 CHAPTER VIII. The period of the Antonines abounded with libraries and schools and authors, with a reading public and all the outward tokens of an educated love of letters. However has there been more enthusiasm for high culture, more careful study of the graces of a literary style, more critical acquaintance with good models, more interchange of sympathy between professors of the different schools, and yet there were but scanty harvests from all this intellectual husbandry. There was no creative thought evolved, no monument of consummate art was reared, no conquest of original research achieved. The Scribendi cacoyates, the menia for scribbling, poured forth fast quantities of literary matter, but most of it fell at once stillborn, and much of what remains has little value for us now, save to illustrate the conditions of the times. The men are of more interest to us than their literary works. There was color and variety in the features of their social status. There were curious analogies to the history of later days, but we are likely to gather from their writings rather a series of literary portraits than ideas to enrich the thought and fancy or models of art to guide our taste. The culture of the age was mainly Greek. Hellenic influence had spread long since far into the east. Among the populous towns of Asia Minor it ruled entirely without a rival. It had pushed its way through Syria and almost to the line of the Freities, while it held many an outpost of civilized life in the colonies planted long ago among the ruder races of the north. Through all of these the liberal studies were diffused, and in their schools the language of Demosthenes was spoken with little loss of purity and grace. From them as well as from Athens and her neighbors came the instructors who taught the western world. From them came the newest literary wares and the ruling fashions of the season, and even in countries such as Gaul, where Rome had stamped so forcibly the impress of her language in her manners, scholars who hoped for influence beyond a narrow local circle often wrote and thought in Greek, as the speech of the whole civilized world. The old Roman tongue grew rapidly more feeble and less pure, with few exceptions the learned declined to write in it, and an emperor, as we have seen, even in the memoirs written for no eye save his own, expressed his deepest thoughts and feelings, not in Latin, but in Greek. The career of a man of letters was chiefly professional, and his works were meant more for the ear than for the eye. His sphere of action commonly was found in lectures, conferences, public readings, panagyrics, debates, and intellectual tournaments of every kind. For the scholars of those days were not content to stay home and be prophets to their countrymen alone, or to trust to written works to spread their fame, but they traveled far away from land to land, and ever as they went they practiced their ready wit and fluent tongue. Like their prototypes in earlier days the rivals of Socrates and the objects of the scorn of Plato, they were known by the old name of Sophist, which implied their claim to be learned if not to be wise, and the term was used without reproach of the most famous of their number whose lives were written by Philistratus. Citizens of the world, and self-styled professors in the widespread university of culture, they found full liberty of speech and an eager audience in every town. For though the times were changed, many of the habits of the old republics lingered still, and though the stormy debates of politics were silenced, and the thunders of the orators of old were heard no more, still the art of public speech was passionately prized, and men were trained even from their childhood to study the grace and power of language and to crave some novel form of intellectual stimulus. So when the traveling Sophist was heard of in their midst, the townsmen flocked with curious ears about the stranger, as the crowd gathered around Paul upon Mars's hill, eager to hear and tell of some new thing. Sometimes it was a scholar of renown who came with a long train of admirers, for young and old went far afield in search of knowledge, and attached themselves for years to a great teacher, like the students of the Middle Ages, who passed in numbers from one famous university of Europe to another, attracted by the name of some great master. Then the news passed along the streets, and time and place were fixed for a lecture of display. The magistrates came in state to do the speaker honor, and even an emperor at times deigned to look on, and set the example of applause with his own hands. Sometimes a young aspirant came in search of laurels to challenge to a trial of skill the veteran whose art was thought by his countrymen to be beyond compare. Others came one with all the enthusiasm of a newfound truth, to maintain some striking paradox, to advocate a moral system or some fresh canon of literary taste. Like the great schoolmen of the age of Dante or the admirable Pico of a later time, they posted up the theses which they would hold against all comers, and were ready in their infinite presumption to discourse of all the universe of thought and being de omniscribili et entei, and when weary of the sameness of the scholar's life, wandered like knights errant round the world in search of intellectual adventures. Sometimes it was a poor vagrant with a tattered mantle, who gathered a crowd round him in the streets, and declaimed with rude energy against the luxury and wantonness of the life of cities, bidding men look within them for the sources of true happiness and worthy manhood. Like the preaching friars of the Christian Church, they appealed to every class without distinction, startling the careless by their examples of unworldliness, and striking often on the cords of higher feeling, as they spoke to the rich and noble in the plain language of uncourtly warning. Yet often this cynic's mantle was only a disguise for sturdy beggars, disgusting decent folks by their important demands, and dragging good names and high professions through the mire of sensuality and lust. The name of Sophist was applied, in common speech, to two great classes, which rivals as they were for popular esteem, and scornful as was each of the pretensions of the other, were yet alike in many of the features of their social life, and were scarcely distinguished from each other by the world. The first included the professional moralists and high thinkers, who claimed to have a rule of active life or a theory of eternal truth which might be of infinite value to their fellow men. Philosophy had somewhat changed its aims and methods since the great systems of original inquiry had parted the schools of Greece among them. The old names indeed of Platonist and Peripatetic, Epicurean and Stoic still were heard, but the boundary lines were growing fainter, and the doctrines of each were losing the sharpness of their former outlines. Philosophy had lost the keenness of her dialectic, the vigor and boldness of her abstract reasoning. She had dropped her former subtlety, and was spending all her energy of thought and action on the great themes of social duty. She aspired, and not quite in vain, to be the great moral teacher of mankind. She stepped into the place which heathen religion long had left unfilled, and claimed to be the directress of the consciences of men. When the old barriers were level to the ground, when natural law and local usages and traditional standards became afaced or passed away before the leveling action of the imperial unity, when servile flattery began to abdicate the claims of manhood and to acknowledge no source of law and right but the caprices of an absolute monarch, philosophy alone began on sure foundations to raise the lines of moral order. Philosophy alone was heard to plead in the name of dignity and honor. She left the shadow of the schools, the quiet groves of academe, the gardens and the porch, and came out into the press and throng of busy life under every variety of social guise. She furnished her lecturers of renown, holding chairs with endowments from the state, and speaking with the authority of men of science. She had her spiritual advisors for great houses, living like domestic chaplains in constant attendance on the wealthy and well-born. There were father confessors for the ruler's ear, rivaling and influenced the ladies of the imperial household. There were physicians of the soul who had little social circles of which they were the oracles, guiding the actions of their friends, sometimes by confidential letters, sometimes by catechetical addresses, while at times their familiar table talk was gathered up for private use in the diaries of admiring pupils. Missionaries traveled in her name from town to town with hardy courage and unvarnished phrase, like the mendicant friars of later days, speaking to the people, mainly in the people's tongue, and denouncing the lust of the eye and the pride of life in the spirit of Christian ascetics. The greatest among the heathen moralists of the age was Epictatus, the newbott slave, for that is the meaning of the only name by which history knows him, early exchanged his frigid home for the mansion of a Roman master who seems to have been a vulgar soul, cringing to the powerful and haughty to the weak, and who treated him probably with little kindness, even if he did not, as one version of the story runs, break his slave's leg in a freak of wanton jest. Yet strange as it may seem, his master sent the lame and sickly youth to hear the lessons of the most famous of the stoic teachers, intending him perhaps for literary labor because he was too weak for other work. The pupil made good use of the chances offered him, and when and after years he gained his freedom he ruled his life in all things by the system of his choice, proving in the midst of his patient, brave and unobtrusive poverty, how fully he had mastered all the doctrines of the porch. No cell of Christian monk was ruder than his simple bedroom, of which the only furniture was a pallet bed and iron lamp, and when the latter was taken by a thief it was replaced by one of clay. Epictatus wrote no works and made no parade in public as a sage, but he talked freely to his friends and admirers gathered round him by degrees to hear his racy earnest sermons on one moral question or another, and some made notes of what he said and passed them on in their own circles, till his fame at last spread far and wide beyond the range of personal acquaintance. Arian, his devoted friend, has left us two such summaries, one, a manual of his rule of