History Of Ancient Civilization Part 26

Then came the mania for public lectures. Pollio, a favorite of Augustus, had set the example. For a century it was the fashion to read poems, panegyrics, even tragedies before an audience of friends a.s.sembled to applaud them. The taste for eloquence that had once produced great orators exhibited in the later centuries only finished declaimers.

=Importance of the Latin Literature and Language.=--Latin literature profited by the conquests of Rome; the Romans carried it with their language to their barbarian subjects of the West. All the peoples of Italy, Gaul, Spain, Africa, and the Danubian lands discarded their language and took the Latin. Having no national literature, they adopted that of their masters. The empire was thus divided between the two languages of the two great peoples of antiquity: the Orient continued to speak Greek; almost the entire Occident acquired the Latin. Latin was not only the official language of the state functionaries and of great men, like the English of our day in India; the people themselves spoke it with greater or less correctness--in fact, so well that today eighteen centuries after the conquest five languages of Europe are derived from the Latin--the Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Roumanian.

With the Latin language the Latin literature extended itself over all the West. In the schools of Bordeaux and Autun in the fifth century only Latin poets and orators were studied. After the coming of the barbarians, bishops and monks continued to write in Latin and they carried this practice among the peoples of England and Germany who were still speaking their native languages. Throughout almost the whole mediaeval period, acts, laws, histories, and books of science were written in Latin. In the convents and the schools they read, copied, and appreciated only works written in Latin; beside books of piety only the Latin authors were known--Vergil, Horace, Cicero, and Pliny the Younger. The renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries consisted partly in reviving the forgotten Latin writers.

More than ever it was the fashion to know and to imitate them.

As the Romans constructed a literature in imitation of the Greeks, the moderns have taken the Latin writers for their models. Was this good or bad? Who would venture to say? But the fact is indisputable. Our romance languages are daughters of the Latin, our literatures are full of the ideas and of the literary methods of the Romans. The whole western world is impregnated with the Latin literature.

THE ARTS

=Sculpture and Painting.=--Great numbers of Roman statues and bas-reliefs of the time of the empire have come to light. Some are reproductions and almost all are imitations of Greek works, but less elegant and less delicate than the models. The most original productions of this form of art are the bas-reliefs and the busts.

Bas-reliefs adorned the monuments (temples, columns, and triumphal arches), tombs, and sarcophagi. They represent with scrupulous fidelity real scenes, such as processions, sacrifices, combats, and funeral ceremonies and so give us information about ancient life. The bas-reliefs which surround the columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius bring us into the presence of the great scenes of their wars. One may see the soldiers fighting against the barbarians, besieging their fortresses, leading away the captives; the solemn sacrifices, and the emperor haranguing the troops.

The busts are especially those of the emperors, of their wives and their children. As they were scattered in profusion throughout the empire, so many have been found that today all the great museums of Europe have collections of imperial busts. They are real portraits, probably very close resemblances, for each emperor had a well-marked physiognomy, often of a striking ugliness that no one attempted to disguise.

In general, Roman sculpture holds itself much more close to reality than does the Greek; it may be said that the artist is less concerned with representing things beautifully than exactly.

Of Roman painting we know only the frescoes painted on the walls of the rich houses of Pompeii and of the house of Livy at Rome. We do not know but these were the work of Greek painters; they bear a close resemblance to the paintings on Greek vases, having the same simple and elegant grace.

=Architecture.=--The true Roman art, because it operated to satisfy a practical need, is architecture. In this too the Romans imitated the Greeks, borrowing the column from them. But they had a form that the Greeks never employed--the arch, that is to say, the art of arranging cut stones in the arc of a circle so that they supported one another.

The arch allowed them to erect buildings much larger and more varied than those of the Greeks. The following are the princ.i.p.al varieties of Roman monuments:

1. The _Temple_ was sometimes similar to a Greek temple with a broad vestibule, sometimes vaster and surmounted with a dome. Of this sort is the Pantheon built in Rome under Augustus.

2. The _Basilica_ was a long low edifice, covered with a roof and surrounded with porticos. There sat the judge with his a.s.sistants about him; traders discussed the price of goods; the place was at once a bourse and a tribunal. It was in the basilicas that the a.s.semblies of the Christians were later held, and for several centuries the Christian churches preserved the name and form of basilicas.

3. The _Amphitheatre_ and the _Circus_ were constructed of several stories of arcades surrounding an arena; each range of arcades supported many rows of seats. Such were the Colosseum at Rome and the arenas at Arles and Nimes.

4. The _Arch of Triumph_ was a gate of honor wide enough for the pa.s.sage of a chariot, adorned with columns and surmounted with a group of sculpture. The Arch of t.i.tus is an example.

5. The _Sepulchral Vault_ was an arched edifice provided with many rows of niches, in each of which were laid the ashes of a corpse.

It was called a Columbarium (pigeon-house) from its shape.

