 CHAPTER XXIII. It would be a great mistake to suppose that skeptism and disbelief in the national religion, which were prevalent enough among the educated classes in the first century AD, had made any way among the uneducated masses the great majority of the people of the empire believed as firmly as their ancestors in the existence of the gods. Evidence of this fact must be sought, not so much in literature, which is misleading because it represents the opinions of cultivated society. As in inscriptions, which directly reflect popular beliefs besides the abundant evidence of inscriptions, there are three considerations which show the strength of the old religion. Its vitality is proved by its power of assimilating elements from Oriental creeds by the creation of new deities such as Anonia, the goddess of the corn market, the defecation of emperors both living and dead, the multiplication of the geni by the resistance which it offered to Christianity for nearly 500 years, and by the remarkable fact that the early Christians themselves never thought of disbelieving in the existence of the pagan gods, whom they regarded as really existing powers of darkness. In regard to the rebellious attitude of educated people, there was a notable difference between the first and second centuries. In the first century men who read and reflected, that did not embrace any definite philosophical system wavered between polytheism and monotheism. Tactitus seems to have believed in the gods, Quintelion veered towards monotheism, but does not seem to have absolutely rejected polytheism, or some to any clear conclusion. Pliny the Elder definitely denied the existence of the gods, and identified God with nature. He held especially that God is not omnipotent. For he cannot kill himself, or make immortal what is mortal, or undo the past, or make twice ten anything but twenty. Some of the Stoics, as we have seen, made a systematic attempt to reconcile the received religion with enlightened thought. They believed in one supreme god, but set under him a number of gods of lower rank, whom they called demons, and with whom the popular gods could be identified, but these streams of doubt and disbelief did not affect the masses. In the second century, we became aware of a great reaction. There was a general return on the part of educated men to the old religion, superstition prevailed, and miracle-mongering became the fashion. This change is clearly reflected in the literature of the Yon, even the younger Pliny, whose philosophic beliefs approximated to Stoicism, believed firmly in dreams, and built two temples. Suenis was childishly superstitious. During an illness of Faustina, Pronto prayed to the god for her health every morning. Alas Talius was extremely conservative in matters of religion, turning to Greek literature. We meet the same Phenorian. Cruelty is one of its distinguishing notes. Lucian and Galeon are the two exceptions. Plutarch is deeply religious. Plusonius is absurdly superstitious. The cruelty of Aristides, the Rhetorican, rises to enthusiasm. It is necessary to be fully aware of this widespread superstition in order to appreciate the satrical wit of Lucian. The prevalence of superstition is illustrated by the story, which the Sophist Phelostitus composed early in the third century of the Wonderworker Apolloius of Tayyana, who having traveled in through the whole world, having learned wisdom from the Brahmas of India and mystic lore from the priests of Egypt, suddenly appeared in Greek lands of the reign of Claudius, wrought miraculous cures, raised the dead, walked through shut doors, rendered himself invisible at pleasure, and performed all kinds of miracles. It is not to be regarded as sober history. It is merely a romance, but the picture which it draws of the general cruelty is probably true to life. Astrology was encouraged both by the higher and lower classes. Noble Austs often kept private astrologers, Mathematicae, to consult about future events. At these seers were subjected of revealing the succession to the principate and were consulted in the case of treasonable conspiracies. The emperors recorded them with superstition, and edicts were issued again and again, banishing them from Italy, but it is proved impossible to suppress them. The emperors, however widely their policies differed in other respects, were all like Solicitus to maintain the religion of the Roman Republic. As became the High Pontiffs, Augustus had received that the close connection of the principate with religion recognized as a political tradition by his successors, the higher classes at Rome, the Senate and the Knights were ready to follow the example of the emperors, and were glad to distinguish themselves from freedmen and foreigners by clinging to the ceremonials of the old Roman religion. The national worship, however, was not held incompatible with foreign cults, which owning to the increased communication between the East and West rapidly made their way into me, and the worship of Isis, in particular, and so securely established itself that she seemed almost to hold a place in the Roman Olympus. We have received Isis, says the poet, Nero's age, into Roman temples. Besides the criticism of philosophy, there were at work other forces hostile to the pagan religion. These were the two rival religions, Judaism and Christianity, being both montheistic. They were both alike diametrically opposed to Pyotheism. The chief Jewish doctrines spread with the Jewish dyspora on the West as well as the East, and commanded attention, popularly indeed the Jews were regarded with the greatest contempt. Their poverty, their dirty habits, their curious customs, such as circumcision, abstinence from pork, and keeping of the Sabbath were a constant theme for ridicule, yet Judaism possessed attraction, especially for women. The Jews were ready to compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and though their efforts in this direction were never attended with such results as the preaching of Christianity, they were not altogether unsuccessful. Popsia, the wife of Nero, was a convert to Judaism. Under Tiberius, Fulvia, a lady of high rank adopted the Jewish faith, and sent gifts to the temple at Jerusalem. It is said that the banishment of the Jews from Rome by Tiberius was caused by the complaints of her husband, Horace, to get rid of his bore, affected respect for the thirteenth Sabbath. Augustus praises grandson Gaius for having passed through Jadin without worshiping in Jerusalem. In the meantime, Christianity was silently spreading in the West as well as in the East. The causes which chiefly promoted its rapid diffusion were its all-embracing character. It opened its fold to sinners and slaves, the attraction which had possessed for women who felt themselves placed on spiritual equality with men, the promise of a future life. When persecution began, the examples of noble martyrdom produced their effect in order to contend successfully with heresies, which were rightful, especially with Gnosticism. The Orthodox majority were forced to form a closed organization, which soon came to be called the Catholic Church. This organization, the state within the state, was ultimately destined to exercise a decisive influence on the empire. But it attracted little notice in the second century for Antoninus and Marcus Aurelius as well as for Trahan and Hadrian. The Christian question was of quite minor importance. We have seen that Christianity was a prohibited religion. This principle had probably been laid down by Domeniton and was affirmed by Trahan in his rescript to Pliny. But the actual practice of emperors varied. Trahan did not discourage information against Christians, but forbade his officials to seek them out. Hadrian tolerated this religion, and there is no evidence that Christians suffered during his principate. Under Antoninus, the same practice seems to have been followed as under Trahan, thus several Christians at Rome who confessed their faith before Lallus Urbicu, prefect of the city, were condemned. And Antoninus, although more sincerely devoted to the established religion than any other empire, was mild intolerant and disliked persecution, and towards the end of his reign, at least, he interfered to prevent it. His interference was called forth by the occurrence of Tomaltes, directed against the Christians in cities of Asia and Greece, for at this time the feeling of hostility against the Christians was very bitter. They were believed, even by such a well-informed person as Fronto to practice. Horrible enormities, the three charges' popularity, brought against them, were sacrilege, incest, and cannibalism. It is remarkable, however, that the government seems to have paid no attention to the second and third charges, evidence of the prevailing Prejudice, against Christianity as found in the writings of Lucian and of the Rhetoric and Aristides. A little later, Celsius wrote a treatise entitled The True Word, to prove the absurdity of the prohibited religion, in consequence of the hostile feeling, popular Tomaltes often broke out in the cities of the East, where the people were enthusiastically devoted to the divine worship of the empire. The mob cried for vengeance on the Christians, many of the Christians were themselves eager for martyrdom, and the official authorities could not protect men who were shown by their own confession, to be guilty of sacrilegium. Thus the Christians were practically exposed to a persecution, which was not organized or ordained by the authorities, but which the authorities, if they maintained the law, could not put a stop to without the special intervention of the emperor. Antoninus intervened and set rescripts to Thessalonica Athens and other cities to prevent these persecutions, a letter purporting to have been written by him to the Provincial Council of Asia, is extant, and though it is a forged document, the very fact of its forgery proves the reputation for toleration and clemency, which he enjoyed among the Christians. They looked upon Antoninus as not only tolerant, but even favorable to their creed. Under Marcus, popular