A History of the Roman World

by Scullard, H. H.

  Before Rome’s conquest of the Mediterranean world slavery was not such a grievous blot on her civilization as it became after her contact with Carthaginian, Hellenic and Oriental ideas. The supply of slaves was maintained, partly by children born to slaves in the house (vernae; who were usually treated with particular kindness), but more especially by warfare. It has been reckoned that the First Punic War produced some 75,000 slaves whose sale brought the Roman treasury 15 million denarii. During the Hannibalic War the capture of Tarentum alone produced some 30,000 prisoners, while the war captives of the first half of the second century may have numbered 250,000. The demand was increasing, both for mere labour in the country and for more educated slaves for domestic work in the town. After Cannae slaves had been freed for military service, while landowners called to the front would require slaves to run their farms in their absence. With the growth of the plantation system in the second century, slave labour largely supplanted free on the big estates, since free labourers were liable to be called away from agriculture to the army.

  The increasing prevalence of slavery in the second century had a deteriorating effect both on Roman character and on the conditions of the slaves themselves. Carthaginians, Spaniards, Greeks, Macedonians and Syrians poured into the slave markets. As manumission was common many foreign freedmen or their descendants achieved full Roman citizenship; lower moral standards from the east crept into Italy and ultimately the Orontes flowed into the Tiber, though only the beginnings of the movement are visible in our period. The more educated slaves would be used in the towns, where they often alleviated their lot by pandering to the increasingly luxurious tastes of their masters, who were frequently less cultured than they were; others drove much free labour out of the manual trades. In the country gangs of the more barbarous slaves worked the latifundia under the control of slave-bailiffs. They were often treated as mere beasts and sometimes worked in chains. Cato, who in his early days had toiled with his slaves, showed a revolting callousness, working them till they dropped or selling them when they became useless. He allowed them a blanket, a tunic and a pair of wooden shoes every second year. Still more wretched were those who worked in the mines of Spain or Macedon. Such conditions led to insecurity in Italy: runaway slaves naturally turned to brigandage, and conspiracies became more common. Punic slaves in some Latin cities tried to rebel in 198; two years later a legion was required to suppress an outbreak in Etruria; others rioted in Apulia in connection with the Bacchanalian conspiracy (186–180); the serious revolts in Sicily, however, belong to a later period. This brutal and degrading system was a canker that gnawed at the healthy life of Italy; it remained for Stoicism and Christianity to remind men that a slave was a fellow human being.13

  6. FAMILY LIFE14

  The Greek lived in a house, the Roman in a home. It was a Greek who said, ‘The city trains the man’; a Roman probably would have said that a man was taught by his family and the state. From the earliest times the family formed the basis of Roman society and provided for each future citizen his grounding in education and morality in a community which knew neither school nor church. The paterfamilias held in his ‘hand’ (manus) the whole familia, which included wife, children, dependants and estate. Over them he exercised absolute and life-long power (patria potestas), including the right of life and death (vital necisque potestas). This authority was in practice limited to private affairs, as a father could not control a son who was holding a magistracy, but it remained a reality: towards the end of the Republic a father slew his son for participating in Catiline’s conspiracy. It was the father who decided after the birth of a child whether to rear or expose it, though in this he was restricted by religious prohibitions. But the very survival of the patria potestas shows that it can seldom have been abused: it was a healthy discipline, remote from Oriental despotism. Further, before taking action a father would generally consult a family council of relatives whose advice might act as a moral, though not a legal, restraint. As the head of each family must be a male, the father usually adopted a son if he had not one of his own. Children born to his sons or brothers were ‘born to him’ (adgnati, agnati), but the children of his daughters and sisters only ‘shared in his birth’ (cognati) and legally belonged to the families of their fathers or husbands.