life, couched in brief and weighty words, as of a general to his soldiers under fire, the second a sort of table-talk, which flowing on with less dogmatic rigor, found tenderer and more genial tones to speak to the hearts of those who heard him. He eschewed all subtleties of metaphysics, all show of paradox or literary graces. His thoughts were entirely transparent and sincere, expressed in the homeliest of prose, though varied now and then by bursts of rude eloquence and vivid figures of the fancy. In them the whole duty of man, according to the stoic system, is put forth in the strongest and most consistent form, and as such they were for centuries the counselors and guides of thousands of self-centered resolute natures. To bear and to forebear in season, to have a noble disregard for all the passing goods of fortune, and all which we cannot of ourselves control. To gain an absolute mastery over will and temper, thought and feeling, which are holy in our power. To make reason sit enthroned within the citadel of self and let no fitful gusts of passion, no mere brute instincts guide our action. These inbear outlines are the dogmas of a creed which insists, as few have ever done, upon the strength and dignity of manhood. True there are harsh words at times, full of a stern aesthetic rigor, as when he bids men not to grieve for the loss of friend, or wife, or child, and to let no foolish pity for the ills of any whom he loves cloud the serenity of the sage's temper. Being grief he needs must banish love, for grief itself is only love which feels the lack of what is torn away, and without sympathy to stir us from our moods of lonely selfishness we should be merely animals of finer breed and subtler brain. But Epictatus could not trample out all feeling. He rises even to a height of lyric fervor when he speaks of the providence of God, of the moral beauty of his works, and the strange insensibility of ungrateful men. Nor would he have his hearers rest content with the selfish hope of saving their own souls, rather he would have them ever think of the human brotherhood and live not for themselves but for the world. He falls into a vein of Christian language when he speaks of the true philosopher as set apart by a special call, anointed with the unction of God's grace to a missionary work of lifelong self-divotion as the apostle of a high social creed. Unconsciously perhaps he holds up the mirror to himself in this description and the rich coloring and impassioned fervor of the chapter redeemed the austerity of his moral system. The substance of some passages may serve perhaps to complete the brief sketch of his character and thought. When asked to describe the nature of the ideal cynic he said that Heaven's wrath would light on him who intruded rashly into a ministry so holy. He called for an Agamemnon to lead a host to Troy. None but Achilles could face Hector in the fight. If at their sighties had presumed to take that place he would have been thrust away in mockery or disgrace. So let the would-be cynic try himself and count the cost before he starts for the campaign. To wear a threadbare cloak is not enough. Something more is needed than to live hardly. To carry staff and wallet and to be rude and unmanorly to all whose life seems too luxurious or self-indulgent. It were an easy matter to do this. But to keep a patient, un-complaining temper, to root out vain desire and rise above the weakness of anger, jealousy, pity, and every carnal appetite. To make the sense of honour take the place of all the screens or safeguards of door and inner chamber. To have no secrets to conceal. No shrinking fear of banishment or death in the confidence of finding everywhere a home where sun and moon will shine and communion will be possible with Heaven. This is not an easy thing. But to be able to do this is to be a philosopher indeed. Thus furnished for the work of life, the true cynic will feel that he has a mission to be a preacher of the truth to erring men who know so little of what is really good or evil. He is sent as a seer to learn the path of safety and as a prophet to warn his fellow men of all their dangers. It is for him to tell them the secret of true happiness, that it does not lie in the comfort of the body nor in wealth nor high estate, nor office, nor in anything, which lies exposed to the caprice of chance. But only in the things which fall within the range of man's free will, in his own domain of thought and action. Men ask indeed if any can be happy without the social blessings which they prize. It is for the apostle of philosophy to show, that homeless, childless, wifeless wanderer though he be, with only a mantle on his body and the sky above his head, he can yet enjoy entireist freedom from all anxiety and fear and from all the misery of a fretful temper. But let no one rashly fancy that he is called to such a life without weighing well its duties and its dangers. Let him examine himself well, and learn the will of God whose messenger he would claim to be. Outraged and buffeted he may be like a poor beast of burden, but he must love his persecutors as his brethren, for him there can be no appeal to Caesar or to Caesar's servants, for he looks only to his sovereign in heaven, and must bear patiently the trials which he sends him. In a realm of perfect sages there would be no call into the mission field, and all might innocently enjoy the pleasures of home life and peace. But that soldier serves most cheerfully, who has no cares of wife or household, and the cynic who has felt the call to do God's work must force wear the blessings of the life of husband or a father, must rise above the narrower range of civic duties, remembering that all men are his brothers and his city is the world. Yet large as is the call upon his self-denial, he should not aim at needless austerity or ascetic gloom. There is no sanctity in dirt or vermin, nothing to win souls or to attract the fancy in emaciated looks and a melancholy scowl, nor is there any reason why the missionary must be a beggar. Epictatus saw no merit in hardships self-imposed, nor would he have men turned from pleasure as from a traitor offering a kiss. Only he would have them able to part cheerfully with all save truth and honor in the spirit of pilgrims on the march. As on a journey, when the ship is lying at anchor, thou mayest land to take in water and gather shells and the like upon the shore, but must keep the vessel still in view, and when the steersman beckons must leave all else at once to come on board. So too in life's pilgrimage, if wife, little or little one, be given thee for a while, it may be well, but see to it that thou art ready, when the pilot calls, to come at once and turn not to look back. End of Section 19 Section 20 of the Roman Empire of the Second Century by William Wolfe Capes. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Pamela Nagami. Chapter 8 The Literary Currence of the Age, Part 2 The life of Dion Chrysostom may serve to illustrate still further the ideal of the philosophic propaganda of these times. He was indeed no stoic by profession, and did not use heroic tones, yet like this age pictured to our fancy in the strong words of Epictatus, he felt that he was called to spend his life unselfishly for others and to preach and plead to every class in the enthusiasm of a religious duty. He only gradually awoke indeed to the sense of his vocation, and it is curious to read his own account of his conversion to philosophy and note his confessions of unworthiness. Even by a popular riot from his home at Prusa, in which town he had already filled the highest offices, he betook himself to Rome where he gained a name for eloquence and the hatred of Domitian by outspoken satire. He fled away and lived a wandering life, in the course of which, as we have seen already, he appeased a mutiny among the legions, when the news of the tyrant's murder reached their camp upon the northern frontier. During those years of banishment he hid his name but could not hide his talents. His threadbare cloak was taken for a cynic's mantle and men often came to him to ask for counsel. His quibbles of rhetoric availed him little for cases of conscience such as these, and he was driven to meditate in earnest on great themes of duty and seek for truth at the sources of a higher wisdom. With light so gained he saw the vanity of human wishes. He felt the littleness of his earlier aims and resolved to devote his eloquence to a higher cause than that of personal ambition. He would spend himself for the needs of every class without distinction and tend the anxious or despairing as the physician of their souls, regretting only that so few care for serious thought in the season of prosperity, and fly to the sage for ghostly counsel only when loss of friends or dear ones makes them feel the need of consolation. The details of his life and character are known to us chiefly by his works, some of which are moral essays, sermons as it were on special texts which might be preached to any audience alike, while others are set speeches made in public as occasion called him forth in many a far-off city as he sojourned in his wandering career. In the former class we note that among all the common places of the schools high thoughts may be met with here and there full of a large humanity and with an entirely modern sound. In a world whose social system rested on a basis of slave labor he raised his voice not merely to plead for kindness and mercy, but to dispute the moral right of slavery itself. Feeling deeply for the artisan and peasant whose happiness was sacrificed and whose social status was degraded by the haughty sentiment of Greece and Rome he spoke in accents seldom heard before of the dignity and prospects of industrial labor. His account of the shipwrecked traveler in Uboa gives us a picture else unequaled in its vividness of the breach between the city and the country life and of the uncared for loneliness of much of the rural population. But the second class of writings best reflects the temper and activity of Dion's efforts to bring philosophy to bear upon the world. They show him as the advocate of peace, stepping in with words of timely wisdom to allay the bitterness of long-standing feuds, where the outbreak of fresh jealousies such as had lingered for centuries among the little states of the Aegean and survived even the tutelage of Roman power. At one time the subject of dispute is the scene of the provincial courts, at another the proud title of metropolis of Asia, at another some infinitely petty right of fisheries or of pasture. Chorals such as these brought citizens of