Tomaltes were frequent. It was in a tumult of this kind that Bishop Polycarp of Smyrna suffered martyrdom. This arulis, like Antoninus, was of a tolerant disposition, but his strict sense of duty led him into countenancing persecution. He regarded the resoluteness of the Christians in refusing to take part in the worship of the gods as sheer obstinacy. About 177 AD, he issued a rescript providing for the punishment of new sex, which caused popular tumults by spreading doctrines by which the ill-balanced minds of men are excited. This was not directed specifically against Christianity, but it led to an outbreak at Legendum, and the arrest of a number of Christians, the Legatus of the Gondaitis, did not feel sure how he ought to deal with his prisoners, especially with those who denied the faith, and Marcus issued a second rescript, directing that those who denied should be set free and those who confessed beaten to death. It is clear that the first rescript placed the Christians in a more unfavorable position than that which they had occupied under the rescript of Trahan, for it gave provincial governors a warrant to hunt down the illegal sex to which I applied, whereas Trahan had expressively withheld such a wanton. On their part, meanwhile the Christians made some attempts to protect themselves by repelling the charges which were popularly brought against them in apologetic Christian literature, seeking to remove the prevailing prejudices, came into being, and is a feature of the second century. A certain Aristides addressed the defense of Christianity to Antoninus, and this apology, which was supposed to have been lost, Lyus been lately recovered, but the most celebrated apologies are the two composed by Justin Martyr, a Samaritan born at Claviniopolis. He had been trained in his youth in Greek philosophies and thought that he had found in Platonism a satisfactory solution of the problems of existence, but one day at Ephesus he met an old man by the shore of the sea who revealed to him the doctrines of Christianity. This led to his conversion, encouraged perhaps by the tolerant spirit of Antoninus. He wrote about 140 A.D. an apology for the Christians, which he addressed to Antoninus, Marcus who he calls Verisimus the Philosopher, Lucius Verus the Sacred Senate, and the whole Roman people. He undertakes the defense of the men who are hated and reviled by the whole human race. He calls upon the emperor and his sons to listen to his pleas and judge the cause fairly if they would sustain their reputation of being pious philosophical guardians of justice and lovers of education. The treatise falls into three parts. In the first, the apologist points out that the Christians should not be condemned, up-herd, and shows that their conduct is innocent and harmless. They are good citizens, they render which are caesars, and pay their taxes regularly and punctually. In the second part he professes to prove that the Christians alone teach the truth that the Son of God was really made flesh, and that the pagan myths were invented by evil spirits. In order that the coming of Christ might be rejected as fabulous. In the third part, the mysteries of baptism and the Eucharist, which the pagans were already disposed to regard with suspicion, are explained. The second apology, which appeared some years later, is a sort of appendix to the first. It is called forth by the execution of some Christians by the perfect Lolius erbicus to which reference has been already made. It has been supposed by some that these manifestations of Justin induced Antoninus to send his rescripts to the cities of the east for the prevention of persecution. Justin himself was destined to suffer martyrdom. In 163 AD he was denounced at Rome by a philosopher named Crescent, and sentenced to death by the prefect of the city. Junius Restacus, the stoic, the first Latin apology for Christianity, was the Octavius of Minicus Felix, which probably appeared in the reign of Marcus. Minicus does not appear to have been a Christian in the full sense of the world. He can hardly have believed in the divine nature of Christ, but he recognized that many of the Christian doctrines were true and acceptable, and tried to offer the religion to his pagan friends in a somewhat rationalized form. He was a sort of Christian Seneca. His work is in the form of a Saronian dialogue between Secilus, who attacks the Christians, their works and their beliefs, and Octavius, who defends them. The scene of the conservation is laid on the seashore near Ostia. The Christians had not only enemies without to contend against, they had also heresies within. The three great Gnostic heresies of Basilis, Carpacris, and Valentinus, originated in the reigns of Hadrian and Antoninus. These men, all three of their Oriental origin, propounded different theories to explain the creation of the world, the origin of evil, and the nature of the deity. These theories are medleys combining doctrines taken from all sorts of philosophies and Oriental religions as they illustrate the tendency of electism, which has been already noted as a feature of age, but far the most powerful Gnostic sect, and that most dangerous to the church, was founded by Marchion of Sinope, who came to Rome in the reign of Antoninus. It was known as Marconism, and was characterized by exclusive adhesion to the writings of Saint Paul, and by very vigorous excess-statism. The effect of these heresies was to force the church to define their teaching and explain their doctrines in writing, thus persecution and heresy called into being an ecclesiastical literature, apologetical, on the one hand and pulmical on the other. End of Chapter 30, Section 3, Recording by Chris Caron, Ham Lake, Minnesota. Chapter 30, Section 4 of J. B. Buries, The Student's Roman Empire, Part 2. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Chris Caron, The Student's Roman Empire, Part 2. By John Bagnell Burie, Chapter 30. The Roman World, Under the Empire, Politics, Philosophy, Religion, and Art. Section 4. Architecture The chief architectural works of the various emperors, from Augustus to Hadrian, have been mentioned under the several reigns. There remains to say something here of architecture under the Antonians. Although architects were still as skillful as over, there was at this time a distinct decondence in taste which manifested itself especially in a striving after novel effects by means of gigantic proportions. The most celebrated example of this fashion was the Colossal Temple of Hadrian at Cisacus in Bithynia. This construction occupied the whole reign of Antoninus and was not finished till the first years of Macchus. The rhetorican Aristides, who gave an address on the occasion of his dedication, can hardly find the words to express his admiration of its enormous size. Your city is now the only one which does not need lighthouses or high towers to guide mariners into its harbors. The temple fills, as it were, the whole horizon and marks the quotation of the city. Every block of marble is as big as a complete temple, but the size was the only wonderful thing about it. It does not seem to have been beautiful and its sculptures were poor. But if taste as Cisacus and in other provincial places was so deplorable, better things were not yet forgotten at Rome. One of the most interesting buildings of the second century is the Temple of Antoninus in Faustina on the Sacred Way, the most perfect specimen on the Corinthian style at home. The origin of this temple has given rise to the considerable discussion. It seems most probable that the temple, which Antoninus built to his wife after her deification, 140 AD, was pulled down holier partly after his death and replaced by a new building dedicated both to him and to Faustina. The ten columns are each of a single piece of rich Choristian marble, standing on bases of white marble and supporting capitals likewise of white marble. The edifice was entirely constructed of a tone and marble, and the common system using brick and cheap material in the parts not intended to be seen was not adopted here. Its modest proportions were a protest of good taste against such buildings as the Temple of Cisacus. In Italy, fine buildings were not confined to Rome. In the splendid remains at Verona, we can form some idea of the public buildings which under the empire adorned most Italian cities of this size, but of which now hardly a trace remains. The colonies in municipal towns imitated the capital in the erection of amphitheaters, paths, temples, and bazookae. The same architectural principles which were adopted at Rome were adopted throughout the empire. There were no local schools or provincial styles of architecture. Of the building of ordinary private houses, we know little except as far as concerns Pompey. The style was Greek, but cheap imitation of Greek ornament. And the use of stucco moldings instead of stone were the great feature. In one case, a colonnade has been turned from the doric into the Corinthian order by the addition of stucco capitals laid round the original echinus. An interesting comparison has been instituted between the Pompeian houses and private dwellings, which have been recently discovered at Delos and are probably of much the same date. The difference is that while there was much less decoration by painting, and while the Delian householder was content with plain panels upon his wall with no ornament, the materials of his pillars and the general construction were far superior to the very shoddy building of Pompey. Sculpture, the history of Roman sculpture, is really a continuation of the history of Greek sculpture, for it is a chronicle not of Roman talent, but of Greek talent displayed under Roman influence and in a Roman atmosphere. With the disappearance of Greek freedom, the inspiration which had shaped the form of the best Greek art had also disappeared. But the art of captured Greece had conquered her Roman captors, and their demands called forth a new development of Greek artistic talent. The taste of the Romans for sculpture was part of their love of luxury. It could not be expected that