6. The _Thermae_ were composed of bathing-halls furnished with basins. The heat was provided by a furnace placed in an underground chamber. The Thermae in a Roman city were what the gymnasium was in a Greek city--a rendezvous for the idle. Much more than the gymnasium it was a labyrinth of halls of every sort: there were a cool hall, warm apartments, a robing-room, a hall where the body was anointed with oil, parlors, halls for exercise, gardens, and the whole surrounded by an enormous wall. Thus the Thermae of Caracalla covered an immense area.

7. The _Bridge_ and the _Aqueduct_ were supported by a range of arches thrown over a river or over a valley. Examples are the bridge of Alcantara and the Pont du Gard.

8. The _House_ of a rich Roman was a work of art. Unlike our modern houses, the ancient house had no facade; the house was turned entirely toward the interior; on the outside it showed only bare walls.

The rooms were small, ill furnished, and dark; they were lighted only through the atrium. In the centre was the great hall of honor (the atrium) where the statues of the ancestors were erected and where visitors were received. It was illuminated by an opening in the roof.

Behind the atrium was the peristyle, a garden surrounded by colonnades, in which were the dining halls, richly ornamented and provided with couches, for among the rich Romans, as among the Asiatic Greeks, guests reclined on couches at the banquets. The pavement was often made of mosaic.

=Character of the Roman Architecture.=--The Romans,[162] unlike the Greeks, did not always build in marble. Ordinarily they used the stone that they found in the country, binding this together with an indestructible mortar which has resisted even dampness for eighteen hundred years. Their monuments have not the wonderful grace of the Greek monuments, but they are large, strong, and solid--like the Roman power. The soil of the empire is still covered with their debris. We are astonished to find monuments almost intact as remote as the deserts of Africa. When it was planned to furnish a water-system for the city of Tunis, all that had to be done was to repair a Roman aqueduct.

=Rome and Its Monuments.=--Rome at the time of the emperors was a city of 2,000,000 inhabitants.[163] This population was herded in houses of five and six stories, poorly built and crowded together. The populous quarters were a labyrinth of tortuous paths, steep, and ill paved. Juvenal who frequented them leaves us a picture of them which has little attractiveness. At Pompeii, a city of luxury, it may be seen how narrow were the streets of a Roman city. In the midst of hovels monuments by the hundred would be erected. The emperor Augustus boasted of having restored more than eighty temples. "I found a city of bricks," said he; "I leave a city of marble." His successors all worked to embellish Rome. It was especially about the Forum that the monuments acc.u.mulated. The Capitol with its temple of Jupiter became almost like the Acropolis at Athens. In the same quarter many monumental areas were constructed--the forum of Caesar, the forum of Augustus, the forum of Nerva, and, most brilliant of all, the forum of Trajan. Two villas surrounded by a park were situated in the midst of the city; the most noted was the Golden House, built for Nero.

THE LAW

=The Twelve Tables.=--The Romans, like all other ancient peoples, had at first no written laws. They followed the customs of the ancestors--that is to say, each generation did in everything just as the preceding generation did.

In 450 ten specially elected magistrates, the decemvirs, made a series of laws that they wrote on twelve tables of stone. This was the Law of the Twelve Tables, codified in short, rude, and trenchant sentences--a legislation severe and rude like the semi-barbarous people for whom it was made. It punished the sorcerer who by magical words blasted the crop of his neighbor. It p.r.o.nounced against the insolvent debtor, "If he does not pay, he shall be cited before the court; if sickness or age deter him, a horse shall be furnished him, but no litter; he may have thirty days' delay, but if he does not satisfy the debt in this time, the creditor may bind him with straps or chains of fifteen pounds weight; at the end of sixty days he may be sold beyond the Tiber; if there are many creditors, they may cut him in parts, and if they cut more or less, there is no wrong in the act."

According to the word of Cicero, the Law of the Twelve Tables was "the source of all the Roman law." Four centuries after it was written down the children had to learn it in the schools.

=The Symbolic Process.=--In the ancient Roman law it was not enough in buying, selling, or inheriting that this was the intention of the actor; to obtain justice in the Roman tribunal it was not sufficient to present the case; one had to p.r.o.nounce certain words and use certain gestures. Consider, for example, the manner of purchasing. In the presence of five citizens who represent an a.s.sembly and of a sixth who holds a balance in his hand, the buyer places in the balance a piece of bra.s.s which represents the price of the thing sold. If it be an animal or a slave that is sold, the purchaser touches it with his hand saying, "This is mine by the law of the Romans, I have bought it with this bra.s.s duly weighed." Before the tribunal every process is a pantomime: to reclaim an object one seizes it with the hand; to protest against a neighbor who has erected a wall, a stone is thrown against the wall. When two men claim proprietorship in a field, the following takes place at the tribunal: the two adversaries grasp hands and appear to fight; then they separate and each says, "I declare this field is mine by the law of the Romans; I cite you before the tribunal of the praetor to debate our right at the place in question." The judge orders them to go to the place. "Before these witnesses here present, this is your road to the place; go!" The litigants take a few steps as if to go thither, and this is the symbol of the journey. A witness says to them, "Return," and the journey is regarded as completed. Each of the two presents a clod of earth, the symbol of the field. Thus the trial commences;[164] then the judge alone hears the case. Like all primitive peoples, the Romans comprehended well only what they actually saw; the material acts served to represent to them the right that could not be seen.