  Within the household the women, especially the materfamilias or matrona, who played such an important part in upholding the family, attained a dignified and influential position. Unlike the women of Greece the Roman lady pursued her daily occupation in the atrium or main room, not in Oriental seclusion. Her chief occupations were to bring up the children, to manage the household work, and to make wool for weaving the family clothes. She could attend religious festivals or banquets and had complete social liberty. This practical freedom contrasts strangely with her theoretical dependence on her husband. Legally a woman had no personal existence and on marriage she merely passed from the protection of her father to the manus of her husband. But the emancipation of women was begun early; they were allowed by the Twelve Tables to hold property. There was also a development of the marriage ceremony. Beside the ancient patrician rite of confarreatio which gave the husband complete authority over his wife, marriage by coemptio was recognized: this implied an equal partnership and the wife could say, ‘Where you are master, I am mistress’ (‘Ubi tu Gaius, ego Gaia’). Marriage by usus was established by a year’s uninterrupted cohabitation. By a law in the Twelve Tables a wife could avoid the legal control of her husband by passing three nights during each year away from her husband’s house. Finally there was free marriage, based on mutual consent, which gave the husband no authority over his wife. It was the payment of dowry rather than a legal ceremony that marked the intended permanence of a union. As marriage was more a personal affair than the concern of the state, divorce was also personal and easily obtained (by the husband, though not by the wife!). And yet it was infrequent. Where affection failed, the conservative tendencies of a dignified aristocracy must often have tended to uphold the continuity of family life. But even in an age of loosening family ties, the numerous sepulchral monuments of Imperial Rome attest the prevalence of happy married companionship (e.g. ‘She loved her husband with her whole heart, she bare two sons… cheerful in converse, dignified in manner, she kept the house, she made wool.’ C.I.L., I, 1007; cf. the formula S.V.Q. ‘sine ulla querela’. Still more must similar conditions have prevailed in the earlier and more austere days whose monuments have perished.

  Roman education was a family concern. In early days the object of training was to form character rather than to promote culture; to fit a child to become a good citizen. Though religion was divorced from morality, the simple daily religious ceremonies of the household would often produce in a child a sense of responsibility and awe towards the unseen. But the greatest influences in the building of character and the enforcing of morality were the parents, home life and the mos maiorum. The ideal Roman was a vir fortis et strenuus. The qualities to be evoked were gravitas, continentia, industria, diligentia, constantia, benevolentia, pietas, simplicitas, and above all virtus, manliness. The mother was responsible for the children’s earliest training, and her influence was great. The older boys constantly attended their father at his duties in home and state and received from him instructions in the three Rs, as well as in physical training. They were taught to respect the traditions of their family and of the state. Thus a dignified, patriotic and self-sacrificing character was formed, but often at the cost of a certain conservative narrowness and unadaptability. The first school is said to have been opened in Rome about 250 BC. From that period onwards Greek influences increased. Rhetoric and slavery began to get a stranglehold on Roman life, despite the opposition of Cato, who wrote in large letters an account of the legends of early Rome for his son to learn and who studied Greek literature in order to teach his son and to save him learning from a slave. Family life remained uncorrupted and a source of Rome’s greatness as long as men could say with Cato that ‘a wi
fe and a son are the holiest of holy things’.

  7. GREEK INFLUENCES

  For centuries the Romans had no literature, philosophy or history, and the achievements of Hellenistic science were unknown. During the regal period they saw something of Greek art through contact with Etruria and Campania, but afterwards they relapsed into a parochial state. The conquest of southern Italy gave them a glimpse of the Greek world, and a Greek playwright, Andronicus, was taken from Tarentum to Rome where he translated the Odyssey and Greek plays. Then the First Punic War opened the floodgates of Greek culture. Roman soldiers campaigned for years in Sicily where they saw the luxurious court life of Hiero and the amenities of the Greek cities. They watched Greek plays in the theatres and picked up so much of the language that later their own writers, Naevius and Plautus, could venture to introduce Greek puns and colloquialisms in their plays for popular consumption. Duilius not only received the honour of a column and a laudatory rhetorical inscription in the Forum, but also was thenceforth escorted home at night through the streets of Rome with torches and music, as if returning from a revel in a Greek city. In the Hannibalic War Roman soldiers crossed to Greece itself, while others campaigned again in Sicily. The nobility and to some extent the people were waking up to the glory that had been Greece. A new world was swimming into their ken and they became self-conscious. They realized that they counted in a larger world, where they were still regarded as barbarians, and they hastened to imbibe some of the culture of their neighbours. Greek literature and thought captivated the imagination of many: Marcellus transported to Italy works of art from captured Syracuse, and Scipio Africanus excited the anger of the old-fashioned Fabius because of the enthusiasm with which he threw himself into the cultural pleasures offered by that city. A group of philhellenic nobles was formed of whom the chief were Scipio and Flamininus.

