The capital behind all this commercial activity came largely, so far as the Romans were concerned, from the Equites who now enjoyed less opportunity for exploiting the provinces and turned therefore from tax-farming to trade. Roman aristocrats may have used their freedmen and agents to promote business interests but they did not break with tradition so far as to come out into the open as business-men, while men who enriched themselves through trade would retire to country villas if they wanted to gain any social standing. An example of the wealthy retired businessmen living on country estates is the portrait or caricature that Petronius has drawn of Trimalchio, a slave from Asia Minor who was set free by his master from whom he inherited some wealth. Then as he told his guests at his famous banquet, he went into business: he built five ships and loaded them with wine, but every ship was wrecked; not losing heart, he built more ships, larger and better ones, which he filled with wine, pork, beans, perfumes and slaves. As a result of this voyage, so he boasted, he made ten million sesterces; he then, significantly, bought up all his former master’s farms and went in for cattle-raising. When he was wealthier than all his fellow-citizens put together, he retired from active business, made his freedmen agents, and built a palatial home on his Campanian estate. But if such a vulgar parvenu was a suitable subject for satire, the emergence of other more thrifty freedmen craftsmen, shopkeepers and agents will have contributed to the common good.
The quickening of economic life was linked with the increase in the number of cities and of the prosperity of the bourgeoisie living in them. In the third century B.C. as a result of the policy of Alexander the Great, the Near and Middle East had been studded with Greek cities; many of these began as military colonies, but they soon attracted Greek civilians and developed into self-governing cities, with a Greek bourgeoisie which helped to spread Greek culture as far as the Indus. It was the work of the early Principate and of the Italian bourgeoisie to parallel this achievement in the west, where city life was promoted not only in the already partly urbanized areas but also through much of the tribal areas in Spain, Northern Gaul and Britain. Urbanization thus led to the Romanization of the interior of the provinces, and the presence of Roman troops had a similar effect on many of the frontier areas. Thus the middle-class town-dwellers of Italy and the provinces fulfilled both a cultural and an economic role, and the urbanizing policy of Augustus and his successors had far-reaching effects. As many of the older senatorial families were dying out (a process hastened by the reigns of terror under Tiberius and his successors), a new class more easily came to the fore, whose main interests lay in industry and trade, and whose energy increased the prosperity of the towns and of the whole Empire. Old and newer towns alike flourished: in Italy, Puteoli and other cities of Campania, Ostia, Aquileia and Patavium; in the East, Corinth, Ephesus, Antioch, Palmyra and Alexandria; in Africa, Carthage and Utica; in Spain, Gades (the second city of the Empire; the number of its capitalists were equalled by Patavium alone, according to Strabo); in Gaul, Arelate and Lugdunum; in Britain, Londinium; and a host of others.
While the Roman world pulsated with activity, really large-scale industry and large-scale commerce may have been limited to a comparatively small number of towns, and the perennial importance of land should not be forgotten.7 In Italy it was still the main source of senatorial incomes; and the governing aristocracy in the majority of the towns of the Empire consisted of a group of local landowners who lived in the town, although it would be increasingly recruited from the sons of men who had made money in trade or industry and had invested it in land. Nor did such town councils show much interest in promoting or protecting local trade: the imperial policy of laissez faire was reflected at this lower stage also. They did of course generally provide a market and encourage the adornment of their cities with fine buildings but the motive will have been civic pride more than economic development. The construction of baths, theatres and (though less in the east than west) amphitheatres was designed to provide public games and entertainments worthy of a city’s local patriotism, and if possible better than those of its neighbours: only incidentally were the economic benefits considered. It is also noteworthy that although great individual fortunes could still be made, they were often soon dissipated: upstart freedmen, nouveaux riches, and reckless luxury were features of social life under Nero; thereafter wealth was used with greater moderation and wisdom and more of it was diverted from luxuries into productive industry and commerce, while the really large fortunes were made more easily in the provinces than in Italy.