a school of sculptors called into being to supply such a demand should be inspired by any new creative power. They counted themselves with reproducing the motives of the older masterpieces, and they wrought with such wonderful technical skill, with such accurate delicacy, that if we had not works of phyodists, praxitellus, and the other great masters to set beside them, we should think it almost impossible that they could be surpassed. But the art of the Roman school is marked by a striving after effect, which is quite absent from the older works. The works were designed to satisfy the Roman love of ostentation. The artists were affected by the end to which their works were destined, and the works themselves have the stamp of self-consciousness. At the beginning of the Empire, the chief schools were the New Attic and the Asiatic. One of the most admired works of the New Attic school is the Farnus Hercules at Naples. Hercules leans upon this club with his load, which is very beautiful. What bent forward the impression he gives us is that he is conscious of his muscles. In the same way, the Median Venus and the Venus of the capital are conscious of their nudity, the boggiest gladiator of the Louvre, of the Asiatic school expressing most powerfully and most artistically the straining of all the force, who though utmost but distinguished by inelasticity and rapidity of movement, which seems to defy the rigidity of the marble. It's characterized and perhaps spoiled by the impression it gives of a preventated effect, but notwithstanding this feature, these limitations of order-art have a great charm. Nothing can be more beautiful in its way than the sleeping are in a day of the Vatican, where the folds of the rich drapery are treated with singular delicacy. In the reign of Hadrian, which was marked by a renaissance in many kinds of culture, the sculptors invented a new ideal, the emperor's favorite, Antonos, of whom innumerable status were set up after his staged death. He was represented in many ways, but all his images have the same type, the curls overshadowing the brow, a certain sadness in the sensual mouth, the head drooping as if in some melancholy contemplation. Under the Antoninus, there were three famous sculptors of Aphrodius in Caria. Their names were Zeno, Aristius, and Papius. Two centaurs in dark grey marble discovered in the Vila of Hadrian, and now in the Capitoline Museum at Rome. There the work of the two last-name artists, the anatomy is faultless and wonderful skill is shown in treating a very hard kind of marble, but there is no genius or originality displayed in these works. Sculptors had long since given up, even trying to be original. The best that we can look for is purity of the taste combined with skill and execution, such as we find in these centaurs or in the equestrian bronze statue of Marcus Aurelius. The decline of art in the second century is shown by two barbarous fashions, the employment of costly and showy materials, and the construction of images of colossal size. Gold and silver are used for statues, Hadrian introduce a taste for statues in Egyptian style, and cause some to be executed for this through blind vils. Besides the sculpture, which was characteristically Greek, there was also a kind of sculpture which had a Roman character about it, and was called into being by Roman customs. This was portrait statues. The Roman desired to preserve the exact likeness of his ancestors, and the imagines, masks, molded in wax, which he kept in his house, aimed at being close resemblances, not at being works of art, though contact with the Greeks, marble and bronze came to be used instead of wax, but whilst Hellenistic art idealized the individual form and only made such use of drapery, even in the airy disposition of it, a lot the figure seemed to be demanded for the interpretation of characteristics, the Romans started with the idea of representing the individual appearance with the utmost exactness, either in the voluminous drapery of peace. The toga, or in complete war-like pantherlia, hence the portrait statues, are distinguished as toge and thoracite. An example of the latter is the marble statue of Augustus in the Vatican. Thus, Roman portrait statues are an expression of the practical, realistic character of the Roman mind, but as Greek dress began to supersede the native costume of the Romans in ordinary life, portraiture became more ideal, yet without abandoning the lifelike presentation of the individual, in many of the statues and busts of the emperors and empresses, which have been preserved. We have this reality, touched by Iodilism, which is the perfection of portraiture, the seated figures of the woman of Heraclunium. In the Dresden Museum are fine examples of this type. The familiar busts of the emperor have many of them, an individually, evidently lifelike and true, and it has been justly said that in the critical inspection of, for instance, the large collection of portrait busts in the Capitoline, museum is of the highest interest, of high interest in a psychological point of view. One of the most complete sets of plastic illustrations to Roman history being here preserved to us. Portrait images of the emperor and his family were made and circulated in the immense numbers throughout the empire. Fronto writes thus to Marcus Aurelius, 140 AD. You know how, in all the banks, all the shoes, taverns, house fronts, porches and windows, your images are everywhere exposed to view. Most of them truly are badly painted and coarsely chiseled in the plastic representation of historical scenes as on the arch of Titus or the column of Trahan. We have a still more conspicuous illustration of the Roman tendency to realism. The Romans wished to see reproduced what actually occurred to the details of a march, a battle or a triumph, the necessity of grouping for the most part, in as limited a space as was consistent with reality, a large number of figures led to an arrangement of the ravello, which is widely removed from the fine and polished treatment of Hellenic art. Sculpture loses itself in the realm of painting when, taking a deeper background, it arranges its figures on different planes by graduations of modeling, those in the foreground often standing out completely from the surface and thus retaining that substantial form which appeared so essential to the Roman conception. While the remaining figures crowded together gradually recede into the background, the reliefs on the column of Trahan have been described in a previous chapter. Two reliefs of a triumphal arch erected by Marcus Aurelius in the via of Flaminia have been preserved, one of which represents the deification of younger Faustina, who is born aloft by the goddess of victory from the funeral pyre. There is a similar representation of the apothesis of Pius and the elder Faustina on the front of the postman of the column erected to that emperor after his death. The genius of immortality is amounting up from earth, and the emperor and empress are supported on his great wings. Two eagles accompany them in their upward flight. On the earth the two figures in Amazon representing Rome and a young man personifying the campus Marius. On the other sides of the same testament are delineated processions of gallowing horsemen being the disorgio, a series of military evolution executed round the pyre of the dead emperor. The representations of the Marcomatic and aquatic wars on the pillar of Marcus Aurelius do not equal but come very near to the reliefs of the pillar of Trahan. Here must be mentioned the art of cutting gems which reached great perfection in the period of the early empire. This corridor was the great master of this branch of skill under Augustus. There is a splendid cameo at Vienna of enormous size measuring 9 inches wide by 8 high on which Augustus as Jupiter and personified Rome are represented. Our knowledge of Roman painting is almost altogether confined to our mural painting of which abundant and most interesting remains have been preserved. The wall paintings discovered at Rome and those of the Campanian cities Pompey and Herculaneum must be treated separately, but it should be remembered that the object of all these pictures is the decoration of rooms and their pictorial character is subordinate to this end. In style, mutual painting passed through several stages. At first Greek artists used to imitate marble in crustaceans. The next stage was to paint imitations of architecture. Columns and pediments, open rooms were adorned with backgrounds, corridors with landscapes, and the pictures were always copies of things actually existing. One fantastic fashions began to be introduced into the realistic imitations, and then grotesque devices gradually came to take the chief place in wall decoration. Under Augustus, the architect Vitrovius invades against the degeneration in style and describes how reeds take the place of columns in a design ribboned and streamered ornaments with curling leaves and spiral tendrils. Like the place of pediments, diminutive temples are supported upon candelabra, vegetable shapes spring from the tops of pediments and send forth multitudes of delicate stems with twining tendrils and figures seeded meaninglessly among them, nay from the very flowers which the stalks sustain are made to issue demi-figures, having the head sometimes of human beings and sometimes of brutes. Of the mural artists we know nothing personally except of one Lodius, who floors in the time of Augustus, the elder Pliny describes with enthusiasm the kind of wall painting which he brought into vogue, vilius conandus, examples of landscape, gardening, woods, or sacred grooves, reservoirs, straits, rivers, coasts, all according to the heart's desire and admits them, passenger, of all kinds and foot, in boats driving the carriages or riding on asses to visit their country properties. Further more a fisherman, bird catchers, hunters, vintagers, or again he exhibits staley vilus, to which the approach is through a swamp with men staggering under the weight of the frightened woman whom they have bargained to carry on their shoulders