The spread of writing reinforced Greek influence. Books and readers probably emerged in the third century to meet the needs of the state and the demands of agriculture and law. In the second century books were securely established but circulated in a very limited educated class. After the defeat of Perseus of Macedonia (168 B.C.), the consul Aemilius Paulus brought the library of the king to Rome. Sulla brought the library of Apollion of Teus, including works of Aristotle and Theophrastus, from Athens to Rome. New biographies and contemporary histories were brought out and larger numbers of writers demanded more compendious and reliable reference works. Dominance of Egypt gave access to papyrus, which was more convenient than bark, the name of which persisted in the word liber, meaning book.[155] Under the Ptolemies papyrus production increased and the quality was improved through domestic cultivation which made it possible to harvest it all the year round. Sale was regulated under royal monopoly but private individuals cultivated and prepared it in factories. The best papyrus was purchased by the state at a fixed price chiefly for the use of notaries and poorer grades were sold outside the monopoly.
The character of the book trade is illustrated in the interests of Atticus, a friend of Cicero's, who accumulated a large library from books collected in Greece and became a publisher. In 61 B.C. he was criticizing a collection of Cicero's orations which had been put in book form and by 56 B.C. apparently controlled Cicero's publications. Slaves were trained as copyists, readers, and librarians, and in 55 B.C. he had a copying establishment.[156] The strihoi, a measurement of fifteen or sixteen syllables, was apparently used as a device for paying copyists as well as in making citations and in protecting purchasers. Stichometry facilitated counting of the number of lines and establishing of market prices for manuscripts. The average rate of production for copyists was 250 strihoi per hour. Private libraries emerged and Vitruvius advised that ‘the sleeping rooms and libraries should face toward the east; for their utilization demands the morning light; also the books in the library will not decay’.
The effect of writing was evident in every phase of cultural life. Manuscripts written by Plautus for a single performance were resurrected from the state archives by the aediles. After Terence old plays glutted the market and new writers were discouraged. The conflict of the Greek method of scansion with Roman pronunciation by stress accent weakened the drama and demands for cheaper amusement reduced the mimes to low levels and drove the intelligent from the theatre. In law Greek influence favoured the abstract formulation of legal doctrines demanded by codes. Literal interpretation led to neglect of the nature of the matter itself. ‘The reasons underlying the legal system should not be inquired into, otherwise much that is certain would collapse’ (Neratius).[157] In 198 B.C. Sextus Aelius had compiled the Tripertita, the earliest systematic treatise, and in 95 B.C. Quintus Mercius Scaevola, consul, made the first digest of civil law in twenty-eight books. A treatise of Saevius Sulpicius Rufus, consul, in 51 B.C., provided systematic comment on the edicts of the urban praetor. Julius Caesar proposed the establishment of a library under Marcus Terentius Varro to reduce ‘all existing codes of civil law to a more simplified form by extracting only the essential features and combining them in a select series of legal documents’, and to make works in Greek and Latin available to the public.[158] As the written tradition was extended shorthand was introduced to bridge the gap with the oral tradition. Cicero dictated to Tiro, a freedman who used shorthand. In 63 B.C. stenographers were apparently introduced in the Senate and in 59 B.C. an official gazette acta diurna and the acta senatus including minutes of the Senate were started by Julius Caesar as consul. Publication of proceedings compelled speakers to consider the outside public. In 52 B.C. the triumvirs severely limited the time for pleas in court, which reinforced the demand for matter-of-fact style in the Senate and brought disaster to the style of Cicero.
The problem of government over large areas compelled an emphasis on bureaucratic administration. Models were available in the large secretarial departments of Hellenistic kingdoms. Concentration of control weakened the power of the Senate. As early as 327 B.C. the practice of extending the power of the consul by lengthening the time of his appointment to enable him to conduct campaigns over longer periods was introduced. In 149 B.C. judicial procedure was extended to cover cases of magisterial extortion in the provinces, including bribery and treason, but its effects were more than offset by the effects of reforms in the army introduced by Marius and Sulla and severance from the civil authorities. Nominally the provinces were protected by regulations of the Senate, but Roman governors returned with wealth, ambitions, and an experience of absolute power disastrous to the Republic. A fixed tribute was imposed on conquered nations in the West and following the practice of monarchies, revenues were farmed in the East. The system meant ‘government by the unpaid aristocrat and exploitation by the irresponsible profiteer’ (H. Stuart Jones). In the third and second centuries B.C. ‘the Senate governed but did not reign whilst the people reigned but did not govern’ (H. Stuart Jones), and dissension between the Senate and the people became the opportunity of Caesarism backed by an army.
