chapter 35.]: "A city for sale, ready to fall into the hands of the

first bidder!" These memorable words, whether really uttered by the Numidian or not, well characterize the state of affairs at this corrupt period.

One general and another were sent to oppose Jugurtha, but he proved too much for them, either corrupting them by bribes or overcoming them by skill of arms. The spirit of the Roman people was at last fully aroused, and an investigation was made, which resulted in convicting some of the optimates, one of them being Opimius, the consul, who had been cruelly opposed to Caius Gracchus. A general of integrity was chosen to go to Africa. He was Cæcilius Metellus, member of a family which had come into prominence during the first Punic war. Marius was with him, and when Jugurtha saw that men of this high character were opposed to him, he began to despair. While the struggle progressed, Marius remembered that a witch whom he had had with him in a former war had prophesied that the gods would help him in advancing himself, and resolved to go to Rome to try to gain the consulship. Metellus at first opposed this scheme, but was finally persuaded to allow Marius to leave. Though but few days elapsed before the election, after Marius announced himself as a candidate, he was chosen consul, and then he began to exult over the optimates who had so long striven to keep him down. He vaunted his lowly birth, declared that his election was a victory over the pusillanimity and license of the rich, and boldly compared his warlike prowess with the effeminacy of the nobility, whom he determined to persecute as vigorously as they had pursued him.

Marius brought the Numidian War to a close by obtaining possession of Jugurtha in the year 106, but as his subordinate, Sulla, was the instrument in actually taking the king, the enemies of Marius claimed for the young aristocrat the credit of the capture, and Sulla irritated his senior still more by constantly wearing a ring on which he had caused to be engraved a representation of the surrender. Marius did not immediately return to Rome, but remained to complete the subjugation of Numidia, Sulla the meantime making every effort to ingratiate himself with the soldiers, sharing every labor, and sitting with them about the camp-fires as they softened the asperities of a hard life by telling tales of past experience, and making prophesies of the future.

Sulla was not a prepossessing person. His blue eyes were keen and glaring; but they were rendered forbidding and even terrible at times by the bad complexion of his face, which was covered with red blotches that told the story of his debaucheries. "Sulla is a mulberry sprinkled over with meal," is the expression that a Greek jester is said to have used in describing his frightful face.

It was the first of January, 104, when Marius entered Rome in triumph, accompanied by evidences of his victories, the greatest of which was the pitiful Numidian king himself, who followed in the grand procession, and was afterwards ruthlessly dropped into the horrible Tulliarium, or Mamertine prison, to perish by starvation in the watery chill. He is said to have exclaimed as he touched the water at the bottom of the prison, "Hercules! how cold are thy baths!"

During the absence of Marius in Africa, there had come over Rome the shadow of a greater peril than had been known since the days when Hannibal's advance had made the strongest hearts quail. The tumultuous multitudes who inhabited the unexplored regions of Central Europe, the Celts and Germans, [Footnote: The Cimbri, who formed a portion of this invading body, had their original home in the modern peninsula of Jutland, whence came also early invaders of Britain, and they were probably a Celtic people.] had gathered a mass comprising, it is said, more than three hundred thousand men capable of fighting, besides hosts of women and children, and were marching with irresistible force towards the Roman domains. Nine years before (B.C. 113), these barbarians had defeated a Roman army in Noricum, north of Illyricum, and after that they had roamed at will through Switzerland, adding to their numbers, and ravaging every region, until at last they had poured over into the plains of Gaul. Year after year passed, and army after army of the Romans was cut to pieces by these terrible barbarians.

As Marius entered the city he was looked upon as the only one who could stem the impetuous human torrent that threatened to overwhelm the republic, for, in the face of the supreme danger, as is usual in such cases, every party jealousy was forgotten. The proud commoner accepted the command with alacrity, setting out for distant Gaul immediately, and taking Sulla as one of his subordinates. After two years of inconsequent strategy, he overcame the barbarians at a spot twelve miles distant from _Aquæ Sextiæ_ (the Springs of Sextius, the modern Aix, in Provence), (B.C. 102). He collected the richest of the spoil to grace a triumph that he expected to celebrate, and was about to offer the remainder to the gods, when, just as he stood amid the encircling troops in a purple robe, ready to touch the torch to the pile, horsemen dashed into the space, announcing that the Romans had for the fifth time elected him consul! The village of Pourrières (_Campi Putridi_) now marks the spot, and the rustics of the vicinity still celebrate a yearly festival, at which they burn a vast heap of brushwood on the summit of one of their hills, as they shout _Victoire! victoire!_ in memory of Marius.

During this period Sulla gained renown by his valorous deeds, but the jealousy that had begun in Africa increased, and in 103 or 102, he left Marius and joined himself to his colleague Lutatius Catulus, who was endeavoring to stem another torrent of barbarians, this time pouring down toward Rome from the valley of the Po. When Marius reached home after his victories in Gaul, he was offered a triumph, but refused to celebrate it until he had marched to the help of Catulus, who, he found, was then retreating before the invaders in a panic. After the arrival of Marius the flight was stopped, and the barbarians totally destroyed at a battle fought near Vercellæ. Though much credit for this wonderful victory was awarded to both Catulus and Sulla, the whole honor was at Rome given to Marius, who celebrated a triumph, was called the third founder of the city (as Camillus had been the second), and enjoyed the distinction of having his name joined with those of the gods when offerings and libations were made. The jealousy of Sulla was all this time growing from its small beginnings.

While Marius and Sulla were fighting the barbarians there had been a second insurrection among the slave population of Italy, and it was not distant Sicily only that was troubled at this time, for though the uprising spread to that island, many towns of Campania were afflicted, and at last the contagion had affected thousands of the slaves, who arose and struck for freedom. The outbreak in Campania was repressed in 103, but it was not until 99 that quiet was restored on the island, and then it was by the destruction of many thousands of lives. Large numbers of the captives were taken to Rome to fight in the arena with wild beasts, but they disappointed their sanguinary masters by killing each other instead in the amphitheatre. The condition of the slaves after this was worse than before. They were deprived of all arms, and even the spear with which the herdsmen were wont to protect themselves from wild beasts was taken away.

At this time the power of the optimates was rather decreasing, and signs of promise for the people appeared. In the year 103, a law had been passed which took from the senate the right to select the chief pontiffs, and it had been given to the populares. [Footnote: This important law was passed through the tribune Cneius Domitius Ahenobarbus, in order to effect his own election as pontiff in the place of his father, and is known as the Domitian law. The people elected him afterward out of gratitude. The chief pontiff was an influential factor in politics, as he pronounced the verdict of the Sibylline books on public questions, and gave or withheld the divine approval from public acts, besides appointing the rites and sacrifices.] An agrarian law was proposed in the following year, a speaker on the subject asserting that in the entire republic there were not two thousand landholders, so rapidly had the rich been able to concentrate in themselves the ownership of the land. The powers of the senate were still further restricted in the year 100, by a law intended to punish magistrates who had improperly received money, and to take from the senators the right to try such offences. [Footnote: The exact date of this law is uncertain. It was directed against Quintus Servilius Cæpio, who, when the barbarians were threatening Italy, commanded in Gaul, and enriched himself by the wealth of Tolosa, which he took (B.C. 106), thus giving rise to the proverb, "He has gold of Toulouse"--ill-gotten gains (_aurum Tolosanum habet_). He was also held responsible for a terrible defeat at Arausio (Orange), where eighty thousand Romans and forty thousand camp-followers perished, October 6, B.C. 105. The day became another black one in the Roman calendar.] At the same time the right of citizenship was offered to all Italians who should succeed in convicting a magistrate of peculation or extortion. Thus it seemed as though the reforms aimed at by the Gracchi might be brought about if only the man for the occasion were to present himself. Marius presented himself, but we shall find that he mistook his means, and only cast the nation down into deeper depths of misery. His star was at its highest when he celebrated his triumph, and it would have been better for his fame had he died at that time.

XIII.

SOCIAL AND CIVIL WARS.

Marius was brave and strong and able to cope with any in the rush of war, but he knew little of the arts of peace and the science of government. Sulla, his enemy, was at Rome, living in quiet, but the same, fiery, ambition that animated Marius, and the same jealousy of all who seemed to be growing in popularity, burned in his bosom and were ready to burst out at any time. The very first attempts of Marius at government ended in shame, and he retired from the city in the year 99. He had supported two rogations, called the Appuleian laws, from the demagogue who moved them, Lucius Appuleius Saturninus, and they were carried by violence and treachery. They enacted that the lands acquired from the barbarians should be divided among both the Italians and the citizens of Rome, thus affording relief to all Italy; and that corn should be sold to Romans by the state at a nominal price.

When Marius retired, the authority of the senate was restored, but the state was in a deplorable condition, for the violence and bloodshed that had been familiar for the half century since the triumph over Greece and Carthage, were bearing their legitimate fruits. Not only was the separation between the rich and poor constantly growing greater, but the effect of the luxury and license of the wealthy was debauching the public conscience, and faith was everywhere falling away. Impostors and foreign priests had full sway.

Opposed to Saturninus was a noble of the most exalted type of character, Marcus Livius Drusus, son of the Drusus who had opposed the Gracchi. A genuine aristocrat, possessed of a colossal fortune, strict in his morals and trustworthy in every position, he was a man of acknowledged weight in the national councils. In the year 91, he was elected tribune, and endeavored to bring about reform. He obtained the adherence of the people by laws for distributing corn at low prices, and by holding out to the allies hopes of the franchise. The allies had long looked for this, and as their condition had been growing worse year by year, their impatience increased, until at last they were no longer willing to brook delay. The Romans (whose party cry was "Rome for the Romans") ever opposed this measure, and now they stirred up opposition to the conservative Drusus, who paid the penalty of his life to his efforts at civil reform and the alleviation of oppression. Though he tried to please all parties, the senate first rendered his laws nugatory, and their partisans not satisfied with his civil defeat, afterwards caused him to be assassinated. [Footnote: Velleius Paterculus, the historian, relates that as Drusus was dying, he looked upon the crowd of citizens who were lamenting his fortune, and said, in conscious innocence: "My relations and friends, will the commonwealth ever again have a citizen like me?" He adds, as illustrating the purity of his intentions, that when Drusus was building a house on the Palatine, his architect offered to make it so that no observer could see into it, but he said: "Rather, build my house so that whatever I do may be seen by all."] It was then enacted that all who favored the allies should be considered guilty of treason to the state. Many prominent citizens were condemned under this law, and the allies naturally became convinced that there was no hope for them except in revolution.

Rome was in consequence menaced by those who had before been her helpers, and the danger was one of the greatest that she had ever encountered. The Italians were prepared for the contest, but the Romans were not. It was determined by the allies that Rome should be destroyed, and a new capital erected at Corfinum, which was to be known as Italica. On both sides it was a struggle for existence.

The Marsians were the most prominent among the allies in one division, and the Samnites were at the head of another. [Footnote: The Marsians were an ancient people of Central Italy, inhabiting a mountainous district, and had won distinction among the allies for their skill and courage in war. "The Marsic cohorts" was an almost proverbial expression for the bravest troops in the time of Horace and Virgil.] The whole of Central Italy became involved in the desperate struggle. The Etruscans and Umbrians took the part of Rome, being offered the suffrage for their allegiance. At the end of the first campaign this was offered also to those of the other antagonistic allies who would lay down their arms, and by this means discord was thrown into the camp of the enemy. The campaign of 89 was favorable to the Romans, who, led by Sulla, drove the enemy out of Campania, and captured the town of Bovianum. The following year the war was closed, but Rome and Italy had lost more than a quarter of a million of their citizens, while the allies had nominally obtained the concessions that they had fought for.

Ten new tribes were formed in which the new citizens were enrolled, thus keeping them in a body by themselves; and it was natural that there should be much discontent among them on account of the manner in which their privileges had been awarded. The franchise could only be obtained by a visit to Rome, which was difficult for the inhabitants of distant regions, and there was besides no place in the city large enough to contain all the citizens, if they had been able to come. The new citizens found, too, that there was still a difference between themselves and those who had before enjoyed the suffrage, something like that which existed between the freedmen and the men who had never been enslaved.

Marius and Sulla, the ever-vigilant rivals, had both been engaged in the Marsic war, but they came out of it in far differing frames of mind. The young aristocrat boasted that fortune had permitted him to strike the last decisive blow; and the old plebeian, now seventy years of age, found his heart swelling with indignation because he received only new mortifications in return for his new services to the state, in whose behalf he had this time fought with reluctance. A spirit of dire vengeance was agitating his heart, the results of which we are soon to observe.

The troubles of the state now seemed to accumulate with terrible rapidity. Two wars broke out immediately upon the close of that which we have just considered, one at home and the other in Asia. The one was the strife of faction, and the other an effort to repel attacks upon allies of the republic. Mithridates the Great, King of Pontus, the sixth of his name, was remarkable for his physical and mental development, no less than for his great ambition and boundless activity. Under his rule his kingdom had reached its greatest power. This monarch had attempted to add to his dominion Cappadocia, the country adjoining Pontus on the south, by placing his nephew on the throne, but Sulla, who was then in Cilicia, prevented it. Mithridates next interfered in the government of Bithynia, to the southwest, expecting that the oppressive rule of the Roman governors would lead the inhabitants to be friendly to him, while the troubles of the Romans at home would make it difficult for them to interfere. The close of the Marsian struggle, however, left Rome free to engage the Eastern conqueror, and war was determined upon.

The success of Sulla in the East made it plain that he was the one to lead the army, but Marius was still ambitious to gain new laurels, and in order to prove that he was not too old to endure the hardships of a campaign, he went daily to the Campus Martius and exercised with the young men. His efforts proved vain, and he determined to take more positive measures. He procured the enactment of a law distributing the new citizens, who far out-numbered the old ones, among the tribes, knowing that they would vote in his favor. It was not without much opposition that this law was enacted, but Marius was then appointed, instead of Sulla, to lead the army against Pontus. Sulla meantime hastened to the army and obtained actual command of the soldiers, who loved him, caused the tribunes of Marius to be murdered, and left the old commander without support. Marius in turn raised another army by offering freedom to slaves, and with it attempted to resist Sulla, but in vain. He was obliged to fly, and a price was placed upon his head. He sailed for Africa, but was thrown back upon the shores of Italy, was cast into prison, and ordered to execution; but the slave commissioned to carry out the judgment was frightened by the flashing eyes of the aged warrior and refused to perform the act, as he heard a voice from the darkness of the cell haughtily asking: "Fellow, darest thou kill Caius Marius?" The magistrates, struck with pity and remorse, as they reflected that Marius was the preserver of Italy, let him go to meet his fate on other shores, and at last he found his way to Africa.

The departure of both Marius and Sulla from Rome left it exposed to a new danger. As soon as Sulla had left for Pontus, Lucius Cornelius Cinna, one of the consuls, began to form a popular party, composed largely of the newly made citizens, for the purpose of overpowering the senate and recalling Marius. A frightful conflict ensued on a day of voting, and thousands were butchered in the struggle. Cinna was driven from the city, but received the support of a vast number of Italians, which enabled him to march again upon Rome.

Meantime Marius returned from Africa, captured Ostia and other places, and joined Cinna. Then, by cutting off its supplies, he caused the city to yield. Marius and Cinna entered the gates, and again the streets ran blood; for every one who had given Marius cause to hate or fear him was hunted to the death without mercy, and with no respect to rank, talent, or former friendship. Cinna and Marius named themselves consuls for the year 86 without the form of election, [Footnote: See note on page 64.] but the firm constitution of the old hero was completely undermined by his sufferings and fatigues, and he succumbed to an attack of pleurisy after a few days, during which, as Plutarch tells us, he was terrified by dreams and by the anticipated return of Sulla. The people rejoiced that they were freed from the cruelty of his ruthless tyranny, little knowing what new horrors the grim future had in store for them.

We return now to Sulla. When he had driven Marius from Rome, he was obliged to hasten away to carry on the war in Asia, though he marched first against Athens, which had become the head-quarters of the allies of Mithridates in Greece. The siege of this city was long and obstinate, and it was not until March I, 86, that it was overcome, when Sulla gave it up to rapine and pillage. He then advanced into Boeotia, and success continued to follow his arms until the year 84, when he crossed the Hellespont to carry the war into Asia. Mithridates had put to death all Roman citizens and allies, wherever found, with all the reckless ferocity of an Asiatic tyrant, but had met many losses and was now anxious to have peace. Sulla settled the terms at a personal interview at Dardanus, in the Troad. Enormous sums (estimated at more than $100,000,000) were exacted from the rich cities, and a single settled government was restored to Greece, Macedonia, and Asia Minor. The soldiers were compensated for their fatigues by a luxurious winter in Asia, and, in the spring of 83, they were transferred, in 1,600 vessels, from Ephesus to the Piraeus, and thence to Brundusium. Sulla carried with him from Athens the valuable library of Apellicon of Teos, which contained the works of Aristotle and his disciple, Theophrastus, then not in general circulation, for he did not forget his interest in literature even in war. Thus it was that the rich thoughts of the great philosopher came to the knowledge of the Roman students. [Footnote: Aristoteles, sometimes called the Stagirite, because he was born in Stagira, in Macedonia, lived at Athens in the fourth century before our era. Theophrastus was his friend and disciple, both at Stagira and Athens.]

Sulla sent a letter to the senate, announcing the close of the war and his intention to return, in the course of which he took occasion to recount his services to the republic, from the time of the war with Jugurtha to the conquest of Mithridates, and announced that he should take vengeance upon his enemies and upon those of the commonwealth. The senate was alarmed, and proposed to treat with him for peace, but Cinna hastened to oppose the arrogant conqueror with force. He was, however, assassinated by his own soldiers.

On the sixth of July, after the arrival of Sulla at Brundusium (B.C. 83), Rome was thrown into a state of consternation by the burning of the capitol and the destruction of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, with the Sibylline oracles, those valuable books which had directed the counsels of the nation for ages, and the close of a historic era approached. [Footnote: Ambassadors were afterwards sent to various places in Greece, Asia, and Italy, to make a fresh collection, and when the temple was rebuilt it was put in the place occupied by the lost books.] Sulla easily marched in triumph through lower Italy on his way to Rome, for his opponents were not well organized, but it was not until months had passed that the fierce struggle was decided. He was besieging Præneste, when the Samnites, after finding that they could not relieve it, marched directly upon Rome. Sulla followed them, and a bloody battle was fought at the Colline gate, on the northern side of the city. It was a fight for the very existence of Rome, for Pontius Telesinus, commander of the Samnites, declared that he intended to raze the city to the ground. Fifty thousand are said to have fallen on each side, and most of the leaders of the party of Marius perished or were afterward put to death. All the Samnites (8,000) who were taken were collected by Sulla in the Campus Martius and ruthlessly butchered.