and many other excellent and entertaining device of the same kind. The same artist also set the fashion of painting views and that wonderfully cheap of seaside towns in broad daylight it is possible that we have specimens of the work of the Lodius in a celebrated painting of the villa of Livia in Rome which represents the plan of a garden on the four walls of a room so that one sitting in the room might imagine himself in the middle of a garden. This work is an interesting example of that stage mentioned above in which fantastic ornament was introduced but had not driven out the older, more sober style. A brilliant example of that older, sober style approved of five vitre views are the great landscapes illustrating the odyssey which were discovered in excavations on the Esquilion in the middle of the present century, six lectures are complete, and half of the seventh and half of the seventh they represent the episode of the Luster Gones, the story of Cirque and the Nikua, or the visit of Odysseus to the shades. They ran round a room as a freeze, or dado, the panels being divided by bright red plasters. The colors in the paintings are chiefly a yellowish-brown and greenish-blue, but the chief interest which these works possess is an example of ancient landscape painting. The country of the Luster Gones bordered with its jutey-yellow crags, the white-blue inlet of the sea, from the mountains overhanging which the giants hurled destruction upon the Greek ships, the court of Circus Pallas, the mighty opening in the rocks on the seashore which proclaims itself the entrance to the neither world, and with vivid pictorial effect lets a broad ray of light stream into the dark and thicky-peopled Kingdom of Shadows. All these furnished examples of completed landscape painting, for which, up to the time of their discovery, we should not have given any age of antiquity credit. Their date is to the end of the Republic or beginning of the Empire, but they were doubtless copies of older compositions. A famous wall painting, preserved at Rome, is the so-called Adabrandi marriage, representing a bride and bridegroom, with eight other figures on the day of their new pitles. More interesting is the picture of fair women of legend notable for their strange love stories, such as Paphiste and Fadria, preserved in the Vatican gallery, having been removed like many other mural paintings from the original wall, along with the plastered ground. In excavations on the Palestine, striking paintings were discovered, especially in the House of Levia, a landscape in which the tale of Paul Amuse and Galitz is represented may be specifically mentioned. It has been jucily offered that in choosing their mythical subjects, mural pointers were generally guided by the opportunities given for landscape. Turning to the paintings of the companion decorators, which are to be seen in the private houses at Hercamilium, and especially at Pompey, we must first observe the double division of the walls. They are divided horizontally into a dado, generally tinted dark and upper wall, generally light separated by a bright band. They are also divided vertically by painted stripes instead of polysters of the older style, which we saw in the Odyssey landscapes. The middle band is thus divided into panels, painted usually red, yellow, black, or white. The architectural designs are in the fantastic style, condemned by Vitrovius. The pictures themselves have been classified into five groups. According to the part, they play in the general design of the room, or the wall, which they decorate. Landscapes which cover a whole wall, or the four walls of a room, and where the usual divisions into panels is abandoned. Large paintings of which, however more than one separated by polysters, are wrought on the same wall. These are often pictures of the chase, or representations of mountain scenery. Those which look like panel pictures set in the walls, these are very often copies of old pictures. While accessory frescoes, which really form part of the ornamentation, they are often subjects of still life. Pictures which have no frame or background, especially human figures, forming part of no scene, but merely intended as ornament. These airy figures floating about in any unoccupied space are sometimes allegorical. Often satchers, bokchans, or graces. The mythological pictures are always of a light kind. The only ones, perhaps marked by seriousness or solemnity, are those in the house of the poet at Pompey, representing the marriage of Zeus. The sacrifice of Amphigia. The release of crisis, and the rape of brysis. Favorite subjects were the loves of Venus and Mars. The judgment of Paris, Bakus and Adrienne, Narcissus, seeing his reflection in the water, the coloring was bright and gay, and the whole effect was cheerful, and the same spirit is displayed in the genre pictures whose subjects are taken from daily life. These frescoes have been divided into two classes, the Hellenistic and the Romano Companion. The former has a certain idealism which is waiting in the latter. They represent idealized scenes from the ordinary life of women and young people. A woman sits lost in love dreams, and heroes laughing at her side. Or two women are engaged in friendly dialogue, or a girl sirs at her painting, or her music. Scenes of the toilet, too, are not forgotten. Then there are youths and maidens assembled at festive gatherings, or explicit love scenes of more or less levity, as well as groups of poets and actors, and occasionally actual stage scenes, especially one lovely concert place, which breathes the purest spirit of Greek art. The others, the Roman campaign class, are technically very inferior, and are marked by the corest realism that Dutch painters ever reached without the compensation of good work. Scenes from taverns and houses of ill-fame, the incidents of the market, brutal scenes of gladiatorial life are the favorite subjects. The objects of still life, which are represented, are as various as those treated by modern painters, fruit and flowers, dead in life, fish, dead in life, fowl, all sorts of vessels and utensils. Characters also occur, that of Aenus fleeing from Troy, holding his son by the hand, and bearing his father on his shoulders may be mentioned, who the decorative artists were is unknown. It is possible that those who were inspired by Greek traditions were Greeks and the executors of the realistic genre paintings Italian natives. One of the most striking things about the frescoes is their durability, and the question as to the materials and methods used has not been yet satisfactorily answered. Something has still to be said about Mosaic pictures, that is pictures constructed by putting together small cubes of colored stone or glass. It is said that Sulla was the first to introduce this art at Rome, in imperial times the decoration with Mosaic, not only of floors to which it was first applied, but of walls was very fashionable. Mosaic pavements with patterns were of course common. One of the most celebrated and excellently executed Mosaic pictures is that of the battle Isis found in 1831 in the house of the faun at Pompey. It represents the moment at which Darius saves himself from the pursuit of the Macadonius by throwing himself on a horse which is offered to him. The artist has most happily and effectually rendered a complicated battle scene with few materials. So far as we know the heads especially that of Darius, whose face notwithstanding its look of anguish is full of manly fire, are unsurpassed for emotional expression in any work of ancient painting. The large Nile Mosaic of Palestina representing an Egyptian landscape may be also mentioned and number of landscapes on tessellated pavement in Hadrian's villa at Tivo are preserved. End of Chapter 30, Section 4, Recording by Chris Caron, Ham Lake, Minnesota. Chapter 31, Section 1 of J. B. Bury's The Student's Roman Empire, Part 2. This is a LibriVox recording. While LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Student's Roman Empire, Part 2 by John Bagnale Bury, Chapter 31, Roman Life and Manors, Section 1, Life at Rome. Under the Empire, Rome wore a very different appearance from that which she had presented in the days of the Republic. We have already seen that the Principate of Augustus inaugurated a new era in the history of her architecture. Numerous splendid buildings are a feature of Rome in the imperial age. Ovid and Marshall call her Golden Rome. But she has taken upon herself more decidedly, not only in external dignity, but also in the constitution of her inhabitants, the character of a capital of the world. Nations of races met within her gates. Many languages were spoken in her streets. Eastern princes and tattooed Britons, rough Dacians and grim Sugambrians, Arabians and Ethiopians, Thracians and Sarmatians, were to be encountered in the Forum. Hadrian's friend, the Sophist Pullaman, called the city a compendium of the world. The chief portion of the foreign population were Greeks. I cannot bear this Greek city, says a speaker in the satire of juvenile, but he goes on to confess that the Greeks are perhaps not the worst feature. There was also a large multitude of Syrians. The Syrian Orontes has long since emptied itself into the Tiber. Most of these strangers were adventurers who lived by their wits. The versatility of the Greeks was proverbial, and the men who flocked to Rome from Achaia and Macedonia, from Asia Minor and the islands, were ready to undertake any employment that was required and make themselves useful in the houses of the wealthy people who lived in the Esquiline, the west end of Rome. The starveling Greek knows everything. He is a grammarian, a rhetorician or engineer, a painter or a trainer, an auger or a rope dancer, a physician or a magician, anything you please. You will go to heaven if you did him. These Greek adventurers were adepts at ingratiating themselves by flattery and outran the needy Roman competitors in the race for the favor of the great. Rome was the great hunting field for adventurers and knights of fortune. A large portion of this foreign population