The Story of Civilization: Volume III: Caesar and Christ

by Will Durant

  The courts, now pre-empted by senators, rivaled the polls in corruption. Oaths had lost all value as testimony; perjury was as common as bribery. Marcus Messala, being indicted for buying his election to the consulate (53), was unanimously acquitted, though even his friends acknowledged his guilt.6 “Trials are now managed so venally,” wrote Cicero to his son, “that no man will ever be condemned hereafter except for murder.”7 He should have said “no man of means”; for “without money and a good lawyer,” said another advocate at this period, “a plain, simple defendant may be accused of any crime which he has not committed, and will certainly be convicted.”8 Lentulus Sura, having been acquitted by two votes, mourned the extra expense he had gone to in bribing one more judge than he had needed.9 When Quintus Calidus, praetor, was convicted by a jury of senators, he calculated that “they could not honestly require less than 300,000 sesterces to condemn a praetor.”10

  Protected by such courts, the Senatorial proconsuls, the tax gatherers, the moneylenders, and the business agents milked the provinces at a rate that would have angered their predecessors with envy. There were several honorable and competent provincial governors, but what could be expected of the majority? They served without pay, usually for a year’s term; in that brief time they had to accumulate enough to pay their debts, buy another office, and set themselves up for life in the style befitting a great Roman. The sole check upon their venality was the Senate; and the senators could be trusted as gentlemen not to raise a fuss, since nearly all of them had done, or hoped soon to do, the same. When Caesar went to Farther Spain as proconsul in 61 he owed $7,500,000; when he returned in 60 he cleared off these debts at one stroke. Cicero thought himself a painfully honest man; he made only $ 110,000 in his year as governor of Cilicia and filled his letters with wonder at his own moderation.

  The generals who conquered the provinces were the first to profit from them. Lucullus, after his campaigns in the East, became a synonym for luxury. Pompey brought in from the same region $11,200,000 for the Treasury and $21,000,000 for himself and his friends; Caesar took literally untold millions from Gaul. After the generals came the publicans, who collected from the people twice the amount which they remitted to Rome. When a province or city could not raise enough from its subjects to pay the demanded tribute or tax, Roman financiers or statesmen would lend them the necesssary funds at from twelve to forty-eight per cent interest, to be collected, if need be, by the Roman army through siege, conquest, and pillage. The Senate had forbidden its members to take part in such loans, but pompous aristocrats like Pompey, and saints like Brutus, skirted the law by lending through intermediaries. In some years the province of Asia paid Romans twice as much in interest on loans as it paid to the publicans and the Treasury.11 The paid and unpaid interest on money borrowed by the cities of Asia Minor to meet Sulla’s exactions in 84 had swelled by 70 to six times the principal. To meet the charges on this debt communities sold their public buildings and statuary, and parents sold their children into slavery, for defaulting debtors could be stretched on the rack.12 If any wealth still remained, a flock of entrepreneurs came in from Italy, Syria, and Greece, with Senatorial contracts for “developing” the mineral, timber, or other resources of the province; trade followed the flag. Some bought slaves, some sold or bought goods, others purchased land and set up provincial latifundia larger than those of Italy. “No Gaul,” said Cicero in 69, with his customary exaggeration, “carries through any business without the intervention of a Roman citizen; not a penny changes hands there without passing through the ledgers of a Roman.”

  Antiquity had never known so rich, so powerful, and so corrupt a government.

  II. THE MILLIONAIRES

  The business classes reconciled themselves to the rule of the Senate because they were better prepared than the aristocracy to exploit the provinces. That “concord of the orders,” or co-operation of the two upper classes, which Cicero was to preach as an ideal, was already a reality in his youth; they had agreed to unite and conquer. Businessmen and their aggressive agents crowded the basilicas and streets of Rome and swarmed into provincial markets and capitals. Bankers issued letters of exchange on their provincial affiliates,13 and lent money for everything, even political careers. Merchants and financiers swung their influence to the populares when the Senate proved selfish, and back to the optimates when democratic leaders tried to keep their pre-election promises to the proletariat.

