Seekers after God

er than those which come through the medium of schools or teachers. The spirit of the age; the general tone of thought, the prevalent habits of social intercourse, the political tendencie

onable education, we shall see that the general aspect of the society by which our y

forms of wickedness were practiced with a more unblushing effrontery than in the city of Rome under the government of the Caesars. A deeply-seated corruption seemed to have fastened upon the very vitals of the national existence. It is surely a lesson of deep moral significance that just as they became most polished in their luxury they became most vile in their manner of life. Horace had already bewailed that "the age of our fathers, worse than that of our grandsires, has produced us who are yet baser, and who are doomed to give birth to a

can but glance at it. The worst cannot be told. Crimes may be spoken of; but things monstrous and inhuman should for ever be concealed. We can but stand at the

ted almost without interruption till nothing was left for Rome except the fire and sword of barbaric invasions. She saw not only her glories but also her virtues "star by st

moral of all

same rehearsa

and then glory;

orruption,--bar

with all her

age; 'tis bett

s tyranny hat

all delights, t

could seek,

, Egyptians and Bithynians who had come to Rome with bored ears and with chalk on their naked feet to show that they were for sale, or who had bawled "sea-urchins all alive" in the Velabrum or the Saburra--who had acquired enormous wealth by means often the most unscrupulous and the most degraded, and whose insolence and baseness had kept pace with their rise to power. Such a man was the Felix before whom St. Paul was tried, and such was his brother Pallas,[9] whose golden statue might have been seen among the household gods of the senator, afterwards the emperor, Vitellius. Another of them might often have been observed parading the streets between two consuls. Imagine an Edward II. endowed with absolute and unquestioned powers o

To th

ums they danced

great and te

esar! 'Lo,

ielding skies!'

ocean pebble

ues; or at h

ovince; tastes, d

ycophants. 'A

des and shrines

Ruins

gned to speak a word in the presence of his own slav

ealthy Romans on their magnificence or their pleasures. And as commerce was considered derogatory to rank and position, and was therefore pursued by men who had no character to lose, these overgrown fortunes were often acquired by wretches of the meanest stamp--by slaves brought from over the sea, who had to conceal the holes bored in their ears;[10] or even by malefactors who had to obliterate, by artificial means, the three letters[11] which had been branded by the executioner on their foreheads. But many of the richest men in Rome, who had not sprung from this convict origin, were fully as well deserving of the same disgraceful stigma. Their houses were built, their coffers were replenished, from the drained resources of exhausted provincials. Every young man of active ambition or noble birth, whose resources had been impoverished by debauchery and extravag

m," are etymologically connected with the roots "thrill," "trill," "drill,"

ief." (See Ma

Apicius' diet 'gainst th

w her thus arrayed. (N

on was the length of their beards; supple Greeklings of the Tartuffe species, ready to flatter and lie with consummate skill, and spreading their vile character like a pollution wherever they went: and among all these a number of poor but honest clients, forced quietly to put up with a thousand forms of contumely[14] and insult, and living in discontented idleness on the sportula or daily largesse which was administered by the grudging liberality of their haughty patrons. The stout old Roman burgher had well-nigh disappeared; the sturdy independence, the manly self-reliance of an indust

itiable than that of the wretched "Quirites" struggling at their patro

claimed,--"Silence, ye stepsons of Italy! What! shall I fear these fellows now they