were slaves, a class which formed more than half the total population of Rome. The number of slaves in all the large towns of the empire was enormous. The price was cheap. A young male slave of good character could be bought for twenty pounds, a girl of six years old for about eight pounds. Notwithstanding the feelings of humanity which began to pervade society in the second century owing partly to the spread of the Stoic doctrine on the subject, the condition of slaves was often very deplorable. This was especially the case with the immense gangs which speculators employed in industry and manufacture. Apuleus gives a harrowing description of slaves working in a mill. These wretches, pale and almost naked, wore rings on their feet. Their skin was discolored and furrowed with the black mark of the lash. Their eyes were nearly blind from smoke and steam. The condition of slaves in private families, and even in small private ergostula, was comparatively exempt from such rigors. The disadvantages and dangers of life at Rome were often enlarged upon by Latin writers. Both Horace and Pliny the Younger contrast the advantage of country life with the miseries and hardships of the capital. Juvenal, in his third satire, represents Umbricius starting for Cume and relating the causes which have driven him from Rome. To begin with, the outbreak of epidemics was a constant occurrence at Rome. Serious pestilences broke out in 23 and 22 B.C. in 65 A.D. after the Great Fire in 79 A.D. just after the eruption of Vesuvius. On the last occasion, ten thousand deaths sometimes occurred on the same day. The most virulent of all was the plague in the reign of Marcus Aurelius. The cities were a much more frequent evil. Moreover, living was very dear at Rome compared with the municipal towns of Italy. The yearly rent of a garret at the top of a Roman lodging house would have purchased a house and garden at Sora or Frusino. The city was consequently full of poor people, humiless, in straightened circumstances, trying to keep up appearances. Men who made a great show were often bankrupt. Besides this great drawback of dear prices, the man of modest means found everything adverse to comfort and tranquility in Rome. During the daytime the ordinary traffic made the streets very noisy, and at night there was the rumbling of the vehicles which were not allowed to pass through the streets by day. Sleep was the luxury of the rich. Even walking in the narrow, crowded streets was a disagreeable and dangerous necessity for the man who was not rich enough to afford to be carried at his ease in a litter. He ran the risk of being struck in the side by planks of timber, of being trodden on by a soldier's hobnail boots, of being crushed to death under a wagon-load of stone. At night a poor man in the streets was exposed to all sorts of dangers. There were the chances of being struck in the head by things thrown out of high windows, and there was the possibility of being assailed by thieves or bitten to stand by quarrelsome bullies, or one of those bands of profligate young men which were brought into fashion by the example of Nero. Those who fell into their hands were unmercifully beaten, sometimes tossed in blankets. Even the rich were glad to leave their houses on the Escoline and Calian for their villas on the companion coast or in the Tuscan hills. Literary men were never tired of contrasting the pleasures of the country with the weariness of town life. Country, when shall I see you, cries Horace, and be restored to my book and sleep and pleasant idleness? Pliny and juvenile echo the same cry. Thus Imperial Rome presents many points of comparison with a large modern capital. Wealth there had the same advantages. There were the same vast inequalities in its distribution and the same glaring contrasts between indigence and luxury. Seneca, who was very rich, was said to have amassed 300 million cestercies, 2,400,000 pounds, within four years. The fortune of the freedman Narcissus was 400,000, 3,200,000 pounds. One of the favorite extravagances, not only of the wealthy, but of men of moderate income, was the possession of a number of houses and villas in different places. Cicero and the younger Pliny, for example, kept up several country houses. In regard to luxury of living, the fashion set by the court exercised doubtless considerable influence, and it is expressly stated by Tacitus that a great change for the better took place after the death of Nero. To illustrate the extravagance of the earlier period, it may be mentioned that Seneca possessed 500 tables with ivory feet, and that at a dinner given in winter to Nero, more than 4,000,000 cestercies, 32,000 pounds, were spent on roses. A gourmand named Apisius, who lived in the time of Augustus and Tiberius, became proverbial for the pleasures of the table. But although Vespasian's moderate example seems to have brought about a reaction and the emperors of the second century were simple in their way of living, the age of juvenile seems to have had many a rival of Apisius. In a letter to his friend Perseus, inviting him to a dinner of simple fare, suggested perhaps by the invitation of Horus to Torquitus, juvenile satirizes the extravagant dinners of the rich more vehemently than Horus. Under the empire the relation of patron and client still played a part in Roman life, but clients had no longer the same political importance for the patron as under the Republic, and consequently their morning visits were less welcome. The habit of receiving retainers, however, was kept up by the wealthy, but the patron instead of occasionally asking the client to a right dinner, senorecta, as it was called, used to give him at the morning reception a dole of food which he carried away in a small basket, sportula, whence the dole itself was called sportula. The next step was to convert the gift in kind into a gift in money, and the amount fixed by custom was one hundred quadrantes. Domation made an attempt to revive the old practice of the senorecta, but did not succeed in introducing it permanently. If we can trust the satirist juvenile, many persons of low degree supported themselves entirely on the doles of patrons, and even men of high position did not disdain to accept the sportula. The poor client was glad to buy his patron's hospitality by all arts in kinds of flattery and obisqueousness, but in the role of the parasite the Roman was actually less successful than the more versatile Greek. Juvenile has given us a vivid and doubtless heightened picture of the life of the needy parasite, who was in his day as marked a feature of Imperial Rome as in Menander's day of Republican Athens. Trebius, in order to fulfill occasionally a vacant place at a table of his rich patron, Vero, has to break his sleep before dawn and expose himself to the cold night air in order to attend an early morning reception and present himself to the patron before his rivals. For two months perhaps he goes without an invitation. At length he receives one. At the dinner for which he pays so dear, he gets the worst wine while his host drinks choice setine. The cup of Vero is jeweled, that of Trebius is of cracked glass, or if he too has a jeweled one placed before him, a slave stands by to see that he does not steal it. The patron and his dependent do not even drink the same water. Trebius has to eat a piece of moldy black bread, and if he ventures to help himself from Vero's loaf, the slave makes him restore it. Vero eats lobster stewed with oil of venom from, choice truffles and fruit. Trebius, a common crab dressed with lamp oil, wretched fungi, and rotten apples. But it is not from stinginess that Vero treats the parasite thus. No, he has bent on mortifying him. You think you are a free guest. He knows that you are the slave of the savor of his kitchen. But the sadderist also complains that patrons are less generous than they used to be. Among the Vero's of his day there are none who bestows such generous presence on their modest friends as Seneca or Piso in the time of Nero. Years later, Lucian draws a similar picture of the parasite Nigranus. It would be a mistake to draw any conclusions as to the morality of Roman society from the stories which are told by the ancient writers of the profligacy of emperors like Gaius or Nero or from the licentiousness of Messalina. This occasional wickedness in high places might have been compatible with an average standard of morality among the mass of the senators, the knights and the people. We must also beware of taking too literally or applying to generally the heightened pictures of juvenile. He devotes his longest satire to a description of the depravity of the women of his day. But most of the follies which he lashes are common to all ages. He describes the women who fall in love with actors and gladiators, heart players and flute players. Those who affect Greek and profess to be quite ignorant of Latin. Those who tyrannize over weak husbands and those who have eight husbands in five years. He satirizes their love of finery, their love of gossip and their pride of birth. He ridicules the literary matron who, when she goes out to dine, institutes comparisons between Virgil and Homer. All the philologists and rhetoricians are hushed by her chatter, which is like the noise of basins and bells. Messalina is introduced as a type of female licentiousness, and Hippa, the wife of Vayento, who eloped to Egypt in the company of Sergius, an ugly gladiator, is mentioned as an instance of vulgar passion in noble dames for men of mean calling. Of all the follies of Roman ladies, that which we can least understand is the practice of the gladiator's art. Women of the lowest class often appeared in the arena, and no one thought anything of it. But ladies of high family, both under Nero and under Demetian, dressed as gladiators with helmets and grieves, and fought in the amphitheater. This scandalized juvenile, but Marshall speaks of it with an approving smile. The superstition of women is ridiculed by juvenile, who describes them as ready to fall into the influence of every Oriental imposter. Priests of Isis, Jewish