From the Gracchi to Nero: A History of Rome from 133 B.C. to A.D. 68

by H. H. Scullard

  ‘The people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions and all else, now meddles no more and eagerly longs for just two things, panem et circenses.’ That Juvenal’s well-known observation was more than the rhetoric of a satirist is shown by a more sober remark in a letter from Fronto to Marcus Aurelius, but in the Julio-Claudian period the evil had not yet assumed such threatening proportions.10 Julius Caesar had cut down the list of recipients of free corn to 150,000, but this may represent roughly the male citizen population of Rome in his day (with women and children, some 600,000; in addition there were the foreigners and slaves). In any case most citizens came to feel that they had a claim on the State for free corn. In 2 B.C. Augustus had reviewed the list and increased the recipients to 200,000 possibly including some boys from the age of ten. Each recipient had a ticket (tessera) which he exchanged every month at the Porticus Minucia for his ration; later the tessera was used simply as an identification disk. The process of distribution was improved by Claudius. Another form of benefit that the privileged citizens of the capital enjoyed was the distribution of money (congiaria) that emperors made as their personal gifts on occasions. Augustus made at least seven such distributions (a normal amount being 75 denarii, which in his day equalled the pay of a legionary for four months), and his successors followed his example; the distributions may have been made in the Atrium Libertatis behind the Senate-House. Non-citizens in Rome could not share in these benefactions and had to be content with missilia, tickets that were thrown to spectators at the Games which entitled them to presents.

  The Romans had no seventh day of rest, but they had a remarkable number of days in the year that were available for holidays and games, days marked dies nefasti in the calendar when public business was suspended. The calendars record 45 feriae publicae, old surviving religious festivals (as the Saturnalia and Lupercalia) which might be accompanied by spectacles, as the footraces at the Robigalia. There were also six old Games (Ludi Romani, Plebei, Apollinares, Ceriales, Megalenses and Florales) which together lasted at least 59 days. Sulla and Caesar added their Victory Games, Augustus his Ludi Fortunae Reducis (11 B.C.) and Livia established Ludi Palatini in Augustus’ memory. Another type of holiday was created when the Senate decreed the commemoration of an important event in an emperor’s life, such as his birthday: eighteen holidays celebrated events connected with the life or memory of Augustus. In all, by Claudius’ reign, there were 159 holidays a year, on 93 of which games were given at public expense. Thus nearly half the year consisted of official holidays, although naturally not everyone could afford to take so much time off from his work.

  The chief amusements were four, each with its appropriate building: the theatre for acting, the stadium for athletics, the circus for horse-racing, and the amphitheatre for gladiatorial and animal contests. Romans had a choice of three theatres, those of Pompey, Balbus and Marcellus, which together may have seated some 50,000 people; each of them was thus far larger than a modern theatre. The decline of tragedy and comedy at the expense of farce and mime has already been noted (p. 164 f.). Tragedy developed into a mixture of opera, ballet and music-hall, comedy into the mime which illustrated the seamy side of life. A form of entertainment, which became popular from the time of Augustus was that of the pantomimus, a dancer who was accompanied by music and chorus and who in dumb show represented various themes of tragedy or comedy. Two such actors, Pylades and Bathyllus, displayed great skill and achieved immense popularity under Augustus. So popular were such actors that under Tiberius the mob rioted over their rival merits and caused the death of several soldiers.

  Attempts had been made as early as the early second century B.C. to introduce Greek athletic games and musical contests into Rome, but they had met with an unenthusiastic response. Augustus fared little better; he founded the Actiaca which were to be celebrated every four years in Rome and Actium, but they are not heard of after A.D. 16. Nero’s Greek Games (p. 259) met with little success after his death, though soon afterwards the emperor Domitian achieved a better result with his Capitoline Games.