If the former scenes had been terrible, much more so were those that now followed. Sulla was made dictator, an officer that had been unknown for a century and a quarter, and proceeded to show his adhesion to the optimates by attempting to blot out the popular party. He announced that he would give a better government to Rome, but he found it necessary to kill all whom he pretended to think her enemies. It was Marius who had brought on the era of carnage by attempting to deprive Sulla of his command in the war against Mithridates, and accordingly the body of the great plebeian was torn from its tomb and cast into the Anio. A list was drawn up of those whose possessions were to be confiscated, and who were themselves to be executed in vengeance. On this the names of the family of Marius came first. Fresh lists were constantly posted in the forum. Each of these was called a _tabula proscriptionis_, a list of proscription, and it presents the first instance of a proscription in Roman history. [Footnote: A proscription had formerly been an offering for sale of any thing by advertisement; but Sulla gave it a new meaning,--the sale of the property of those unfortunates who were put to death by his orders. The victims were said to be proscribed. The meaning given by Sulla still lives in the English word.] Sulla placed on these lists not only the names of enemies of the state, but his personal opponents, those whose property he coveted, and those who were enemies of friends whom he desired to please. No man was safe, for his name might appear at any time on the terrible lists, and then he would be an outlaw, whom any one might kill with impunity. Especially were the rich and prominent liable to find themselves in this position. Many thousands of unfortunate citizens perished before Sulla was content to put a stop to the horrors. He then celebrated with exceeding magnificence the postponed triumph on account of his victory over Mithridates, and received from a trembling people the title _Felix_, the lucky.

It has been said that after having killed the men with his sword, Sulla made it his work to kill the party that opposed him, by laws. He wished to have in Rome the silence and the autocracy of a camp. He put some three hundred new members into the senate, and gave that body the power to veto legislative enactments, while at the same time he restricted the authority of the tribunes of the people and of the _comitia tributa,_ the general convention of the tribes. On the other hand, he reduced debts by one fourth, to conciliate the masses, and paid his soldiers for their services in the civil strife with vast amounts of booty and great numbers of slaves. The _pomoerium_ was extended to embrace all Italy, and, as is supposed, the northern boundary of Roman territory was extended to the Rubicon. New courts were established and the judicial system was reorganized; the censors were practically shelved, but sumptuary laws were passed to prevent extravagance and luxury. All of the laws of Sulla were submitted to the people for formal approval; but as no one was hardy enough to differ from the dictator, it mattered little what the people thought.

By the beginning of the year 79, Sulla considered that his reforms were complete, and bethought himself of retiring to see at a little distance the effect of his regulations. He felt that no danger could overtake him, for he had settled his old veterans (called Cornelians), to the number of more than a hundred thousand, in colonies scattered throughout Italy, on the estates and in the cities that he had confiscated, and thought that they would prove his supporters in any event. He boldly summoned the people and, announcing his purpose, offered to render an account of his official conduct. He gave the crowd a _congiarium_, as it was called--that is, he glutted them with the costliest meats and the richest wines, and so great was his profusion that vast quantities that the gorged multitude were unable to eat were cast into the Tiber. He then discharged his armed attendants, dismissed his lictors, descended from the rostra, and retired on foot to his house, accompanied only by his friends, passing through the midst of the populace which he had given every reason to desire to wreak vengeance upon him. It was audacity of the supremest sort. Sulla afterwards withdrew to his estate at Puteoli, where he spent the brief remainder of his life in the most remarkable alternation of nocturnal orgies and cultured enjoyment, sharing his time with male and female debauchees and learned students of Greek literature, and concluding the memoirs of his life and times, in which, through twenty-two books, he recorded the story of his deeds, colored doubtless to a great extent by his own magnificent self-love. In the last words of his "Memoirs" he characterized himself, with a certain degree of truth from his own point of view, as "fortunate and all-powerful to his last hour."

The senate voted Sulla a gorgeous funeral, in spite of opposition on the part of the consul Lepidus, and his body was carried to the Campus Martius, preceded by the magistrates, the senate, the equites, the vestal virgins, and the veterans. There it was burned, that no future tyrant could treat it as that of Marius had been, though up to that time the Cornelian gens, to which Sulla belonged, had always buried their dead.

Thus lived and thus died the man who, though he relieved Rome of the last of her invaders, infused into her system a malady from which she was to suffer in the future; for the pampered veterans whom he had distributed throughout Italy in scenes of peace, all unwonted to such a life, were to be the ones on which another oppressor was to depend in his efforts to subvert the government.

XIV.

THE MASTER SPIRITS OF THIS AGE.

Rome was now ruled by an oligarchy,--that is, the control of public affairs fell into the hands of a few persons. There was an evident tendency, however, towards the union of all the functions of governmental authority in the person of a single man, whenever one should be found of sufficient strength to grasp them. The younger Gracchus had exercised almost supreme control, and Marius, Cinna, and Sulla had followed him; but their power had perished with them, leaving no relics in the fundamental principles of the government, except as it marked stages in the general progress. Now other strong men arise who pursue the same course, and lead directly up to the concentration of supreme authority in the hands of one man, and he not a consul, nor a tribune, nor a dictator, but an emperor, a titled personage never before known in Rome. With this culmination the life of the populus Romanus was destined to end.

A dramatist endeavoring to depict public life at Rome during the period following the death of Sulla, would find himself embarrassed by the multitude of men of note crowding upon his attention. One of the eldest of these was Quintus Sertorius, a soldier of chivalric bravery, who had come into prominence during the Marian wars in Gaul. He had at that time won distinction by boldly entering the camp of the Teutones disguised as a spy, and bringing away valuable information, before the battle at Aix. When Sulla was fighting Mithridates, Sertorius was on the side of Cinna, and had to flee from the city with him. When the battle was fought at the Colline gate, Sertorius served with his old comrade Marius, whom he did not admire, and with Cinna, but we do not know that he shared the guilt of the massacre that followed. Certainly he punished the slaves that surrounded Marius for their cruel excesses. When Sulla returned, Sertorius escaped to Spain, where he raised an army, and achieved so much popularity that the Romans at home grew very jealous of him. [Footnote: Sertorius is almost the only one among the statesmen of antiquity who seems to have recognized the modern truth, that education is a valuable aid in making a government firm. He established a school in Spain in which boys of high rank, dressed in the garb of Romans, learned the languages that still form the basis of a classical education, while they were also held as hostages for the good behavior of their elders. He was not a philanthropist, but a sagacious ruler, and the author of Latin colonies in the West. He was for a time accompanied by a white fawn, which he encouraged the superstitious barbarians to believe was a familiar spirit, by means of which he communicated with the unseen powers and ensured his success.] He did not intentionally go to live in Spain, but having heard that there were certain islands out in the Atlantic celebrated since the days of Plato as the abode of the blest; where gentle breezes brought soft dews to enrich the fertile soil; where delicate fruits grew to feed the inhabitants without their trouble or labor; where the yellow- haired Rhadamanthus was refreshed by the whistling breezes of Zephyrus; he longed to find them and live in peace and quiet, far from the rush of war and the groans of the oppressed. From this bright vision he was turned, but perhaps his efforts to establish a merciful government in Spain may be traced to its influence.

Another prominent man on the stage at this time was a leader of the aristocratic party, Marcus Crassus, who lived in a house that is estimated to have cost more than a quarter of a million dollars. Probably he would not have been very prominent if his father had not left him a small fortune, to which he had added very largely by methods that we can hardly consider noble. It is said that when the Sullan proscription was going on, he obtained at ruinously low prices the estates that the proscribed had to give up, and, whenever there was a fire, he would be on the spot ready to buy the burning or ruined buildings for little or nothing. He owned many slaves who were accomplished as writers, silversmiths, stewards, and table-waiters, whom he let out to those who wished their services, and thus added largely to his income. He did not build any houses, except the one in which he lived, for he agreed with the proverb which says that fools build houses for wise men to live in, though "the greatest part of Rome sooner or later came into his hands," as Plutarch observes. He was of that sordid, avaricious character which covets wealth merely for the desire to be considered rich, for the vulgar popularity that accompanies that reputation, and not for ambition or enjoyment. He was said to be uninfluenced by the love of luxury or by the other passions of humanity. He was not a man of extensive learning, though he was pretty well versed in philosophy and in history, and by pains and industry had made himself an accomplished orator. He could thus wield a great influence by his speeches to the people from the rostra.

Among the aristocrats who composed the oligarchy that ruled at about this time were two men born in the same year (106 B.C.): the egotistic, vain, and irresolute, but personally pure orator, Marcus Tullius Cicero; and the cold and haughty soldier, Cneius Pompeius Magnus, commonly known as Pompey the Great. The philosophical, oratorical, and theological writings of Cicero are still studied in our schools as models in their different classes. Inheriting a love of culture from his father, a member of an ancient family, he was afforded every advantage in becoming acquainted with all branches of a polite education; and travelled to the chief seats of learning in Greece and Asia Minor with this end in view. When he was twenty-six years of age, he made his first appearance as a public pleader, and soon gained the reputation of being the first orator at the Roman bar. Besides these pursuits, Cicero had had a brief military experience, during the war between Sulla and Marius.

Pompey, likewise, began to learn the art of war under his father, in the same struggle, but he continued its exercise until he became a consummate warrior. For his success in pursuing the remains of the Marian faction in Africa and Sicily, Pompey was honored with the name Magnus (the Great), and with a triumph, a distinction that had never before been won by a man of his rank who had not previously held public office.

Older than these men there was one whose character is forever blackened on the pages of history by the relentless pen of Cicero, Caius Licinius Verres, who, if we may believe the only records we have regarding him, was the most phenomenal freebooter of all time. The story of his career is a vivid demonstration of the manner in which the people of the Roman provinces were outraged by the officers sent to rule over them, and we shall anticipate our story a little in tracing it. The provincial governors were, as a class, corrupt, and Verres was as vile as any of them, but he was also brutal in his manners and natural instincts, rapacious, licentious, cruel, and fond of low companions. At first, one of the Marian faction, he betrayed his associates, embezzled the funds that had been entrusted to him, and joined himself to Sulla, who sent him to Brundusium, allowing him a share in the confiscated estates. Thence he was transferred to Cilicia, where again he proved a traitor to his superior officer, and stole from cities, private persons, temples, and public places, every thing that his rapacity coveted. One city offered him a vessel as a loan, and he refused to return it; another had a statue of Diana covered with gold, and he scraped off the precious metal to put it in his pocket. Using the money thus gained to ensure his election to office at Rome, Verres enjoyed a year at the Capitol, and then entered upon a still more outrageous career as governor of the island of Sicily. Taking with him a painter and a sculptor well versed in the values of works of art, he systematically gathered together all that was considered choice in the galleries and temples. Allowing his officers to make exorbitant exactions upon the farmers, he confiscated many estates to his own use, and reaped the crops. Even travellers were attacked to enrich this extraordinary thief, and six vessels were afterward dispatched to Rome with the plunder, which he asserted was sufficient to permit him to revel in opulence the remainder of his life, even if he were obliged to give up two thirds in fines and bribes.

The people Verres had outraged did not, however, suffer in quiet. They engaged Cicero to conduct their case against him, and this the great orator did with overwhelming success. [Footnote: The orations of Cicero against Verres are based upon information which the orator gathered by personally examining witnesses at the scenes of the rascality he unveiled. The orator showed a true Roman lack of appreciation of Greek art, and exercised his own love of puns to a considerable extent, playing a good deal upon the name Verres, which meant a boar. The extreme corpulence of the defendant, too, offered an opportunity for gross personal allusions. Cicero compared him to the Erymanthean boar, and called him the "drag-net" of Sicily, because his name resembled the word _everriculum_, a drag-net.] Though protected by Hortensius, an older advocate, who, during the absence of Cicero, on his travels, had acquired the highest rank as an orator, so terrible was the arraignment in its beginning that, at the suggestion of Hortensius, Verres did not remain to hear its close, but hastened into voluntary exile. He precipitately took ship for Marseilles, and for twenty-seven years was forced to remain in that city. Would that every misdoer among the provincial governors had thus been followed up by the law!

The representative of the Sullan party at this time was Lucius Sergius Catiline, an aristocrat, who, during the proscription, behaved with fiendish atrocity towards those of the opposite party, torturing and killing men with the utmost recklessness. His early years had been passed in undisguised debaucheries and unrestrained vice, but in spite of all his acts, he made political progress, was prætor, governor of Africa, and candidate for the consulship by turn. Failing in the last effort, however, he entered into a conspiracy to murder the successful candidates, and was only foiled by his own impatience. We shall find that he was encouraged by this failure which so nearly proved a success.

There was one man among the host of busy figures on the stage at this eventful period who seems to stalk about like a born master, and the lapse of time since his days has not at all dimmed the fame of his deeds, so deep a mark have they left upon the laws and customs of mankind, and so noteworthy are they in the annals of Rome. Caius Julius Cæsar was six years younger than Pompey and Cicero, and was of the popular or Marian party, both by birth and tastes. His aunt Julia was wife of the great Marius himself, and though he had married a young woman of high birth to please his father, he divorced her as soon as his father died, and married Cornelia, daughter of Cinna, the devoted opponent of Sulla, to please himself.

When Sulla returned to Rome from the East, he ordered Pompey to put away his wife, and he obeyed. He ordered Cæsar, a boy of seventeen, to give up his Cornelia, and he proudly replied that he would not. Of course he could not remain at Rome after that, and he fled to the land of the Sabines until Sulla was induced to grant him a pardon. Still, he did not feel secure at Rome, and a second time he sought safety in expatriation. Upon the death of the dictator, he returned, having gained experience in war, and having developed his talents as an orator by study in a school at Rhodes. He plunged immediately into public life and won great distinction by his effective speaking.

These are enough characters for us to remember at present. They represent four groups, all striving for supreme power. There are the men of the oligarchy, represented by Pompey and Cicero, actually holding the reins of government; and Crassus, standing for the aristocrats, who resent their claims; Cæsar, foremost among the Marians, the former opponents of Sulla and his schemes; and Catiline, at the head of the faction which included the host of warriors that Sulla had settled in peaceful pursuits throughout Italy,--in peaceful pursuits that did not at all suit their impetuous spirits, ever eager as they were for some revolution that would plunge them again into strife, and perchance win for them some spoil.

The consuls at the time of the death of Sulla were Lepidus and Catulus, who now fell out with one another, Lepidus taking the part of the Marians, and Catulus holding with the aristocrats. This was the same Lepidus who had opposed the burial of the dictator Sulla in the Campus Martius. As soon as the Marians saw that one consul was ready to favor them, there was great excitement among the portion of the community that looked for gain in confusion. Those who had lost their riches and civic rights, hoped to see them restored; young profligates trusted that in some way they might find means to gratify their love of luxury; and the people in general, who had no other reason, thought that after the three years of the calm of despotism, it would be refreshing to see some excitement in the forum. Lepidus was profuse in promises; he told the beggars that he would again distribute free grain; and the families deprived of their estates, that they might soon expect to enjoy them again. Catulus protested in vain, and the civil strife constantly increased, without any apparent probability that the Senate, now weak and inefficient, would or could successfully interfere. Finally it was decreed that Lepidus and Catulus should each be sent to the provinces under oath not to turn their swords against each other.

Lepidus slowly proceeded to carry out his part of this decree, but Catulus remained behind long enough to complete a great temple, which towered above the forum on the Capitoline Hill. The foundations only remain now, but they bear an inscription placed there by order of the senate, testifying that Catulus was the consul under whom the structure was completed. Lepidus did not consider his oath binding long, and the following year (B.C. 77) he marched straight to Rome again, announcing to the senators that he came to re-establish the rights of the people and to assume the dictatorship himself. He was met by an army under Pompey and Catulus, at a spot near the Mulvian bridge and the Campus Martius, almost on the place where the fate of the Roman Empire was to be determined four centuries later by a battle between Maxentius and Constantine (A.D. 312). Lepidus was defeated and forced to flee. Shortly after, he died on the island of Sardinia, overcome by chagrin and sorrow. One would expect to read of a new proscription, after this success, but the victors did not resort to that terrible vengeance. Thus Pompey found himself at the head of Roman affairs.

His first duty was to march against the remnant of the party of the Marians. They had joined Sertorius in Spain. It was the year 76 when Pompey arrived on the scene of his new operations. He found his enemy more formidable than he had supposed, and it was not until five years had passed, and Sertorius had been assassinated, that he was able to achieve the victory and scatter the army of the Marians. Meantime the Romans had been fearing that Sertorius would actually prove strong enough to march upon the capital and perhaps overwhelm it. Hardly had their fears in this respect been quieted than they found themselves menaced by a still more frightful catastrophe.

We remember how, in the year 264 B.C., two young Romans honored the memory of their father by causing men to fight each other to the death with swords to celebrate his funeral, and hints from time to time have shown how the Romans had become more and more fond of seeing human beings hack and hew each other in the amphitheatres. The men who were to be "butchered to make a Roman holiday," as the poet says, were trained for their horrid work with as much system as is now used in our best gymnasiums to fit men to live lives of happy peace, if not with more. They were divided into classes with particular names, according to the arms they wore, the hours at which they fought, and their modes of fighting, and great were the pains that their instructors took to make them perfect in their bloody work. Down at Capua, that celebrated centre of refinement and luxury, there was a school of gladiators, kept by one Lentulus, who hired his fierce pupils out to the nobles to be used at games and festivals.

While Pompey was away engaged with Sertorius, the enemies of Rome everywhere thought it a favorable moment to give her trouble, and these gladiators conspired in the year 73 to escape to freedom, and thus cheat their captors out of their expected pleasures, and give their own wives and children a little more of their lives. So large was the school that two hundred engaged in the plot, though only seventy-eight were successful in escaping. They hurried away to the mountains, armed with knives and spits that they had been able to snatch from the stalls as they fled, and, directed by one Spartacus who had been leader of a band of robbers, found their way to the crater of Mount Vesuvius, not a comfortable resort one would think; but at that time it was quite different in form from what it is now, the volcano being extinct, so that it afforded many of the advantages of a fortified town. From every quarter the hard-worked slaves flocked to the standard of Spartacus, and soon he found himself at the head of a large army. His plan was to cross the Alps, and find a place of refuge in Gaul or in his native Thrace; but his brutalized followers thought only of the present. They were satisfied if they could now and then capture a rich town, and for a while revel in luxuries; if they could wreak their vengeance by forcing the Romans themselves to fight as gladiators; or, if they had the opportunity to kill those to whom they attributed their former distresses. They cared not to follow their leader to the northward, and thus his wiser plans were baffled; but, in spite of all obstacles, he laid the country waste from the foot of the Alps to the most southern extremity of the toe of the Italian boot. For two years he was able to keep up his war against the Roman people, but at last he was driven to the remotest limits of Bruttium, where his only hope was in getting over to Sicily, in the expectation of gaining other followers; but his army was signally defeated by Crassus, a small remnant only escaping to the northward, where they were exterminated by Pompey, then returning from Spain (B.C. 71). From Capua to Rome six thousand crosses, each bearing a captured slave, showed how carefully and ruthlessly the man- hunt had been pursued by the frightened and exasperated Romans. Both Crassus and Pompey claimed the credit of the final victory, Pompey asserting that though Crassus had scotched the serpent, he had himself killed it.

