The Story of Civilization: Volume III: Caesar and Christ

by Will Durant

  These festivals, though agricultural in origin, remained popular in the cities and survived through all vicissitudes of belief into the fourth and fifth centuries of our era. Their number was so confusing that one of the prime purposes of the Roman calendar was to list them for the guidance of the people. In early Italian custom the chief priest had convened the citizens at the beginning of every month and named the festivals to be observed in the next thirty days; this calling (calatio) gave a name (calendae) to the first day of each month. To the Romans, as in some measure to modern Catholics or orthodox Jews, a calendar meant a priestly list of holidays and business days, interspersed with scraps of sacred, legal, historical, and astronomical information. Tradition ascribed to Numa the calendar that governed Roman chronology and life till Caesar. It divided the year into twelve lunar months, with complex intercalations that summed up to an average of 366 days per year. To remedy the mounting excess the pontiffs were empowered (191 B.C.) to revise the intercalations; but they used their authority to lengthen or shorten magistracies pleasing or displeasing to them, so that by the end of the Republic the calendar, then three months amiss, was a monster of chaos and chicanery.

  In the early days time had been measured simply by the height of the sun in the sky. In 263 B.C. a sundial was brought from Catana, in Sicily, and placed in the Forum; but as Catana was four degrees south of Rome, the dial was deceptive, and the priests were for a century unable to make the needed adjustments. In 158 B.C. Scipio Nasica set up a public clepsydra, or water clock. The month was divided into three periods by the kalends (first), the nones (fifth or seventh), and the ides (thirteenth or fifteenth); and the days were clumsily named by their distance before these dividing lines; so March 12 was “the fourth day before the ides of March.” A loose economic week was marked out by the nundinae, or every ninth day, when the villagers came to market in the towns. The year began with the coming of spring, and the first month, Martius, bore the name of the god of sowing; next came Aprilis, sprouting; Maius, month of Maia, or perhaps of increase; Iunius, month of Juno, or possibly of thriving; then Quinctilis, Sextilis, September, October, November, and December, named from their numerical order in the year; then January for Janus, and February for the februa, or magic objects by which persons might be purified. The year itself was called annus, ring; as if to say that in reality there is no beginning and no end.

  4. Religion and Character

  Did this religion help Roman morals? In some ways it was immoral: its stress on ritual suggested that the gods rewarded not goodness but gifts and formulas; and its prayers were nearly always for material goods or martial victory. Ceremonies gave drama to the life of man and the soil, but they multiplied as if they, and not the devotion of the part to the whole, were the proper essence of religion. The gods were, with some exceptions, awesome spirits without moral aspect or nobility.

  Nevertheless, the old religion made for morality, for order and strength in the individual, the family, and the state. Before the child could learn to doubt, faith molded its character into discipline, duty, and decency. Religion gave divine sanctions and support to the family: it instilled in parents and children a mutual respect and piety never surpassed, it gave sacramental significance and dignity to birth and death, encouraged fidelity to the marriage vow, and promoted fertility by making parentage indispensable to the peace of the dead soul. By ceremonies sedulously performed before each campaign and battle it raised the soldier’s morale, and led him to believe that supernatural powers were fighting on his side. It strengthened law by giving it celestial origins and religious form, by making crime a disturbance of the order and peace of Heaven, and by placing the authority of Jove behind every oath. It invested every phase of public life with religious solemnity, prefaced every act of government with ritual and prayer, and fused the state into such intimate union with the gods that piety and patriotism became one, and love of country rose to a passion stronger than in any other society known to history. Religion shared with the family the honor and responsibility of forming that iron character which was the secret of Rome’s mastery of the world.

  III. MORALS

  What kind of morality emerged from this life in the family and among the gods? Roman literature, from Ennius to Juvenal, idealized these earlier generations and mourned the passing of ancient simplicity and virtue. These pages too will suggest a contrast between the stoic Rome of Fabius and the epicurean Rome of Nero. But the contrast must not be exaggerated by a biased selection of the evidence. There were epicureans in Fabius’ days and stoics in Nero’s.

  From beginning to end of Roman history the sexual morality of the common man remained essentially the same: coarse and free, but not incompatible with a successful family life. In all free classes virginity was demanded of young women, and powerful tales were told to exalt it; for the Roman had a strong sense of property and wanted a wife of such steady habits as would reasonably ensure him against leaving his goods to his rival’s breed. But in Rome, as in Greece, premarital unchastity in men was not censured if it preserved a decent respect for the hypocrisies of mankind. From the elder Cato to Cicero 25 we find express justifications of it. What increases with civilization is not so much immorality of intent as opportunity of expression. In early Rome prostitutes were not numerous. They were forbidden to wear the matron’s robe that marked the reputable wife, and were confined to the dark corners of Rome and Roman society. There were as yet no educated courtesans like the hetairai of Athens, nor such delicate drabs as posed for Ovid’s verse.