  But Greece displayed not only the greatness of her past but also the decadence of her present. In the second century more Roman soldiers and businessmen met the Greeks at home and familiarity bred contempt. The idealism of any philhellenists appeared impracticable, Roman policy became more realistic, and Greek independence was finally extinguished. But Rome not only gave, whether freedom or peace; she also received. Throughout the century Greeks poured into Italy: statesmen, traders, craftsmen, artists, and above all teachers and slaves. Cato, who with narrow nationalism had withstood the liberal policy of the Scipios, now set himself to stem the tide that threatened to sweep away the simplicity of Roman life. Greek men of culture aroused his puritanical suspicions; the corruption of others was only too patent; and all were tarred with the same brush since they threatened to undermine the mos maiorum. In every field a bitter struggle was waged between the nationalists and the Hellenists, each of whom saw only one side of Greek culture. But Cato fought a losing battle; despite his fulminations a younger generation of enthusiasts received the torch of Hellenism unquenched. Around Scipio Aemilianus there gathered a number of friends, including the historian Polybius, Panaetius the Stoic philosopher, Laelius the ‘Wise’, the dramatists Terence and Pacuvius and the satirist Lucilius. This ‘Scipionic circle’ formed a centre of the new enlightenment and a brilliant social coterie; amid great freedom of thought and discussion an attempt was made to blend the best elements of Greek and Roman life.

  The direct influence of Greek culture on Roman literature and art, philosophy and religion is discussed elsewhere. It remains to refer to its less beneficent effect on society and life. Not all the ills of the second century can be laid at the door of the Greeks, but most are due indirectly to Rome’s conquest of the Hellenistic world and the lowering of her moral standards. Whether Greece was the cause or the first victim of Rome’s corruption can scarcely be decided: the two cultures reacted on one another with some good results, such as peace for Greece and culture for Rome, but the last state of both nations was worse than the first.15

  During the second century family life declined. The census statistics show an unhealthily small increase. Female and infant mortality was doubtless high. As early as 234 BC complaints were heard that celibacy was increasing. The number of children in the great families declined, so that recourse was often had to adoption, to prevent their extinction. Divorce became more common. Girls married young, often at the age of twelve; old men sometimes married young girls, and it was not unknown for father and son to marry two sisters. The emancipation of women proceeded apace. Instead of reverting to the control of their own families on the death of their husbands, they had often persuaded their husbands to decree by will that they should be allowed to nominate their own guardians. An attempt was made to check their extravagance and to prevent their gaining control of large amounts of capital by passing a law (Lex Voconia) in 169 forbidding a testator of the highest property class to make a woman his heir and limiting legacies to a sum less than that received by the heir. This attempt to secure a male succession and to preserve the large estates in the hands of the nobles was easily thwarted by the invention of legal fictions. An earlier bill, the Lex Furia Testamentaria, probably of 183, had limited bequests to 1,000 asses in cases where the legatee was outside a certain degree of affinity. This also could be obviated, as numerous bequests might exhaust the estate and leave the heir penniless.

  Changes in family life inevitably affected education which remained a domestic matter, though Polybius censured the state for not assuming control. The father was often less able or willing to train his children to meet the needs of the day. Consequently Greek slaves were employed as tutors in large houses, as were private chaplains by noblemen in Elizabethan England; and the number of schools increased. The influence of a slave on a growing boy was a poor substitute for a father’s instruction in the mos maiorum, and character necessarily suffered. But the change was not entirely bad, for the curriculum was widened and the father often chose the teachers with great care. Aemilius Paullus, the victor of Pydna, devoted especial care to the education of his children, and Cornelia, the daughter of Scipio Africanus, trained her sons, Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, with a wise intermingling of Roman virtues and Greek enlightenment. Even Cato in his old age was forced to realize that the coming generation must be trained to meet a larger world than that faced by their fathers. Greek language, literature and thought were studied; public speaking was practised and rhetoric began to get its fatal hold on Roman life.