On the last day of the year 71 Pompey entered Rome with the honor of a triumph, while Crassus received the less important distinction of an ovation, [Footnote: In a triumph in these times, the victorious general, clad in a robe embroidered with gold, and wearing a laurel wreath, solemnly entered the city riding in a chariot drawn by four horses. The captives and spoils went before him, and the army followed. He passed along the Via Sacra on the Forum Romanum, and went up to the Capitol to sacrifice in the temple of Jupiter. In the ovation the general entered the city on foot, wore a simple toga, and a wreath of myrtle, and was in other respects not so conspicuously honored as in the triumph. The two celebrations differed in other respects also.] as it was called, because his success had been obtained over slaves, less honorable adversaries than those whom Pompey had met. Each desired to be consul, but neither was properly qualified for the office, and therefore they agreed to overawe the senate and win the office for both, each probably thinking that at the first good opportunity he would get the better of the other. In this plan they were successful, and thus two aristocrats came to the head of government, and the oligarchy, to which one of them belonged, went out of power, and soon Pompey, who all the time posed as the friend of the people, proceeded to repeal the most important parts of the legislation of Sulla. The tribunes were restored, and Pompey openly broke with the aristocracy to which by birth he belonged, thus beginning a new era, for the social class of a man's family was no longer to indicate the political party to which he should give his adherence.

XV.

PROGRESS OF THE GREAT POMPEY.

The master spirits of this remarkable age were now in full action on the stage, and it is difficult to keep the eye fixed upon all of them at once. Now one is prominent and now another; all are pushing their particular interests, while each tries to make it appear that he has nothing but the good of the state at heart. Whenever it is evident that a certain cause is the popular one, the various leaders, opposed on most subjects, are united to help it, in the hope of catching the popular breeze. During the consulship of Pompey and Catulus, Pompey was the principal Roman citizen, and he tried to make sure that his prestige should not be lessened when he should step down from his high office.

Crassus, aristocrat by birth and aristocrat by choice, had been a candidate for the senate in opposition to Pompey, but he soon found that his interest demanded that he should make peace with his powerful colleague, and as he did it, he told the people that he did not consider that his action was in any degree base or humiliating, for he simply made advances to one whom they had themselves named the Great. Crowds daily courted Pompey on account of his power; but a multitude equally numerous surrounded Crassus for his wealth, and Cicero on account of his wonderful oratory. Even Julius Cæsar, the strong Marian, who pronounced a eulogy upon his aunt, the widow of Marius, seemed also to pay homage to Pompey, when, a year later, he took to wife Pompeia, a relative of the great soldier (B.C. 67).

Both Cæsar and Pompey saw that gross corruption was practised by the chiefs of the senate when they had control of the provinces, and knew that it ought to be exposed and effectually stopped, but Cæsar was the first to take action. He was quickly followed by Pompey, however, who encouraged Cicero to denounce the crimes of Verres with the success that we have already noticed. Cicero loftily exclaimed that he did not seek to chastise a single wicked man who had abused his authority as governor, but to extinguish and blot out all wickedness in all places, as the Roman people had long been demanding; but with all his eloquence he was not able to make the people appreciate the fact that the interests of Rome were identical with the well-being and prosperity of her allies, distant or near at hand.

Both Crassus and Pompey retired from the consulship amid the plaudits of the people and with the continued friendship of the optimates. Crassus, out of his immense income, spread a feast for the people on ten thousand tables; dedicated a tenth of his wealth to Hercules; and distributed among the citizens enough grain to supply their families three months. With all his efforts, however, he could not gain the favor which Pompey apparently held with ease. For two years Pompey assumed royal manners, and gave himself up to the enjoyment of his popularity, but then beginning to fear that without some new evidence of genius he might lose the admiration of the people, he began to make broad plans to astonish them.

For years the Mediterranean Sea had been infested by daring pirates, who at last made it unsafe for a Roman noble even to drive to his sea- side villa, or a merchant to venture abroad for purposes of trade. Cities had been ravaged, and the enemies of Rome had from time to time made alliances with the marauders. The pirates dyed their sails with Tyrian purple, they inlaid their oars with silver, and they spread gold on their pennants, so rich had their booty made them. Nor were they less daring than rich; they had captured four hundred towns of importance, they had once kidnapped Cæsar himself, and held him for enormous ransom, [Footnote: This occurred in the year 76 B.C., when Cæsar, at the age of twenty-four, was on his way to Rhodes, intending to perfect himself in oratory at the school of Apollonius Molo, the teacher of Cicero, lie was travelling as a gentleman of rank, and was captured off Miletus. After a captivity of six weeks, during which he mingled freely with the games and pastimes of the pirates, though plainly assuring them that he should one day hang them all, Cæsar was liberated, on payment of a ransom of some fifty thousand dollars. Good as his word, he promptly collected a fleet of vessels, returned to the island, seized the miscreants as they were dividing their plunder, carried them off to Pergamos, and had them crucified. He then went on to Rhodes, and practised elocution for two years.] and now they threatened to cut off the entire supply of grain that came from Africa, Sardinia, and Sicily,

The crisis was evident to all, and in it Pompey saw his opportunity. In the year 67, he caused a law to be introduced by the tribune Gabinius, ordaining that a commander of consular rank should be appointed for three years, with absolute power over the sea and the coasts about it for fifty miles inland, together with a fleet of two hundred sail, with officers, seamen, and supplies. When the bill had passed, Gabinius declared that there was but one man fit to exercise such remarkable power, and it was conferred with acclamations upon Pompey, whom he nominated. The price of grain immediately fell, for every one had confidence that the dread crisis was passed. The people were right, for in a few weeks the pirates had all been brought to terms. Pompey had divided the sea into thirteen parts, and in each of them the freebooters had been encountered in open battle, driven into creeks and captured, or forced to take refuge in their castles and hunted out of them, so that those who were not taken had surrendered.

The next move among the master spirits led to the still greater advancement of Pompey. His supporters at Rome managed to have him appointed to carry on a war in the East. In the year 74, when other enemies of the republic seized the opportunity to rise against Rome, Mithridates, never fully conquered, entered upon a new war. Lucius Licinius Lucullus, who had gained fame in the former struggle with Mithridates, was sent again to protect Roman interests in Pontus. He completely broke the power of the great monarch, in spite of his vast preparations for the struggle, but, under a pretext, he was now superseded by Pompey, who went out with a feigned appearance of reluctance, to pluck the fruit just ready to drop (B.C. 66). Cicero urged Pompey to accept this new honor, [Footnote: When the Manilian law which enlarged the powers of Pompey was under discussion, Cicero made his first address to the Roman people, and though vigorously opposed by Hortensius and Catulus, carried the day against the senate and the optimates whom they represented. This oration contains a panegyric of Pompey for suppressing piracy, and argues that a public servant who has done well once deserves to be trusted again.] and Cæsar, who enjoyed the precedents that Pompey had established, in adopting monarchical style, was now glad to have a rival removed from the country, that he might have, better opportunity to perfect his own plans.

The third or great Mithridatic war lasted from the year 74, when Lucullus was sent out, to 61. By the terms of the Manilian law, Pompey went out with unlimited power over the whole of Asia, as far as Armenia, as well as over the entire Roman forces; and as he already was supreme over the region about the Mediterranean Sea, he was practically dictator throughout all of the dominions of the republic. He planned his first campaign with so much skill that he cut Mithridates off from all help by sea, and destroyed every hope of alliances with other rulers. So clearly did it appear to the Pontic monarch that resistance would be vain, that he sued for peace. Pompey would accept no terms but unconditional surrender, however, and negotiations were broken off. Mithridates determined to avoid battle, but Pompey finally surprised and defeated him in Lesser Armenia, forcing him to flight. He found a retreat in the mountainous region north of the Euxine Sea, where Pompey was unable to follow him. There he meditated grand schemes against the Romans, which he was utterly unable to carry out, and at last he fell a victim to the malevolence of one of his former favorites (B.C. 63).

Pompey continued his conquering progress throughout Asia Minor, and did not return to Rome until he had subdued Armenia, Syria, Phoenicia, and Palestine, [Footnote: There was civil war in Palestine at the time, and the king surrendered to Pompey, but the people refused, took refuge in the stronghold of the temple, and were only overcome after a seige of three months. Pompey explored the temple, examined the golden vessels, the table of shew bread, and the candlesticks in their places, but was surprised to find the Holy of Holies empty, there being no representation of a deity. He reverently refrained from touching the gold, the spices, and the money that he saw, and ordered the place to be cleansed and purified that service might be resumed.] had established many cities, and had organized the frontier of the Roman possessions from the Euxine to the river Jordan. When he arrived at Rome, on the first of January, 61, he found that affairs had considerably changed during his absence, and it was not easy for him to determine what position he should assume in relation to the political parties. Cicero offered him his friendship; Cato, grandson of the stern old censor, and an influential portion of the senate opposed him; Crassus and Lucullus, too, were his personal enemies; and Cæsar, who appeared to support him, had really managed to prepare for him a secondary position in the state. On the last day of September, Pompey celebrated the most splendid triumph that the city had ever seen, and with it the glorious part of his life ended. Over three hundred captive princes walked before his chariot, and brazen tablets declared that he had captured a thousand fortresses, many small towns, and eight hundred ships; that he had founded thirty-nine cities, and vastly raised the public revenue.

The year following the departure of Pompey for the East was rendered noteworthy by the breaking out of a conspiracy that will never be forgotten so long as the writings of Cicero and Sallust remain. These were times of treasons, stratagems, and greed for spoils. Vice and immorality were rampant, and among the vicious and debased none had fallen lower than Lucius Sergius Catiline, a ferocious man of powerful body and strong mind, who first appears as a partisan of Sulla and an active agent in his proscription. All his powers were perverted to evil, and when to his natural viciousness there was added the intensity of disappointed political ambition, he was ready to plunge his country into the most desperate strife to gratify his hate. He stands for the worst vices of this wretched age. He had been a provincial governor, and in Africa had perpetrated all the crimes that Cicero could impute to a Verres, and thus had proclaimed himself a villain of the deepest dye, both abroad and at home.

Gathering about him the profligate nobles and the criminals who had nothing to lose and every thing to gain by revolution, Catiline plotted to murder the consuls and seize the government; but his attempt was foiled, and he waited for a more favorable opportunity. Two years later he was defeated by Cicero as candidate for the consulship, and the plot was renewed, it being then determined to add the burning of the city to the other atrocities contemplated. Cicero discovered the scheme, and unveiled its horrid details in four orations; but again the miserable being was permitted to escape justice. He was present and listened in rage to the invective of Cicero until he could bear it no longer, and then rushed wildly out and joined his armed adherents, an open enemy of the state. His plot failed in the city through imprudence of the conspirators and the skill of Cicero, and he himself fled, hoping to reach Gaul. He was, however, hemmed in by the Roman army and killed in a battle. Catiline's head was sent to Rome to assure the government that he was no more. Cicero, who had caused nine of the conspirators to be put to death, [Footnote: Under Roman law no citizen could legally be put to death except by the sanction of the Comitia Curiata, the sovereign assembly of the people, though it often happened that the regulation was ignored. If nobody dared or cared to object, no notice was taken of the irregularity, but we shall see that Cicero paid dearly for his action at this time.] now laid down his consular authority amid the plaudits of the people, who, under the lead of Cato and Catulus, hailed him as the Father of his Country.

Cicero was apparently spoiled by his success. Carried away by his own oratorical ability, he too often reminded the people in his long and eloquent speeches of the great deeds that he had done for the country. They cheered him as he spoke, but after this they never raised him to power again.

Just about this time a noble named Publius Clodius Pulcher, who was a demagogue of the worst moral character, in the pursuance of his base intrigues, committed an act of sacrilege by entering the house of Cæsar, disguised as a woman, during the celebration of the mysteries of the Bona Dea, to which men were never admitted. He was tried for the impiety, and, through the efforts of Cicero, was almost convicted, though he managed to escape by bribery. He was ever afterward a determined enemy of the great orator, and, by the aid of Pompey, Cæsar, and Crassus, finally succeeded in having him condemned for putting to death the Catilinian conspirators without due process of law. Cicero does not appear manly in the story of this affair. He left Rome, fearing to face the result; and after he had gone Clodius caused a bill to be passed by which he was declared a public enemy, and every citizen was forbidden to give him fire or water within four hundred miles of Rome (spring of 58). He found his way to Brundusium and thence to Greece, where he passed his time in the most unmanly wailings and gloomy forebodings. His property was confiscated, his rich house on the Palatine Hill and his villas being given over to plunder and destruction. Strange as it appears, Cicero was recalled the next year, and entered the city amid the hearty plaudits of the changeful people, though his self-respect was gone and his spirit broken.

Meantime, Cæsar had been quietly pushing himself to the front. He had returned from Spain, where he had been governor, at about the time that Pompey had returned from the East. He reconciled that great warrior to Crassus (called from his immense wealth _Dives_, the rich), and with the two made a secret arrangement to control the government. This was known as the _First Triumvirate_ [Footnote: Each of the three pledged himself not to speak nor to act except to subverse the common interest of all, though of course they were not sincere in their promises of mutual support.] or government of three men, though it was only a coalition, and did not strictly deserve the name given it (B.C. 60). Cæsar reaped the first-fruits of the league, as he intended, by securing the office of consul, through the assistance of his colleagues, whose influence proved irresistible.

Entering upon his office in the year 59, Cæsar very soon obtained the good-will of all,--first winning the people by proposing an agrarian law dividing the public lands among them. This was the last law of this sort, as that of Cassius (B.C. 486) had been the first. [Footnote: See page 83.] He rewarded Crassus by means of a law remitting one third of the sum that the publicans who had agreed to farm the revenues in Asia Minor had contracted to pay to the state; and satisfied Pompey by a ratification of all his acts in the East. The distribution of the lands among the people was placed in the hands of Pompey and Crassus.

At the end of his term of office Cæsar was made governor of Gaul, an office which he sought no more for the opportunity it afforded of gaining renown by conquering those ancient enemies who had formerly visited Rome with such dire devastation, than because he hoped to win for himself an army and partisans who would be useful in carrying out further ambitious ends.

Cæsar now entered upon a wonderful career of conquest, which lasted nine years. The story of what he accomplished during the first seven is given in his "Commentaries," as they are called, which are still read in schools, on account of the incomparable simplicity, naturalness, and purity of the style in which they are written, as well as because they seem to give truthful accounts of the events they describe. Sixty years before this time the Romans had possessed themselves of a little strip of Gaul south of the Alps, which was known as the Province, [Footnote: See pages 166 and 182.] and though they had ever since thought that there was a very important region to the north and west that might be conquered, they made no great effort to gain it. Cæsar was now to win imperishable laurels by effecting what had been before only vaguely dreamed of. He first made himself master of the country of the Helvetii (modern Switzerland), defeated the Germans under their famous general Ariovistus, and subjected the Belgian confederacy. The frightful carnage involved in these campaigns cannot be described, and the thousands upon thousands of brave barbarians who were sacrificed to the extension of Roman civilization are enough to make one shudder. When the despatches of Cæsar announcing his successes reached Rome, the senate, on motion of Cicero, though against the protestations of Cato, ordained that a grand public thanksgiving, lasting fifteen days, should be celebrated (B.C. 57). This was an unheard-of honor, the most ostentatious thanksgiving of the kind before--that given to Pompey, after the close of the war against Mithridates--having lasted but ten days.

Pompey and Crassus had fallen out during the absence of Cæsar, and he now invited them to meet and consult at Lucca, at the foot of the Apennines, just north of Pisa, where (April, 56) he held a sort of court, hundreds of Roman senators waiting upon him to receive the bribes with which he ensured the success of his measures during his absences in the field. [Footnote: Pompey had left Rome ostensibly for the purpose of arranging for supplies of grain from Africa and Sardinia. He was followed by many of his most noted adherents, the conference counting more than two hundred senators and sixscore lictors. Cæsar, like a mighty magician, caused the discordant spirits to act in concert. The power of the triumvirs is shown by the change that came over public opinion, and the calmness with which their acts were submitted to, though it was evident that the historic form of government was to be overturned, and a monarchy established. ] Here the three agreed that Pompey should rule Spain, Crassus Syria, and Cæsar Gaul, which he had made his own. Cæsar still kept on with his conquests, meeting desperate resistance, however, from the hordes of barbarians, who would not remain conquered, but engaged in revolts that caused him vast trouble and the loss of large numbers of soldiers. Incidentally to his other wars, he made two incursions into Britain, the home of our forefathers (B.C. 55 and 54), and nominally conquered the people, but it was not a real subjugation. Shakespeare did not make a mistake when he put into the mouth of the queen-wife of Cymbeline the words:

* * * "A kind of conquest Cæsar made here; but made not here his brag Of 'came' and 'saw' and 'overcame,'"

and certainly the brave Britons did not continue to obey their self- styled Roman "rulers."

In the sixth year of Cæsar's campaigns in Gaul, it seemed as if all was to be lost to the Romans. There arose a young general named Vercingetorix, who was much abler than any leader the Gauls had ever opposed to their enemies, and he united them as they had never been united before. This man persuaded his countrymen to lay their own country waste, in order that it might not afford any abiding place for the Romans, but contrary to his intentions one town that was strongly fortified was left, and to that Cæsar laid siege, finally taking it and butchering all the men, women, and children that it contained. Vercingetorix then fortified himself at Alesia (southeast of Paris), where he was, of course, besieged by the Romans, but soon Cæsar found his own forces attacked in the rear, and surrounded by a vast army of Gauls, who had come to the relief of their leader. In the face of such odds, he succeeded in vanquishing the enemy, and took the place, achieving the most wonderful act of his genius. The conquered chief was reserved to grace a Roman triumph, and to die by the hand of a Roman executioner. [Footnote: The historian Mommsen says of this unfortunate "barbarian": "As after a day of gloom the sun breaks through the clouds at its setting, so destiny bestows on nations in their decline a last great man. Thus Hannibal stands at the close of the Phoenician history and Vercingetorix at the close of the Celtic. They were not all to save the nations to which they belonged from a foreign yoke, but they spared them the last remaining disgrace--an ignominious fall.... The whole ancient world presents no more genuine knight [than Vercingetorix], whether as regards his essential character or his outward appearance."] The fate of Gaul was now certain, and Cæsar found comparatively little difficulty in subduing the remaining states, the last of which was Aquitania, the flat and uninteresting region in the southwest of modern France, watered by the Garonne and washed by the Atlantic. The conqueror treated the Gauls with mildness, and endeavored in every way to make them adopt Roman habits and customs. As they had lost all hope of resisting him, they calmly accepted the situation, and the foundation of the subsequent Romanizing of the west of Europe was laid. Three million Gauls had been conquered, a million had been butchered, and another million taken captive, while eight hundred cities, centres of active life and places of the enjoyment of those social virtues for which the rough inhabitants of the region were noted, had been destroyed. Legions of Roman soldiers had been cut to pieces in accomplishing this result, the influence of which upon the history of Europe can hardly be over-estimated Cæsar had completely eclipsed the military prestige of his rival, Pompey the Great.

XVI.

HOW THE TRIUMVIRS CAME TO UNTIMELY ENDS.