  Crassus, Atticus, and Lucullus typify the three phases of Roman wealth: acquisition, speculation, luxury. Marcus Licinius Crassus was of aristocratic lineage. His father, a famous orator, consul, and censor, had fought for Sulla and had killed himself rather than yield to Marius. Sulla rewarded the son by letting him buy at bargain prices the confiscated properties of proscribed men. As a youth Marcus had studied literature and philosophy and had assiduously practiced law; but now the smell of money intoxicated him. He organized a fire brigade—something new to Rome; it ran to fires, sold its services on the spot, or bought endangered buildings at nominal sums and then put out the fire; in this way Crassus acquired hundreds of houses and tenements, which he let at high rentals. He bought state mines when Sulla denationalized them. Soon he had inflated his fortune from 7,000,000 to 170,000,000 sesterces ($25,500,000)—a sum nearly equal to the total yearly revenue of the Treasury. No man should consider himself rich, said Crassus, unless he could raise, equip, and maintain his own army;14 it was his destiny to perish by his definition. Having become the wealthiest man in Rome, he was still unhappy; he itched for public office, for a province, for the leadership of an Asiatic campaign. He solicited votes humbly in the streets, memorized the first names of countless citizens, lived in conspicuous simplicity, and, to tether influential politicians to his star, lent them money without interest but payable on demand. With all his eager ambitions he was a kindly man, accessible to everyone, generous without limit to his friends, and contributing to both political parties with that bilateral wisdom which has always distinguished his kind. He fulfilled all his dreams: he became consul in 70 and again in 55, governed Syria, and helped to raise the great army that he led against Parthia. He was defeated at Carrhae, treacherously captured, and barbarously slain (53); his head was cut off, and into the mouth his conqueror poured molten gold.

  Titus Pomponius Atticus, though of equestrian birth, was a truer aristocrat than Crassus and a higher type of millionaire: as honest as Meyer Anschel of the rot Schild, as learned as Lorenzo de’ Medici, as financially astute as Voltaire. We hear of him first as a student in Athens, when his conversation, and his reading of Greek and Latin poetry, so charmed Sulla that the bloodstained commander wished, in vain, to take him back to Rome as a personal companion. He was a scholar and a historian, wrote an outline of universal history,15 lived most of his life in the philosophical circles of Athens, and earned his cognomen from his Attic erudition and philanthropies. His father and his uncle left him some $960,000; he invested it in a great cattle ranch in Epirus, in buying and letting houses in Rome, in training gladiators and secretaries and hiring them out, and in publishing books. When good openings came he lent money at profitable rates; but to Athens and his friends he lent without interest.16 Men like Cicero, Hortensius, and the younger Cato entrusted him with their savings and the management of their affairs, and honored him for his caution, his integrity, and his dividends. Cicero was glad to have his advice not only in purchasing houses, but in choosing statuary to adorn them and books to fill his library. Atticus entertained frugally and lived with the modesty of a true Epicurean; but his genial friendship and his cultivated conversation made his house in Rome the salon of all political celebrities. He contributed to all parties and was spared in all proscriptions. At the age of seventy-seven, finding himself afflicted with a painful and incurable disease, he starved himself to death.

  Lucius Licinius Lucullus, of high patrician family, sallied forth in 74 to complete Sulla’s war against Mithridates. For eight years he led his inadequate forces with co
urage and skill; then, as his campaign was nearing full success, his tired troops mutinied, and he guided their retreat from Armenia to Ionia through perils as great as those that had immortalized Xenophon. Relieved of his command by political intrigue, he returned to Rome and, with his patrimony and his spoils, spent the rest of his life in quiet but ornate luxury. He built on the Pincian hill a palace with spacious halls, loggias, libraries, and gardens; at Tusculum his estate extended for many miles; he bought a villa at Misenum for 10,000,000 sesterces ($1,500,000); and he turned the entire island of Nisida into his summer resort. His various gardens were famous for their horticultural innovations; it was he, for example, who introduced the cherry tree from Pontus to Italy, whence it was carried to north Europe and America. His dinners were the culinary events of the Roman year. Cicero tried once to find out how Lucullus ate when alone; he asked Lucullus to invite him and some friends to dinner that evening, but pledged Lucullus to send no word of warning to his servants. Lucullus agreed, merely stipulating that he be allowed to notify his staff that he would eat in the “Apollo Room” that evening. When Cicero and the rest came they found a lavish repast. Lucullus had several dining rooms in his city palace, each selected according to the splendor of the feast; the Apollo Room was reserved for meals costing 200,000 sesterces or more.17 But Lucullus was no gourmand. His houses were galleries of well-chosen art; his libraries were the resort of scholars and his friends; he himself was learned in both the classical literatures and in all the philosophies—naturally favoring that of Epicurus. He smiled at Pompey’s strenuous life; one campaign seemed to him enough for one life; anything more was mere vanity.