  The chief Games, however, were the chariot-races held in the Circuses, the old Circus Maximus, that of Flaminius, and Caligula’s new one on the Vatican. The Maximus, in the hollow between the Aventine and Palatine hills, was gradually improved: Augustus decorated the spina (the axial wall around which the chariots raced) with the obelisk of Rameses II from Egypt (now in the Piazza del Popolo) and with a ‘box’ (pulvinar) for himself and friends on the Palatine side above the cavea, the seats. Stone seats were introduced for senators by Claudius, and for Equites by Nero. In all it seated some 150,000 spectators. In it various games might be staged (athletics, races on horseback, the Trojan Game for nobles’ sons), but the chief feature was the chariot-races. These might last up to fifteen days, with as many as twenty-four races a day; each race comprised seven laps of the course by teams of two (bigae) or generally four horses (quadrigae). Four teams would race at a time, representing the factions of the Whites, Greens, Blues and Reds. These ‘sides’ were supported with great fervour by their followers (Caligula and Nero both backed the Greens) and gambling was heavy. Racing involved great skill by the charioteers, and risk to limb or life for man and beast was severe, especially when the two turning-posts (metae) were being rounded. Pedigree horses won great fame: one that achieved a hundred victories was then called a centenarius. Not less renowned were the star charioteers, such as Scirtus of the Whites under Tiberius. But the excitement of the race was not the only attraction: here Sulla met his last wife Valeria when she pulled a thread from his toga, and Ovid, the poet of love, could point out the opportunities provided by the Circus for flirtation and gallantry.10a

  More brutal was the carnage that went on in the amphitheatre. The first permanent one in Rome was built by Statilius Taurus in 29 B.C. Here were staged the gladiatorial combats which were the responsibility (munera) of magistrates, praetors under Augustus and quaestors under Claudius. Under the Julio-Claudians the number of gladiators was limited to 120 a time, less perhaps for humane reasons than to check the popularity of the magistrate. The emperors gradually assumed chief responsibility; Augustus gave eight special shows, and built a flooded arena near the Janiculum where mock sea-fights (naumachiae) could be staged. From Rome the practice spread widely through Italy and the western provinces; few cities of note would lack an amphitheatre, and before long Rome gained the greatest of them all, the Amphitheatrum Flavium, dedicated in A.D. 80 and better known as the Colosseum. The Greek East was less receptive to this barbarous practice, but cosmopolitan Corinth and gradually Greek cities in Asia Minor succumbed.11

  Gladiators, who were recruited from condemned criminals and prisoners of war, were trained in schools (ludi) and were classified according to their equipment as Samnites, Thracians, murmilliones, retiarii (armed with net and trident), laquearii and others. When successful, a gladiator might receive great rewards and become a popular idol (the Thracian Celadus is described on a grafitto at Pompeii as ‘decus puellarum, suspirium puellarum’), but his hour of fame was likely to be brief and he would have to survive many a further combat before he could hope for his rudis, the wooden sword that symbolized his discharge. Courage and skill might occasionally save a man, but even more pitiful and degrading for the spectators were the munera sine missione, butcheries from which no one might survive, and also the practice of exposing unarmed victims ad bestias, to the mercy of the lions.

  Gladiatorial combats in the amphitheatre might be supplemented with venationes, animal fights or hunts, or even only exhibitions. Men pitted against animals, bestiarii, were not gladiators but at first condemned criminals and later specially trained men; they too could become stars who prided themselves on their scars and bites. More pleasant was the exhibition of trained animals, as elephants which danced and dined and even, under Tiberius, walked a tight-rope; a race of chariots drawn by camels was staged by Claudius. Augustus exhibited in the arena or elsewhere an Indian rhinoceros, a white elephant from
Siam, and a large snake, probably a python; under Nero a polar-bear made its appearance. The vast numbers of animals, as elephants, lions, tigers, leopards, panthers and hippopotami, that had to be shipped to Rome to gratify Roman cruelty gave rise to a large-scale trade in wild-beasts.

  Italy

  These ghastly displays, with their degrading influence on the spectators, lasted for centuries. The ludi bestiarii persisted until the sixth century, but the Christian emperors gradually took action against gladiatorial combats: in 326 Constantine forbade condemnation ad bestias, and in 404 after the monk Telemachus had been torn to pieces by the angry spectators when he had jumped into the arena to separate the combatants, Honorius suppressed by edict gladatorial combats in the West.