It was agreed at the conference of Lucca that Pompey should rule Spain, but it did not suit his plans to go to that distant country. He preferred to remain at Rome, where he thought that he might do something that would establish his influence with the people, and give him the advantage over his colleagues that they were each seeking to get over him. In order to court popularity, he built the first stone theatre that Rome had ever seen, capable of accommodating the enormous number of forty thousand spectators, and opened it with a splendid exhibition (B.C. 55). [Footnote: This theatre was built after the model of one that Pompey had seen at Mitylene, and stood between the Campus Martius and Circus Flaminius. Adjoining it was a hall affording shelter for the spectators in bad weather, in which Julius Cæsar was assassinated. The Roman theatres had no roofs, and, in early times, no seats. At this period there were seats of stone divided by broad passages for the convenience of the audience in going in and out. A curtain, which was drawn down instead of up, served to screen the actors from the spectators. Awnings were sometimes used to protect the audience from rain and sun. A century before this time the Senate had stopped the construction of a theatre, and prohibited dramatic exhibitions as subversive of good morals. The actors usually wore masks. See page 159.] Day after day the populace were admitted, and on each occasion new games and plays were prepared for their gratification. For the first time a rhinoceros was shown; eighteen elephants were killed by fierce Libyan hunters, and five hundred African lions lost their lives in the combats to which they were forced; the vehement, tragic actor Æsopus, then quite aged, came out of his retirement for the occasion, and uttered his last words on the stage, the juncture being all the more remarkable from the fact that his strength failed him in the midst of a very emphatic part; gymnasts contended, gladiators fought to the death, and the crowd cheered, but, alas for Pompey! the cheers expressed merely temporary enjoyment at the scenes before them, and did not at all indicate that he had been received to their hearts.

Crassus, in the meantime, was thinking that he too must accomplish something great or he would be left behind by both of his associates. He reflected that Cæsar had won distinction in Gaul, and Pompey by overcoming the pirates and conquering the East, and determined to show his skill as a warrior in his new province, Parthia. There was no cause for war against the people of that distant land, but a cause might easily be found, or a war begun without one, the great object aimed at being the extension of the sovereignty of Rome, and marking the name of Crassus high on the pillar of fame. This would surely, he thought, give him the utmost popularity. Thus, in the year 54, he set out for Syria, and the world saw each of the triumvirs busily engaged in pushing his own cause in his own way. Ten years later not one of them was alive to enjoy that which they had all so earnestly sought.

It is not necessary to follow Crassus minutely in his campaign. He spent a winter in Syria, and in the spring of 53 set out for the still distant East, crossing the Euphrates, and plunging into the desert wastes of old Mesopotamia, where he was betrayed into the hands of the enemy, and lost, not far from Carrhæ (Charran or Haran), the City of Nahor, to which the patriarch Abraham migrated with his family from Ur of the Chaldees. Thus there remained but two of the three ambitious seekers of popular applause.

Pompey had been in some degree attached to Cæsar through his daughter Julia, whom he had married; but she died in the same year that Crassus went to the East, and from that time he gravitated toward the aristocrats, with whom his former affiliations had been. The ten years of Cæsar's government were to expire on the 1st of January, 48, and it became important for him to obtain the office of consul for the following year; but the senate and Pompey were equally interested to have him deprived of the command of the army before receiving any new appointment. The reason for this was that Cato [Footnote: This Cato was great-grandson of Cato the Censor (see page 152), was a man who endeavored to remind the world constantly of his illustrious descent by imitating the severe independence of his great ancestor, and by assuming marked peculiarity of dress and behavior. His life, blighted by an early disappointment in love, was unfortunate to the last. He was a consistent, but often ridiculous, leader of the minority opposed to the triumvirs.] had declared that as soon as Cæsar should become a private citizen he would bring him to trial for illegal acts of which his enemies accused him; and it was plain to him, no less than to all the world, that if Pompey were in authority at the time, conviction would certainly follow such a trial. One of Cicero's correspondents said on this subject: "Pompey has absolutely determined not to allow Cæsar to be elected consul on any terms except a previous resignation of his army and his government, while Cæsar is convinced that he must inevitably fall if he has once let go his army."

In the year 50, Cæsar went into Cisalpine Gaul, that is, into the region which is now known as Northern Italy, and was received as a great conqueror. He then went over the mountains to Farther Gaul and reviewed his army--the army that he had so often led to victory. He did not lose sight of the fact that it was now, more than ever before, necessary for him to have some one in Rome who would look out for his interests in his absences, and he bethought himself of a man whom he had known from his youth, Caius Scribonius Curio by name, a spendthrift whom he had vainly tried to inspire with higher ambition than the mere gratification of his appetites. He was married to Fulvia, a scheming woman of light character, widow of Clodius (who afterwards become wife of Marc Antony), and he was harassed by enormous debts. Though Curio was allied to the party of Pompey, Cæsar won him over by paying his debts, [Footnote: The debts of this young man have been estimated as high as $2,500,000, and their vastness shows by contrast how wealthy private citizens sometimes became at this epoch.] and he then began cautiously to turn his back upon his former associates. At first, he pretended to act against Cæsar as usual; then he cautiously assumed the appearance of neutrality; and, when the proper opportunity arrived, he threw all the weight of his influence in favor of the master to whom he had sold himself. Curio was not the only person whom Cæsar bought, for he distributed immense sums among other citizens of influence, as he had not hesitated to do before, and they quietly interposed objections to any movement against him, though outwardly holding to Pompey's party.

The senate, assisted by the solemn jugglery of the pontiffs, who had charge of the calendar and were accustomed to shorten or lengthen the year according as their political inclinations impelled them, proposed to weaken Cæsar's position by obliging him to resign his authority November 13th, though his term did not expire, as we know, until the following January.

Under these circumstances, Curio, then one of the tribunes of the people, began his tactics by plausibly urging that it would be only fair that Pompey, who was not far from the city at the head of an army, should also give up his authority at the same time before entering the city. Pompey had no intention of doing this, though everybody saw that it was reasonable, and Curio took courage and went a step farther, denouncing him as evidently designing to make himself tyrant. [Footnote: A tyrant was simply a ruler with dictatorial powers, and it was not until he abused his authority that he became the odious character indicated by the modern meaning of the title; but any thing that looked like a return to the government of a king was hateful to the Romans.] However, in order to keep up his appearance of impartiality, he approved a declaration that unless both generals should lay down their authority, they ought to be denounced as public enemies, and that war should be immediately declared against them. Pompey became indignant at this. Finally it was decided that each commander should be ordered to give up one legion, to be used against the Parthians, in a war which it was pretended would soon open. Pompey readily assented, but craftily managed to perform his part without any loss; for he called upon Cæsar to return to him a legion that he had borrowed three years before. The senate then sent both legions to Capua instead of to Asia, intending, in due time, to use them against Cæsar. Cæsar gave up the two legions willingly, because he thought that with the help of the army that remained, and with the assistance of the citizens whom he had bribed, he would be able to take care of himself in any emergency, but nevertheless he endeavored to bind the soldiers of these legions more firmly to him by giving a valuable present to each one as he went away. [Footnote: One of Cicero's correspondents writing in January, 50, says in a postscript: "I told you above that Curio was freezing, but he finds it warm enough just at present, everybody being hotly engaged in pulling him to pieces. Just because he failed to get an intercalary month, without the slightest ado he has stepped over to the popular side, and begun to harangue in favor of Cæsar." In replying to this, Cicero wrote: "The paragraph you added was indeed a stab from the point of your pen. What! Curio now become a supporter of Cæsar. Who could ever have expected this but myself? for, upon my life, I really did expect it. Good heavens! how I miss our laughing together over it." ] Not long after this Curio went to Ravenna to consult Cæsar.

We see on our maps a little stream laid down as the boundary between Italy and Gaul. It is called the Rubicon; but when we go to Italy and look for the stream itself we do not find it so easily, because there are at least two rivers that may be taken for it. However, it is not of much importance for the purposes of history which was actually the boundary. North of the Rubicon we see the ancient city of Ravenna, which stood in old times like Venice, on islands, and like it was intersected in all directions by canals through which the tide poured volumes of purifying salt water twice every day. Now the canals are all filled up, and the city is four miles from the sea, so large have been the deposits from the muddy waters that flow down the rivers into the Adriatic at that place. Thirty-three miles south of Ravenna and nine miles from the Rubicon, the map shows us another ancient town called Ariminum. connected directly with Rome by the Flaminian road, which was built some two hundred years before the time of which we are writing. Ravenna was the last town in the territory of Cæsar on the way to Rome, and there he took his position to watch proceedings, for it was not allowed him to leave his province.

On the first of January, 49, Curio arrived at Rome with a letter from Cæsar offering to give up his command provided Pompey would do the same. The consuls at that time were partisans of Pompey, and they at first refused to allow the letter to be read; but the tribunes of the people were in favor of Cæsar, and they forced the senators to listen to it. A violent debate followed, and it was finally voted that unless Cæsar should disband his army within a certain time he should be considered an enemy of the state, and be treated accordingly. On the sixth of the same month the power of dictators was given to the consuls, and the two tribunes who favored Cæsar--one of whom was Marc Antony--fled to him in disguise, for there was no safety for them in Rome.

Now there was war. On the one side we have Pompey, proud and confident, but unprepared because he was so confident; and on the other, Cæsar, cool and unperturbed, relying not only on his army, but also upon the friends that his money and tact had made among the soldiers with him, no less than among those at Capua and elsewhere, upon which his opponent also depended.

The moment is one that has been fixed in the memory of men for all time by a proverbial expression based upon an apochryphal event that might well have happened upon the banks of the little Rubicon. As soon as Cæsar heard of the action of the senate he assembled his soldiers and asked them if they would support him. They replied that they would follow him wherever he commanded. The story runs that he then ordered the army to advance upon Ariminum, but that when he arrived at the little dividing river he ordered a halt, and meditated upon his course. He knew that when he crossed that line blood would surely flow from thousands of Romans, and he asked himself whether he was right in bringing such woes upon his countrymen, and how his act would be represented in history.

It is not improbable that the great conqueror entertained thoughts like these, for he was a writer of history as well as one of the mightiest makers of it; but he mentions nothing of the sort in his own story of the advance, and we may well doubt whether it was not invented by Suetonius, or some other historian, who wished to make his account as picturesque as possible. It is said that after these thoughts Cæsar exclaimed: "The die is cast; let us go where the gods and the injustice of our enemies direct us!" He then urged his charger through the stream.

There had been confusion in the capital many a time before, but probably never was there such a commotion as arose when it was known that the conqueror of Gaul, the man who had for years marched through that great region as a mighty monarch, was on the way towards it. That the consuls were endowed with dictatorial power for the emergency, availed little. A few days before, some one had asked Pompey what he should do for an army if Cæsar should leave his province with his soldiers, and he replied haughtily that he should need but to stamp on the ground and soldiers would spring up. Now he stamped, and stamped in vain; no volunteers came at his call. The venerable senators, successors of those who had remained in their seats when the barbarians were coming, hastened away for dear life; they did not make the usual sacrifices; they did not take their goods and chattels; they even forgot the public treasure, which would have been of the utmost use to them and to the cause of Pompey.

Cæsar's army supported him as a whole, but there was one self-important man among the leaders of it who proved an exception. Titus Labienus, who had been with Cæsar in Spain, who had performed some brilliant feats when Vercingetorix revolted, and who was in all his master's confidence, had allowed his little mind to become filled with pride and ambition until he began to believe that he was at the bottom of Cæsar's success, and probably as great a general as he! He was ready to allow the Pompeians to beguile him from his allegiance, and at last went over to them. Cæsar, to show how little he cared for the defection of Labienus, hastened to send his baggage after him; but in Rome he was welcomed with acclamations. Cicero, the trimmer, exclaimed: "Labienus has behaved quite like a hero!" and believed that Cæsar had received a tremendous blow by his defection. This deserter's act had, however, no effect whatever on the progress of Cæsar, who, though it was the middle of winter, marched onwards, receiving the surrender of city after city, giving to all the conquered citizens the most liberal terms, and thus binding them firmly to his cause. [Footnote: As Cæsar approached Rome, Cato took flight, and, determined to mourn until death the unhappy lot of his country, allowed his hair to grow, and resigned himself to unavailing grief. Too weak and perplexed to stand against opposing troubles, he fondly thought that resolutions and laws and a temporizing policy might avail to bring happiness and order to a distraught commonwealth.]

Pompey did not even attempt to interrupt the triumphant career of his enemy, but determined to find safety out of Italy, and hastened to Brundusium as fast as possible. After mastering the whole country, Cæsar reached the same port before Pompey was able to get away, and began a siege, in the progress of which Pompey escaped. Cæsar was not able to follow, on account of a want of vessels. He therefore turned back to Rome, where he encountered no opposition, except from Metellus, a tribune of the people, who attempted to keep him from taking possession of the gold in the temple of Saturn, traditionally supposed to have been that which Camillus had recovered from Brennus. It was intended for use in case the Gauls should make another invasion, but Cæsar said that he had conquered the Gauls, and they need be feared no more. "Stand aside, young man!" he exclaimed; "it is easier for me to do than to say!" Metellus saw that it was not worth while to discuss the question with such a man, and prudently stepped aside.

Cæsar did not remain at Rome at this time, but hastened to Spain, where partisans of Pompey were in arms, leaving Marc Antony in charge of Italy in general, and Marcus Lepidus responsible for order in the city. Both of these men were destined to become more prominent in the future. At the same time, legions were sent to Sicily and Sardinia, and their success, which was easily gained, preserved the city from a scarcity of grain. Cæsar himself overcame the Pompeians in Spain, and, in accordance with his policy in Italy, dismissed them unharmed. Most of their soldiers were taken into his own army. He then felt free to continue his movements against Pompey himself, and returned to the capital.

For eleven days Cæsar was dictator of Rome, receiving the office from Lepidus, who had been authorized to give it by those senators who had not fled with Pompey. In that short period he passed laws calling home the exiles; giving back their rights as citizens to the children of those who had suffered in the Sullan proscription; and affording relief to debtors. Then, causing the senate to declare him consul, he started for Brundusium to pursue his rival. It was the fourth of January, 48, when he sailed for the coast of Epirus, and the following day he landed on the soil of Greece. He met Pompey at Dyrrachium, but his force was so small that he was defeated. He then retreated to the southeast, and another battle was fought on the plain of Pharsalia, in Thessaly, June 6, 48. The forces were still very unequal, Pompey having more than two soldiers to one of Cæsar's; but Cæsar's were the better warriors, and Pompey was totally defeated. Feeling that every thing was now lost, Pompey sought an asylum in Egypt; and there he was assassinated by order of the reigning monarch, who hoped to win the favor of Cæsar in his contest with his sister, Cleopatra, who claimed the throne.

Cæsar followed his adversary with his usual promptness, and when he had reached Egypt was shown his rival's severed head, from which he turned with real or feigned sadness and tears. This alarmed the king and his partisans, and they still further lost heart when Cleopatra won Cæsar to her support by the charms of her personal beauty.

After a brief struggle known as the Alexandrine War, which closed in March, 47, Cæsar placed the queen and her brother on the throne. It was at this time that the great Library and Museum at Alexandria were destroyed by fire. Four hundred thousand volumes were said to have been burned. The next month Cæsar was called from Egypt to Pontus, where a son of Mithridates was in arms, and, after a campaign of five days, he gained a decisive victory at a place called Zela, boastfully announcing his success to the senate in three short words: "_Veni, vidi, vici_" (I came, I saw, I overcame). In September, Cæsar was again in Rome, where he remained only three months, arranging affairs. There were fears lest he should make a proscription, but he proceeded to no such extremity, exercising his characteristic clemency towards those who had been opposed to him. A revolt occurred at this time among the soldiers at Capua, and they marched to Rome, but Cæsar cowed them by a display of haughty coolness.

The remnant of the adherents of Pompey gathered together and went to Africa, whither Cæsar followed, and after a short campaign defeated them on the field of Thapsus, April 6, 46. They were commanded by Scipio, father-in-law of Pompey, and by Cato, who had accepted the position after it had been declined by Cicero, his superior in rank. After the defeat of Thapsus Cato retreated to Utica, where he deliberately put an end to his life after occupying several hours in reading Plato's _Phædo_, a dialogue on the immortality of the soul. From the place of his death he is known in history as Cato of Utica.

When the news of this final victory reached Rome Cæsar was appointed dictator for ten years, and a thanksgiving lasting forty days was decreed. He was also endowed with a newly created office-that of Overseer of Public Morals (_Præfectus Morum_). Temples and statues were dedicated to his honor; a golden chair was assigned for his use when he sat in the senate; the month Quintilis was renamed after him Julius (July); and other unheard of honors were thrust upon him by a servile senate. He was also called the Father of his Country (a title that had been before borne by Camillus and Cicero), and four triumphs were celebrated for him. On his own part, Cæsar feasted the people at twenty-two thousand tables, and caused combats of wild animals and gladiators to be celebrated in the arenas beneath awnings of the richest silks.

The great conqueror now prepared to carry out schemes of a beneficent nature which would have been of great value to the world; but their achievement was interfered with, first by war and then by his own death. He intended to unify the regions controlled by the republic by abolishing offensive political distinctions, and to develop them by means of a geographical survey which would have occupied years to complete under the most competent management; and he wished to codify the Roman law, which had been growing up into a universal jurisprudence, a work which Cicero looked upon as a hopeless though brilliant vision, and one that Justinian actually accomplished, though not until six hundred years later. He contemplated also the erection of vast public works. His knowledge of astronomy led him to accomplish one important change, for which we have reason to remember him to-day. He reformed the calendar, substituting the one used until 1582 (known from him as the Julian calendar) for that which was then current. [Footnote: The Gregorian calendar was introduced in the Catholic states of Europe in 1582, but owing to popular prejudice England did not begin to use it until 1752, in which year September 3d became, by act of Parliament, September 14th. Usage in America followed that of the mother country.] Three hundred and fifty-five days had been called a year from the time of Numa Pompilius, but as that number did not correspond with the actual time of the revolution of the earth around the sun, it had been customary to intercalate a month, every second year, of twenty-two and twenty-three days alternately, and one day had also been added to make a fortunate number. This made the adaptation of the nominal year to the actual a matter of great intricacy, the duty being intrusted to the chief pontiffs. These officers were often corrupted, and managed to effect political ends from time to time by the addition or omission of the intercalary days and months. At this time the civil calendar was some weeks in advance of the actual time, so that the consuls, for example, who should have entered office January 1, 46, really assumed their power October 13, 47. The Julian calendar made the year to consist of 365 days and six hours, which was correct within a few minutes; but, by the time of Pope Gregory XIII, this had amounted to ten days, and a new reform was instituted. Cæsar now added ninety days to the year in order to make the year 45 begin at the proper time, inserting a new month between the 23d and 24th of February, and adding two new months after the end of November, so that the long year thus manufactured (445 days) was very justly called the "year of confusion", or "the last year of confusion."

Cæsar had also in mind plans of conquest. He had not forgotten that the Roman arms had been unsuccessful at Carrhæ, and he wished to subdue the Parthians, but the ghost of Pompey would not down. His sons raised the banner of revolt in Spain, and the officers sent against them did not succeed in their efforts to assert the supremacy of Rome. It was necessary that Cæsar himself should go there, and accordingly he set out in September. Twenty-seven days later he was on the ground, and though he found himself in the face of greater difficulties than he had anticipated, a few months sufficed to completely overthrow the enemy, who were defeated finally at the battle of Munda, not far from Gibraltar (March, 17, 45). Thirty thousand of them perished. Cæsar did not return to Rome until September, because affairs of the province required attention. Again he celebrated a triumph, marked by games and shows, and new honors from the senate.