  Educated Romans learnt to speak Greek in quite early times. Thus in 282 BC L. Postumius Megellus, an ambassador to Tarentum, addressed the council in Greek; true, his audience laughed at his faults in language, but perhaps it was not too bad since they went on to insult him in other ways and were obviously out to be obstreperous. A century later Flamininus and the father of the Gracchi were excellent Greek speakers, and Aemilius Paullus in his diplomatic interviews with Perseus switched easily from Latin to Greek, while P. Licinius Crassus, consul in 131, in dispensing justice in Asia Minor could even reply to Greek petitioners in five different dialects. Further, as we shall see (p. 346), Roman writers were composing histories in Greek before the end of the third century, and so by the next century probably most Roman nobles were becoming bilingual. This gave them an advantage in their diplomatic dealings with the Greeks, who by contrast appear to have failed to learn Latin.16

  Life became more luxurious as money poured in from foreign conquests and contact with the east awoke fresh needs. It is easy to exaggerate the extent of this change in the first half of the second century: the pictures drawn by Plautus reflect Athens of the New Comedy period, not Rome; Roman conservatism acted as a brake and luxury remained rather primitive. Though Cato could complain that Rome was the only city in the world where a jar of preserved fish cost more than a yoke of oxen, his strictures on Roman customs were doubtless exaggerated by his moralizing zeal. But changes were taking place. The growth of town at the expense of country life involved a rise in the price of property and rents in the city. Domestic architecture was adapted to fresh needs and the atrium became a hall rather than th
e centre of the house. Works of art were collected to adorn the dwellings of the rich. Manlius Vulso brought back from Asia bronze couches, costly coverlets, tapestry and other fabrics, pedestal tables and silver salvers. The Greek bathroom (balneum) began to supersede the old washroom (lavatrina), and public baths existed at Capua during the Hannibalic War. Banquets became more luxurious, and cookery an art. Baking became a trade instead of the housewife’s task, and bakers’ shops are heard of in 171. Ennius wrote on the Art of Pleasant Eating (ńδυϕαγητικά) and drunkenness increased. In vain Cato opposed the repeal in 195 of the Oppian law, a wartime measure of 215 which had limited the amount of jewellery and plate that could be used by individuals. As censor in 184 he laid heavy taxes on luxuries, especially women’s ornaments and dress, vehicles and slaves. In 181 a Lex Orchia limited the number of guests that might be invited to entertainments, and in 161 a Lex Fannia fixed the maximum expenditure on banquets at the Megalesian Games. The very frequency of such sumptuary legislation points to its ineffectiveness. The nobility indulged their wealth and leisure, but their luxury only seemed excessive in contrast with their earlier austerity. (Less than a hundred years earlier, in 275, P. Cornelius Rufinus, who had twice been consul and had celebrated a triumph, was expelled from the Senate for possessing 10 lb of silver vessels!) Two pictures of the wife and daughter of Scipio Africanus give us an intimate glimpse of social life. Aemilia, his wife, ‘used to display great magnificence, whenever she took part in the religious ceremonies of the women. For apart from the richness of her own dress and the decorations of her carriage, all the baskets, cups, and other utensils of the sacrifice were of gold or silver and were borne in her train on such solemn occasions, while the number of maids and servants in attendance was correspondingly large’ (Polybius, xxxi, 26). Of the salon of his daughter Cornelia, Plutarch writes, ‘She had many friends, and kept a good table that she might show hospitality, for she always had Greeks and other literary men about her, and all the reigning kings interchanged gifts with her’ (c. Gracchus, 19). Among these the King of Egypt in vain sought her hand and offered her the crown.