A wealthy aristocracy and a prosperous middle-class were not balanced by any great improvement in the condition of the labouring class which consisted largely of freedmen and slaves. Skilled slaves would normally receive reasonable treatment, if only because of their economic value, and their conditions tended to improve (p. 273). The life of the freeborn labourer was more precarious and must often have been grim; competition by slave labour will have depressed his living standard and many men must have been near to bare subsistence. He could be kept from actual starvation by the corn-dole, and the State also supplied free amusements and free public baths where he could meet his friends. There existed also societies of craftsmen and traders, but these were not real guilds or unions which bargained for better wages or working conditions. They were rather social clubs or friendly societies, and membership of such a collegium was not rigidly limited to followers of a particular trade. Most of them, whatever other purpose they served, were ‘burial clubs’ which beside providing companionship in life also assured a member a decent burial. When judged by modern standards conditions must often have been bad, but they tended to get better: thus even in the mines, worked generally by slaves and convicts, arrangements improved, since regulations for the mining settlement at Vispasca (in southern Portugal) show that under Hadrian the children of the workers had schools and teachers and that the pit-head baths were open from 2 to 8 p.m. Many free workers must have shared in the general affluence of Italy, while some of the less fortunate may have found a better life by joining the army or emigrating to the provinces where free labour predominated and where a rising tide of prosperity led to the extraordinary flowering of municipal life that was one of the great achievements of the Empire.
5. THE SENATORIAL CLASS
Economic, social and political factors had brought about a profound change in the composition and outlook of the senatorial nobility by the end of Nero’s reign.8 The downfall of the Republic with its civil wars and proscription had wrought havoc in the ranks of the nobles, and many of those that survived had little sympathy for the new emerging régime which provided less scope for the free exercise of their ambitions and talents. The names of members of old families, as the Scipios, Metelli and Claudii Marcelli, were disappearing from the consulship under Augustus; the Porcii, Luculli, Lutatii, Hortensii, Servilii Caepiones and Calpurnii Bibuli produced no more consuls; the last Scipio and the last Appius Claudius Pulcher perished in the scandal that ruined Julia in 2 B.C., while the Sempronii Gracchi survived only a little longer. The Claudii and Domitii endured, to provide emperors, but Nero was to prove the last of the Domitii Ahenobarbi who had given Rome eight consuls in the previous eight generations. The names of Sulla, Cinna, Crassus, Pompeius, and Cornelius Lentulus still managed to appear in the consular fasti of the Julio-Claudian period, but not thereafter. While so many of the older nobility were sinking into obscurity or extinction, many of the newer men that had emerged in the revolutionary period fared little better: the younger Cicero, Vatinius, Trebonius, Gabinius, and Ventidius had no consular descendants. Some too of the new families whom Augustus had ennobled for their services failed to perpetuate their lines: Quirinius had no children, and consulars bearing the names of Statilius Taurus, Sentius Saturninus and Vinicius are not found after the reign of Claudius. And few of the Republican, or even of the Augustan, nobles, who did survive to hold the consulship, received army commands: the legates who controlled the armies in the imperial provinces inc
reasingly were drawn from men of less social distinction, sons or grandsons of Roman knights some of them coming even from Narbonese Gaul. Thus a new nobility was gradually replacing the older aristocracy.
Whence came these newer men to dilute and then to supersede the older blood in the Senate? It has already been seen that the enfranchisement of Italy during the Social War opened up a new reservoir of supply, which Sulla may not have totally neglected when he added some 300 knights to the Senate (p. 69). Caesar’s new senators included many more of these Roman knights from Italy, men of substance and property; the freedmen, centurions or provincials that he admitted were few in number (p. 125). Under Augustus the Senate received yet more of the ‘flower of Italy’, wealthy men from the colonies and municipalities, not only from central parts but from all Italy from the foothills of the Alps down to Bruttium and Apulia. The civilized regions of the West also began slowly to supply their contingent. Caesar had pointed the way, with a handful from Cisalpine and Narbonese Gaul and from Spain: the younger Balbus of Gades had become quaestor in 44 B.C. Under Augustus and Tiberius the Senate will have been largely limited to the senatores Italici; but under Tiberius in 35 a consul came from Narbonensis, with a second in Gaius’ principate: Claudius then opened the doors of the Senate-House wider for the Gauls (p. 251); soon Seneca, from Spanish Corduba, and Burrus, from Gallic Vasio, had gathered great powers into their hands, and provincial senators became more common. But under Nero they still came mainly from Italian families abroad: the senators who were descendants of native provincials belong to the succeeding period.
6. SOCIAL LIFE
It is clearly impossible to describe adequately in a few lines the rich and varied social life of the age.9 Various aspects of it, not least the economic background, have already received some mention, but it may be well to glance at some others. As already seen, Roman society was somewhat sharply divided into classes, ranging from aristocrats to slaves. The nobles and senators devoted much time to public administration and law, both at home and abroad, but how did they pass the rest of their lives? Let us see briefly how a member of the upper class might spend a day.