  His example spread without his taste among the rich of Rome; soon patricians and magnates were competing in luxurious display, while revolt brewed in bankrupt provinces and men starved in the slums. Senators lounged in bed till noon and seldom attended sessions. Some of their sons dressed and walked like courtesans, wore frilled robes and women’s sandals, decked themselves with jewelry, sprinkled themselves with perfume, deferred marriage or avoided parentage, and emulated the bisexual impartiality of the Greeks. Senatorial houses cost up to 10,000,000 sesterces; Clodius, leader of the plebs, built a mansion costing 14,800,000. Lawyers like Cicero and Hortensius, despite the Cincian law against legal fees, competed in palaces as well as in oratory; the gardens of Hortensius contained the largest zoological collection in Italy. All men of any pretension had villas at or near Baiae, where the aristocracy took the baths, enjoyed the Bay of Naples, and declared a moratorium on monogamy. Other villas rose on the hills outside of Rome; rich men had several, moving from one to another as the season changed. Fortunes were spent on interior decoration, furniture, or silver plate. Cicero paid 500,000 sesterces for a table of citrus wood; a million sesterces might be paid for one of cypress wood; even the younger Cato, pillar of all Stoic virtues, was alleged to have paid 800,000 sesterces for some table spreads from Babylon.18

  A horde of specialized slaves formed the staff of these palaces—valets, letter carriers, lamplighters, musicians, secretaries, doctors, philosophers, cooks. Eating was now the chief occupation of upper-class Rome; there, as in the ethics of Metrodorus, “everything good had reference to the belly.” At a repast given in 63 by a high priest, and attended incongruously by Vestal Virgins and Caesar, the hors d’oeuvres consisted of mussels, spondyles, fieldfares with asparagus, fattened fowls, oyster pastries, sea nettles, ribs of roe, purple shellfish, and songbirds. Then came the dinner—sows’ udders, boar’s head, fish, duck, teals, hares, fowl, pastries, and sweets.19 Delicacies were imported from every part of the Empire and beyond: peacocks from Samos, grouse from Phrygia, cranes from Ionia, tunnyfish from Chalcedon, muraenas from Gades, oysters from Tarentum, sturgeons from Rhodes. Foods produced in Italy were considered a bit vulgar, fit only for plebeians. The actor Aesopus gave a dinner at which songbirds were eaten to the cost of $5ooo.20 Sumptuary laws continued to denounce expensive meals, and to be ignored. Cicero tried to obey, ate the legally permitted vegetables, and suffered ten days of diarrhea.22

  Some of the new wealth disported itself in enlarged theaters and extended games. In 58 Aemilius Scaurus built a theater with 8000 seats, 360 pillars, 3000 statues, a three-storied stage, and three colonnades—one of wood, one of marble, and one of glass; his slaves, rebelling against the hard labor he had exacted of them, burned down the theater soon afterward, netting him a loss of 100,000,000 sesterces.23 In 55 Pompey provided funds for the first permanent stone theater in Rome—with 17,500 seats, and a spacious porticoed park for entr’acte promenades. In 53 Scribonius Curio, one of Caesar’s generals, erected two wooden theaters, each a semicircle, back to back; in the morning the two stages presented plays; then, while the spectators were still in their seats, the two structures were turned on pivots and wheels, the semicircles formed an amphitheater and the united stages became an arena for gladiatorial games.24 Never had such games been so frequent, costly, or prolonged. In a single day of the games given by Caesar 10,000 gladiators took part, many of whom were killed. Sulla exhibited a fight involving a hundred lions, Caesar four hundred, Pompey six hundred. Beasts fought men, men fought men; and the vast audience waited hopefully for the sight of death.