And yet the priests, and Salii, and Flamens, and Augurs continued to fulfil their solemn functions, and the highest title of the Emperor himself was that of Pontifex Maximus, or Chief Priest, which he claimed as the recognized head of the national religion. "The common worship was regarded," says Gibbon, "by the people as equally true, by the philosophers as equally false, and by the magistrates as equally useful." And this famous remark is little more than a translation from Seneca, who, after exposing the futility of the popular beliefs, adds: "And yet the wise man will observe them all, not as pleasing to the gods, but as commanded by the laws. We shall so adore all that ignoble crowd of gods which long superstition has heaped together in a long period of years, as to remember that their worship has more to do with custom than with reality." "Because he was an illustrious senator of the Roman people," observes St. Augustine, who has preserved for us this fragment, "he worshipped what he blamed, he did what he refuted, he adored that with which he found fault." Could anything be more hollow or heartless than this? Is there anything which is more certain to sap the very foundations of morality than the public maintenance of a creed which has long ceased to command the assent, and even the respect of its recognized defenders? Seneca, indeed, and a few enlightened philosophers,

Ep. xxiv. "Nemo tam puer est at C

ragm.

tius, Divin

Aemilius and Gracchus--even generals and consuls and praetors--mixed familiarly with the lowest canaille of Rome in their vilest and most squalid purlieus of shameless vice. They fought as amateur gladiators in the arena. They drove as competing charioteers on the race-course. They even condescended to appear as actors on the stage. They devoted themselves with such frantic eagerness to the excitement of gambling, that we read of their staking hundreds of pounds on a single throw of the dice, when they could not even restore the pawned tunics to their shivering slaves. Under the cold marble statues, or amid the waxen likenesses of their famous stately ancestors, they turned ni

table, whi

tures as the

vomit, and then they eat." But even in this matter

s gluttonies an

bles and Atl

f Setia, Gale

e, and how they

rrhine cups, em

s of pea

things," says Seneca, "are full of iniquity and vice; more crime is committed than can be remedied by restraint. We struggle in a huge contest of criminali

rd, the bowl em

tever i

quisition; T

ion's high te

hian wines, wit

an thirst: for t

eets they prost

ghts, their dign

ve gloriou

and has prevailed so completely in the breast of

s in Dyer's little-re

discontent at a life overflowing with every possible means of indulgence--was extraordinarily prevalent. The Stoic philosophy, especially as we see it represented in the tragedies attributed to Seneca, rang with the glorification of it. Men ran to death because their mode of life had left them no

ean Rosbi

it pour se

ith a perfectly curable illness. The philosophy which alone professed itself able to heal men's sorrows applauded the supposed courage of a voluntary death, and it was of too abstract, too fantastic, and

m facit

m pede

dstrue

s quate

superest

ihi ve

m cruce

be parap

hands w

feet w

back and

teeth f

f Life b

er the

life, an

on the

ble wish;" but it may be paralleled out of Euripides, and still more closely o

eigning in this

ies,' he cried,

ar laboriou

es, and breath

anest hind that

sceptred monarc

atural savage, they dreaded death with an intensity of terror; or, when their crimes and sorrows had m

vening the Emperor Augustus was supping at the house of Vedius Pollio, when one of the slaves, who was carrying a crystal goblet, slipped down, and broke it. Transported with rage Vedius at once ordered the slave to be seized, and plunged into the fish-pond as food to the lampreys. The boy escaped from the hands of his fellow-slaves, and fled to Caesar's feet to implore, not that his life should be spared--a pardon which he neither expected nor hoped--but that he might die by a mode of death less horrible than being devoured by fishes. Common as it was to torment slaves, and to put them to death, Augustus, to his honor be it spoken, was horrified by the cruelty of Vedius, and commanded both that the slave should be set free, that every crystal vase in the house of Vedius should be broken in his presence and that the fish pond should be filled up. Even women inflicted upon their female slaves punishments of the most cruel atrocity for faults of the most venial character. A brooch wrongly placed, a tress of hair ill-arranged, and the enraged matron orders her slave to be lashed and crucified. If her milder husband interfere

Sat. i.

njust if we do not admit that much at least of the life he lived, and nearly all the sentiments

ictor once, no

de vassal, wh

, and temperate,

ll the natio

r provinces,

apine; first

that insul

their sports

sts, and men to

eir wealth, and

daily scene

valient men wo

nerate, by them

ard slaves make

ise Regained,