  XVI

  ART, LITERATURE AND RELIGION IN THE JULIO-CLAUDIAN PERIOD

  1. ARCHITECTURE AND ART

  The demand for theatres, amphitheatres, circuses, baths and other public buildings naturally stimulated architecture. The establishment of colonies and the development of older towns throughout the provinces, and especially in the less urbanized west, gave employment to workmen and architects alike, and each municipality strove to outdo its neighbour in the splendour of its public buildings. In Gaul, for instance, there was tremendous building activity under Augustus. Arelate, Nemausus, Forum Julii, Vienna, Lugdunum and Augustodunum (Autun) all had Augustan walls (incidentally if Londinium and Verulamium had enjoyed the same privilege, accorded to Roman colonies and those with Latin rights in Gaul, they would not have succumbed so easily to Boudicca’s attack). Other famous Augustan monuments in Gaul included the Maison Carrée, a temple built by Agrippa, at Nîmes; possibly the famous Pont du Gard which majestically carried an aqueduct over the river to bring water to Nîmes (though it may be later); and the temple at Vienne. In Spain and Africa also similar development took place, and although these were all lands where city life had long been known, their external appearance must have been changed considerably during the early principate.

  The great architectural changes that Augustus had brought about in Rome have already been mentioned (pp. 192 ff.). The contribution of Tiberius included a temple to Divus Augustus, barracks for the Praetorian Guard (Castra Praetoria: traces of the brick and concrete walls survive), and a sumptuous palace on the Palatine, which contrasted with the modest house of Augustus; Tiberius also developed Augustus’ villa at Capri into a large estate. Gaius constructed a private Circus on the far side of the Tiber, where the first Christian martyrs were to suffer. Claudius was much concerned with engineering, and endowed Rome with two new aqueducts, while the triumphal arch which celebrated his conquest of Britain was a transformation of an existing aqueduct-arch where it crossed a main road. The reconstruction of the city by Nero after the Great Fire has already been mentioned (p. 261). His Domus Aurea is interesting not only for the scale of its conceptions, but also for its wall-paintings (which influenced artists of the early Renaissance in a building which still survives under the later Baths of Trajan) and for its circular dining-room with a revolving ceiling. This probably had no religious significance (the conception was not, as has been suggested, that of a sacred palace for the Sun-god, borrowed from the Parthians) but it illustrates the love of Nero (‘incredibilium cupitor’) for mechanical marvels. More important is the purely architectural significance of this room since it is probably an early example of a new use of the shape of space within a building at the expense of the function of the masonry masses that contained it: this conception was to become increasingly fruitful in the architecture of the later Empire.1 Another interesting building which looks to the future and in its arrangement anticipates in some respects the later Christian basilica, is the underground hypogeum near the Porta Maggiore. Probably of Claudian date, it is a vaulted and arched hall, with stucco decorations that suggest that it may have formed the meeting-place for a mystery religion, perhaps Neopythagorean. Augustan architecture had in the main followed the Greek classical tradition: it had added the use of fresh materials (coloured stone and veined marble from Numidia, Phrygia and Euboea), but with all its excellence it was following a conventional Greek pattern. Under Nero, however, Augustan classicism began to be complemented by bolder developments which led on to the amazing buildings of the Flavian emperors and their successors.

  Domestic architecture also received a stimulus in the rebuilding of Rome after the fire. Space was valuable and the tendency was to build upwards. The houses known to us from excavation at Ostia reveal the type of building at Rome: a high block built around a central arcaded court, with shops, windows and balconies facing outwards on to the streets, now often laid out on a grid-system; the rooms would be let as flats. At Pompeii, on the other hand, where an earthquake in A.D. 63 led to much rebuilding, the richer inhabitants continued to live in the more old-fashioned rambling houses of one or two storeys only, built around atrium and peristyle. The heating of some houses was improved in the Augustan period by the adaptation to private dwellings of the system, used in baths, of heating a floor by a furnace underneath (hypocaust); this was extended during the first century by the use of box-tiles in the walls to circulate the heat.