rival towns into collision in the streets and led to the interchange of passionate complaints wearying out the patience of their Roman masters by the vanity and turbulence of these Greek republics. All Dion's tact and all his eloquence were needed in such cases to enforce the eternal principle of concord and forbearance by the dexterous use of personal appeals. He shows his sense of the importance of this work by speaking with a sort of fervor of the holy functions of this ministry of reconciliation. He was jealous of his dignity and independence, stooping to the truchel neither to the violence of mob license nor to the caprices of a monarch. He startled the dissolute population of Alexandria by his bold defiance of their wanton humor and by his skillful pleading to have the claims of philosophy respected. He bore himself with courteous firmness in the presence of the court and lectured Trajan on the duties of a royal station without any loss of honest frankness or imperial favor. He preached on the vanity of human glory and was one day to prove in his own person how treacherous and unsubstantial a thing it is. The cities which had honored him as their teacher and their friend were presently to grow weary of his counsels and to show him the indignity of setting another head upon his statues. Prusa his birthplace and the object of his special tenderness was to turn against him in blind fury and to denounce him to the Roman governor as a traitor and a thief. To the vicissitudes of the career of Dion we may find a striking contrast in the unbroken calm of Plutarch's life. Descended from an ancient family of Boeotian Chironia after drawing from the sources of ancient art and learning at their fountain headed Athens, he put took himself in riper years to Rome, where besides attending to the duties with which he seems to have been charged in the service of his fellow townsmen, he lectured publicly from time to time and made good use of the literary stores amassed in the great libraries and of the interchange of thought in the cultivated circles of the capital. In the vigor of his intellectual manhood he went back to Chironia, where he lived henceforth for fear, he says, that the little town should lose in him a single citizen, serving with honorable zeal in the whole round of civil and religious offices and winning the respect of all his neighbors as well as of many correspondence from abroad. Full of the generous patriotism of the best days of Greece he gave his time and thought without reserve to the service of his countrymen, though he allowed no glamour of ancient sentiment to cloud his judgment. He told the young aspirants around him that when they read the harangues of Pericles and the story of their old republics they must be careful to remember that those times were gone forever and that they must speak with baited breath in their assemblies since the power had passed into the hands of an imperial governor. It was idle to be like children at their play who dressed themselves as grown-up folks and put on their father's robes of state, and yet the worthy citizen, he says, has no lack of opportunities for action, to keep open house and so to be a harbor of refuge for the wanderers, to sympathize with joy and grief, to be careful not to wound men's feelings by the wantonness of personal display, to give counsel freely to the unwary, to bring parted friends once more together, to encourage the efforts of the good and frustrate the villainy of designing knaves, to study, in a word, the common wheel. These are the duties which a citizen can discharge until his dying day, whether clothed or not with offices of state. For Plutarch did not write merely as a literary artist to amuse a studious leisure or revive the memory of heroic days, but as a moralist, invested by public confidence with a sort of priesthood to direct the consciences of men. He had indeed no new theory of morals to maintain, and made no pretension to original research. He wished not to dazzle, but to edify, to touch the heart and guide the conduct rather than instruct the reason. His friends or neighbors came to him for counsel on one or other of life's trials, and he sends them willingly the fruit of his study or reflection. He holds his conferences like a master of the schools, and the privileged guests flock willingly to hear the sermons of which the subject has already been announced, and listen with becoming gravity to the exhortations of the sage. Sometimes they are invited to propose a question for debate, but nothing frivolous can be allowed, nor may any of the audience betray an unseemly lack of interest, like the bidden guest who scarcely touches with his lips the vians which his host has spread before him. The listener's mind must be ever on the alert, as the tennis player watches for the ball, and he never should forget that he is sitting, not like a lounger at the theatre, but in a school of morals where he may learn to regulate his life. The lecture ended or the public conference closed, the privileged few remained to discuss the subject further with their master, while here or there a stricken conscience stays behind to confess its secret grief and ask for ghostly admonition. But the teacher's doors are ever open, all may freely come and go who need encouragement or advice on any point of social duty. Out of such familiar intercourse, and the cases of conscience thus debated, grew the treatises of ethics which read at Rome and Athens, as well as in the little town of Kyrenia, extended to the world of letters the fruits of his ministry of morals. He did not always wait to be applied to, but sought out at times the intimates who seemed to need his counsels, watched their conduct with affectionate concern, and pressed in with warning words amid the business of common life. He tried to recommend philosophy not by precept only but by practice, first testing on himself the value of his spiritual drugs, and working with humility for the salvation of his soul. It was for the good of others he tells us that I first began to write the biographies of famous men, but I have since taken to them for my own sake. Their story is to me a mirror, by the help of which I do my best to rule my life after the likeness of their virtues. I seem to enter into living communion with them, while bidding them welcome one by one under the shelter of my roof. I contemplate the beauty and the grandeur of the souls unbarred before me in their actions. Yet it was not without other reasons that he lingered over these old passages of history and romance. For indeed, with all his width of sympathy and his broad humanity, the mind of Plutarch was cast in an antique mold. At home mainly in the world of books or in the social moods of a petty town of Greece, he knew little of the new ideas which were then leavening the masses. The Christian church, meantime, was setting the hearts of men aglow with the story of a noble life which could find no sort of parallel in his long list of ancient worthies. Dion Chrysostome had dared to call the rite of slavery in question and spoke as feelingly as any modern writer of the sorrows of the proletariat and the dignity of labour. Sir Relius was soon to show what delicate humility and unselfish grace could blossom in the midst of heathendom, while straining after visions of perfection not to be realised in scenes of earth. But Plutarch's thought in religion and in morals seems scarcely to have passed beyond the stage of human progress reached long ago in Plato's days and five centuries had passed away and taught him no new principles of duty. He believed in the unity of God and saw the vanity of idol worship, but to him the essence of religion lay not in dogmas or rules of life, but in solemn ritual. He clung to the edifying round of holy forms, though the faith to which they ministered of old was swept away, and though he had to people the unseen world with intermediate spirits and freely resort to allegoric fancy to justify the whole mythology of Greek religion. In morals his ideal is confined to the culture and perfection of the personal aspirant and amiable and chastened, as are his tones of courtesy, his talk is still of happiness rather than of duty, and his spiritual horizon is too narrow to take in the thought of the loathesomeness of evil and the enthusiasm of charity. His calm serenity reminds us of the temples of old Greece, which attain in all that is attempted to a simple grace and a consummate art, with none of the gloom and mystery of a Christian cathedral, and with little of its witness to a higher world and its vision of unfulfilled ideals. But most of the scholars of the day make no pretensions to such earnest thought, and shrunk from philosophy as from a cheerless mentor who spoke a language harsh and discordant to their ears. These were literary artists, word fanciers and rhetoricians, whose fluent speech and studied graces won for them often times a worldwide fame and raised them to wealth or dignity, but did not add a single thought to the intellectual capital of their age and left behind no monument of lasting value. They studied the orators of earlier days to learn the secrets of their power, but the times were changed since the party strife of the republican assemblies had stirred into intensity the statesmen's genius and passion. The pleadings even of the law-course were somewhat cold and lifeless when all of the graver cases were sent up by appeal before the emperor or his servants. They tried indeed to throw themselves back into the past to reopen the debates of history and galvanize into spasmodic life, the rigid skeletons of ancient quarrels. When men grew weary of these worn-out topics, the lecturers had recourse to paradox, to quicken afresh, the jaded fancy, startling the curiosity by some unlooked-for theme, writing panigerics on fever and baldness, dust and smoke, the fly-even and the gnat, or imagining almost impossible conjectures to test their skill in casuistry or their fence of subtle dialectic. Two others the subject mattered little. Like the Isaias, of whom Pliny writes admiringly, or the improvasitore of a later age, they left the choice to the audience who came to hear them, and cared only to display the stock of images with which their memory was furnished, their power of graceful eloquution in which every tone or gesture had artistic value, for their unfailing skill in handling all the arms of logical debate. Sometimes it was a question merely of the choice of words. The Greeks commonly were faithful to the purer models of good style, but the Roman taste, not content with the excellence of Cicero, as approved