hags, Caldean astrologers, Haru spices from the East are all consulted and believed. The cruelty of ladies to their slaves is portrayed vividly. If they get up in a cross temper, their maids and tiremen, Cosmite, are flogged. Some, he says, pay so much as a year for the use of the public torturers in order to punish their slaves. Juvenile seeks for the causes of the degeneracy of morals and indicates three. One, the evils of a long period of peace which induces idleness and luxury. Two, the great increase of wealth which produces the same effects. And three, the influx of foreign nations who brought with them effeminacy and debauchery. Since Roman poverty departed, he says, every lust is in our midst. It can be no doubt that these were the chief causes of the difference between Rome in the third century B.C. and Rome in the first century A.D. The close connection between the three causes assigned is evident. Schools and Education At Rome, education was not compulsory but it was general. The fees at the elementary schools were low, not more than 15 shillings a year. Under the Empire, men of the highest sent their children to public schools. Members of the imperial family, however, were always taught at home. The elementary school of the literator, or Ludin Magister, must be distinguished from the advanced schools of the Gramaticus and the Rhetor. The schools seemed to have been held in porticoes opening on the street and the noise of the classes was often a nuisance to the neighbors. Marshall assigns the din of a school near his lodgings as one of the causes which drive him to seek rest at his nomen-tained villa. Children began to attend school at about seven years old and boys and girls were taught together. The school year began on the 24th of March, the day following the five-day festival of Minerva, called Quincortis, and the new pupil then paid his first fee, which was called Minervale. These five days in March and the week of the Saturnalia in December were the only school vacations. But the noon dine were always free days. School began before dawn, the boys used to bring their own lamps. There was an interval for breakfast prandium. Children were accompanied to school by a servant called the pedagogus, who had control over them and probably superintended the preparation of their lessons. Another slave, the Capsarius, carried the books. The discipline both of the literator and of the grammaticus was strict. We hear much of the schoolmaster's feral. Orbillius, the schoolmaster who taught Horus, was famous for his severity. On leaving the literator, children who were destined to have a higher education could go on to the grammaticus who gave instruction in the recitation and interpretation of the Greek and Latin poets. Acquaintance with Greek began at the age, and we read of a Greek maid being kept to exercise young children in talking the language, just as English children had French and German nursery governesses. Great stress was laid on the art of elocution. The master used to read passages aloud, and the pupils used to repeat them after him and practice the right emphasis. The meaning was explained in great detail. Of Greek poets, Homer and Menander were the favorites. Stadius gives a list of those who were read at his father's school in Naples. It includes Hesiod and Pindar, Elkman, Stesachorus and Sappho, Sophron Calomacus and Lycrafron. Of later poets, Virgil, Horus and Lucan were the most popular in the first century. Stadius seems to have been read at schools in his own lifetime. In the second century, the school course was affected by the elocution and taste, and early writers were introduced, such as Aeneas and Plautus. Music and geometry also came into the encyclic education, which was preliminary to the study of rhetoric. At the schools of the rhetoricians, prose authors were studied instead of the poets, and the art of prose composition and declamation was practiced. Do you teach to declaim, was a way of asking, are you a student? The classes were very large, the lecturer sat in a high chair, cathedra, and the pupils sat on benches, subcellia, or stood. The subjects of the declamations frequently turned on historical questions, such as, should Hannibal have marched on Rome after his victory at Cannae, or, advice to Sulla to abdicate. Such declamations were called Swasaurier and are distinguished by the controversy, which handled legal questions. Juvenal satirizes the tedious sameness of the subjects discussed in these essays. The parents used to come on special days to hear their sons declaim. End of Chapter 31, Section 1. Chapter 31, Sections 2 to 3 of J. B. Bury's The Student's Roman Empire, Part 2. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Student's Roman Empire, Part 2 by John Bagnell Bury Chapter 31 Roman Life and Manners, Sections 2 to 3 Section 2, Houses The houses in Rome were of two kinds, Domus and Insulae. The Domus was a private house generally inhabited by one family and of not more than one story above the ground floor. The Insulae was a building of three or four stories, let out in flats or rooms, and inhabited by people of small means. The Insulae was so called because it was detached and stood like an island surrounded by streets. The ground floor was generally let out in shops. The garrets of the fourth floor were called Senaculae. The upper stories had windows and sometimes balconies from which people could shake hands across the narrow streets, and sometimes the higher stories projected over the lower. These houses were often cheaply and badly built by speculators. They were generally of wood and they were constantly either tumbling or being burnt down. Augustus made some attempt to remedy these evils and fixed a limit for the height but Nero was the great reformer. He ordained that the outer walls should be built of peperino stone and introduced other improvements. It has even been suggested that he caused the great conflagration in order to be able to carry out his reforms. In the Domus, the dwelling of the rich man, most of the rooms were on the ground floor. The two most important rooms were the Atrium, which was the original nucleus of the house and the Peristillium, both open to the sky. The hearth beside which the household gods were kept was in the Atrium where also were arranged the ancestral images, imaginaries. The space exposed to the rain in the center of the Atrium was called the Impluvium and in it was a marble foundation. The Peristillium had likewise a foundation in the center. An open space in the middle was used to build towers and surrounded by columns. The dining rooms, sitting rooms with drawing rooms, bedrooms and kitchens opened out from the Peristillium which was kept as a sort of private court while the Atrium was used as a recreation room. The floors on the ground floor were generally of stone or pavement, that is, pieces of stone and brick beaten down to a smooth surface. In the upper stories the walls were usually decorated with paintings on a prepared white ground. But wealthy and fashionable people at Rome used to line their walls with marble slabs or adorn them with mosaics of brilliant colors. Ceilings were ornamented with paintings or relief in stucco work. Sometimes they were divided into small sunken panels resembling lakes, hence the name Lacunar. There were windows in the upper story into the street and into the inner court, but the ground floor rooms were chiefly lit from the Atrium and Peristillium. There seems to be little doubt that glass and other transparent substances were used in the windows. The rooms were heated by braziers or by pipes of hot air. Of the imperial palaces we know most about the Flavian Palace of Domitian, of which there are considerable remains on the Palatine. It's not a comparatively modest dwelling place, like the House of Augustus, but consisted of a number of stately rooms for public purposes. At one end is a very splendid throne room with a lorarium or imperial chapel on one side and a basilica for judicial business on the other. At the other end of the Peristyle is the triclinium for state banquets, and beyond it is a series of stately halls which may possibly be libraries and an academia for recitations and other literary purposes. A sort of nymphaeum, a room containing a fountain with flowers, plants and statues of nymphs and river gods was placed at one side of the triclinium if not on both so that the murmur and coolness of the water and the scent of the flowers might refresh the wine-heated guests. The whole of this magnificent palace was adorned with the greatest richness, both of design materials with floors, wall linings and columns of oriental marbles, alabaster and red and green porphyry. Even the rows of colossal statues which decorated the throne room were made of the very refractory basalts and porphyry from the quarries of Egypt at a cost of an almost incredible amount of labor. Remains of these were found early in the last century. The position of the Flavian Palace is very remarkable. It is built on an immense artificial platform which bridges over a deep valley or depression in the summit of the Palatine. The Roman villa or country house of the rich was generally situated on the seashore or among the hills for the sake of coolness. The Laurentine villa of Pliny overlooked the Tyrrhenian sea. It consisted of numerous rooms of various forms and dimensions and designed for various uses united by open galleries. Most of these chambers commanded as may be supposed a sea view and enjoyed nearly a southern aspect. Some were circular and looked forth in all directions. Others semi-circular and screened only from the north. Others again excluded the prospect of the water and almost its noises. Some faced west, some east to be used at different seasons or even different times of the day. Behind this long line of building, the outward appearance of which is nowhere indicated by Pliny in his description of it but which seems in no part to have risen above the ground floor, lay gardens, terraces and covered ways for walking and riding. And among these were placed also some detached apartments such as we