  Men married early—usually by twenty; not through romantic love but for the sound purposes of having a helpmate, useful children, and a healthy sexual life. In the words of the Roman wedding ceremony, marriage was liberum quaerendorum causa—for the sake of getting children; on the farm, children, like wives, were economic assets, not biological toys. Marriages were often arranged by the parents and engagements were sometimes made for couples in their infancy. In every case the consent of both fathers was required. Betrothal was formal and constituted a legal bond. The relatives gathered in a feast to witness the contract; a stipula, or straw, was broken between the parties as a sign of their agreement; the stipulations—especially those concerning the dowry—were put in writing; and the man placed an iron ring upon the fourth finger of the girl’s left hand, because it was believed that a nerve ran thence to the heart.26 The minimum age for legal marriage was twelve for the girl, fourteen for the man. Early Roman law made marriage compulsory;27 but this law must have become a dead letter by 413 B.C., when Camillus as censor imposed a tax on bachelors.

  Marriage was either cum manu or sine manu—with or without the handing over of the bride and her possessions to the authority of the husband or the father-in-law. Marriage sine manu dispensed with religious ceremony and required only the consent of the bride and groom. Marriage cum manu was by usus—a, year’s cohabitation; or by coemptio—purchase; or by confarreatio (literally, eating a cake together), which required religious ceremony and was confined to patricians. Marriage by actual purchase disappeared at an early date, or was reversed; the bride’s dowry often in effect bought the man. This dowry was usually at the husband’s disposal, but its equivalent had to be returned to the wife in divorce or on the death of the male. Weddings were rich in folk ceremony and song. The two families feasted in the home of the bride; then they marched in colorful and frolicsome procession to the home of the groom’s father, to an accompaniment of flutes, hymeneal chants, and Rabelaisian raillery. At the garlanded door the bridegroom asked the girl, “Who art thou?” and she answered with a simple formula of devotion, equality, and unity: “Where thou art Caius, there am I Caia.” He lifted her over the threshold, presented her with the keys of the house, and put his neck with hers under a yoke to signify their common bond; hence marriage was called coniugium—a yoking together. In token of her joining the new family the bride then took part with the others in worshiping the household gods.

  Divorce was difficult and
rare in marriages by confarreatio; marriages cum manu could be dissolved only by the husband; in marriage sine manu divorce was open to either party at will, without asking consent of the state. The first recorded divorce in Roman history is dated 268 B.C.; a suspicious tradition claimed that no divorce had previously occurred since the foundation of the city.28 Clan custom required a husband to divorce an unfaithful or childless wife. “If you find your wife in the act of adultery,” said old Cato, “the law permits you to kill her without trial. If by chance she surprises you in the same condition she must not touch you even with the tips of her fingers; the law forbids her.”29 Despite these distinctions there were apparently many happy marriages. The tombstones abound in post-mortem affection. One honored touchingly a lady who had served two husbands well:

  Thou wert beautiful beyond measure, Statilia, and true to thy husbands! . . . He who came first, had he been able to withstand the fates, would have set up this stone to thee; while I, alas, who have been blessed by thy pure heart these sixteen years, now have lost thee.30

  The young women of early Rome were probably not quite so pretty as the later ladies whom the experienced Catullus would credit with laneum latusculum manusque mollicellas31—“little sides as smooth as wool, and soft little hands.” Presumably in those rural days toil and care soon overlaid this adolescent loveliness. Feminine features were classically regular, nose small and thin, hair and eyes usually dark. Blondes were at a premium, as were the German dyes that made them. As for the Roman male, he was impressive rather than handsome. A stern education and years of military life, hardened his face, as later indulgence would soften it into flabbiness. Cleopatra must have loved Antony for something else than his wine-puffed cheeks, and Caesar for some other charm than his eagle’s head and nose. The Roman nose was like the Roman character—sharp and devious. Beards and long hair were customary till about 300 B.C., when barbers began to ply their trade in Rome. Dress was essentially like the Greek. Boys, girls, magistrates, and the higher priests wore the toga praetexta, or purple-fringed robe; on attaining his sixteenth birthday the youth changed to the toga virilis—the white robe of manhood—as a symbol of his right to vote in the assemblies and his duty to serve in the army. Women wore, indoors, a dress (stola) bound with a girdle under the breasts, and reaching to the feet; outdoors they covered this with a palla, or cloak. Indoors, men wore a simple tunica, or shirt; outdoors they added a toga, and sometimes a cloak. The toga (tegere, to cover) was a woolen garment in one piece, twice the width and thrice in length the height of the wearer. It was wrapped around the body, and the surplus was thrown back over the left shoulder, brought forward under the right arm, and again thrown over the left shoulder. The folds at the breast served as pockets; the right arm remained free.

  The Roman male cultivated a severe dignity (gravitas) as an uncomfortable necessity in an aristocracy that ruled a people, then a peninsula, then an empire. Sentiment and tenderness belonged to private life; in public a man of the upper classes had to be as stern as his statue, and hide behind a mask of austere calm the excitability and humor that cry out not only in the comedies of Plautus but in the speeches of Cicero. Even in private life the Roman of this age was expected to live Spartanly. Luxury of dress or table was reproved by the censor; even negligent tillage could bring some Cato down upon the farmer’s head. In the First Punic War the Carthaginian ambassadors, returning from Rome, amused the rich merchants by telling how the identical set of silver plate had appeared in every house to which they had been invited; one set, secretly passed about, had sufficed the whole patriciate. In that age the Senate sat on hard wooden benches in a curia, or hall, never heated even in winter.