by Quintilian's practical judgment, mounted higher for its standards of latinity, and prided itself on its familiar use of archaic words or phrases gleaned from Cato or Aeneas. The harmonious arrangement of these borrowed graces was in itself a proof of eloquence, and poverty of thought and rigid feeling mattered little if the stock of such literary conceits was large enough. Fronto of Sirte passed for the first orator of his day at Rome, and was honored with the friendship of three emperors, of whom the latest, Marcus Aurelius, had been his pupil, and was to the last a loving friend. When scholars heard early in this century that the letters which passed between the sovereign and the professor had been found in a polympsest under the ax of the Council of Calcedon, they were full of eager interest to read them. But they turned with contempt from the tasteless pedantry and tawdry affectation of the style which was then so much in vogue at Rome. It is curious to find the rhetorician speaking of his favorite art as the only serious study of the age. For philosophy, he said, no style was needed, no labored periods, nor touching proration. The student's intellect was scarcely ruffled while the lecturer went groaning on in the dull level of his tedious disquisitions. Lazy ascent or a few lifeless words alone were needed, and the audience might be even half asleep while the firstly and secondly were leisurely set forth and truisms disguised in learned phrases. That done the learner's work was over, no conning over tasks by night, no reciting or declaiming, no careful study of the power of synonyms or the methods of translation. He thought it mere presumption of philosophy to claim the sphere of morals for its special care. The domain of rhetoric was wide enough to cover that as well as many another field of thought. Her mission was to touch the feelings and to guide men by persuasive speech. Four words were something infinitely sacred, too precious to be trifled with by any bungler in the art of speaking. As for the thoughts, they were not likely to be wanting if only the terms of oratory were fitly chosen. Yet with all the pedants' vanity we see disclosed to us in his familiar letters an honest, true, and simple-minded man who was jealous for the honor of his literary craft, who lived contentedly on scanty means and never abused his influence at court to advance himself to wealth or honor. CHAPTER VIII. Few like Fronto were content to shine only with the lustre of their art. To live a sophist's life was a proverbial phrase for a career of sumptuous luxury. To turn from rhetoric to philosophy was marked by outward changes like that to the monks' cowl from the pleasures of the world. But it was in the Greek cities of the empire that they paraded their magnificence with most assurance and ruled supreme over an admiring public. Among the brilliant towns of Asia Minor, which were at this time at the climax of their wealth and splendor, there flourished an art and literature of fashion to which the sophists gave the tone as authors and critics. At Smyrna above all the sanctuary of the muses and the metropolis of Asia, as it proudly styled itself, the famous polamon lorded it without dispute, deigning to prefer that city for his home above the neighboring rivals for his favor. When he went abroad the chariot which bore him was decked with silver trappings and followed by a long train of slaves and hounds. So proud was his self-confidence that he was said to treat the municipalities as his inferiors and emperors and gods only as his equals. Smyrna, the city of his choice, profited largely by the reputation of its townsmen, scholars flocked to it to hear his lectures, jarring factions were abashed at his rebuke and forgot their quarrels and his eulogies of peace. Marx honored him with their favors and lavished their bounty on his home. Hadrian even transferred his love from Ephesus to Smyrna and gave the orator a noble sum to beautify the queen of cities. His self-esteem was fully equal to his great renown. When he went to Athens, unlike the other speakers who began with panagyrics on the illustrious city, he startled his hearers with the words, You have the credit, men of Athens, of being accomplished critics of good style. I shall soon see if you deserve the praise. A young aspirant of distinction came once to measure words with him and asked him to name a time for showing off his powers. Nothing loath he offered to speak offhand, and after hearing him the strangers slipped away by night to shun the confession of defeat. When Hadrian came to dedicate the stately works with which he had embellished Athens, the ceremony was not thought complete unless Polamon was sent forward to deliver a sort of public sermon on the opening of the temple. When death came at last to carry him from the scene of his triumphs, he said to the admirers who stood beside his bed, See that my tomb is firmly closed upon me, that the sun may not see me at last reduced to silence. Ephesus' meantime, which took the second place among the cities of Ionia, had brought favorinous from his native Arles to honor it with his brilliant talents. But neither of the great professors could brook a rival near his chair, and a war of epigrams and angry words was carried on between them, and was taken up with warmth by the partisans of each. At Pergamos, Aristocles was teaching still after giving up philosophy, and scandalizing serious minds by taking to the theater another haunts of pleasure. Each even of the lesser towns had its own school of rhetoric, and its own distinguished sophist. Nor could the intellectual society of Athens fail to have its shining light in all this galaxy of luminous talents. It had its university with chairs endowed by government and filled with teachers of distinction, but it had also a greater center of attraction in its own Herodes Atticus, who devoted his enormous wealth, his stores of learning, and his cultivated tastes to do honor to his birthplace and make her literary circles the admiration of the educated world. His father, who came of an old family at Athens, had found a treasure in his house so great that he feared to claim it till he was reassured by Nerva. He used it with lavish generosity, frequently keeping open house, and at his death nearly all the town was in his debt. No expense was spared in the education of his son who studied under the first teachers of the day, and made such progress that he was taken to Pannonia as a youth to display his powers of rhetoric before the Emperor Hadrian. The young student's vanity was damped however by a signal failure, and he nearly drowned himself in the Danubian despair. Returning home in humbler moot, he gave himself once more to study. There in in Asia where he served as an imperial commissioner he amassed ample stores of learning and formed his style by intercourse with the greatest scholars of the day. After some years spent at Rome, he settled finally on his own estates and became henceforth the central figure of Athenian society which was by general consent the most refined and cultivated of the age and the most free from the insolent parade of wealth. The most promising of the students of the university were soon attracted to his side where they found a liberal welcome and unfailing encouragement and help. Aulus Gelius gives a pleasant picture of the studious retreat in which he entertained them. In our college life at Athens, Herodes Atticus often fit us come to him. In his country house of Cephasia we were sheltered from the burning heat of summer by the shade of the vast groves and the pleasant walks about the mansion whose cool sight and sparkling basins made the whole neighborhood resound with splashing waters and the song of birds. Here at one time or another came most of the scholars who were to make a name in the great world and who were glad to listen to the famous lecturer. A privileged few remained after the audience had dispersed and were favored with a course of special comments which were heard with rapt attention. Even the applause so usual in the Sophists lecture halls was then suspended. But if an orator of any eminence arrived at Athens and wished to say a word in public, Herodes came with his friends to do the honors of the day, to move the vote of thanks to the illustrious stranger and to display all his practiced skill in the Tournament of Rhetoric. Not indeed that the reception was so courteous always. One philager had the impudence to write an offensive letter to Herodes before he came to Athens. On his arrival the theater in which he had intended to decline was crowded with the admirers of the Athenian teacher who had malicious pleasure in detecting an old harangue which was passed off before them as a new one, and hissed the poor Sophist off the stage when he tried vainly to recover credit. Nor did the talents of the orator save him always from a petty vanity. Aristides wished on one occasion to deliver the pen-athenaic speech, and to disarm the opposition of his rival whose jealousy he feared he submitted to his criticism the draft of a weak and colorless address. But instead of this when the day came to deliberate the actual speech proved to be of far higher merit and Herodes saw that he was duped. One special object of his care was purity of diction. Not content with forming his style upon the best models of the past, he was known even to consult upon nice points of language, an old hermit who lived retired in the heart of Attica. He lives in the district, was his explanation, where the purest Attic always has been spoken, and where the old race has not been swept away by strangers. We may find a curious illustration of his affectation of archaic forms in the fact that some of the inscriptions of his monuments were written in Greek characters of a much earlier date, which seemingly in the enthusiasm of the antiquarian he was desirous to revive. A like spirit of reverence for the past is shown in his regard for the great religious centers of Hellenic life. Not content with adorning Athens like Hadrian with stately works of art, he left the tokens of his fond respect at Delphi, Corinth, and Olympia, where new temples and theaters rose at his expense. There are few parts of Greece indeed which had not caused to thank the magnificent patron of the arts, whose taste inclined after the fashion of the day to the colossal, and was turned only with regret from the idea of cutting a canal through the Corinthian isthmus. In spite of all his glory and his lavish outlay, the Athenians, worried of their benefactor, or powerful enemies at least combined to crush him, impeached