The spread of writing contributed to the downfall of the Republic and the emergence of the empire. With the growth of administration the power of the emperor was enhanced and in turn used to secure new support. Eastern religions were mobilized in the interest of the empire. Following a severe pestilence the Greek god Asklepios was brought from Epidaurus to Rome in 293 B.C. and a temple dedicated to him in 291 B.C. The migration of deities in the second half of the third century compelled the Senate to attempt to check the spread of sacred writings in 213 B.C. The Magna Mater,[159] a pre-Phrygian goddess, was, however, of special interest to the nobility and in 204 B.C. her transfer to Rome was advised by the Sybils. Attalus who had helped the Romans against Philip assisted in her migration. Official recognition assumed a privileged position. ‘A breach had been made in the cracked wall of old Roman principles, through which the entire Orient finally gained ingress’ (Cumont), although the authorities had isolated the religion to prevent contagion at the expense of Roman customs. Junius Brutus, praetor urbanus, celebrated dedication of the temple in the Palatinate in 191 B.C. In the last days of the second Punic war the mystic cult of Bacchus was introduced from Tarentum and in the early years of the second century B.C. the Dionysiac orgies ‘descended on Rome like a pestilence’. In 139 B.C. an edict attempted to check the spread of astrology. The spread of worship of Isis and Serapis from Egypt was followed by orders for the destruction of its altars and statues in 59, 58, 53, and 48 B.C. Under Julius Caesar an Alexandrian astronomer had reformed the calendar and the dates of the festivals of Isis were marked by Alexandrian priests. When Octavian accepted the title of Augustus in 27 B.C. he revised Roman religion. Ruined temples were restored and the temple of Apollo, his mother, and sister was dedicated and in 17 B.C., at his secular celebration, Augustus made them the equal of old deities. Apollo became the chief divinity and the rites were placed under the jurisdiction of fifteen men. After a fire in 83 B.C. additions had been made to the sacred collection of Sibylline books and Augustus ordered the destruction of over 2,000 copies of pseudo-books of unlicensed divination and prohibited books on magic. The remainder were transferred from the temple of the Capitoline Jupiter to a new house closely associated with the imperial residence. Deliberate emphasis was given to cults related to the Julian gens. In 12 B.C. Augustus became Pontifex Maximus and the colleges came under his control. The oath of officials and soldiers was associated with the genius of the emperor and the divi Caesares of the past.
Emperor worship was steadily reinforced from the East. Pompey had been greeted as a god and after his defeat in 48 B.C. his place was taken by Julius Caesar. After the death of the latter his deification was fixed by law on 1 January 42 B.C. Octavian had discredited Antony in his alliance with Cleopatra, the one living representative of the divine monarchies in the East, but as a successor to the Ptolemies he himself necessarily
became a god and by 9 B.C. was worshipped in the East as a saviour. The cult of the living ruler spread rapidly in the provinces after the long and prosperous rule of Augustus, and Caligula (A.D. 37-41) was probably declared a god before the Senate. Eastern religions were held in check, although a bloody persecution of the priests of the cult of Isis and Serapis by Tiberius in A.D. 19 was followed by the erection of a temple of Isis Campensis by Caligula in A.D. 38. Claudius gave new importance to the Magna Mater by establishing a complete cycle of events for an annual celebration on 15-17 March to mark the beginning of spring. The cult was especially attractive to women and under Trajan spread to the provinces. After the death of Nero (34-68), the last of the line of Caesars, the Flavian dynasty attempted to prove its legitimacy by assuming a divinity similar to that of its predecessor. Under Trajan the imperial cult gained in importance and the emperor became the vice-regent of God. Hadrian revived the religious attitude of Augustus in the classicism of art and architecture. Distrust of a divinized sovereign led to the avoidance of titles suggesting kingly authority, but deified Caesars were worshipped as symbols of continuity and legitimacy.