Cæsar's ambition now made him wish to continue the supreme power in his family, and he fixed upon a great-nephew named Octavius as his successor. In the fifth year of his consulate (B.C. 44), on the feast of Lupercalia (Feb. 15th), he attempted to take a more important step. He prevailed upon Marc Antony to make him an offer of the kingly diadem, but as he immediately saw that it was not pleasing to the people that he should accept it, he pushed the glittering coronet from him, amid their plaudits, as though he would not think of assuming any sign of authority that the people did not freely offer him themselves. [Footnote: "I saw Mark Antony offer him a crown; yet 't was not a crown neither, 't was one of these coronets; and, as I told you, he put it by once; but for all that, to my thinking, he would fain have had it. Then he offered it to him again; then he put it by again; but to my thinking, he was very loth to lay his fingers off it. And then he offered it the third time; he put it the third time by, and still as he refused it, the rabblement shouted and clapped their chapped hands, and threw up their sweaty night-caps, and uttered such a deal of stinking breath because Cæsar refused the crown, that it had almost choked Cæsar; for he swooned and fell down at it." Casca's account, in Shakespeare's _Julius Cæsar_, act i., sc. 2.] Cæsar still longed for the name of king, however, and became irritated because it was not given him. This was shown in his intercourse with the nobles, and they were now excited against him by one Caius Cassius Longinus (commonly called simply Cassius), who had wandered and fought with Crassus in Parthia, but had escaped from that disastrous campaign. He had been a follower of Pompey, and had fallen into Cæsar's hands shortly after the battle of Pharsalia. Though he owed his life to Cæsar, he was personally hostile to him, and his feelings were so strong that he formed a plot for his destruction, in which sixty or eighty persons were involved. Among these was Marcus Junius Brutus, then about forty years of age, who had also been with Pompey at Pharsalia. He was of illustrious pedigree, and claimed to be descended from the shadowy hero of his name, who is said to have pursued the Tarquins with such patriotic zeal. His life also had been spared by Cæsar at Pharsalia, and he had made no opposition to his acts as dictator. Cato was his political model, and at about this time, he divorced his wife to marry Portia, Cato's daughter. Cassius had married Junia Tertulla, half- sister of Brutus, and now offered him the place of chief adviser of the conspirators, who determined upon a sudden and bold effort to assassinate the dictator. They intended to make it appear that patriotism gave them the reason for their act, but in this they failed.

The senate was to convene on the Ides of March, and Cæsar was warned that danger awaited him; but he was not to be deterred, and entered the chamber amid the applause of the people. The conspirators crowded about him, keeping his friends at a distance, and at a concerted signal he was grasped by the hands and embraced by some, while others stabbed him with their fatal daggers. He fell at the base of the statue of Pompey, pierced with more than a score of wounds. It is said that when he noticed Brutus in the angry crowd, he exclaimed in surprise and sorrow: "_Et tu Brute!_" (And thou, too, Brutus!).

Brutus had prepared a speech to deliver to the senate, but when he looked around, he found that senators, centurions, lictors, and attendants, all had fled, and the place was empty. He then marched with his accomplices to the forum. It was crowded with an excited multitude, but it was not a multitude of friends. The assassins saw that there was no safety for them in the city. Lepidus was at the gates with an army, and Antony had taken possession of the papers and treasures of Cæsar, which gave him additional power; but all parties were in doubt as to the next steps, and a reconciliation was determined upon as giving time for reflection. Cassius went to sup with Antony, and Brutus with Lepidus. This shows plainly that the good of the republic was not the cause nearest the hearts of the principal actors; but that each, like a wary player at chess, was only anxious lest some adversary should get an advantage over him.

The senate was immediately convened, and under the direction of Cicero, who became its temporary leader, it was voted that the acts of Cæsar, intended as well as performed, should be ratified, and that the conspirators should be pardoned, and assigned to the provinces that Cæsar had designated them for.

Antony now showed himself a consummate actor, and a master of the art of moving the multitude. He prepared for the obsequies of the dictator, at which he was to deliver the oration, and, while pretending to endeavor to hold back the people from violence against the murderers, managed to excite them to such an extent that nothing could restrain them. He brought the body into the Campus Martius for the occasion, and there in its presence displayed the bloody garment through which the daggers of the conspirators had been thrust; identified the rents made by the leader, Cassius, the "envious Casca," the "well-beloved Brutus," and the others; and displayed a waxen effigy that he had prepared for the occasion, bearing all the wounds. He called upon the crowd the while, as it swayed to and fro in its threatening violence, to listen to reason, but at the same time told them that if he possessed the eloquence of a Brutus he would ruffle up their spirits and put a tongue in every wound of Cæsar that would move the very stones of Rome to rise in mutiny. He said that if the people could but hear the last will of the dictator, they would dip their kerchiefs in his blood--yea, beg a hair of him for memory, and, dying, mention it in their wills as a rich legacy to their children.

The oration had its natural effect. The people, stirred from one degree of frenzy to another, piled up chairs, benches, tables, brushwood, even ornaments and costly garments for a funeral pile, and burned the whole in the forum. Unable to restrain themselves, they rushed with brands from the fire towards the homes of the conspirators to wreak vengeance upon them. Brutus and Cassius had fled from the city, and the others could not be found, so that the fury of their hate died out for want of new fuel upon which to feed.

Antony was now the chief man of Rome, and it was expected that he would demand the dictatorship. To the astonishment of all, he proposed that the office itself should be forever abolished, thus keeping up his pretence of moderation; but, on the other hand, he asked for a body- guard, which the senate granted, and he surrounded himself with a force of six thousand men. He appointed magistrates as he wished, recalled exiles, and freed any from prison whom he desired, under pretence of following the will of Cæsar.

It soon became apparent that, in the words of Cicero addressed to Cassius, the state seemed to have been "emancipated from the king, but not from the kingly power," for no one could tell where Antony would stop his pretence of carrying out the plans of Cæsar. The republic was doubtless soon to end, and it was not plain what new misery was in store for the distracted people.

XVII.

HOW THE REPUBLIC BECAME AN EMPIRE.

When Cæsar had planned to go to Parthia, he sent in that direction some of his legions, which wintered at Apollonia, just over the Adriatic, opposite Brundusium, and with them went the young and sickly nephew whom Cæsar had mentioned in his will as his heir. While the young man was engaged in familiarizing himself with the soldiers and their life, a freedman arrived in camp to announce from his mother the tragedy of the Ides of March. The soldiers offered to go with him to avenge his uncle's death, but he decided to set out at once and alone for the capital. At Brundusium he was received by the army with acclamations. He did not hesitate to assume the name Cæsar, and to claim the succession, though he thus bound himself to pay the legacies that Cæsar had made to the people. He was known as Caius Julius Cæsar Octavianus, or, briefly, as Octavius. [Footnote: Octavius was son of Caius Octavius and Atia, daughter of Julia, sister of Julius Cæsar, and was born Sept. 23, B.C. 63. His true name was the same as that of his father, but he is usually mentioned in history as Augustus, an untranslatable title that he assumed when he became emperor. His descent was traced from Atys, son of Alba, an old Latin hero.] Cæsar had bequeathed his magnificent gardens on the opposite side of the Tiber to the public as a park, and to every citizen in Rome a gift of three hundred sesterces, equal to ten or fifteen dollars. These provisions could not easily be carried out except by Antony, who had taken possession of Cæsar's moneys, and who was at the moment the most powerful man in the republic. Next to him stood Lepidus, who was in command of the army. These two seemed to stand between Octavius and his heritage.

Octavius understood the value of money, and took possession of the public funds at Brundusium, captured such remittances from the provinces as he could reach, and sent off to Asia to see how much he could secure of the amount provided for the Parthian expedition, just as though all this had been his own personal property.

Thus the timid but ambitious youth began to prepare himself for supreme authority. When he reached Rome his mother and other friends warned him of the risks involved in his course, but he was resolute. He had made the acquaintance at Apollonia of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, then twenty years of age, who afterwards became a skilful warrior and always was a valuable adviser, and now he determined to make a friend of Cicero. This remarkable orator had already been intimate with all the prominent men of his day; had at one time or another flattered or cajoled Curio, Cassius, Crassus, Pompey, Antony, and Cæsar, and now, after thoroughly canvassing the probabilities, he decided to take the side of Octavius, though he was loth to break with either Brutus or Antony. His weakness is plainly and painfully presented by his own hand in his interesting letters, which add much light to the story of this period. [Footnote: James Anthony Froude says: "In Cicero, Nature half-made a great man and left him uncompleted. Our characters are written in our forms, and the bust of Cicero is the key to his history. The brow is broad and strong, the nose large, the lips tightly compressed, the features lean and keen from restless intellectual energy. The loose, bending figure, the neck too weak for the weight of the head, explain the infirmity of will, the passion, the cunning, the vanity, the absence of manliness and veracity. He was born into an age of violence with which he was too feeble to contend. The gratitude of mankind for his literary excellence will forever preserve his memory from too harsh a judgment."--"Cæsar, a Sketch," chapter xxvii.]

Octavius gathered together enough money to pay the legacies of Cæsar by sales of property, and by loans, in spite of the fact that Antony refused to give up any that he had taken. He artfully won the soldiers and the people by his liberality (that could not fail to be contrasted with the grasping action of Antony), and by the shows with which he amused them. Thus with it all he managed to make the world believe that he was not laying plans of ambition, but simply wished to protect the state from the selfish designs of his rival. In this effort he was supported by the oratory of Cicero, who began to compose and deliver or publish a remarkable series of fourteen speeches known as Philippics, from their resemblance to the four acrimonious invectives against Philip of Macedon which the great Demosthenes launched at Athens during the eleven years in which he strove to arouse the weakened Greeks from inactivity and pusillanimity (352-342 B.C.).

Cicero entered Rome on the first of September, and delivered his first Philippic the next day, in the same Temple of Concord in which he had denounced Catiline twenty years before. He then retired from the city, and did not hear the abusive tirade with which Antony attempted to blacken his reputation. In October he prepared a second speech, which was not delivered, but was given to the public in November. This is the most elaborate and the best of the Philippics, and it is also much more fierce than the former. The last of the series was delivered April 22, 43. Antony was soon declared a public enemy, and Cicero in his speeches constantly urged a vigorous prosecution of the war against him.

Octavius gained the confidence of the army, and then demanded the consulate of the senate. When that powerful office had been obtained, he broke with the senate, and marched to the northward, ostensibly to conquer Antony and Lepidus, who were coming down with another great army. Instead of precipitating a battle, Lepidus contrived to have a meeting on a small island in a tributary of the Po, not far from the present site of Bologna, and there, toward the end of October, it was agreed that the government of the Roman world should be peaceably divided between the three captains, who were to be called Triumvirs for the settlement of the affairs of the republic. They were to retain their offices until the end of December, 38, Lepidus ruling Spain; Octavius, Sicily, Sardinia, and Africa; and Antony, the two Gauls; while Italy was to be governed by the three in common, their authority being paramount to senate, consuls, and laws. This is known as the Second Triumvirate, though we must remember that the former arrangement, made by Cæsar, Pompey, and Crassus, was simply a private league without formal sanction of law. The second triumvirate was proclaimed November, 27, 43 B.C.

The first work of the three rulers was to rid themselves of all whom they feared as enemies, and we have to imagine them sitting down to make out a list of those who, like the sufferers at the dreadful time of Marius and Sulla, were proscribed. Among the prominent men seventeen were first chosen to be butchered, and on the horrid list are found the names of a cousin of Octavius, a brother of Lepidus, and an uncle of Antony. To the lasting execration of Octavius, he consented that Cicero, who had so valiantly fought for him, should be sacrificed to the vengeance of Antony, whom the orator had scarified with his burning words.

This was but the beginning of blood-shedding, for when the triumvirs reached Rome they issued list after list of the doomed, some names being apparently included at the request of daughters, wives, and friends to gratify private malice. The head and hands of Cicero were cut off and sent to be affixed to the rostra, where they had so often been seen during his life. It is said that on one occasion a head was presented to Antony, and he exclaimed: "I do not recognize it, show it to my wife"; and that on another, when a man begged a few moments of respite that he might send his son to intercede with Antony, he was told that it was that son who had demanded his death. The details are too horrible for record, and yet it is said that the massacre was not so general as in the former instance. In this reign of terror, three hundred senators died, and two thousand knights.

While these events had occurred in Rome, Brutus and Cassius had been successfully pursuing their conquests in Syria and Greece, and were now masters of the eastern portion of the Roman world. When they heard of the triumvirate and the proscription, they determined to march into Europe; but Antony and Octavius were before them, and the opposed forces met on the field of Philippi, which lies nine miles from the Ægean Sea, on the road between Europe and Asia, the Via Egnatia, which ran then as now from Dyrrachium and Apollonia in Illyricum, by way of Thessalonica to Constantinople, or Byzantium, as it was then called. Brutus engaged the forces of Octavius, and Cassius those of Antony. Antony made head against his opponent; but Octavius, who was less of a commander, and fell into a fit of illness on the beginning of the battle, gave way before Brutus, though in consequence of misinformation of the progress of the struggle, Cassius killed himself just before a messenger arrived to tell him of his associate's success. Twenty days afterwards the struggle was renewed on the same ground, and Brutus was defeated, upon which he likewise put an end to his own life. If the murderers of Cæsar had fought for the republic, there was no hope for that cause now. The three rulers were reduced to two, for Lepidus was ignored after the victory of his associates, and it only remained to eliminate the second member of the triumvirate to establish the monarchy. For the present, Octavius and Antony divided the government between them, Antony taking the luxurious East, and leaving to Octavius the invidious task of governing Italy and allotting lands to the veterans.

Thousands of the inhabitants of Cisalpine Gaul were expelled from their homes to supply the soldiers with farms, but still they remained unsatisfied, and Italy was filled with complaints which Octavius was unable to allay. Antony, on the other hand, gave himself up to the grossest dissipation, careless of consequences. At Tarsus, he had an interview with Cleopatra, then twenty-eight years of age, whom he had seen years before when he had accompanied Gabinius to Alexandria, and later, when she had lived at Rome the favorite of Cæsar. Henceforth he was her willing slave. She sailed up the river Cydnus in a vessel propelled by silver oars that moved in unison with luxurious music, and filled the air with fragrance as she went, while beautiful slaves held the rudder and the ropes. The careless and pleasure-loving warrior forgot every thing in his wild passion for the Egyptian queen. He forgot his wife, Fulvia, but she was angry with Octavius because he had renounced his wife Claudia, her daughter, and stirred up a threatening revolt against him, which she fondly hoped might also serve to recall Antony from the fascinations of Cleopatra. With her supporters she raised a considerable army, by taking the part of the Italians who had been dispossessed to give farms to the veterans, and by pretending also to favor the soldiers, to whom rich spoils from Asia were promised. They were, however, pushed from place to place until they found themselves shut up in the town of Perusia, in Etruria, where they were besieged and forced to surrender, by the military skill of Agrippa, afterwards known as one of the ablest generals of antiquity.

Meantime, Antony's fortunes in the East were failing, and he determined upon a brave effort to overthrow Octavius. He sailed for Brundusium, and laid siege to it; but the soldiers on both sides longed for peace. Fulvia had died, and mutual friends prevailed upon Octavius and Antony to make peace and portion out the world anew. Again the East fell to Antony and the West to his colleague. Antony married Octavia, sister of Octavius, and both repaired to the capital, where they celebrated games and festivities in honor of the marriage and the reconciliation. This was at the end of the year 40 B.C.

The next year peace was effected with Sextus, a son of the great Pompey, who had been proscribed as one of the murderers of Cæsar, though he had really had no share in that deed. He had been engaged in marauding expeditions having for their purpose the injury of the triumvirs, and at this time had been able to cut off a considerable share of the supply of grain from Sicily and Africa. He was indemnified for the loss of his private property and was given an important command for five years. This agreement was never consummated, for Antony had not been consulted and refused to carry out a portion of it that depended upon him. Again Pompey entered upon his marauding expeditions, and the price of grain rose rapidly at Rome. Two years were occupied in preparing a fleet, which was placed under command of Agrippa, who defeated Pompey off Naulochus, on the northwestern coast of Sicily (Sept. 3, 36.)

In the midst of the preparations for the war with Pompey, (B.C. 37) discord had arisen between Antony and Octavius, and the commander of the Eastern army set out for Italy with a fleet of three hundred sail. Octavius forbade his landing, and he kept on his course to Tarentum, where a conference was held. There were present on this memorable occasion, besides the two triumvirs, Agrippa, the great general; Octavia, sister of one triumvir and wife of the other, one of the noblest women of antiquity; and Caius Cilnius Mæcenas, a wealthy patron of letters, who had also been present when the negotiations were made previous to the peace of Brundusium, three years before. Probably the satiric poet Horace was also one of the group, for he gives, in one of his satires, an account of a journey from Rome to Brundusium, which he is supposed to have made at the time that Mæcenas was hurrying to the conference.

Horace says that he set out from Rome accompanied by Heliodorus, a rhetorician whom he calls by far the most learned of the Greeks, and that they found a middling inn at Aricia, the first stopping-place, on the Appian Way, sixteen miles out, at the foot of the Alban mount.

Next they rested, or rather tried to rest, at Appii Forum, a place stuffed with sailors, and then took a boat on the canal for Tarracina. He gives a vivid picture of the confusion of such a place, where the watermen and the slaves of the travellers were mutually liberal in their abuse of each other, and the gnats and frogs drove off sleep. Drunken passengers, also, added to the din by the songs that their potations incited them to. At Feronia the passengers left the boat, washed their faces and hands, and crawled onward three miles up to the heights of Anxur, where Mæcenas and others joined the party. Slowly they made their way past Fundi, and Formiæ, where they seem to have been well entertained. The next day they were rejoiced by the addition of the poet Virgil and several more friends to the party, and pleasantly they jogged onwards until their mules deposited their pack- saddles at Capua, where Mæcenas was soon engaged in a game of tennis, while Horace and Virgil sought repose. The next stop was not far from the celebrated Caudine Forks, at a friend's villa, where they were very hospitably entertained, and supplied with a bountiful supper, at which buffoons performed some droll raillery. Thence they went directly to Beneventum, where the bustling landlord almost burned himself and those he entertained in cooking their dainty dinner, the kitchen fire falling through the floor and spreading the flames towards the highest part of the roof. It was a ludicrous moment, for the hungry guests and frightened slaves hardly knew whether to snatch their supper from the flames or to try to extinguish the fire.

From Beneventum the travellers rode on in sight of the Apuleian mountains to the village of Trivicum, where the poet gives us a glimpse of the customs of the times when he tells us that tears were brought to their eyes by the green boughs with the leaves upon them with which a fire was made on the hearth. Hence for twenty-four miles the party was bowled away in chaises to a little town that the poet does not name, where water was sold, the worst in the world, he thought it, but where the bread was very fine. Through Canusium they went to Rubi, reaching that place fatigued because they had made a long journey and had been troubled by rains. Two days more took them through Barium and Egnatia to Brundusium, where the journey ended.