before the governor of the province on charges of oppression, he was sent to Sermium when Marcus Aurelius was busy with his marcomonic war. Faustina had been prejudiced against him, the emperor's little son was taught to list papryor for the Athenians, and the great orator, broken down by bereavement and ingratitude, refused to exert his eloquence in his own behalf, and broke out even into bitter words as he abruptly left his sovereign's presence. But no charges could be proved against him, and the emperor was not the man to deal harshly with his old friend for a hasty word. Among the visitors at Cephasia, in the circle gathered around Herodes, probably was Apuleus, who had left Carthage to carry on his studies in the lecture rooms and libraries of Athens. Philosopher and pietist, poet, romanticist, and rhetorician, he was an apt example of the many-sidedness of the sophistic training as it was then spread universally throughout the Roman Empire. Apuleus is a curious illustration of the social characteristics of the age, combining as he does in his own person and expressing in his varied works most of the moral and religious tendencies which are singly found elsewhere in other writers of these times. Firstly, there is no originality of thought or style. In every work we trace the influence of Greek models. His celebrated novel of the transformation of a man into an ass is spaced upon a tale which is also found in Lucian. The stirring incidents of comedy or tragic pathos which are so strangely interspersed, the description of the robber band, the thrilling horrors of the magic art, the licentious gallantries therein described, are freely taken from the Greek romances which he found ready in his hand in many of the countries where he traveled. Even the beautiful legend of Cupid and Psyche, which lies embedded like a pure vein of gold in the Corsa strata of his fiction, is an allegoric fancy which belongs to a purer and a nobler mind than his. The style indeed is more attractive than that of any of the few Latin writers of his age, for Apuleus had a poet's fancy and could pass with ease from grave to gay. But the author is over-weighted by his learning and spoils the merit of his diction by ill-adapted archaisms and tawdry ornaments of pretentious rhetoric. Two. In him as in the literature of the times there is none of the natural simplicity of perfect art but a constant striving for effect and a parade of ingenuity as if to challenge the applause of lecture rooms in a society of mutual admiration. One of his works consists of the choice passages, the lively openings or touching parorations gleaned from a number of such public lectures to serve it may be as a sort of commonplace book for the beginner's use. Three. As a religious philosopher he illustrates the eclectic spirit then so common. From the theories of Plato he accepted the faith in a supreme being and an immortal soul. But instead of the types or ideas of the Greek sage, the unseed world was peopled by the fancy of Apuleus with an infinite hierarchy of demon agencies going to and fro among the ways of men startling them with phantom shapes but making themselves at times the ministers of human will under the influence of magic arts and incantations. Four. We find in him a curious blending of mocking incited of mystic dread. He vividly expresses in the pages of his novel the imposture and the license of the priestly charlatans who travel to the world making capital out of the timorous credulity of the devout. Yet except Aristides no educated mind that we read of in that age was more intensely mastered by superstitious hopes and fears. The mysteries of all the ancient creeds have a powerful attraction for his fancy. He is eager to be admitted to the holy rites and to pass within the veil which hides the secrets from the eyes of the profane. Nothing can exceed the fervor of his enthusiastic sentiment when he speaks of the revelation of the spirit world disclosed in the sacred forms before his kindling fancy. Five. Finally in his case we have brought vividly before our minds the difference between devotion and morality. The sensuality of heathendom is reflective for our study in many illusivious and disgusting page of Apuleus, and though he speaks of the chastity and self-denial needed for the pious votary to draw near to the god whom he adores, yet the abstinence must have been perfunctory indeed, in one whose fancy could at times run riot in images so foul and lewd as to revolt every pure-minded reader. We have seen that the scholars of the times were almost wholly living on the intellectual capital of former ages. In rhetoric and history, in religion and philosophy, they were looking to the past for guidance in renewing the old jealousies of rival studies. In the credulous and many-sided mind of Apuleus all the literary currents flowed on peacefully together side by side. But in Lucian we may note the culture of the age breaking all the idols of its adoration and losing every trace of faith and earnestness and self-respect. The great satirist of Samosata was a Syrian by birth, though his genius and language were purely Greek. Apprenticed early to his sculptor, he soon laid down the carver's tools to devote himself to letters and making little progress at the bar of Antioch, took to the Sophists' wandering life and like the others of his trade, courted the applause of idle crowds by formal panagerics on the parrot or the fly. In middle life he grew weary of such frivolous pursuits and finding another literary vein more suited to his talents composed the many dialogues and essays in which all the forms of thought and faith and social fashion passed before us in a long procession, each in turn, to be stripped of its show of dignity and grace. It was an easy matter to expose the follies of the legendary tales of early Greece and many a writer had already tried to show that such artless imaginings of childlike fancy were hopelessly at war with all moral codes and earnest thought. But it was left for Lucian to deal with them in a tone of entire indifference, without a trace of passion or excitement or spirit of a vowed attack. The gods and goddesses of old Olympus come forward in his dialogues without the flowing draperies of poetic forms which half disguised the unloveliness of many a fancy. They talk to each other of their vanities and passions simply and frankly, without reserve or shame, till the creations of a nation's childhood brought down from the realms of fairyland to the realities of common life seem utterly revolting in the nudities of homely prose. Nor had Lucian more respect for the motley forms of Eastern worship to which the public mind had lately turned in its strong need of something to adore. He painted in his works the moods of credulous sentiment which sought for new sources of spiritual comfort in the glow and mystery and excitement of those exotic rites. He described in lively terms the consternation of the deities of Greece when they found their council chamber thronged by the grotesque brotherhood of unfamiliar shapes, finding a voice at last in the protests of Momus who came forward to resist their claims to equality with the immortals of Olympus. Addis and Coribas and Sabazius and the Median Mithras, who does not know a word of Greek, and can make no answer when his health is drunk, these are bad enough. Still they could be endured, but that Egyptian there, swathed like a mummy with a dog's head on his shoulders, what claim has he when he barks to be listened to as a god? What means Yon dappled bull of Memphis with his oracles and train of priests? I should be ashamed to tell of all the ibises, apes and goats, and thousand deities still more absurd with which the Egyptians have deluged us. I cannot understand, my friends, how you can bear to have them honored as much as or more even than yourselves. And Jupiter, how can you let them hang those ram's horns on your head? Momus has reminded that these are mysterious emblems which an ignorant outsider must not mock at, and he readily admits that in those times only the initiated could distinguish between a monster and a god. Lucian Spanter did not flow from any deeper source of faith in a religion purer than those bastard forms of idol worship. He was entirely skeptical and unimpassioned, and the unseen world was to his thoughts animated by no higher life, nor might man look for anything beyond the grave. His attacks upon the established faith were far from being carried on in the spirit of a philosophic propaganda. He was unsparing in his mockery of the would-be sages who talked so grandly of the contempt for riches and for glory, of following honor as their only guide, of keeping anger within bounds, and treating the great ones of the earth as equals and who yet must have a fee for every lesson and do homage to the rich. They are greedy of filthy lucre, more passionate than dogs, more cowardly than hares, more lascivious than asses, more thievish than cats, more quarrelsome than cocks. He describes at length the indignities to which they are willing to submit as domestic moralists in the service of stingy and illiterate patrons, or in the train of some fine lady, who likes to show at times her cultivated tastes, but degrades her spiritual advisor to the company of waiting-maids and insolent pages, or even asks them to devote his care to the confinement of her favorite dog and to the litter soon to be expected. One by one they pass before us in his pages the several types of militant philosophy, the popular lecturer, the court confessor, the public missionary and cynic dress, the would-be prophets and the wonder-mongers, astrologers, and charlatans, all crowding to join the ranks of a profession where the only needful stock in trade was a staff, a mantle, and a wallet, with ready impudence and a fluent tongue. Was Lucian concerned for the good name of the earnest thinkers of old time, the founders of the great schools of thought, whose dogmas were parodied by these imposters? Not so indeed. The old historic names appear before us in his auction scene, but the paltry biddings made for each show how he underrated them, and in his pictures of the realms of the departed spirits, all the high professions of the famous moralists of Greece did not raise them above an ignominious want of dignity and courage. Thus with mocking irony the scoffer rang out the funeral now of the creeds and systems of the ancient world. Genius and heroism, high faith and earnest thought, seemed one by one to turn to dust and ashes under the solvent of his merciless wit. Religion was a mere syllabus of old wives' fables or a