After Marcus Aurelius, his son Commodus (180-93) probably claimed sacrifices and images and weakened the two pillars of the empire, namely, rejection of oriental cults and postponement of the apotheosis of the emperor until after death. He was initiated to the mysteries of Mithra and recognition was followed by rapid advance. Deification of living emperors assumed public worship of them. In the following century of war the emperors relied to an increasing extent on force. Septimus Severus (193-211) was an African by birth and the Severi gave fresh support to foreign cults.
Elagabalus made his own god, Baal of Emesa, the proper lord of Rome but was murdered by his troops in A.D. 222. Caracalla Alexander (222-35) erected a temple to Serapis and in his name he reflected the interest of Alexander in the idea of a world empire rather than the Roman attitude of maintaining distinctions between the ruler and his subjects. In A.D. 273 Aurelian defeated Queen Zenobia, who had formed a large state, at Palmyra, and in A.D. 274 he proclaimed the dethronement of Roman idolatry and dedicated a shrine to the god Sol Invictus. The 25th of December, marking the sun's entrance on a new course of triumph, became the great festival of Mithra's sacred year. Diocletian (284-305) completed the work begun by Aurelian, though he was not worshipped as dominus et deus, and an oriental cult became the religion of the empire bringing a new conception of the emperor and the empire. The disappearance of formal privileges of the Senate and the dyarchy weakened constitutionalism and strengthened an autocracy in an intricate bureaucratic state. Mithraism had spread with the army in the West and particularly in Germany and the Danubian provinces. After reaching its peak about A.D. 250 it suffered a severe blow in the loss of Dacia in A.D. 275. Hellenism never surrendered to the gods of hereditary enemies and Mithra was excluded from the Hellenic world. Diocletian, in establishing a system of tetrarchy, recognized the growing division between the Latin West and the Greek East.
The rise of absolutism in a bureaucratic state reflected the influence of writing and was supported by an increase in the production of papyrus. Under Augustus cultivation, manufacture, and sale were placed in private hands. An embarkation tax was probably substituted for an export tax since Rome was the chief importer.[160] Manufacture shifted from small villages to more important towns. The ouvrier-fabricant became a workman in a factory. The swamps of the Nile delta supplied a convenient, reasonably priced material for an administrative organization covering territory from Britain to Mesopotamia.
Augustus overcame the distrust of experts and government without paid officials inherited by the Romans from the Greek city-state and created a civil service. He became his own chancellor of the Exchequer and introduced a trained personnel for the collection of taxes. Systems of account were devised to provide a guarantee of efficiency. Freedmen[161] who had probably been Hellenic slaves and had acquired literary and linguistic skill had been used by Julius Caesar as officers of the mint, and in the first century they were generally in control of correspondence with all parts of the empire. Augustus, following Persian example, organized a state post with the use of relays. Later a messenger was sent to travel the whole distance and to supplement written with verbal instructions. After the death of Nero, Vitellius, who represented the army on the Rhine, began to assign officers in the imperial bureaux to the knights. While freedmen continued as efficient administrators Vespasian recruited the governing class from the whole empire and Hadrian gave greater importance to the knights in the civil service at the expense of the power of the Senate. Bureaucratic interference began to sap the freedom and independence of municipal life.[162] Equites as secretaries introduced a new epoch in the development of a bureaucracy. Severus created the res privata principis which became a central treasury and openly claimed it as his own. Procuratorships were treated as rewards for services and as pensioning posts for discharged officers. Gallienus excluded the senatorial order from imperial administration and gave control of the legions and of the more important provinces to the imperial praefecti. By about A.D. 250 the fiction of dualism of emperor and Senate had collapsed. Diocletian separated control of the military arm from the civil authority and left provincial governors only with judicial and administrative functions. The large provinces were divided into small units and were subject to a vast bureaucracy.