might call summer houses. While still farther in the rear rose the primeval pine woods of the Lation Coast applied the baths with fuel and formed a chief recommendation of the locality. Pliny's villa among the Tuscan hills seems to have been still more extensive. He describes in a letter the silvan beauties of the spot, the wide range of plain and meadow stretching before it to the Tiber, the slope of leafy hills on the skirt of which it lay, the massy amphitheater of the Apennines behind it. In the villa, almost every apartment is substantially independent of the rest and only slightly connected with them by suites of open galleries. The tuscum seems to have abounded also in gardens and plantations. Its situation is a little bit different from what it seems to have been in the past. In the villa, almost every apartment is substantially independent of the rest of the plantations. Its situation being better adapted for such luxuries than the seashore. But neither in this case is there any mention of the exterior appearance nor any hint that the reader might be expected to derive pleasure from the description of it. It is evident that an architectural design did not enter into the ideas either of Nero when he flaunted over Rome the villa by the sea or on the hillside. The villa of Hadrian at Tibor was laid out as a sort of miniature world. It contained a representation of the underworld and a number of buildings called after the Lyceum, the Academy, the Prytanium, and the Posail Stoa at Athens. The Vale of Tempe was imitated with artificial mountains. There were libraries, temples, and a small theater. They were full of works of art, some of which have been recovered in modern excavations. Section 3, Meals The first meal of the day among the Romans was the eontaculum or breakfast generally taken about the third hour. It was very light, generally consisting of bread seasoned with salt or honey or dipped in wine. Schoolboys in some cases had their breakfast at Cock Crow The next meal was the perandium corresponding to our lunch or more nearly to the French déjeuner. It was taken at the sixth hour, about eleven o'clock and might be as simple as a piece of bread or consist of a number of courses of fish, flesh, and fowl. The regular hour for the seina or dinner, the chief meal of the day was the ninth, but it was often later. A fashionable entertainment was marked by the 12th of the hour and early dining was considered a sign of luxury. The dinner always lasted a long time. Three hours was considered a moderate length. The ordinary Roman of modest means dined in the atrium with his wife and children, but rich men had separate dining rooms called triclinia. The men reclined on electus or couch, the women sat. An elaborate seina consisted of three parts, the gustatio, somewhat like the zakuska of northern Europe, consisting of shellfish, olives, eggs, and other hors d'oeuvres to stimulate the appetite. Then the seina proper of several courses of all sorts of vions, after which offerings were made to the layers, and the third part of the dinner called mensei seconde, second course was served, consisting of pastry and fruit and corresponding to our sweets and dessert. Augustus used to give three courses, furcula, trays of vions or at the outside six. Juvenal mentioned seven as luxurious. The arrangement of the dishes on the trays and the carving of the joints became with the development of luxury, a special art. One tray often contained a large number of vions. At the dinner of Trimalchio, described by Petronius, a furculum was served with twelve dishes of fish, meat, fowl, vegetables and fruit, arranged to represent the signs of the zodiac. And when the guests seemed disappointed, the upper part was removed in richer dishes such as hairs, capons were discovered underneath. The Romans ate with their fingers and hence used to wash their hands after each course. They wiped their hands on pieces of bread which were afterwards thrown to the dogs. At dinner parties nine was the usual number. Three couches, lectae, were arranged on three sides of a square and each accommodated three people. To make up parties it was usual for invited guests to bring uninvited persons who were called shadows, umbre. Sometimes the host asked a client to fill the vacant place. Thus at the dinner of Nesidienus, described by Horus, there were nine at the table and Messenas, the guest of the evening, had two shadows. The Romans dressed for dinner, the garment consisting of a colored tunic vestus sanatoria. When they reclined, they took off their sandals which the guests gave into the charge of their slaves whom they brought with them for the purpose. The Latin for he rose from the table is he called for his sandals. During the meal the guests were entertained by reading or music, acroama. Literary hosts used often to bore their parties by reading their own compositions. At the entertainments of the fashionable there were frequently dancing girls and singing girls to amuse the guests by their performances which were of a very loose kind. Dancers from Gades were especially in request. Juvenal tells his friend Perseus whom he invites to a modest meal that he will not see girls singing the lascivious songs of Gades to the sound of castanets but will hear a recitation of style and Homer. It was a frequent practice at the end of entertainments to give presents to the guests to carry home with them. These were called apapharetta. The style of the slaves who waited was considered important by fashionable people. Africans and handsome Greeks from Asia Minor seemed to have been the favorites. They were either dressed in showy silk or went without clothing of any kind. It was the custom for the guests to address the slaves in Greek. In third-rate society manners and meals were often coarse and violent. Horace says that to fight with cups is a custom which should be left to the Thracians but it seems to have been common in the civilized world. The vulgar freedmen Trimalchio in the satire of Petronius throws a cup at the face of his wife Fortunata who has just called him a dog. They throw the birds at one another and tear one another's beards. Zenothemus flings a cup at his antagonist and, missing him, his wife Fortunata throws a cup at the face of his wife Fortunata who has just called him a dog. They throw the birds at one another and tear one another's beards. Zenothemus flings a cup at his antagonist and, missing him, hits the bridegroom. Then the women throw themselves between the opponents and the cynic Alcidimus uses his club with great effect. A general fray ensues and cups are freely hurled. Allowing for exaggeration this description shows that scenes of the kind sometimes occurred. The public banquets Convivia Publica given by the emperors to their friends and invitation to these was considered a great honor by senators of the highest rank. Statius was so elated at being invited to dine with Domitian that he wrote a special poem on the occasion. The wives of senators were sometimes present, as for instance at a banquet given by Otho. Claudius used to give large dinners constantly to about six hundred guests. A story is told that on one occasion a guest was suspected of having carried a gold drinking cup and that on the next day an earthen cup was set before him. The fair provided by Augustus was very simple. That of Tiberius was said to have been hardly decent. Under the three subsequent emperors there was a reign of luxury. Vespasian's dinners were costly without being extravagant. Gold plate was a privilege reserved for the emperors since 16 AD. All the guests appeared in the toga and all irrespective of rank enjoyed the same fare. The treatment of the guests by the various emperors at their state banquets was very different. Augustus in his role of a true princess was friendly. Trajan also showed himself very sociable and the Antonines doubtless knew how to make their guests feel at home. Domitian was condescending according to his admirer Statius, Hadi according to the adverse testimony of Pliny who states that he used to dine by himself before midday and sit at the public banquet as a mere spectator. A curious story is told of a grim practical joke which he played upon a select number of distinguished guests. He decorated a room in funereal black. The walls and ceiling and the floor were all black and stone seats also black were arranged in order. The guests were ushered in at night without their attendance and saw a pillar like a gravestone at the head of his seat and his own name graven on it and a sepulchral lamp hanging above it. A band of black and naked boys then entered, danced round the room with hideous gestures and offered the guests fragments of food such as are presented to corpses. The guests were terribly frightened. They expected death at every instant and Domitian spoke of funereal subjects but presently when the emperor sufficiently amused with their terror he ordered that the silver cup and plate on which the food had been served should be given as a present to each guest and likewise the slave who had waited on him. End of Chapter 31, Sections 2 and 3 Chapter 31, Section 4 of J.B. Bury's The Student's Roman Empire, Part 2 This is a Libra Box recording. All Libra Box recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibraBox.org. The Student's Roman Empire, Part 2 by John Bagnell Bury Chapter 31, Roman Life and Manners Section 4, The Aqueducts the Baths During the last three centuries of the republic and under the empire Rome obtained her supply of water from the surrounding hills by means of aqueducts some of which have been mentioned in the forgoing pages. When Frontinus wrote his treatise on the aqueducts of the city of Rome there were nine aqueducts of which four dated from the republican period. One, Aquaepia, begun by Apeus Claudius the censor, B.C. 312. Two, Añovetis, derived from the river Año begun by M.Curinus Dentitus censor in B.C. 272. Three, Aquamarcia, built by the Praetor Q. Marcius Rex in B.C. 144. Four, Aquatepula built by the censor's Servilius Capio and Cassius Longanus, B.C. 127 and so called because its water