creaking machinery of supernatural terrors. Philosophy was an airy unreality of metaphysic cobwebs. Enthusiasm was the disguise of knaves and badge of dupes. Life was an ignoble scramble uncheered by any rays of higher light and unredeemed by any faith or hope from a despairing self-contempt. CHAPTER IX. The Imperial Ruler governed with unqualified authority. No checks or balances or constitutional safeguards were provided by the theory of the State, and the venerable forms which lingered on existed mainly by his sufferance. The Kurul offices remained only as part of the Shoei ceremonial of the life of Rome but with no substantial power. The Senate met to help the monarch with his councils or to register his decrees in formal shapes, but the rains had passed entirely from their hands. The local liberties throughout the provinces were little meddled with, and municipal self-rule provoked as yet no jealousy, but it might be set aside at any moment by a Caesar's will or its machinery abused as an engine of oppression. Meantime however the transition from the unsystematic forms of the Republic was only slowly going on, and the agents of the Central Government were few compared with those of the widespread bureaucracy of later days. The Imperial household had been organized at first, like that of any Roman noble. Educated slaves or freedmen commonly of Greek extraction wrote the letters, kept the books or managed the accounts and wealthy houses, and filled a great variety of posts, partly menial, partly confidential. In default of ministers of State and public functionaries of trite experience, the early emperors had used their own domestic servants to multiply their eyes and ears and hands for the multitudinous business to be transacted. Weak rulers had been often tools in the hands of their own insolent freedmen, who made colossal fortunes by working on their master's fears or selling his favour to the highest bidder. But the emperors of the second century were too strong and self-contained to stoop to the meanness of such back-stairs intrigue, and we hear little in their days of the sinister influence of the Imperial freedmen. But the offices, which they had filled in direct attendance on the ruler were raised in seeming dignity, though shorn perhaps of actual power, when Hadrian placed in them knights who might aspire to rise higher on the ladder of promotion. Of such posts there were four of special trust and confidence. One. First came the office of the privy purse Arationibus, treasurer, which controlled all the accounts of the sovereign's revenues and of the income of the fiscous. The poet Statius describes in lofty style the importance and variety of the cares which thus devolved upon a powerful freedman who held the post for several reigns. The produce of Iberian gold mines, of the Egyptian harvests, of the pearl fisheries of the eastern seas, of the flocks of torrentum, of the transparent crystal made in Alexandrian factories, of the forests of Numidia, of the ivory of India, whatever the winds waft from every quarter into port, all is entrusted to his single care, the outgoings are also his concern. The supplies of all the armies passed daily through his hands, the necessary sums to stock the granaries of Rome, to build aqueducts and temples, to deck the palaces of Caesar and to keep the mince at work. He has scant time for sleep or food, none for social intercourse, and pleasure is a stranger to his thoughts. Two. The Prince's secretary, Ab Apistulus, required, of course, a high degree of literary skill as well as the powers of an accomplished penman. He has, says the same poet of another freedman, to speed the misives of the monarch through the world, to guide the march of armies, to receive the glad news of victory from the Rhine, the Danube, the Euphrates, from the Ramosis lands of Tull, whither the conquering eagles have already made their way. His hand prepares the officers' commissions and lets men know who have gained the post of canturian or tribune. He has to ask if the waters of the Nile have risen high enough for a good harvest, if rain has fallen in Africa and to make a thousand-like inquiries. Not Isis nor Mercury himself has so many messages of moment. In later days there were two departments of the office, for the language of Greece and for that of Italy. The former of the two was coveted by the most famous scholars of the age and was looked upon as the natural reward for purity of style and critical discernment. It led in time to the higher rank and the substantial amoluments of office. Three. It was the duty of another minister, Alabelus, the clerk of petitions, to open the petitions or complaints intended for his master's ear and probably to make abstracts of their contents. If we may trust Seneca's account, the duties were arduous enough. Even Polybius, who discharged them, had little time to nurse his private sorrows. Thou hast so many thousand men to hear, so many memorials to set in order, to lay such a mass of business that flows in from the wide world in fitting method before the eyes of thy great prince, thou must have thyself unfaltering courage. Thou must not weep, for thou hast so many weeping petitioners to hear. To dry the eyes of so many who are in danger, and who would feign win their way to the mercy of thy gracious Caesar, thou must need dry thine own eyes first. Four. The Chamberlains, often attained to large influence by their talents and address, but there seemed something menial in the duties of the office which was therefore filled by slaves or freedmen, though as the court adopted more of the sentiment and language of the East, the overseer of the Sacred Bedchamber, Prypositus Sacriculi, filled a larger place in public thought, and gained at times complete ascendancy over a week or vicious monarch like the mayors of the palace over puppet-kings in France. Of far higher social dignity were the official friends of Caesar, Amici Caesaris, the notables of Rome who were honoured with his confidence and called on for advice as members of a sort of privy council or consistory, which met in varying numbers at the discretion of the Prince, to debate with him on the affairs of state. It was an old custom with the great Roman nobles to divide their friends according to gradations of their rank and influence. The Emperor's Court was formed on the same model, and it was of no slight moment to the aspirant after honours, to be ranked in one or other of the two great privileged classes. Out of these were chosen the companions, comites or counts, of the Prince in all his travels, who journeyed with him at his cost, and were entertained by him at his table. In the first century the rank had proved a dangerous eminence. With moody and suspicious tyrants a word, a look, had proved enough to hurl the courtier from his post of honour. But in the period before us the lot was a far happier one. The privy councilors were treated with a marked respect, and by the Antonines at least they were not burdened with the duties of personal attendance on the Prince, or the mere etiquette of social intercourse, save when the business of state required the presence. At last the term became a purely honourary title, and the great functionaries throughout the empire were styled the friends or counts of Caesar. The imperial officers were not appointed, like the ministers of state in modern times, to great departments such as war, the home office, the exchequer, but each held a fraction of delegated power within local limits carefully prescribed. The city of Rome, the Prince's bodyguard, the urban watch, a province or an army, were put under the command of officers who looked only to the emperor for orders. Two of these posts towered high above the rest in dignity and trust. One, the prefect of the city, represented the emperor in his absence, and maintained civil order in the capital. The police of Rome lay wholly in his sphere of competence with summary powers to proceed against slaves or disturbers of the peace, out of which grew gradually the functions of a high court of criminal jurisdiction. Two, the prefect of the Praetorian soldiers was at first only the commander of the few thousand household troops who served as the garrison of Rome. While the legions were far away upon the frontier, the temper of the Praetorians was a vital moment, and the prefects might and did dispose of the safety of a throne. Sometimes their loyalties seemed to be secured by boons and honours or by marriage ties, sometimes two were named together to balance each other by their rivalries, but they were always dangerous to their master, till in the fourth century the power of the sword was wholly taken from them and lodged in the hands of separate commanders. Already the greatest jurists of the day had been appointed to the office to replace the emperor on the seat of justice, and it became at last the supreme court of appeal in civil jurisdiction. The whole of the Roman Empire, save Italy alone, was divided into provinces, and in each the central government was represented by a ruler sent from Rome. For the peaceful lands, long since annexed, where no armed force was needed, a governor, procounsel or propraetor, was chosen by the senate in whose name the country was administered. For borderlands or others where there was any danger of turbulence or civil feud, a lieutenant, the goddess of the emperor, ruled in his master's name and held the power of the sword. There were doubtless cases still of cruelty and greed, but the worst abuses of republican misgovernment had been long since swept away. The prince or his counsellors kept strict watch and ward, and sharply called offenders to account. The provincial notables sat in the imperial senate, in which every real grievance could find a champion and a hearing. There was a financial agent, procurator, of the sovereign in each country, ready to note and to report all treasonable action. Dispatches traveled rapidly by special posts organized by the government along the great highways. The armed force was seldom lodged in the hands of civil rulers. The payment of fixed salaries for office-made indirect gains seemed far less venial, and the old sentiment was gone that the world was governed in the interest of Rome or of its nobles. The responsibilities of power raised the tone of many of the rulers and moral qualities which had languished in the stifling air of the great city, flourished on the seat of justice before the eyes of subject peoples. A certain court or retinue followed each governor to his province, some of which received a definite sanction and a salary from the state. There were