At this conference it was agreed that the triumvirate should continue five years longer, Antony agreeing to assist Octavius with 120 ships against Pompey, and Octavius contributing a large land force to help Antony against the Parthians. After Pompey had been overcome, Lepidus claimed Sicily, but Octavius seduced his soldiers from him, and obliged him to throw himself upon his rival's mercy. He was permitted to retire into private life, but was allowed to enjoy his property and dignities. He lived in the ease that he loved until 13 B.C., first at Circeii, not far from Tarracina, and afterwards at Rome, where he was deprived of honors and rank. Lepidus had not been a strong member of the triumvirate for a long time, but after this he was not allowed to interfere even nominally in affairs of government. Antony and Octavius were now to wrestle for the supremacy, and the victor was to be autocrat.

For three years after his marriage with Octavia, Antony seems to have been able to conquer the fascinations of the Egyptian queen, but then, when he was preparing to advance into Parthia, he allowed himself to fall again into her power, and the chances that he could hold his own against Octavius were lessened (B.C. 37). He advanced into Syria, but called Cleopatra to him there, and delayed his march to remain with her, overwhelming her with honors. When at last he did open the campaign, he encountered disaster, and, hardly escaping the fate of Crassus, retreated to Alexandria, where he gave himself up entirely to his enchantress. He laid aside the dress and manners of a Roman, and appeared as an Eastern monarch, vainly promising Cleopatra that he would conquer Octavius and make Alexandria the capital of the world. The rumors of the mad acts of Antony were carried to Rome, where Octavius was growing in popularity, and it was inevitable that a contrast should be made between the two men. Octavius easily made the people believe that they had every thing to fear from Antony. The nobles who sided with Antony urged him to dismiss Cleopatra, and enter upon a contest with his rival untrammelled; but, on the contrary, in his infatuation he divorced Octavia.

War was declared against Cleopatra, for Antony was ignored, and Octavius as consul was directed to push it. Mæcenas was placed in command at Rome, Agrippa took the fleet, and the consul himself the land forces. The decisive struggle took place off the west coast of Greece, north of the islands of Samos and Leucas, near the promontory of Actium, which gained its celebrity from this battle (September 2, B.C. 31). The ships of Agrippa were small, and those of Antony large, but difficult of management, and Cleopatra soon became alarmed for her safety, She attempted to flee, and Antony sailed after her, leaving those who were fighting for them. Agrippa obtained a decisive victory, and Octavius likewise overcame the forces on land.

Agrippa was sent back to Rome, and for a year Octavius busied himself in Greece and Asia Minor, adding to his popularity by his mildness in the treatment of the conquered. He had intended to pass the winter at Samos, but troubles among the veterans called him to Italy, where he calmed the rising storm, and returned again to his contest, after an absence of only twenty-seven days.

Both Cleopatra and Antony sent messengers to solicit the favor of Octavius, but he was cold and did not satisfy them, and calmly pushed his plans. An effort was made by Cleopatra to flee to some distant Arabian resort, but it failed: Antony made a show of resistance, but found that his forces were not to be trusted, and both then put an end to their lives, leaving Octavius master of Egypt, as he was of the rest of the world. He did not hasten back to Rome, where he knew that Mæcenas and Agrippa were faithfully attending to his interests, but occupied himself another year away from the capital in regulating the affairs of his new province.

In the summer of the year 29, however, Octavius left Samos, where he had spent the winter in rest, and entered Rome amid the acclamations of the populace, celebrating triumphs for the conquest of Dalmatia, of Actium, and of Egypt, and distributing the gold he had won with such prodigality that interest on loans was reduced two thirds and the price of lands doubled. Each soldier received a thousand sesterces (about $40), each citizen four hundred, and a certain sum was given to the children, the whole amounting to some forty million dollars.

Octavius marked the end of the old era by himself closing the gates of the temple of Janus for the third time in the history of Rome, and by declaring that he had burned all the papers of Antony. Several months later, by suppressing all the laws of the triumvirate he emphasized still more the fact which he wished the people to understand, that he had broken with the past.

The Roman Republic was ended. The Empire was not established in name, but the government was in reality absolute. The chief ruler united in himself all the great offices of the state, but concealed his strength and power, professing himself the minister of the senate, to which, however, he dictated the decrees that he ostentatiously obeyed.

XVIII.

SOME MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE ROMAN PEOPLE.

We have now traced the career of the people of Rome from the time when they were the plain and rustic subjects of a king, through their long history as a conquering republic, down to the period when they lost the control of government and fell into the hands of a ruler more autocratic than their earlier tyrants. The heroic age of the republic had now long since passed away, and with it had gone even the admiration of those personal qualities which had lain at the foundation of the national greatness.

History at its best is to such an extent made up of stories of the doings of rulers and fighting-men, who happen by their mere strength and physical force to have made themselves prominent, that it is often read without conveying any actual familiarity with the people it is ostensibly engaged with. The soldiers and magistrates of whom we have ourselves been reading were but few, and we may well ask what the millions of other citizens were doing all these ages. How did they live? What were their joys and griefs? We have, it is true, not failed to get an occasional glimpse of the intimate life of the people who were governed, as we have seen a Virginia passing through the forum to her school, and a Lucretia spinning among her maidens, and we have learned that in the earliest times the workers were honored so much that they were formed into guilds, and had a very high position among the centuries (see pages 31 and 50), but these were only suggestions that make us all the more desirous to know particulars.

Rome had not become a really magnificent city, even after seven hundred years of existence. We know that it was a mere collection of huts in the time of Romulus, and that after the burning of the principal edifices by the Gauls, it was rebuilt in a hurried and careless manner, the houses being low and mean, the streets narrow and crooked, so that when the population had increased to hundreds of thousands the crowds found it difficult to make their way along the thoroughfares, and vehicles with wheels were not able to get about at all, except in two of the streets. The streets were paved, it is true, and there were roads and aqueducts so well built and firm that they claim our admiration even in their ruins.

The Roman house at first was extremely simple, being of but one room called the _atrium_, or darkened chamber, because its walls were stained by the smoke that rose from the fire upon the hearth and with difficulty found its way through a hole in the roof. The aperture also admitted light and rain, the water that dripped from the roof being caught in a cistern that was formed in the middle of the room. The atrium was entered by way of a vestibule open to the sky, in which the gentleman of the house put on his toga as he went out. [Footnote: When Cincinnatus went out to work in the field, he left his toga at home, wearing his tunic only, and was "naked" (_nudus_), as the Romans said. The custom illustrates MATT, xxiv., 18. (See p. 86.)] Double doors admitted the visitor to the entrance-hall or _ostium_. There was a threshold, upon which it was unlucky to place the left foot; a knocker afforded means of announcing one's approach, and a porter, who had a small room at the side, opened the door, showing the caller the words _Cave canem_ (beware of the dog), or _Salve_ (welcome), or perchance the dog himself reached out toward the visitor as far as his chain would allow. Sometimes, too, there would be noticed in the mosaic of the pavement the representation of the faithful domestic animal which has so long been the companion as well as the protector of his human friend. Perhaps myrtle or laurel might be seen on a door, indicating that a marriage was in process of celebration, or a chaplet announcing the happy birth of an heir. Cypress, probably set in pots in the vestibule, indicated a death, as a crape festoon does upon our own door-handles, while torches, lamps, wreaths, garlands, branches of trees, showed that there was joy from some cause in the house.

In the "black room" the bed stood; there the meals were cooked and eaten, there the goodman received his friends, and there the goodwife sat in the midst of her maidens spinning. The original house grew larger in the course of time: wings were built on the sides, and the Romans called them wings as well as we (_ala_, a wing). Beyond the black room a recess was built in which the family records and archives were preserved, but with it for a long period the Roman house stopped its growth.

Before the empire came, however, there had been great progress in making the dwelling convenient as well as luxurious. Another hall had been built out from the room of archives, leading to an open court, surrounded by columns, known as the _peristylum_ (_peri_ about, _stulos_, a pillar), which was sometimes of great magnificence. Bedchambers were made separate from the atrium, but they were small, and would not seem very convenient to modern eyes.

The dining-room, called the _triclinium_ (Greek, _kline_, a bed) from its three couches, was a very important apartment. In it were three lounges surrounding a table, on each of which three guests might be accommodated. The couches were elevated above the table, and each man lay almost flat on his breast, resting on his left elbow, and having his right hand free to use, thus putting the head of one near the breast of the man behind him, and making natural the expression that he lay in the bosom of the other. [Footnote: In the earliest times the Romans sat at table on benches. The habit of reclining was introduced from Greece, but Roman women sat at table long after the men had fallen into the new way.] As the guests were thus arranged by threes, it was natural that the rule should have been made that a party at dinner should not be less in number than the Graces nor more than the Muses, though it has remained a useful one ever since.

Spacious saloons or parlors were added to the houses, some of which were surrounded with galleries and highly adorned. In these the dining- tables were spread on occasions of more ceremony than usual. After the capture of Syracuse, and the increase of familiarity with foreign art, picture-rooms were built in private dwellings; and after the second Punic war, book-rooms became in some sort a necessity. Before the republic came to an end, it was so fashionable to have a book-room that ignorant persons who might not be able to read even the titles of their own books endeavored to give themselves the appearance of erudition by building book-rooms in their houses and furnishing them with elegance. The books were in cases arranged around the walls in convenient manner, and busts and statues of the Muses, of Minerva, and of men of note were used then as they are now for ornaments. [Footnote: The books were rolls of the rind (_liber_) of the Egyptian papyrus, which early became an article of commerce, or of parchment, written on but one side and stained of a saffron color on the other. Slaves were employed to make copies of books that were much in demand, and booksellers bought and sold them.] House-philosophers were often employed to open to the uninstructed the stores of wisdom contained in the libraries.

As wealth and luxury increased, the Romans added the bath-room to their other apartments. In the early ages they had bathed for comfort and cleanliness once a week, but the warm bath was apparently unknown to them. In time this became very common, and in the days of Cicero there were hot and cold baths, both public and private, which were well patronized. Some were heated by fires in flues, directly under the floors, which produced a vapor bath. The bath was, however, considered a luxury, and at a later date it was held a capital offence to indulge in one on a religious holiday, and the public baths were closed when any misfortune happened to the republic.

Comfort and convenience united to take the cooking out of the atrium (which then became a reception-room) into a separate apartment known as the _culina_, or kitchen, in which was a raised platform on which coals might be burned and the processes of broiling, boiling, and roasting might be carried on in a primitive manner, much like the arrangement still to be seen at Rome. On the tops of the houses, after a while, terraces were planned for the purpose of basking in the sun, and sometimes they were furnished with shrubs, fruit-trees, and even fishponds. Often there were upwards of fifty rooms in a house on a single floor; but in the course of time land became so valuable that other stories were added, and many lived in flats. A flat was sometimes called an _insula_, which meant, properly, a house not joined to another, and afterwards was applied to hired lodgings. _Domus_, a house, meant a dwelling occupied by one family, whether it were an _insula_ or not.

The floors of these rooms were sometimes, but not often, laid with boards, and generally were formed of stone, tiles, bricks, or some sort of cement. In the richer dwellings they were often inlaid with mosaics of elegant patterns. The walls were often faced with marble, but they were usually adorned with paintings; the ceilings were left uncovered, the beams supporting the floor or the roof above being visible, though it was frequently arched over. The means of lighting, either by day or night, were defective. The atrium was, as we have seen, lighted from above, and the same was true of other apartments--those at the side being illuminated from the larger ones in the middle of the house. There were windows, however, in the upper stories, though they were not protected by glass, but covered with shutters or lattice-work, and, at a later period, were glazed with sheets of mica. Smoking lamps, hanging from the ceiling or supported by candelabra, or candles, gave a gloomy light by night in the houses, and torches without.

The sun was chiefly depended upon for heat, for there were no proper stoves, though braziers were used to burn coals upon, the smoke escaping through the aperture in the ceiling, and, in rare cases, hot- air furnaces were constructed below, the heat being conveyed to the upper rooms through pipes. There has been a dispute regarding chimneys, but it seems almost certain that the Romans had none in their dwellings, and, indeed, there was little need of them for purposes of artificial warmth in so moderate a climate as theirs.

Such were some of the chief traits of the city houses of the Romans. Besides these, there were villas in the country, some of which were simply farm-houses, and others places of rest and luxury supported by the residents of cities. The farm villa was placed, if possible, in a spot secluded from visitors, protected from the severest winds, and from the malaria of marshes, in a well-watered place near the foot of a well-wooded mountain. It had accommodations for the kitchen, the wine- press, the farm-superintendent, the slaves, the animals, the crops, and the other products of the farm. There were baths, and cellars for the wine and for the confinement of the slaves who might have to be chained.

Varro thus describes life at a rural household: "Manius summons his people to rise with the sun, and in person conducts them to the scene of their daily work. The youths make their own bed, which labor renders soft to them, and supply themselves with water-pot and lamp. Their drink is the clear fresh spring; their fare, bread, with onions as a relish. Every thing prospers in house and field. The house is no work of art, but an architect might learn symmetry from it. Care is taken of the field that it shall not be left disorderly, and waste or go to ruin through slovenliness or neglect; and, in return, grateful Ceres wards off damage from the produce, that the high-piled sheaves may gladden the heart of the husbandman. Here hospitality still holds good; every one who has but imbibed mother's milk is welcome. The bread-pantry, the wine-vat, and the store of sausages on the rafter,--lock and key are at the service of the traveller, and piles of food are set before him; contented, the sated guest sits, looking neither before him nor behind, dozing by the hearth in the kitchen. The warmest double-wool sheepskin is spread as a couch for him. Here people still, as good burgesses, obey the righteous law which neither out of envy injures the innocent, nor out of favor pardons the guilty. Here they speak no evil against their neighbors. Here they trespass not with their feet on the sacred hearth, but honor the gods with devotion and with sacrifices; throw to the familiar spirit his little bit of flesh into his appointed little dish, and when the master of the household dies accompany the bier with the same prayer with which those of his father and of his grandfather were borne forth."

The pleasure villa had many of the appointments of the town house, but was outwardly more attractive, of course. It stood in the midst of grassy slopes, was approached through avenues of trees leading to the portico, before which was a terrace and ornaments made of box-trees cut into fantastic forms representing animals. The dining-room stood out from the other buildings, and was light and airy. Perhaps a grand bedchamber was likewise built out from the others, so that it might have the warmth of the sun upon it through the entire day. Connected with the establishment were walks ornamented with flowerbeds, closely clipped hedges, and trees tortured into all sorts of unnatural shapes. There were shaded avenues for gentle exercise afoot or in litters; there were fountains, and perhaps a hippodrome formed like a circus, with paths divided by hedges and surrounded by large trees in which the luxurious owner and his guests might run or exercise themselves in the saddle. [Footnote: Roman extravagance ran riot in the appointments of the villa. One is mentioned that sold for some $200,000, chiefly because it comprised a desirable fish-pond. A late writer says of the site of Pompey's villa on a slope of the Alban hills: "It has never ceased in all the intervening ages to be a sort of park, and very fine ruins, from out of whose massive arches grow a whole avenue of live oaks, attest to the magnificence which must once have characterized the place. The still beautiful grounds stretch along the shore of the lake as far as the gate of the town of Albano.... The house in Rome I occupy, stands in the old villa of Mæcenas, an immense tract of land comprising space enough to contain a good-sized city.... Where did the Plebs live? and what air did they and their children breathe? Who cared or knew, so long as Pompey or Cæsar fared sumptuously? What marvel that there were revolutions!"]

In such houses the Roman family lived, composed as families must be, of parents and children, to which were usually added servants, for after the earlier times of simplicity had passed away it became so fashionable to keep slaves to perform all the different domestic labors, that one could hardly claim to be respectable unless he had at least ten in his household. The first question asked regarding a stranger was: "How many slaves does he keep?" and upon its answer depended the social position the person would have in the inquirer's estimation. The son did not pass from his father's control while that parent lived, but the daughter might do so by marriage. The power of the father over his children and grandchildren, as well as over his slaves was very great, and the family spirit was exceedingly strong.

When a man and a woman had agreed to marry, and the parents and friends had given their consent, there was sometimes a formal meeting at the maiden's house, at which the marriage-agreement was written out on tablets and signed by the engaged persons. It seems, too, that in some cases the man placed a ring on the hand of his betrothed. It was no slight affair to choose the wedding-day, for no day that was marked _ater_ on the calendar would be considered fit for the purpose of the rites that were to accompany the ceremony. The calends (the first day of the month), the nones (the fifth or seventh), and the ides (the thirteenth or fifteenth), would not do, nor would any day in May or February, nor many of the festivals.

In early times, the bride dressed herself in a long white robe, adorned with ribbons, and a purple fringe, and bound herself with a girdle on her wedding day. She put on a bright yellow veil and shoes of the same color, and submitted to the solemn religious rites that were to make her a wife. The pair walked around the altar hand in hand, received the congratulations of their friends, and the bride, taken with apparent force from the arms of her mother, as the Sabine women were taken in the days of Romulus, was conducted to her new home carrying a distaff and a spindle, emblems of the industry that was thought necessary in the household work that she was to perform or direct. Strong men lifted her over the threshold, lest her foot should trip upon it, and her husband saluted her with fire and water, symbolic of welcome, after which he presented her the keys. A feast was then given to the entire train of friends and relatives, arid probably the song was sung of which _Talasia_ was the refrain. [Footnote: See page 22.] Sometimes the husband gave another entertainment the next day, and there were other religious rites after which the new wife took her proud position as mater-familias, sharing the honors of her husband, and presiding over the household.

The wives and daughters made the cloth and the dresses of the household, in which they had ample occupation, but their labors did not end there. [Footnote: Varro contrasts the later luxury with past frugality, setting in opposition the spacious granaries, and simple farm arrangements of the good old times, and the peacocks and richly inlaid doors of a degenerate age. Formerly even the city matron turned the spindle with her own hand, while at the same time she kept her eye upon the pot on the hearth; now the wife begs the husband for a bushel of pearls, and the daughter demands a pound of precious stones: then the wife was quite content if the husband gave her a trip once or twice in the year in an uncushioned wagon; now she sulks if he go to his country estate without her, and as she travels my lady is attended to the villa by the fashionable host of Greek menials and singers.] The grinding of grain and the cooking was done by the servants, but the wife had to superintend all the domestic operations, among which was included the care of the children, though old Cato thought it was necessary for him to look after the washing and swaddling of his children in person, and to teach them what he thought they ought to know. The position of the woman was entirely subordinate to the husband, though in the house she was mistress. She belonged to the household and not to the community, and was to be called to account for her doings by her father, her husband, or her near male relatives, not by her political ruler. She could acquire property and inherit money the same as a man could, however. When the pure and noble period of Roman history had passed, women became as corrupt as the rest of the community. The watering-places were scenes of unblushing wickedness; women of quality, but not of character, masquerading before the gay world with the most reckless disregard of all the proprieties of life. [Footnote: Cato the Elder, who enjoyed uttering invectives against women, was free in denouncing their chattering, their love of dress, their ungovernable spirit, and condemned the whole sex as plaguy and proud, without whom men would probably be more godly.]

The garments of Roman men and women were of extreme simplicity for a long period, but the desire of display and the love of ornament succeeded in making them at last highly adorned and varied. Both men and women wore two principal garments, the tunic next to the body, and the pallium which was thrown over it when going abroad; but they also each had a distinctive article of dress, the men wearing the _toga_ (originally worn also by women), a flowing outer garment which no foreigner could use, and the women the _stola_, which fell over the tunic to the ankles and was bound about the waist by a girdle. Boys and girls wore a toga with a broad border of purple, but when the boy became a man he threw this off and wore one of the natural white color of the wool.