had a slightly warm temperature. The courses of the Aquaepia, the Añovetis and the Aquamarcia were almost entirely underground. The Aquamarcia, which began south of the Via Valeria at a distance of 36 miles from Rome, supplied the coldest and purest water of all. There are still remains of it to be seen near Tivoli. It was repaired by Agrippa and Augustus reinforced its supply from a new spring, which he connected with it by the Aquagusta. The two new aqueducts of Agrippa, 33 B.C. Five, Aquajulia and six, Aquavergo have been mentioned in an earlier chapter. The Aquajulia came from a source 2 miles to the right of the 12th milestone in the Via Latina. It joined the Aquatepula and afterwards both joined the Aquamarcia so that the three channels traveled for some distance one above the other on the same substructions and entered Rome on an arch, now the Porta San Lorenzo, erected Augustus in 5 B.C. The Aquavergo, renowned like the Marcia for the purity of its water, was designed to supply the baths of Agrippa. Seven, the Aqua Alsiatina derived from the Lacus Alsiatinas was on the other side of the Tiber. The water was remarkably bad and was probably intended for the Naumachia, the base in which Augustus made for sham sea fights. Eight, the Aquaclaudia and nine, the Año Novus were begun by Gaius and finished by Claudius 52 A.D. The length of the former which began near the 38th milestone on the Via Subalensis was between 40 and 50 miles and about a third of it was above ground resting on arches and substructions. The Año Novus which began a few miles further on the same road was still longer nearly 60 miles and higher but less of it was above ground. These two aqueducts joined near the city where they entered one above the other. Of the Claudian Aqueduct whose arches still remain in the Capagna the Elder Pliny wrote thus quote, if anyone will carefully calculate the quantity of the public supply of water for baths, reservoirs, houses, trenches gardens and suburban villas and along the distance which it traverses the arches built the mountains perforated, the valleys level, he will confess that never was anything more wonderful in the whole world, end quote. It has been estimated that the water supplied by these nine aqueducts was, quote, equal to that carried down by a river 30 feet broad by six deep flowing at the rate of 30 inches a second, end quote. And that if the population of Rome was a million the supply was equivalent to 332 gallons ahead daily. To these aqueducts Trajan added a tenth, the Aquatrajana. It is interesting to observe that some of the ancient aqueducts still supply Rome with water, namely the Aquavergo still called by the same name Aquavergine restored by Pope Pius IV the Aquapaola named after Pope Paul V who constructed it by uniting the Aquatrajana and the Aqua Alsiatina and the Aquamarcia Pia restored in 1870. Splendid aqueducts were built also in other parts of the empire and perhaps the finest remains of these achievements of Roman engineering are to be found at Sokovia in Spain and at Namausus, the Pont du Gard. The channel specious through which the water flowed had a slight slope. It consisted of stone or brick lined with cement and was provided with vent holes. Sometimes the water did not pass through the specious itself but through pipes, pistulae of pottery or lead laid along inside the specious. At the source of the aqueduct there was a large reservoir, Piscina and other reservoirs were placed at stages along the course. When the water reached the city it flowed into a large chamber from which it was conducted into three smaller basins one of these being filled from the overflow of the other two. The two outer basins supplied private houses and the public baths the middle one the public fountains and ponds so that in the case of a deficiency in the supply the most useful purposes were first satisfied. These reservoirs formed what was called the chief castellum and were usually contained in a handsome building. From the chief castellum the water was diverted into lesser local castella distributed over the regions of the city. The castella were either public or private the former supplied the circus and amphitheaters, the public fountains the baths and the praetorian camp. The private castella were built at the joint cost of the families who used them but were under the supervision of the public officers who controlled the aqueduct's curatoris aquarum. The water was measured by the size of the tube calyx through which it passed out of the castellum. A very large number of officials were employed in managing the water supply in keeping the aqueducts in repair and in preventing fraudulent diversion of the water. The curatoris aquarum had 460 slaves under them in the time of frontanus. They were divided according to their duties as follows. One, the volici who managed the pipes in the tubes. Two, the castellari who had charge of the castella. Three, the circuitoris who went around and inspected the aqueducts. Four, the cilisari who took up the pavement and laid it down again when subterranean pipes had to be examined. Five, the tectoris who attended to the masonry. This will give an idea of the elaborate organization which the emperors developed in the city with water. Baths In early times, the Romans made use of the bath only for health or cleanliness. They washed their arms and legs once a day and their whole body every week. But in later times, bathing came to be regarded not merely as a necessity but as a luxury and in the imperial period was a conspicuous feature of Roman life. At first, public baths were only intended for the use of people of low rank who were unable to have the luxury of a bathroom at home. But before the end of the Republic people of all classes resorted to the baunier and the emperors themselves used to bathe in public with their fellow citizens. The bath was a very cheap luxury which the poorest men could indulge in as the fee was only a quadrant the smallest Roman coin. Women had probably to pay a higher price. The usual time for bathing was about the eighth hour before the chief meal of the day. But idle and luxurious people often bathed several times a day. Gormans used to take a bath after eating as well as before in order to get a fresh appetite. This practice is ascribed for instance to Caligula and to Nero. And a contemporary writer, Pliny the Elder considered it partly the cause of the degeneration of morality. It was an ordinary practice in the time of Cicero to take a medics for the same purpose. The number of public baths some built by the state others by private speculators was enormous. Agrippa is said to have added 170 to those already in existence. By the beginning of the fourth century their number was nearly 1000. The bathing did not consist merely of a hot or cold bath but was a long process out of our Turkish baths only more elaborate. Hot air was employed as well as water. The chief rooms of a bath were the apoditarium or stripping room in which the bathers took off their garments and committed them to slaves who were proverbial for their dishonesty. The oleothesium or oil room where the unguents were kept. The frigidarium or cold room for those who only wished for cold baths, the tepidarium was a chamber heated by moderately warm air in which the bathers sat and was anointed before proceeding into the hot atmosphere of the calderium. In some rich baths there was a special anointing room unctorium. The calderium was heated by a hypocost over which its floor was suspended. At one end of the room in the old baths of Pompeii was a bath of warm water at the other end a tub of cold water which was poured over the head before leaving the room. In some baths there was a sweating chamber of higher temperature known as the laconicum which was a round room with a domed ceiling. When he had duly perspired the bather was scraped all over with a strigel, a sharp instrument of bone or metal whose edge was softened with oil. The rich man was scraped by his slaves whom he brought with him for the purpose. The poor man scraped himself. It was a disagreeable experience for fastidious people to bathe at the same time as those who used rank-smelling oil. After anointing the bathers remained some time in the tepidarium so as not to pass suddenly into the cold air. This general description applies both to the ordinary baths Baunier and to the special kind of baths called thermae which were introduced by Agrippa and formed a feature of imperial Rome. Baths were only a part of the thermae which were really a Roman adaptation of a Greek gymnasium. In the period with which we are concerned four great thermae were erected at Rome, those of Agrippa, Nero, Titus and Trajan. These were extensive and splendid establishments fitted up with conveniences for every exercise and pursuit. Here the youth of Rome could learn and practice athletics. Here there were cool, colonnaded cedre where the idler could lounge and talk where the philosophers could lecture and the poets recite their verses. It was usual for clients to escort their patrons to the public baths and these large crowds of shabby and dirty retainers were a nuisance to others. At the Baunae, not in the thermae there were separate sets of baths for women, a story as told of a council's wife who wished to bathe in the men's asylum in Campania and in order was consequently issued that all the men should be turned out. The men's establishment was probably better provided with conveniences than the women's. But although there were separate departments it was a common practice in the imperial age for men and women to bathe promiscuously in the same baths. Respectable women of course did not do so, but the habit was so widespread that both Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius had to make attempts to check the scandal. Rich men had private baths Baunae in their own houses, though they used to frequent the public baths also. Juvenal mentioned 600,000 cestercies 4800 pounds as a large price for building a set of bathrooms. The baths of Fronto cost more than half that sum, 2800 pounds. End of Chapter 31, Section 4