After getting up early, probably about dawn, he would spend only a few minutes dressing, washing and eating: his main bath and meal came later in the day. Since he did not wear special night-clothes, he would already have on his subligaculum (a kind of loin-cloth) and, if it was cold, his tunic, which was a long shirt of wool or linen; in winter he might put on another one for warmth. Before going out, and for any formal business in the house, he would put on his toga, the carefully arranged cloak that every Roman citizen had to wear in public (naturally the ordinary Roman working on his land or at his bench did not wear his toga, but he had to put it on if he went to any public gathering). The broad stripe of purple on his tunic and the crescent ornament on his shoes would mark out the senator from other classes. If he had a private barber (tonsor), he might be shaved at home; otherwise he would later go to a barber’s shop, which was often a social centre for exchanging gossip and news. Shaving must have been a painful and often bloody business, but at this period it was de rigueur. Meantime his wife might be giving similar time to her make-up and to her hair-dressing which from the time of Messalina became increasingly elaborate; in these tasks she would be helped by her ornatrices, slaves who attended their mistress while others were waiting on their master.
The first duty of the day would be to receive formally the clients who had called to pay their respects to their patron and were waiting in his ante-room. To these salutatores, who came wearing their togas (togati), he would distribute food or money (sportula); the whole proceedings were governed by strict rules of etiquette. As most Romans owed obsequium to some superior, our senator might himself in turn have to go to pay his respects to some one more elevated, perhaps the emperor himself. After holding his own levée he might then take a stroll, accompanied by some of his clients, perhaps to the Forum, the heart of Rome’s life. Here he might attend a court, from interest if not officially, or perform some social duty for a friend; he might go to the public recitatio of the latest work of a writer that he knew, though the wiser authors would not start their ‘readings’ before the afternoon. If he went home for lunch (prandium), it would be a light meal, which his wife and children might take with him; while the parents reclined, the children were seated at table. After a siesta or some time spent in reading, he might visit the Baths, the theatre, the races in the Circus, or the Games in the amphitheatre. Then followed dinner (cena), the main meal of the day; not all Romans were gourmands, and many men must often have dined quietly and simply with a few friends. A synthesis would be worn in place of the toga, and the company, often nine in number, reclined on benches arranged to form three sides of a square (triclinium), the fourth side being left open to give the servers access to the table which was placed in the centre. Since knives and spoons but not forks were used, slaves frequently attended the diners with ewers of water and towels for their hands. The talk might be on social or literary topics; politics would usually be avoided. On occasions a man would entertain his clients, and would normally show them more courtesy, it may be hoped, than those hosts who did not offer all their guests the same fare. At times larger banquets might be given, and though not all the disgust expressed by the satirists need be taken at its full value and not every dinner was an orgy, gluttonous over-eating, and over-drinking must often have ensued. Such feasts, however, tended to last many hours, which provided opportunities between the courses for professional entertainment, whether music, poetry or dancing-girls. While a Nero or Trimalchio might prolong the feast till midnight or after, the more temperate host after bidding his guests goodnight might read, or be read to by a slave, before retiring to his often austerely furnished bedroom and to his bed of which the frame and fittings might be a work of art but which, with mattress and bolster resting on strips of webbing, might not provide excessive comfort.
The manifold business interests of the rich Equites and the multifarious activities of the middle and lower classes in field and farm, in city shop or factory, defy description, but one difference from our own society may be noted. Physicians, surgeons, and teachers, whom we regard as members of the professional classes, were recruited mainly from Greeks or other foreigners who were freedmen or slaves. For the population in the city there were three outstanding centres of attraction: the Baths, ‘Bread and Circuses’. The Baths, though not without their corrupting influences, were of great physical benefit. Attached to them was a palaestra, where sports, ball-games, gymnastics and athletics could be practised; after exercise a man could enter a sudatorium, then the caldarium where he cleansed himself with hot water and a scraper (strigil); next he cooled off in the tepidarium, and finally took a cold plunge in the frigidarium. Many Baths had existed in the later Republic, built for profit or given by the wealthy; in a census taken by Agrippa in 33 B.C. there were 170. Soon afterwards he built the first great public Bath; it bore his name and entrance was free. The next benefaction came from Nero, and later emperors followed suit. Further, these Baths served an important social function: they were centres where men (and women) could meet and talk and stroll, and if a few bathers were ennervated by over-indulgence, the majority including the poor, gained much good from these fine health-giving centres.
From the Gracchi to Nero: A History of Rome from 133 B.C. to A.D. 68 Page 45