of orphanhood and age, the penury and monotonous dulness of the lives of great sunken classes, the education of the young, were drawing forth the pity of the charitable. Munificence was often indeed, in obedience to the sentiment of the time, wasted on

pitiful, half contemptuous, of M. Aurelius, penned, perhaps, as he looked down on some gorgeous show in the amphitheatre, when the Numidian lion was laid low by a deft stroke of the hunting-spear, or a gallant Myrmillo from the Thames or the Danube sank upon the sand in his last conflict.1415 It is the feeling of Dion, when he watched the Alexandrians palpitating with excitement over a race in the circus, or the cities of Bithynia convulsed by some question of shadowy precedence or the claim to a line of sa

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