trusted intimates on whose experience or energy he might rely, trained jurists to act as assessors in the courts and to guide his judgment on nice points of law, young nobles eager to see life in foreign lands, literary men to amuse his leisure moments on the journey or to help in drafting his dispatches, practiced accountants for financial business, surveyors or architects for public works. They were with personal attendants to minister to their master's wants. None of these, safe perhaps the notaries, scribi, were permanent officials, and their number on the whole was small and quite disproportionate to the size and population of the province. For the agents of the central government were few, and local liberties were still respected, though there were ominous signs of coming changes. The imperial rulers had shown little jealousy as yet of municipal self-rule, and almost every town was a unit of free life with many administrative forms of local growth still undisturbed. Magistrates were elected year by year in each. Town councils formed of leading citizens and ex-officials ruled all concerns of public interest. General assemblies of the townsmen met from time to time and took an active part in the details of civic life long after the Comedia of Rome were silenced. Before were these merely idle forms which disguised the reality of servitude. Men still found scope for active energy in managing the affairs of their own towns. They still saw prizes for a passionate ambition in the places in the honors which their fellow countrymen could give. We have only to follow the career of some of the leading provincials of the age. We have only to turn over the copies of the numerous inscriptions left on stone or bronze to see how much remained in outward show at least of the old forms of republican activity. A Herodes Atticus could still be a commanding figure in the life of Greece. A Dion crisis stone could find occasion for his eloquence in soothing the passions of assemblies and reconciling the feuds of neighboring cities. No sacrifices seemed too costly for the wealthy who wished to be dignitaries in their native boroughs. To gain a year or two of office they spent vast sums in building libraries or aqueducts or baths or schools or temples, squandering sometimes a fortune in the extravagant magnificence of largeses or shows. They disputed with each other not only for the office of duem where or of ideal, but for honorary votes of every kind, for precedence at the theatres, for statues whose heads were to be presently replaced with those of other men, for a flattering inscription even on the building which the city had accepted at their hands. But if we look below the surface and listen to the moralists like Plutarch who best reflect the social features of provincial life, we may have cause to think that public spirit was growing fainter every day, and that the securities for freedom and self-rule were very few. 1. Rome was the real center of attraction as of old, the aim of all ambitious hopes. Local distinctions were a natural stepping-stone to a place in the Senate or the Privy Council, and employments else of little worth found a value as the lowest rounds of a ladder of promotion on which none could mount high until they had made a name at Rome. Men of good old families dropped their ancestral titles and Latinized their names to pass as descendants of the conquerors of the world. In a spirit of flattery and mean compliance, the municipal authorities abridged with their own hands their ancient freedom, tore up their old traditional charters, consulted the governor at every turn, and laid humbly at his feet the reins of power. Of such unconscious traders Plutarch speaks with just severity. He reminds his readers that the invalids who have been won't to bathe and eat only at the bidding of their doctor soon lose the healthy enjoyment of their strength, and so too those who would appeal to Caesar or his servants in every detail of public life find to their cost that they are masters of themselves no longer, they degrade Senate, magistrates, courts, and people, and reduce their country to a state of impotent and debasing servitude. He would have them cherish no illusions and give themselves no heirs of independence, for real power had passed out of their hands, but it was needless follies who seemed to court oppression or to appear incapable of using the liberties which still remained, for these lasted on by sufferance only and had no guarantees of permanence. The old federal leaks had passed away and there was no bond of union between the cities saved the tie of loyalty to the emperor at Rome. As units of free life linked to each other by some system of provincial parliaments they might have given effective utterance to the people's will, and have formed organized centers of resistance to oppression. But such assemblies can be hardly traced save here and there in feeble forms, and the imperial mechanism was brought to bear directly on a number of weak and isolated atoms. 2. The procouncils or lieutenants of Caesar grew impatient of any show of independence or any variety of local usage, not content with the maintenance of peace and order, and with guarding the interests of state they began to meddle in all the details of civic life. A street riot or a financial crisis or an architect's mistake in public works was excuse enough for superseding lower powers and changing the whole machinery of local politics. Sometimes immunities were swept away and old customs set aside by self-willed rulers greedy of extended power, ignorant even of the language of the subject peoples and careless of the associations of the past. Sometimes conscientious men like Pliny who rose above sinister or selfish aims would interpose in the interests of symmetry and order or wish to prove their loyalty and zeal by carrying out their master's plan with scant regard for old privileges or historic methods. 3. The imperial system was one of personal rule and the stronger and more self-contained the Caesar on the throne, the more was he tempted to make his government felt in every department of his power. The second century was the age of able and untiring rulers whose activity was felt in every part of their wide empire. The ministers who knew the temper of their sovereigns appealed to them in every case of doubt, and the imperial posts along the great high roads were kept in constant work with the dispatches which went to and fro between every province and the center. From distant Pithynia came Pliny's questions about a bath, a guild of firemen, the choice of a surveyor or the status of a runaway slave who had enlisted in the army, and Trajan thought it needful to write special letters to forbid a couple of soldiers being shifted from their post or to sanction the removal of a dead man's ashes. End of Section 22. Section 23 of the Roman Empire of the Second Century by William Wolfe Capes. This Librivox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Pamela Nagami. Chapter 9. The Administrative Forms of the Imperial Government Part 2. Under cautious princes like the Antonines the effects of an absolutism so unqualified were for a time disguised, but the evils of misgovernment which in the last century had been mainly felt at Rome might now as the empire grew more centralized be known in every land. They were not hid from the eyes of Plutarch, who, preferring as he does monarchic rule to every other social form, and looking on the sovereign as the representative of heaven on earth, yet insists on the grave danger to the world if the prince has not learnt the lessons of self-mastery. He should be like the sun, which moves most slowly when it attains its highest elevation. We shall better understand the perils of the system than adopted if we look forward to some of the actual evils of the centralized monarchy of the later empire. 1. The sums which flowed into the treasury at Rome seem to have been still moderate if compared with the vast extent of her dominions and the wealth of many of the subject lands. Much of the expense of government fell upon the local resources of the towns which had their own domains or levied special taxes for the purpose, but the rest may be brought under three heads. 1. That of the pay and pensions for the soldiers of the legions. 2. Of the largesse of corn or money. And 3. The prince's civil list, including the charges of his household and the salaries of public servants. The first and second varied little in amount. There were few changes in the number of troops or the expenses of the service save in crises like the Dacian or Marcomonic war. At Rome the recipients of corn were kept at nearly the same figure, and it was dangerous to neglect the imperial bounties to the populace of the great towns. The third was the division in which a thrifty ruler might retrench or a prodigal exhaust his coffers by extravagance. The question was one of personal economy or self-indulgence, for the civil servants were not many, and their salaries has yet formed no great item in the budget. It was by the wantonness of insolent caprices that tyrants, such as Caligula or Nero, drained their treasuries and were driven to refill them by rapine or judicial murder. But while they struck at wealthy victims they spared the masses of the people and it was left to an unselfish ruler like the Spasian to face the outcry and the indignation caused by a heavier system of taxation. In general the empire had in that respect at least been a boon to the whole Roman world, for it had replaced the license and extortion of provincial governors and farmers of the tithes by a system of definite tariff and control. The land tax levied in every country beyond Italy had taken commonly the form of a tithe or fraction of the produce, farmed by middlemen, pubicani, and collected by their agents who were often unscrupulous and venal. It was a method wasteful to the state and oppressive to the subjects and full of inequalities and seeming hardships. The first step taken by Augustus was to carry out a general survey of the empire as a needful condition of a fairer distribution of the burdens. Another was to control the license of the publicans by a financial agent in each province holding a commission directly from the prince. Further steps were gradually taken and by the time of Marcus Aurelius the system of middlemen was swept away. Tithes were not levied as before in kind, but a land tax tributum solely of uniform pressure took their place. Italy had long enjoyed immunities unto the republic when she lived upon the plunder of the world. But custom duties, Portoria, were imposed