The effects of bureaucracy were evident in the codification of law. Under the empire the urban edict which had been an important instrument in the advance of law ceased to be a living source of law. ‘While the Roman state was alive and developing no code was constituted or even proposed’ (Savigny). The praetor became dependent and lost initiative and, under Hadrian, Salvus Julianus codified the edict in a final and fixed form about A.D. 130. A limited number of privileged jurists gave answers by the emperor's authority and under seal. These replies reached high authority by the time of Gaius who prepared the Institutes about A.D. 161. By the end of the third century the formulary system had been displaced by magisterial procedure which became legally inquisitorial and actually accusatorial. After Tiberius torture was applied to free-born accused persons and after Severus to free-born citizens. In the third century capital punishment became ordinary for serious and even comparatively trivial crimes. The decline of legal science at the end of the third century when the calamity of legal insecurity overtook the empire was accompanied by private and official collections. The un-Roman state legislation was extended to the domain of civil law. The empire was accompanied by statute law. The letter of the law became supreme and decrees were inexorably and unalterably fixed. The living growth was replaced by the dead letter.
Attempts were made in the empire to build up the prestige of Rome to offset that of Alexandria by establishing libraries. Libraries were associated with temples as the most magnificent, accessible, and secure of public edifices. Augustus built two libraries, including the Palatine in which books were divided into Greek and Latin sections. Tiberius, Vespasian, Trajan, and Hadrian continued the imperial practice. By the fourth century Rome possessed at least 28 libraries with perhaps 20,000 rolls each divided into Greek and Roman sections. Municipal libraries were scattered throughout the empire.[163] Private libraries had become indications of conspicuous consumption.[164] Pliny gave an estimated £9,000 to establish a library at Como and an endowment of over £800 to maintain it.
The growth of libraries supported a trade chiefly in Latin books, since Alexandria continued as an important centre in the publication of Greek books. A single bookselling firm with 100 slaves trained as scribes could produce through the use of dictation a thousand copies of Martial (Book II) in ten hours, which, plainly bound, sold at an estimate of 6 to 8 pence and yielded a profit of 100 per cent. Large-scale production and moderate prices assumed a wide distribution. An important export business[165] followed extension of territory and improvement of roads, particularly in Spain and the western provinces. Native languages were displaced by
Latin and by the end of Augustus's reign Spain was as Latin as Italy. Druidism in Gaul with its oral traditions and long poems (Caesar's Gallic Wars) disappeared in favour of a book trade in Lyons.
In the empire books became instruments of literary propaganda. Patronage was used by Augustus as it had been by the Ptolemies. Maecenas brought together a literary group, chiefly Italians, and encouraged writers such as Virgil and Horace to achievements of the highest craftsmanship in a golden literary age. An artificial delicate literature which accompanied a profession of letters diverged increasingly with popular taste, and the death of Augustus was followed by almost immediate collapse. Suppression of public life in the empire, punishment, and confiscation of work reflecting on the emperor brought hypocritical silence, subterfuge, and servility. Vespasian took an active part in controlling education as a means of directing the influence of professors and rhetoricians who controlled the views of the upper classes. A system of higher schools of grammar and rhetoric was established and fixed endowments given to professors of the liberal arts. Quintilian became the first professor of Latin rhetoric in Rome in A.D. 71. ‘Declamation is the most modern of all exercises and also by far the most useful’ (Quintilian). In the silver age, roughly from A.D. 14 to 128, the strongest voices such as Tacitus and Juvenal were those of protest. Writers turned to the compilation of facts. The elder Pliny, who held a high place in the councils of Vespasian, wrote thirty-seven books in his Natural History, for which 2,000 volumes were consulted. The younger Pliny's panegyric on Trajan ‘became the parent and model of the prostituted rhetoric of the Gallic renaissance in the fourth century’.[166] Hadrian opened the Athenaeum as the first school for higher education and supported Athenian schools. ‘After a long eclipse, the rhetorical culture of Greece vigorously addressed itself in the reign of Hadrian to the conquest of the West.’[167] Marcus Aurelius established four professorships in Athens with a salary of 10,000 denarii each to support the teaching of Stoic, Platonic, Peripatetic, and Epicurean philosophers.
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