Sometimes the stola was clasped over the shoulder, and in some instances it had sleeves. The _pallium_ was a square outer garment of woollen goods, put on by women as well as men when going out. It came into use during the civil wars, but was forbidden by Augustus. Both sexes also wore in travelling a thick, long cloak without sleeves, called the _pænula_, and the men wore also over the toga a dark cloak, the _lacerna_.

On their feet the men wore slippers, boots, and shoes of various patterns. The _soccus_ was a slipper not tied, worn in the house; and the _solea_ a very light sandal, also used in the house only. The _sandalium_ proper was a rich and luxurious sandal introduced from Greece and worn by women only. The _baxa_ was a coarse sandal made of twigs, used by philosophers and comic actors; the _calcæus_ was a shoe that covered the foot, though the toes were often exposed; and the _cothurnus_, a laced boot worn by horsemen, hunters, men of authority, and tragic actors, and it left the toes likewise exposed.

An examination of the mysteries of the dressing-rooms of the ladies of Rome displays most of the toilet conveniences that women still use. They dressed their hair in a variety of styles (see page 155), and used combs, dyes, oils, and pomades just as they now do. They had mirrors, perfumes, soaps in great variety, hair-pins, ear-rings, bracelets, necklaces, gay caps and turbans, and sometimes ornamental wigs.

The change that came over Rome during the long period of the kingdom and the republic is perhaps as evident in the table customs as in any respect. For centuries the simple Roman sat down at noon to a plain dinner of boiled pudding made of spelt (_far_), and fruits, which, with milk, butter, and vegetables, formed the chief articles of his diet. His table was plain, and his food was served warm but once a day. When the national horizon had been enlarged by the foreign wars, and Asiatic and Greek influences began to be felt, hot dishes were served oftener, and the two courses of the principal meal no longer sufficed to satisfy the fashionable appetite. A baker's shop was opened at the time of the war with Perseus, and scientific cookery rapidly came into vogue.

We cannot follow the course of the history of increasing luxury in its details. Towards the end of the republic, breakfast (_jentaculum_), consisting of bread and cheese, with perhaps dried fruit, was taken at a very early hour, in an informal way, the guests not even sitting down. At twelve or one o'clock luncheon followed (_prandium_). There was considerable variety in this meal. The principal repast of the day (_cæna_) occurred late in the afternoon, some time just before sunset, there having been the same tendency to make the hour later and later that has been manifested in England and America. There were three usual courses, the first comprising stimulants to the appetite, eggs, olives, oysters, lettuce, and a variety of other such delicacies. For the second course the whole world was put under requisition. There were turbots and sturgeon, eels and prawns, boar's flesh and venison, pheasants and peacocks, ducks and capons, turtles and flamingoes, pickled tunny-fishes, truffles and mushrooms, besides a variety of other dishes that it is impossible to mention here. After these came the dessert, almonds and raisins and dates, cheese-cakes and sweets and apples. Thus the egg came at the beginning, and the apple, representative of fruit in general, at the end, a fact that gave Horace ground for his expression, _ab ovo usque ad mala_, from the egg to the apple, from the beginning to the end. [Footnote: The practical side of the Roman priesthood was the priestly _cuisine_; the augural and pontifical banquets were, as we may say, the official gala days in the life of a Roman epicure, and several of them form epochs in the history of gastronomy: the banquet on the occasion of the inauguration of the augur Quintus Hortensius, for instance, brought roast peacocks into vogue.--Mommsen. Book IV., chap. 12.]

The Roman dinner was served with all the ostentatious elegance and formality of our own days, if not with more. The guests assembled in gay dresses ornamented with flowers; they took off their shoes, lest the couch, inlaid with ivory, perhaps, or adorned with cloth of gold, should be soiled; and laid themselves down to eat, each one adjusting his napkin carefully, and taking his position according to his relative importance, the middle place being deemed the most honorable. About the tables stood the servants, dressed in the tunic, and carrying napkins or rough cloths to wipe off the table, which was of the richest wood and covered by no cloth. While some served the dishes, often of magnificent designs, other slaves offered the feasters water to rinse their hands, or cooled the room with fans. At times music and dances were added to give another charm to the scene.

The first occupation of the Romans was agriculture, in which was included the pasturage of flocks and herds. In process of time trades were learned, and manufactures (literally making with the hand, _manus_, the hand, _facere_, to make) were introduced, but not, of course, to any thing like the extent familiar in our times. There were millers and shoe-makers, butchers and tanners, bakers and blacksmiths, besides other tradesmen and laborers. In the process of time there were also artists, but in this respect Rome did not excel as Greece had long before. There were also physicians, lawyers, and teachers, besides office-holders. [Footnote: There were office-seekers, also, and of the most persistent kind, throughout the whole history of the republic, and they practised the corrupt arts of the most ingenious of the class in modern times. The candidate went about clad in a toga of artificial whiteness (_candidus_, white), accompanied by a _nomenclator_, who gave him the names of the voters they might meet, so that he could compliment them by addressing them familiarly, and he shook them by the hand. He "treated" the voters to drink or food in a very modern fashion, though with a more than modern profusion; and he went to the extreme of bribing them if treating did not suffice. Against these practices Coriolanus haughtily protests, in Shakespeare's play. Sometimes candidates canvassed for votes outside of Rome, as Cicero proposed in one of his letters to Atticus.]

When the Roman wished to go from place to place he had a variety of modes among which to choose, as we have already had suggested by Horace in his account of the trip from Rome to Brundusium. He might have his horse saddled, and his saddle-bags packed, as our fathers did of yore; he could do as one of the rich provincial governors described by Cicero did when, at the opening of a Sicilian spring, he entered his rose- scented litter, carried by eight bearers, reclining on a cushion of Maltese gauze, with garlands about his head and neck, applying a delicate scent-bag to his nose as he went. There were wagons and cars, in which he might drive over the hard and smooth military roads, and canals; and along the routes, there were, as Horace has told us, taverns at which hospitality was to be expected.

The Roman law was remarkable for embodying in itself "the eternal principles of freedom and of subordination, of property and legal redress," which still reign unadulterated and unmodified, as Mommsen says; and this system this strong people not only endured but actually ordained for itself, and it involved the principle that a free man could not be tortured, a principle which other European peoples embraced only after a terrible and bloody struggle of a thousand years.

One of the punishments is worthy of mention here. We have already noticed its infliction. It was ordered that a person might not live in a certain region, or that he be confined to a certain island, and that he be interdicted from fire and water, those two essentials to life, in case he should overstep the bounds mentioned. These elements with the Romans had a symbolical meaning, and when the husband received his bride with fire and water, he signified that his protection should ever be over her. Thus their interdiction meant the withdrawal of the protection of the state from a person, which left him an outlaw. Such a law could only have been made after the nation had become possessed of regions somewhat remote from its centre of power. England can now exile its criminals to another hemisphere, and Russia to a distant region of deserts and cold, but neither country could have punished by exile before it owned such regions.

XIX.

THE ROMAN READING AND WRITING.

In the earliest times the education of young Romans was probably confined to instruction in dancing and music, though they became acquainted with the processes of agriculture by being called upon to practise them in company with their elders. It was not long before the elementary attainments of reading, writing, and counting were brought within their reach, even among the lower orders and the slaves, and we know that it was thought important to make the latter class proficient in many departments of scholarship.

The advance in the direction of real mental culture was, however, not great until after the contact with Greece. So long as the Romans remained a strong and self-centred people, deriving little but tribute from peoples beyond the Italian peninsula, and looking with disdain upon all outside that limit, there was not much to stimulate their mental progress; but when contrast with another civilization showed that there was much power to be gained by knowledge, it was naturally more eagerly sought. The slaves and other foreigners, to whom the instruction of the children was assigned, were familiar with the Greek language, and it had the great advantage over Latin of being the casket in which an illustrious literature was preserved. For this reason Roman progress in letters was founded upon that of Greece.

The Roman parent for a long time made the Twelve Tables the text-book from which his children were taught, thus giving them a smattering of reading, of writing, and of the laws of the land at once. Roman authorship and the study of grammar, however, were about coincident in their beginnings with the temporary cessation of war and the second closing of the temple of Janus. Cato the elder prepared manuals for the instruction of youth (or, perhaps, one manual in several parts), which gave his views on morals, oratory, medicine, war, and agriculture (a sort of encyclopædia), and a history entitled _Origines_, which recounted the traditions of the kings, told the story of the origin of the Italian towns, of the Punic wars, and of other events down to the time of his own death. [Footnote: See page 153. "Cato's encyclopædia... was little more than an embodiment of the old Roman household knowledge, and truly when compared with the Hellenic culture of the period, was scanty enough."--MOMMSEN, bk. IV., ch. 12.] This seems to have originated in the author's natural interest in the education of his son, a stimulating cause of much literature of the same kind since.

The Roman knowledge of medicine came first from the Etruscans, to whom they are said to have owed so much other culture, and subsequently from the Greeks. The first person to make a distinct profession of medicine at Rome, however, was not an Etruscan, but a Greek, named Archagathus, who settled there in the year 219, just before the second Punic war broke out. He was received with great respect, and a shop was bought for him at the public expense; but his practice, which was largely surgical, proved too severe to be popular. In earlier days the father had been the family physician, and Cato vigorously reviled the foreign doctors, and like the true conservative that he was, strove to bring back the good old times that his memory painted; but his efforts did not avail, and the professional practice of the healing art not only became one of the most lucrative in Rome, but remained for a long period almost a monopoly in the hands of foreigners. Science, among the latest branches of knowledge to be freed from the swaddling-clothes of empiricism, received, in its applied form, some attention, though mathematics and physics were not specially favored as subjects of investigation.

The progress of Roman culture is distinctly shown by a comparison of the curriculum of Cato with that of Marcus Terentius Varro, a long-time friend of Cicero, though ten years his senior. [Footnote: Varro is said to have written of his youth. "For me when a boy there sufficed a single rough coat and a single undergarment, shoes without stockings, a horse without a saddle. I had no daily warm bath, and but seldom a river bath." Still, he utters warnings against over-feeding and over- sleeping, as well as against cakes and high living, pointing to his own youthful training, and says that dogs were in his later years more judiciously cared for than children.] Varro obtained from Quintilian the title "the most learned of the Romans," and St. Augustine said that it was astonishing that he could write so much, and that one could scarcely believe that anybody could find time even to read all that he wrote. He was proscribed by the triumvirs at the same time that Cicero was, but was fortunate enough to escape and subsequently to be placed under the protection of Augustus. Cato thought that a proper man ought to study oratory, medicine, husbandry, war, and law, and was at liberty to look into Greek literature a little, that he might cull from the mass of chaff and rubbish, as he affected to deem it, some serviceable maxims of practical experience, but he might not study it thoroughly. Varro extended the limit of allowed and fitting studies to grammar, logic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, music, medicine, and architecture.

Young children were led to their first studies by the kindergarten path of amusement, learning their letters as we learned them ourselves by means of blocks, and spelling by repeating the letters and words in unison after the instructor. Dictation exercises were turned to account in the study of grammar and orthography, and writing was taught by imitation, though the "copy-book" was not paper, but a tablet covered with a thin coating of wax, and the pen a stylus, pencil-shaped, sharp at one end and flat at the other, so that the mark made by the point might be smoothed out by reversing the instrument. Thus _vertere stilum_, to turn the stylus, meant to correct or to erase. [Footnote: See illustrations on pages 23 and 219.] The first school-book seems to have been an Odyssey, by one Livius Andronicus, probably a Tarentine, who was captured during the wars in Southern Italy. He became a slave, of course, and was made instructor of his master's children. He familiarized himself with the Latin language, and wrote dramas in it. Thus though he was a native of Magna Græcia, he is usually mentioned as the first Roman poet. It is not known whether his Odyssey and other writings were imitations of the Greek or translations, but it matters little; they were immediately appreciated and held their own so well that they were read in schools as late as the time of Horace. This first awakener of Roman literary effort was born at the time of Pyrrhus and died before the battle of Zama.

A few other Roman writers of prominence claim our attention. With some reason the Romans looked upon Ennius as the father of their literature. He, like Andronicus, was a native of Magna Græcia, claiming lordly ancestors, and boasting that the spirit of Homer, after passing through many mortal bodies, had entered his own. His works remain only in fragments gathered from others who had quoted them, and we cannot form any accurate opinion of his rank as a poet; but we know that his success was so great that Cicero considered him the prince of Roman song, that Virgil was indebted to him for many thoughts and expressions, and that even the brilliance of the Augustan poets did not lessen his reputation. His utterances were vigorous, bold, fresh, and full of the spirit of the brave old days. He found the language rough, uncultivated, and unformed, and left it softer, more harmonious, and possessed of a system of versification. He was born in 239 B.C., the year after the first plays of Andronicus had been exhibited on the Roman stage, and died just before the complete establishment of the universal empire of Rome as a consequence of the battle of Pydna. [Footnote: See Page 164.]

At the head of the list of Roman prose annalists stands the name of Quintus Fabius Pictor, at one time a senator, who wrote a history of his nation beginning, probably, like other Roman works of its class, with the coming of Æneas, and narrating later events, to the end of the second Punic war, with some degree of minuteness. He wrote in Greek, and made the usual effort to preserve and transmit a sufficiently good impression of the greatness of his own people. That Pictor was a senator proves his social importance, which is still further exemplified by the fact that after the carnage of Cannæ, he was sent to Delphi to learn for his distressed countrymen how they might appease the angry gods. We only know that his history was of great value from the frequent use that was made of it by subsequent investigators in the antiquities of the Roman people, because no manuscript of it has been preserved.

Titus Maccius, surnamed, from the flatness of his feet, Plautus, was the greatest among the comic poets of Rome. Of humble origin, he was driven to literature by his necessities, and it was while turning the crank of a baker's hand-mill that he began the work by which he is now known. He wrote three plays which were accepted by the managers of the public games, and he was thus able to turn his back upon menial drudgery. Born at an Umbrian village during the first Punic war, not far from the year when Regulus was taken, [Footnote: See page 133.] he came to Rome at an early age, and after he began to write, produced a score or more of plays which captivated both the learned and the uneducated by their truth to the life that they depicted, and they held their high reputation long after the death of the author. Moderns have also attested their merit, and our great dramatist in his amusing _Comedy of Errors_ imitated the _Menoechmi_ of this early play-wright. [Footnote: Rude farces, known as _Atellanæ Fabula_, were introduced into Rome after the contact with the Campanians, from one of whose towns, Atella, they received their name. Though they were at a later time divided into acts, they seem to have been at first simply improvised raillery and satire without dramatic connection. The Atellan plays were later than the imitations of Etruscan acting mentioned on page 110.]

Publius Terentius Afer, commonly known as Terrence, the second and last of the comic poets, was of no higher social position than Plautus, and was no more a Roman than the other writers we have referred to, for he was a native of Carthage, Rome's great rival, where he was born at the time that Hannibal was a refugee at the court of Antiochus at Ephesus. In spite of his foreign origin, Terence was of sufficient ability to exchange the slave-pen of Carthage for the society of the best circles in Rome, and he attained to such purity and ease in the use of his adopted tongue that Cicero and Cæsar scarcely surpass him in those respects. His first play, the _Andria_ (the Woman of Andros), was produced in 166 B.C., the year before Polybius and the other Achæans were transported to Rome. [Footnote: See page 164; and portrait, page 141] It has been imitated and copied in modern times, and notably by Sir Richard Steele in his _Conscious Lovers_. Andria was followed by _Hecyra_ (the Stepmother), _Heautontimoroumenos_, (the Self- Tormentor), _Eunuchus_ (the Eunuch), _Phormio_ (named from a parasite who is an active agent in the plot), and _Adelphi_ (the Brothers), the plot of which was mainly derived from a Greek play of the same title. This foreign influence is further shown in the names of these plays, which are Greek.

Cato, the Censor, found time among his varied public labors to contribute to the literature of his language. His _Origines_ and other works have already been mentioned. [Footnote: See pages 153 and 239.] The varied literary productions of Cicero have also come under our notice, [Footnote: See page 202] but they deserve more attention, though they are too many to be enumerated. Surpassing all others in the art of public speaking, he was evidently well prepared to write on rhetoric and oratory as he did; but his general information and scholarly taste led him to go far beyond this limit, and he made considerable investigations in the domains of politics, history, and philosophy, law, theology, and morals, besides practising his hand in his earlier years on the manufacture of verses that have not added to his reputation. The writings of Cicero of greatest interest to us now are his orations and correspondence, both of which give us intimate information concerning life and events that is of inestimable value, and it is conveyed in a literary style at once so appropriate and attractive that it is itself forgotten in the impressive interest of the narrative. The period covered by the eight hundred letters of Cicero that have been preserved is one of the utmost importance in Roman history, and the author and his correspondents were in the hottest of the exciting movements of the time.

When he writes without reserve, he gives his modern readers confidential revelations of the utmost piquancy; and when he words his epistles with diplomatic care, he displays with equal acuteness, to the student familiar with the intrigues of public life at Rome at the time, the sinuosities of contemporary statesmanship and the wiles of the wary politician, and the revelation is all the more entertaining and important because it is an unintentional exhibition. The orations of Cicero are likewise storehouses of details connected with public and private life, gathered with the minute care of an advocate persistently in earnest and determined not to allow any item to pass unnoticed that might affect the decision of his cause.

The learned Varro, already mentioned, deserves far more attention than we can afford him. He had the advantage at an early age of the acquaintance of a scholar of high attainments in Greek and Latin literature, who was well acquainted also with the history of his own country, from whom he imbibed a love of intellectual pursuits. During the wars with the pirates (in which he obtained the naval crown) and with Mithridates, he held a high command, and after supporting Pompey and the senate during the civil struggles, he was compelled to surrender to Cæsar (though he was not changed in his opinions), and passed over to Greece, where he was finally overcome by the dictator, and owed his subsequent opportunities for study to the clemency of his conqueror, who gave him pardon after the battle of Pharsalia. All the rest of his life was passed aloof from the storm that raged around him, the circumstances of his proscription and pardon being the only indication of his personal connection with it. He died in the year 28 B.C., after the temple of Janus had been closed the third time, when Augustus had entered upon the enjoyment of his absolute power.

Of nearly five hundred works that Varro is said to have written, one only has come down to our time complete, though some portions of another are also preserved. The first is a laboriously methodical and thorough treatise on agriculture. The other work (a treatise on Latin grammar) is of value in its mutilated and imperfect state (it seems never to have received its author's final revision), because it preserves many terms and forms that would otherwise have been lost, besides much curious information concerning ancient civil and religious usages. In regard to the derivation of words, his principles are sound, but his practice is often amusingly absurd. We must remember, however, that the science of language did not advance beyond infancy until after our own century had opened. The great reputation of Varro was founded upon a work now lost, entitled "Book of Antiquities," in the first part of which he discussed the creation and history of man, especially of man in Italy from the foundation of the city in 753 B.C. (which date he established), not omitting reference to Æneas, of course, and presenting details of the manners and social customs of the people during all their career. In a second part Varro gave his attention to Divine Antiquities, and as St. Augustine drew largely from it in his "City of God," we may be said to be familiar with it at second hand. It was a complete mythology of Italy, minutely describing every thing relating to the services of religion, the festivals, temples, offerings, priests, and so on. Probably the loss of the works of Varro may be accounted for by their lack of popular interest, or by their infelicities of style, which rendered them little attractive to readers.