on her by the first Caesar and tolls at the markets, Quentissima rara monialum by Augustus, while successive duties, Quentissima hereditatum, were levied in the course of the same reign in spite of the indignant outcry of the wealthy Romans. These or their equivalents, under other names were the chief sources of revenue to which we have to add the lands and minds which passed into the imperial domains as the heritage of the state or of the royal houses of the provinces together with the proceeds of legacies and confiscations. There was no large margin it would seem for personal extravagance or a social crisis, but the Antonines were happily of frugal habits and one of them, as we have seen, parted with the heirlooms of the palace rather than lay fresh burdens on his people. Future rulers were less scrupulous than they. The brilliancy of personal display, the costly splendors borrowed from the eastern courts, the charge of a rapidly increasing civil service, the corruption of the agents of the treasury, the pensions paid to the barbarian leaders, these and other causes led to a steady drain upon the exchequer, which it was harder every year to keep supplied. Fresh dues and tolls of various kinds were frequently imposed, the burdens on the land grew more oppressive as the prosperity of the wealth-producing classes waned, till at last a chorus of many voices rises to deplore the general misery caused by the pressure of taxation, the insolence of the collectors in the towns, the despair of the poor artisans when the poll tax is demanded, parents selling their children into slavery, women driven to a life of shame, landowners flying from the exhausted fields to take refuge even with barbarian peoples, and all the signs of universal bankruptcy. 2. The administrative system gradually became more bureaucratic and more rigidly oppressive. In early days the permanent civil servants of the state were few in number. At Rome we read of notaries or accountants, scribae, of javelin men, lictores, and ushers, aperitores, in personal attendance on the magistrates. These were seemingly allowed to form themselves in guilds and defence of their professional rights, and gained a sort of vested interest in their office, which could at times be even bought or sold. But their number and importance was not great. We have little evidence of like classes in the provinces, and the Governor's suite went out and returned with him as his own friends or retainers while doubtless servile labour was largely used upon the spot. Such a practice was too rude and immature to last long after the activity of the central government became more intense. In the course of time, therefore, the whole character of such official work was changed. The accountants and the writers rapidly increased in number as the business grew upon their hands, and the state secured its servants a professional status. This strange to say was called a military service, militia. Many of the grades of rank adopted in different stages of employment were borrowed from the army. A certain uniform was worn at last, and commissions were made out in the Emperor's name, while a sort of martial discipline was observed in the Bureau, Scrinia. Honours and privileges and illustrious names were given to the heads of the official hierarchy, but the state began to tighten its grasp upon its agents, to require a long period of service, to refuse permission to retire until a substitute was found, to force the children to learn their father's craft and step one day into their places, till the whole civil service gradually became one large official caste in which every generation was bound to a lifelong servitude disguised under imposing names and military forms. 3. A like series of changes may be traced in a higher social order. In all the lands through which Greek or Italian influence had spread, some sort of town council had existed as a necessary element of civic life. The municipal laws of the First Caesars define the functions of this order, ordo decurionum curia, which like the Roman Senate was composed of ex-officials or other citizens of dignity and wealth. For a century or more while the tide of public life flowed strongly in the provinces, the status of a counselor, decurio, curialis, was prized, and leaning men spent time and money freely in the service of their fellows. As the empire grew more centralized, local distinctions were less prized and we find in the inscriptions fewer names of patriots willing, like Herodes Atticus, to enrich their native cities with the monuments of their lavish bounty. As municipal honors were less valued, the old relation was inverted, and the counselors had to fill in turn the public offices which instead of dignities were felt to be oppressive burdens. By the time of Trajan we find the traces of unwillingness to serve, and in the reign of Marcus Aurelius the reluctance had grown already more intense. The Sophist, Aristides, tells us frankly of his eagerness to escape from civic charges, how he wept and fasted, prayed and pleaded to his gods, till he saw the vision of white maids who came to set him free, and found the dream was followed by imperial dispatches which contained the dispensation so much longed for. The central government, in its concern, devised more marks of honor and distinction, but still men grew less willing to wear the gilded chains, for the responsibilities of office grew more weighty. The order of De Coriones had not only to meet as best it could, the local needs, but to raise the imperial taxes, to provide for the commissariat of the armies, and keep the people in good humor by spectacles and corn and grants of money. Men sought to quit their homes and part with their estates, and hoard as best they could the proceeds of the sale, if only they could free themselves from public duties. But still the state pursued them with its claims, the service of the counselors became a charge on landed property, the citizen of means was a functionary who might not quit his post, he might not sell his fields, for the treasury had a lien on them. He might not travel at his ease, for that would be a waste of public time. He might not live unmarried, for his duty was to provide children to succeed him when he died. He might not even take holy orders when he would, for folks of narrow means were good enough for that. But he must stay in the bosom of his native country, and like the minister of holy things go through the ceaseless round of solemn service. In their despair the de Coriones tried to fly, but they were hunted down without compunction. Their names are posted in the proclamations with runaways and criminals of the lowest class. They are tracked even to the precincts of the churches, to the mines and quarries where they seek a shelter, to the lowest haunts of the most degraded outcasts. In spite of all such measures their numbers dwindled constantly and had to be recruited, while land was given to the newly enrolled to qualify them for the duties of the office. Still the cry was for more to fill the vacant offices of state, and the pressed gang gathered in fresh tax-gatherers, for they were little more, from every class. The veteran's son, if weak or idle, the coward who had mutilated himself to be unfit for soldier's work, the deacon who had unfrocked himself or been degraded. All were good enough for this. The priestly gambler even, who had been counted hopeless and ex-communicate, and who was declared to be possessed of an evil spirit, was sent not to a hospital, but to the courier. 4. The same tendencies were at work mean-time on every side and other social grades, for in well-nigh all alike the imperial system first interfered with healthy energy by its centralized machinery, discouraged industry by heavy burdens, and then appealed to force to keep men to the task-work which they shunned. Its earlier rulers had indeed favored the growth of trade and the development of industry, had respected the dignity of the labor of free artisans, and fostered the growth of guilds and corporations, which gave the sense of mutual protection and self-respect to the classes among which they sprung. These and privileges were granted to many of such unions which specially existed for the service of the state, for the carrying trade of Roman markets were the labors of the post, the arsenals, the docks. Over these the control became gradually more stringent, as the spur of self-interest ceased to prompt the workers to continued effort. Men must be chained like galley slaves if need be to their work, rather than the well-being of society should suffer, or government be discredited in vital points. The principal adopted in their case was extended to many other forms of industry which languished from the effects of high taxation or unwise restrictions, and were likely to be deserted in despair. In rural districts also sturdy arms must be kept to the labors of the field, lest the towns be starved by their neglect. Peasants must not be allowed to roam at will, or but take themselves to other work, but be tied to the fields they cultivated in a state of villanage or serfdom. The armies could not safely be exposed to the chances of voluntary recruits, but the land owners must provide their quota, or the veterans bring up their children in the camp or military colonies be planted on the frontier with the obligation of perpetual service. So high and low through every grade of social status, the tyranny of a despotic government was felt. It drained the lifeblood from the heart of every social organism. It cut at the roots of public spirit and of patriotic pride, and dried up the natural sources of unselfish effort. And then, in self-defense, it chained men to their work, and made each department of the public service a sort of convict labor in a hereditary caste. But the toil of slaves is but a sorry substitute for the enlightened industry of freemen, and the empire grew poorer as its liberties were cramped. It grew weaker also in its energies of self-defense, for when the barbarians knocked loudest at the gates, instead of the strong cohesion of a multitude of centers of free life bound to each other by a thousand interlacing sympathies, they found before them only towns and villages standing alone in helpless isolation, and vainly looking round them for defense, while the central mechanism was sadly out of gear. The imperial Colossus seemingly had dwindled to an inorganic group of crumbling atoms. End of Section 23. Recording by Pamela Nagami in Encino, California, March 2019. End of the Roman Empire of the Second Century or the Age of the Antenines by William Wolfe Capes.