  III. THE NEW WOMAN

  The increase of wealth conspired with the corruption of politics to loosen morals and the marriage bond. Despite increasing competition from women and men, prostitution continued to flourish; brothels and the taverns that usually housed them were so popular that some politicians organized votes through the collegium lupanariorum, or guild of brothelkeepers.25 Adultery was so common as to attract little attention unless played up for political purposes, and practically every well-to-do woman had at least one divorce. This was not the fault of women; it resulted largely from the subordination of marriage, in the upper classes, to money and politics. Men chose wives, or youths had wives chosen for them, to get a rich dowry or make advantageous connections. Sulla and Pompey married five times. Seeking to attach Pompey to him, Sulla persuaded him to put away his first wife and marry Aemilia, Sulla’s stepdaughter, who was already married and with child; Aemilia reluctantly agreed, but died in childbirth shortly after entering Pompey’s house. Caesar gave his daughter Julia to Pompey in marriage as an item in their triumviral alliance. The Empire, growled Cato, had become a matrimonial agency.25a Such unions were mariages de politique; as soon as their utility ended, the husband looked for another wife as a steppingstone to higher place or greater wealth. He did not need to give a reason; he merely sent his wife a letter announcing her freedom and his. Some men did not marry at all, alleging distaste for the forwardness and extravagance of the new woman; many lived in free unions with concubines or slaves. The censor Metellus Macedonicus (131) had begged men to marry and beget children as a duty to the state, however much of a nuisance {molestia) a wife might be;26 but the number of celibates and childless couples increased more rapidly after he spoke. Children were now luxuries which only the poor could afford.

  Under these circumstances women could hardly be blamed for looking lightly upon their marriage vows and seeking in liaisons the romance or affection that political matrimony had failed to bring. There was, of course, a majority of good women, even among the rich; but a new freedom was breaking down the old patria potestas and the ancient family discipline. Roman women now moved about almost as freely as men. They dressed in diaphanous silks from India and China, and ransacked Asia for perfumes and jewelry. Marriage cum manu disappeared, and women divorced their husbands as readily as men their wives. A growing proportion of women sought expression in cultural pursuits: they learned Greek, studied philosophy, wrote poetry, gave public lectures, played, sang, and danced, and opened literary salons; some engaged in business; a few practiced medicine or law.

  Clodia, the wife of Quintus Caecilius Metellus, was the most prominent of those ladies who in this period supplemented their husbands with a succession of cavalieri serventi. She had a gay passion for the rights of women;
shocked the older generation by going about unchaperoned with her male friends after her marriage; accosted people whom she met and knew, and sometimes publicly kissed them, instead of lowering her eyes and crouching in her carriage as proper women were supposed to do. She invited her male friends to dine with her while her husband absented himself with the chivalry of the Marquis du Châtelet. Cicero, who cannot be trusted, describes “her loves, adulteries, and lecheries, her songs and symphonies, her suppers and carousing, at Baiae on land and sea.”27 She was a clever woman, who could sin with irresistible grace, but she underestimated the selfishness of men. Each lover demanded her entirely until his appetite waned, and each became her shocked enemy when she found a new friend. So Catullus (if she was his Lesbia) besmeared her with ribald epigrams; and Caelius, alluding to the price paid for the poorest prostitutes, called her in open court the quadrantaria—the quarter-of-an-as (one-and-a-half-cent) woman. She had accused him of trying to poison her; he hired Cicero to defend him; and the great orator did not hesitate to charge her with incest and murder, protesting, however, that he was “not the enemy of women, still less of one who was the friend of all men.” Caelius was acquitted, and Clodia paid some penalty for being the sister of that Publius Clodius who was the most radical leader in Rome and Cicero’s implacable enemy.