  Nevertheless, between the First and Second Punic Wars, wealth and luxury made a good beginning. Hannibal gathered a peck of gold rings from the fingers of Romans slain at Cannae;32 and sumptuary laws repeatedly—therefore vainly—forbade ornate jewelry, fancy dress, and costly meals. In the third century B.C. the menu of the average Roman was still simple: breakfast (ientaculum) of bread with honey or olives or cheese; luncheon (prandium) and dinner (cena) of grains, vegetables, and fruit; only the rich ate fish or meat.33 Wine, usually diluted, graced nearly every table; to drink undiluted wine was considered intemperance. Festivals and banquets were a necessary relaxation in this stoic age; those who could not unbend to them became too tense, and showed their nervous fatigue in the portrait statues they left to posterity.

  Charity found little scope in this frugal life. Hospitality survived as a mutual convenience at a time when inns were poor and far between; but the sympathetic Polybius reports that “in Rome no one ever gives away anything to anyone if he can help it”34—doubtless an exaggeration. The young were kind to the old, but in general the graces and courtesies of life came to Rome only with the dying Republic. War and conquest molded morals and manners and left men often coarse and usually hard, prepared to kill without compunction and be killed without complaint. War captives were sold into slavery by the thousands, unless they were kings or generals; these were usually slaughtered at the victor’s triumph or allowed to starve leisurely to death. In the business world these qualities took on a fairer aspect. The Romans loved money, but Polybius (about 160 B.C.) describes them as industrious and honorable men; a Greek, said the Greek, could not be prevented from embezzling, no matter how many clerks were set to watch him, while the Romans spent great sums of public money with only rare cases of ascertained dishonesty.35 We note, however, that a law to check malpractice at elections was passed in 432 B.C. Roman historians report that political integrity was at its height in the first three centuries of the Republic; but they arouse suspicion by their high praise of Valerius Corvus, who, after occupying twenty-one magistracies, returned to his fields as poor as he had come; of Curius Dentatus, who kept no part of the spoils he had taken from the enemy; and of Fabius Pictor and his associates, who handed over to the state the rich presents they had received on an embassy to Egypt. Friends lent one another substantial amounts without interest. The Roman government was guilty of frequent treachery in dealing with other states, and perhaps in foreign relations the Empire was more honorable than the Republic. But the Senate refused to connive at the poisoning of Pyrrhus, and warned him of the plot. When, after Cannae, Hannibal sent ten prisoners to Rome to negotiate for the ransom of 8000 others, and drew from them a promise to return, all but one kept their word; the Senate apprehended the tenth, put him in irons, and turned him over to Hannibal, whose joy at his victory, says Polybius, “was not so great as his dejection when he saw how steadfast and high-spirited the Romans were.”27

  In summary, the typical educated Roman of this age was orderly, conservative, loyal, sober, reverent, tenacious, severe, practical. He enjoyed discipline, and would have no nonsense about liberty. He obeyed as a training for command. He took it for granted that the government had a right to inquire into his morals as well as his income, and to value him purely according to his services to the state. He distrusted individuality and genius. He had none of the charm, vivacity, and unstable fluency of the Attic Greek. He admired character and will as the Greek admired freedom and intellect; and organization was his forte. He lacked imagination, even to make a mythology of his own. He could with some effort love beauty, but he could seldom create it. He had no use for pure science, and was suspicious of philosophy as a devilish dissolvent of ancient beliefs and ways. He could not, for the life of him, understand Plato, or Archimedes, or Christ. He could only rule the world.

  IV. LETTERS

  The Roman was formed not only by the family, the religion, and the moral code, but, in less degree, by the school, the language, and the literature. Plutarch dates the first Roman school about 250 B.C..; 38 but Livy, perhaps romancing, describes Virginia, the desired of the Decemvir, as “going to a grammar school in the Forum” as early as 450.39 The demand for written laws, and the publication of the Twelve Tables, suggest that by that date a majority of the citizens could read.

  The teac
her was usually a slave or freedman, employed by several families to instruct their children, or setting up his own private school and taking any pupil that came. He taught reading, writing, grammar, arithmetic, history, and obedience; moral education was fundamental and unceasing; disciple and discipline were almost the same word. Memory and character alike were trained by memorizing the Twelve Tables of the law. Heine remarked that “the Romans would not have had much time left for conquering the world if they had first had to learn Latin”;40 but they too had to conjugate irregular Latin verbs, and soon would be put to Greek. The boy familiarized himself, through poetry and prose, with the exploits of his country and its heroes, and received many a patriotic lesson conveyed through edifying episodes that had never occurred. No attention was given to athletics; the Romans thought it better to train and harden the body by useful work in the field or the camp rather than through contests in the palaestra or gymnasium.