Julius Cæsar must be included among the authors of Rome, though most of his works are lost, his _Commentaries_ (mentioned on p. 226) being the only one remaining. This book is written in Latin of great purity, and shows that the author was master of a clear style, though the nature of the work did not admit him to exhibit many of the graces of diction. The Commentaries seem to have been put into form in winter quarters, though roughly written during the actual campaigns. Cæsar always took pleasure in literary pursuits and in the society of men of letters.

Valerius Catullus, a contemporary of the writers just named, was born when Cinna was Consul (B.C. 87), and died at the age of thirty or forty, for the dates given as that of his death are quite doubtful. His father was a man of means and a friend of Cæsar, whom he frequently entertained. Catullus owned a villa near Tibur, but he took up his abode at Rome when very young, and mingled freely in the gayest society, the expensive pleasures of which made great inroads upon his moderate wealth. Like other Romans, he looked to a career in the provinces for means of improving his fortune, but was disappointed, and like our own Chaucer, but more frequently, he pours forth lamentations to his empty purse. He was evidently a friend of most of the prominent men of letters of his time, and he entered freely into the debauchery of the period. Thus his verse gives a representation of the debased manners of the day in gay society. His style was remarkably felicitous, and it is said that he adorned all that he touched. Most of his poems are quite short, and their subjects range from a touching outburst of genuine grief for a brother's death to a fugitive epigram of the most voluptuous triviality. His verses display ease and impetuosity, tumultuous merriment and wild passion, playful grace and slashing invective, vigorous simplicity and ingenious imitation of the learned stiffness and affectation of the Alexandrian school. They are strongly national, despite the author's use of foreign materials, and made Catullus exceedingly popular among his countrymen.

Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus) was a native of Italy, whose birth is said to have occurred B.C. 95, His death was caused by his own hand, or by a philtre administered by another, about 50 B.C., and very little is known about his life. His great work, entitled About the Nature of Things (_De Rerum Natura_), is a long poem, in which an attempt is made to present in clear terms the leading principles of the philosophy of Epicurus, and it is acknowledged to be one of the greatest of the world's didactic poems. He undertakes to demonstrate that the miseries of men may be traced to a slavish dread of the gods; and in order to remove such apprehensions, he would prove that no divinity ever interposed in the affairs of the earth, either as creator or director. The Romans were not, as we have had occasion to observe, inclined to philosophic pursuits, and Lucretius certainly labored with all the force of an extraordinary genius to lead them into such studies. He brought to bear upon his task the power of sublime and graceful verse, and it has been said that but for him "we could never have formed an adequate idea of the strength of the Latin language. We might have dwelt with pleasure upon the softness, flexibility, richness, and musical tone of that vehicle of thought which could represent with full effect the melancholy tenderness of Tibullus, [Footnote: Albius Tibullus was a poet of singular gentleness and amiability, who wrote verses of exquisite finish, gracefully telling the story of his worldly misfortunes and expressing the fluctuations that marked his indulgence in the tender passion, in which his experience was extensive and his record real. He was a warm friend of Horace.] the exquisite ingenuity of Ovid, [Footnote: Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) was born March 20, B.C. 43, and did not compose his first work, The Art of Love (Ars Amatoria), until he was more than fifty years of age. He wrote subsequently The Metamorphoses, in fifteen books; The Fasti, containing accounts of the Roman festivals; and the Elegies, composed during his banishment to a town on the Euxine, near the mouth of the Danube, where he died, A.D. 18. Niebuhr places him after Catullus the most poetical among the Roman poets, and ranks him first for facility. He did not direct his genius by a sound judgment, and has the unenviable fame of having been the first to depart from the canons of correct Greek taste.] the inimitable felicity and taste of Horace, the gentleness and high spirit of Virgil, and the vehement declamation of Juvenal, but, had the verses of Lucretius perished, we should never have known that it could give utterance to the grandest conceptions with all that sustained majesty and harmonious swell in which the Grecian Muse rolls forth her loftiest outpourings."

Caius Sallustius Crispus (Sallust) was born the year that Marius died (B.C. 86) of a plebeian family, and during the civil wars was a partisan of Cæsar, whom he accompanied to Africa, after having brought to him the news of the mutiny of his troops in Campania (B.C. 46). [Footnote: See page 245.] Left as governor, Sallust seems to have pursued the methods common to that class, for he became immensely rich. Upon his return from Africa, he retired to an extensive estate on the Quirinal Hill, and lived through the direful days which followed the death of Cæsar. He died in the year 34 B.C., his last years being devoted to diligent pursuits of literature. His two works are _Catilina_, a history of the suppression of the conspiracy of Catiline, and _Jugurtha_, a history of the war against Jugurtha, in both of which he took great pains with his style. As he witnessed many of the events he described, his books have a great value to the student of the periods. Roman writers asserted that he imitated the style of Thucydides, but there is an air of artificiality about his work which he did not have the skill to conceal. He has the honor of being the first Roman to write history, as distinguished from mere annals.

Livy (Titus Livius) was born in the year of Cæsar's first consulship (B.C. 59), at Patavium (Padua), and died A.D. 17. His writings, like those of Ovid, come therefore rather into the period of the empire. His great work is the History of Rome, which he modestly called simply _Annales_. Little is known of his life, but he was of very high repute as a writer in his own day, for it is said by Pliny that a Spaniard travelled all the way from his distant home merely to see him, and as soon as his desire had been accomplished, returned. Livy's history comprised one hundred and forty-two books, of which thirty-five only are extant, though with the exception of two of the missing books valuable epitomes are preserved. Though wanting many of the traits of the historian, and though he was of course incapable of looking at history with the modern philosophic spirit, Livy was honest and candid, and possessed a wonderful command of his native language. His work enjoyed an unbounded popularity, not entirely to be accounted for by the fascinations of his theme, He realized his desire to present a clear and probable narrative, and no history of Rome can now be written without constant reference to his pages.

Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) was born on the river Aufidus, in the year 65 B.C., and was son of a freeman who seems to have been a publican or collector of taxes. At about the age of twelve, after having attended the local school at Venusia, to which the children of the rural aristocracy resorted, he was taken to Rome, where he enjoyed the advantages of the best means of education. He studied Livius Andronicus, and Homer, and was flogged with care by at least one of his masters. He was accompanied at the capital by his father, of whom he always speaks with great respect, and because he mingled with boys of high rank, was well dressed and attended by slaves. The gentle watchfulness of the father guarded Horace from all the temptations of city life, and at the age of eighteen he went to Athens, as most well- educated Romans were obliged to, and studied in the academic groves, though for a while he was swept away by the youthful desire to acquire military renown under Brutus, who came there after the murder of Cæsar. Like the others of the republican army, he fled from the field of Philippi, and found his military ardor thoroughly cooled. He thenceforth devoted himself to letters. Returning to Rome, he attracted notice by his verses, and became a friend of Mæcenas and Virgil, the former of whom bestowed upon him a farm sufficient to sustain him. His life thereafter was passed in frequent interchange of town and country residence, a circumstance which is reflected with charming grace in his verses. His rural home is described in his epistles. It was not extensive, but was pleasant, and he enjoyed it to the utmost. His poetry is deficient in the highest properties of verse, but as the fresh utterances of a man of the world who was possessed of quick observation and strong common-sense, and who was honest and bold, they have always charmed their readers. The Odes of Horace are unrivalled for their grace and felicitous language, but express no great depth of feeling. His Satires do not originate from moral indignation, but the writer playfully shoots folly as it flies, and exhibits a wonderful keenness of observation of the ways of men in the world. His Epistles are his most perfect work, and are, indeed, among the most original and polished forms of Roman verse. His Art of Poetry is not a complete theory of poetic art, and is supposed to have been written simply to suggest the difficulties to be met on the way to perfection by a versifier destitute of the poetic genius. The works of Horace were immediately popular, and in the next generation became text-books in the schools.

Cornelius Nepos was a historical writer of whose life almost no particulars have come down to us, except that he was a friend of Cicero, Catullus, and probably of other men of letters who lived at the end of the republic. The works that he is known to have written are all lost, and that which goes under his name, The Biographies of Distinguished Commanders (_Excellentium Imperatorum Vitæ_), seems to be an abridgment made some centuries after his death, and tedious discussions have been had regarding its authorship. The lives are, however, valuable for their pure Latinity, and interesting for the lofty tone in which the greatness of the Roman people is celebrated. The life of Atticus, the friend and correspondent of Cicero, is the one of the biographies regarding which the doubts have been least. The work is still a favorite school-book and has been published in innumerable editions.

This brief list of celebrated writers whose works were in the hands of the reading public of Rome during the time of the republic, must be closed with reference to Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro), the writer who stands at the head of the literature of Rome, sharing his pre- eminence only with his younger friend, Horace. Born on his father's small estate near Mantua, Virgil studied Greek at Naples, and other branches, probably, at Rome, where in time he became the friend of the munificent patron of letters, Mæcenas, with whom we have already seen him on the noted journey to Brundusium. It was at the instigation of Mæcenas that Virgil wrote his most finished work, the agricultural poem entitled _Georgica_, which was completed after the battle of Actium (B.C. 31), when Augustus was in the East. It had been preceded by ten brief poems called Bucolics (_Bucolica_, Greek, _boukolos_, a cowherd), noteworthy for their smooth versification and many natural touches, though they have only the form and coloring of the true pastoral poem. The Æneid, which was begun about 30 B.C., occupied eleven years in composition, and yet lacked the finishing touches when the poet was on his death-bed. His death occurred September 22, B.C. 19, at Brundusium, to which place he had come from Greece, where he had been in company with Augustus, and he was buried between the first and second milestones on the road from Naples to Puteoli, where a monument is still shown as his.

Though always a sufferer from poor health, and therefore debarred from entering upon an oratorical or a military career, Virgil was exceptionally fortunate in his friendships and enjoyed extraordinary patronage which enabled him to cultivate literature to the greatest advantage. He was fortunate, too, in his fame, for he was a favorite when he lived no less than after his death. Before the end of his own generation his works were introduced as text-books into Roman schools; during the Middle Age he was the great poet whom it was heresy not to admire; Dante owned him as a master and a model; and the people finally embalmed him in their folk-lore as a mysterious conjurer and necromancer. His _Æneid_, written in imitation of the great Greek poem on the fall of Troy, is a patriotic epic, tracing the wanderings, the struggles, and the death of Æneas, and vaunting the glories of Rome and the greatness of the royal house of the emperor.

Thus, through long ages the Roman wrote, and thus he was furnished with books to read. For centuries he had no literature excepting those rude ballads in which the books of all countries have begun, and all trace of them has passed away. When at last, after the conquest of the Greek cities in Southern Italy, the Tarentine Andronicus began to imitate the epics of his native language in that of his adoption, the progress was still quite slow among a people who argued with the sword and saw little to interest them in the fruit of the brain. As the republic totters to its fall, however, the cultivators of this field increase, and we must suppose that readers also were multiplied. At that time and during the early years of the empire, a Mæcenas surrounded himself with authors and stimulated them to put forth all their vigor in the effort to create a native literature.

On the Esquiline Hill there was a spot of ground that had been a place of burial for the lower orders. This the hypochondriacal invalid Mæcenas bought, and there he laid out a garden and erected a lofty house surmounted by a tower commanding a view of the city and vicinity. Effeminate and addicted to every sort of luxury, Mæcenas calmed his sometimes excited nerves by the sweet sound of distant symphonies, gratified himself by comforting baths, adorned his clothing with expensive gems, tickled his palate with dainty confections of the cook, and regaled himself with the loftier delights afforded by the companionship of the wits and virtuosi of the capital. Magnificent was the patronage that he dispensed among the men of letters; and that he was no mean critic, his choice of authors seems to prove. They were the greatest geniuses and most learned men of the day. At his table sat Virgil, Horace, and Propertius, besides many others, and his name has ever since been proverbial for the patron of letters. No wealthy public man has since arisen who could rival him in this respect.

XX.

THE ROMAN REPUBLICANS SERIOUS AND GAY.

It is easier to think of the old Roman republicans as serious than gay, when we remember that they considered that their very commonwealth was established upon the will of the gods, and that no acts--at least no public acts--could properly be performed without consulting those spiritual beings, which their imagination pictured as presiding over the hearth, the farm, the forum--as swarming throughout every department of nature. The first stone was not laid at the foundation of the city until Romulus and Remus had gazed up into the heavens, so mysterious and so beautiful, and had obtained, as they thought, some indication of the fittest place where they might dig and build. The she-wolf that nurtured the twins was elevated into a divinity with the name Lupa, or Luperca (_lupus_, a wolf), and was made the wife of a god who was called Lupercus, and worshipped as the protector of sheep against their enemies, and as the god of fertility. On the fifteenth of February, when in that warm clime spring was beginning to open the buds, the shepherds celebrated a feast in honor of Lupercus. Its ceremonies, in some part symbolic of purification, were rude and almost savage, proving that they originated in remote antiquity, but they continued at least down to the end of the period we have considered, and the powerful Marc Antony did not disdain to clothe himself in a wolfskin and run almost naked through the crowded streets of the capital the month before his friend Julius Cæsar was murdered. [Footnote: see page 248*] It was a fitting festival for the month of which the name was derived from that of the god of purification (_februare_, to purify).

It was at the foot of a fig-tree that Romulus and Remus were fabled to have been found by Faustulus, and that tree was always looked upon with special veneration, though whenever the Roman walked through the woods he felt that he was surrounded by the world of gods, and that such a leafy shade was a proper place to consecrate as a temple. A temple was not an edifice in those simple days, but merely a place separated and set apart to religious uses by a solemn act of dedication. When the augur moved his wand aloft and designated the portion of the heavens in which he was to make his observations, he called the circumscribed area of the ethereal blue a temple, and when the mediæval astrologer did the same, he named the space a "house." On the Roman temple an altar was set up, and there, perhaps beneath the spreading branches of a royal oak, sacred to Jupiter, the king of the gods, or of an olive, sacred to Minerva, the maiden goddess, impersonation of ideas, who shared with him and his queen the highest place among the Capitoline deities, prayers and praises and sacrifices were offered.

When the year opened, the Roman celebrated the fact by solemnizing in its first month, March, the festivity of the father of the Roman people by Rhea Silvia, the god who stood next to Jupiter; who, as Mars Silvanus, watched over the fields and the cattle, and, as Mars Gradivus (marching), delighted in bloody war, and was a fitting divinity to be appealed to by Romulus as he laid the foundation of the city. [Footnote: See page 19.] As spring progressed, sacrifices were offered to Tellus, the nourishing earth; to Ceres, the Greek goddess Demeter, introduced from Sicily B.C. 496, to avert a famine, whose character did not, however, differ much from that of Tellus; and to Pales, a god of the flocks. At the same inspiring season another feast was observed in honor of the vines and vats, when the wine of the previous season was opened and tasted. [Footnote: This was the ,_Vinalia urbana_ (_urbs_, a city), but there was another festival celebrated August 19th, when the vintage began, known as the _Vinalia rustica_ when lambs were sacrificed to Jupiter. While the flesh was still on the altar, the priest broke a cluster of grapes from a vine, and thus actually opened the wine harvest.]

In like manner after the harvest, there were festivals in honor of Ops, goddess of plenty, wife of that old king of the golden age, Saturnus, introducer of social order and god of sowing, source of wealth and plenty. The festival of Saturnus himself occurred on December 17th, and was a barbarous and joyous harvest-home, a time of absolute relaxation and unrestrained merriment, when distinctions of rank were forgotten, and crowds thronged the streets crying, _Io Saturnalia!_ even slaves wearing the _pileus_ or skullcap, emblem of liberty, and all throwing off the dignified toga for the easy and comfortable _synthesis_, perhaps a sort of tunic.

Other festivals were devoted to Vulcanus, god of fire, without whose help the handicraftsmen thought they could not carry on their work; and Neptunus, god of the ocean and the sea, to whom sailors addressed their prayers, and to whom commanders going out with fleets offered oblations. Family life was not likely to be forgotten by a people among whom the father was the first priest, and accordingly we find that every house was in a certain sense a temple of Vesta, the goddess of the fireside, and that as of old time the family assembled in the atrium around the hearth, to partake of their common meal, the renewal of the family bond of union was in later days accompanied with acts of worship of Vesta, whose actual temple was only an enlargement of the fireside, uniting all the citizens of the state into a single large family. In her shrine there was no statue, but her presence was represented by the eternal fire burning upon her hearth, a fire that Æneas was fabled to have brought with him from old Troy. The purifying flames stood for the unsullied character of the goddess, which was also betokened by the immaculate maidens who kept alive the sacred coals. As Vesta was remembered at every meal, so also the Lares and Penates, divinities of the fireside, were worshipped, for there was a purification at the beginning of the repast and a libation poured upon the table or the hearth in their honor at its close. When one went abroad he prayed to the Penates for a safe return, and when he came back, he hung his armor and his staff beside their images, and gave them thanks. In every sorrow and in every joy the indefinite divinities that went under these names were called upon for sympathy or help.

In the month of June the mothers celebrated a feast called _Matralia_, to impress upon themselves their duties towards children; and at another they brought to mind the good deeds of the Sabine women in keeping their husbands and fathers from war. [Footnote: see page 26] This was the _Matronalia_, and the epigrammatist Martial, who lived during the first century of our era, called it the Women's Saturnalia, on account of its permitted relaxation of manners. At that time husbands gave presents to their wives, lovers to their sweethearts, and mistresses feasted their maids.

The _Lemuria_ was a family service that the father celebrated on the ninth, eleventh, and thirteenth of May, when the ghosts of the departed were propitiated. It was thought that these spirits were wont to return to the scenes of their earthly lives to injure those who were still wrestling with the severe realities of time, and specially did they come up during the darkness of night. Therefore it was that at midnight the father rose and went forth with cabalistic signs, skilfully adapted to keep the spectres at a distance. After thrice washing his hands in pure spring water, he turned around and took certain black beans into his mouth, and then threw them behind him for the ghosts to pick up. The goodman then uttered other mystic expressions without risking any looks towards the supposed sprites, after which he washed his hands, and beat some brazen basins, and nine times cried aloud: "Begone, ye spectres of the house!" Then could he look around, for the ghosts were harmless.

Thus the Roman forefathers worshipped personal gods, but they did not, in the early times, follow the example of the imaginative Greeks, and represent them, as possessing passions like themselves, nor did they erect them into families and write out their lines of descent, or create a mythology filled with stories of their acts good and bad. The gods were spiritual beings, but the religion was not a spiritual life, nor did it have much connection with morality. It was mainly based on the enjoyment of earthly pleasures. If the ceremonious duties were done, the demands of Roman religion were satisfied. It was a hard and narrow faith, but it seemed to tend towards bringing earthly guilt and punishment into relation with its divinities, and it contained the idea of substitution, as is clearly seen in the stories of Curtius, Decius Mus, and others. [Footnote: "When the gods of the community were angry, and nobody could be laid hold of as definitely guilty, they might be appeased by one who voluntarily gave himself up."--MOMMSEN, Book I.,