  In wealthier houses it was customary to have mural paintings.2 Many survive at Pompeii, and these have been classified in four styles. The earliest Incrustation style was followed in the first century B.C. by the so-called Architectural style which lasted until the end of Augustus’ reign. Here the wall-surface was broken into a number of architectural features designed to produce an illusion of space; the panels were often filled with pictures which were not ‘pictures on the wall’ but designed to show, as it were, the open country beyond the wall. Examples of this style are the scenes from the Odyssey from the Esquiline, the smaller landscapes in the house of Livia (probably the home of Augustus) on the Palatine, the lovely garden scene, with shrubs, birds, flowers and butterflies, which create the illusion of a real garden, from the villa of the empress Livia at Prima Porta, and the ritual scenes from the House of the Mysteries (Villa Item) at Pompeii. This style overlapped with the Third or Ornate style (from c. 20 B.C.), in which the painted architecture becomes more elaborate and the painted groups become more like panelpictures. The fourth or Intricate style from c. A.D. 50 to the destruction of Pompeii showed pictures, often impressionistic, set in fantastic architecture: examples are the paintings in the House of the Vettii and the shop-front sign of Venus Pompeiana in a car drawn by elephants, both at Pompeii, and those of the Domus Aurea at Rome.

  Many of the achievements of the Augustan age must have been commemorated in paintings, as they were in sculpture and other arts, but such paintings have all perished. An impression of their style, however, can be gleaned from some cameos, whose composition is essentially pictorial. Two of the most famous, themselves exquisite works of art, are the sardonyx ‘Gemma Augustea’ in Vienna which depicts one of the German triumphs of Tiberius (7 B.C. or A.D. 12), and the ‘Grand Camée de France’, a composition grouped around the figures of Tiberius and Livia.3

  Portraiture is represented by a few paintings from Pompeii and in the continuation of the tradition in sculpture that flourished in the late Republic (p. 161 f.). It was desirable that the appearance of Augustus, the founder of the new age, should be made known to as many of his grateful subjects as possible. His portrait was most widely diffused by means of the coinage, but numerous statues and busts also were set up in Italy and the provinces. They show great variety and various aspects of his personality, and their style tended to be reflected in portraits of Agrippa, Tiberius and Gaius. The individuality, and indeed the dignity of Claudius is brought out in most of his portraits. With Nero, and increasingly under his successors, a great blending can be observed between the classical plastic style, which emphasized the essential character of the subject, and the more realistic Roman emphasis. The coinage also presents a fine portrait-gallery from Augustus to Nero, including the more important members of the imperial family; while the reverses blazoned forth the imperial ach
ievements in a way which even the illiterate could understand, the obverses revealed the ruler who was thus speaking to his subjects. And he was revealed in portraits made by artists of great skill; many of the die-cutters were Greeks, and it is appropriate that Nero with his Greek interests should have been served so well in this respect: his portraits artistically rank very high.

  Among the most important products of Augustan art are the reliefs of the Ara Pacis (p. 193).4 The altar itself stood in a precinct of which the internal walls were decorated with sculptured festoons; the external walls had a lower frieze of foliage and above, on the longer sides a processional frieze, on the shorter ends four panels with allegorical scenes of Empire. Of the last the most famous is Terra Mater, seated amid a pastoral scene of great fertility and beauty; another depicts the Arrival of Aeneas in Latium; another Romulus and Remus. The processional frieze shows Augustus offering libation, followed by the priests, members of his family and a long file of senators. Instinct with serenity and religious feeling, this great reminder of the majesty of Rome is yet a very human document (as the child clinging to the cloak of the pontifex shows); it is also a historical document, depicting the actual consecration of the altar in 13 B.C. and skilfully showing the princeps as primus inter pares, a figure sharing in the common ceremony, yet by the slightest emphasis subtly marked off from the rest. It is also, both in subject and style, a work in which Greek and Roman elements are skilfully harmonized and embodies Augustan art at its highest.