=The Formalism of Roman Law.=--The Romans scrupulously respected their ancient forms. In justice, as in religion, they obeyed the letter of the law, caring nothing for its sense. For them every form was sacred and ought to be strictly applied. In cases before the courts their maxim was: "What has already been p.r.o.nounced ought to be the law." If an advocate made a mistake in one word in reciting the formula, his case was lost. A man entered a case against his neighbor for having cut down his vines: the formula that he ought to use contained the word "arbor," he replaced it with the word "vinea," and could not win his case.

This absolute reverence for the form allowed the Romans some strange accommodations. The law said that if a father sold his son three times, the son should be freed from the power of the father; when, therefore, a Roman wished to emanc.i.p.ate his son, he sold him three times in succession, and this comedy of sale sufficed to emanc.i.p.ate him.

The law required that before beginning war a herald should be sent to declare it at the frontier of the enemy. When Rome wished to make war on Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, who had his kingdom on the other side of the Adriatic, they were much embarra.s.sed to execute this formality.

They hit on the following: a subject of Pyrrhus, perhaps a deserter, bought a field in Rome; they then a.s.sumed that this territory had become territory of Epirus, and the herald threw his javelin on this land and made his solemn declaration. Like all other immature peoples, the Romans believed that consecrated formulas had a magical virtue.

=Jurisprudence.=--The Law of the Twelve Tables and the laws made after them were brief and incomplete. But many questions presented themselves that had no law for their solution. In these embarra.s.sing cases it was the custom at Rome to consult certain persons who were of high reputation for their knowledge of questions of law. These were men of eminence, often old consuls or pontiffs; they gave their advice in writing, and their replies were called the Responses of the Wise.

Usually these responses were authoritative according to the respect had for the sages. The emperor Augustus went further: he named some of them whose responses should have the force of law. Thus Law began to be a science and the men versed in law formulated new rules which became obligatory. This was Jurisprudence.

=The Praetor's Edict.=--To apply the sacred rules of law a supreme magistrate was needed at Rome. Only a consul or a praetor could direct a tribunal and, according to the Roman expression, "say the law." The consuls engaged especially with the army ordinarily left this care to the praetors.

There were always at Rome at least two praetors as judges: one adjudicated matters between citizens and was called the praetor of the city (praetor urba.n.u.s); the other judged cases between citizens and aliens and was called praetor of the aliens (praetor peregrinus), or, more exactly, praetor between aliens and citizens. There was need of at least two tribunals, since an alien could not be admitted to the tribunal of the citizens. These praetors, thanks to their absolute power, adjusted cases according to their sense of equity; the praetor of the aliens was bound by no law, for the Roman laws were made only for Roman citizens. And yet, since each praetor was to sit and judge for a year, on entering upon his office he promulgated a decree in which he indicated the rules that he expected to follow in his tribunal; this was the Praetor's Edict. At the end of the year, when the praeter left his office, his ordinance was no longer in force, and his successor had the right to make an entirely different one. But it came to be the custom for each praetor to preserve the edicts of his predecessors, making a few changes and some additions. Thus acc.u.mulated for centuries the ordinances of the magistrates. At last the emperor Hadrian in the second century had the Praetorian Edict codified and gave it the force of law.

=Civil Law and the Law of Nations.=--As there were two separate tribunals, there developed two systems of rules, two different laws.

The rules applied to the affairs of citizens by the praetor of the city formed the Civil Law--that is to say, the law of the city. The rules followed by the praetor of aliens const.i.tuted the Law of Nations--that is to say, of the peoples (alien to Rome). It was then perceived that of these two laws the more human, the more sensible, the simpler--in a word, the better, was the law of aliens. The law of citizens, derived from the superst.i.tious and strict rules of the old Romans, had preserved from this rude origin troublesome formulas and barbarous regulations. The Law of Nations, on the contrary, had for its foundation the dealings of merchants and of men established in Rome, dealings that were free from every formula, from every national prejudice, and were slowly developed and tried by the experience of several centuries. And so it may be seen how contrary to reason the ancient law was. "Strict law is the highest injustice," is a Roman proverb. The praetors of the city set themselves to correct the ancient law and to judge according to equity or justice. They came gradually to apply to citizens the same rules that the praetor of the aliens followed in his tribunal. For example, the Roman law ordained that only relatives on the male side should be heirs; the praetor summoned the relatives on the female side also to partic.i.p.ate in the succession.

The old law required that a man to become a proprietor must perform a complicated ceremony of sale; the praetor recognized that it was sufficient to have paid the price of the sale and to be in possession of the property. Thus the Law of Nations invaded and gradually superseded the Civil Law.

="Written Reason."=--It was especially under the emperors that the new Roman law took its form. The Antonines issued many ordinances (edicts) and re-scripts (letters in which the emperor replied to those who consulted him). Jurisconsults who surrounded them a.s.sisted them in their reforms. Later, at the beginning of the third century, under the bad emperors as under the good, others continued to state new rules and to rectify the old. Papinian, Ulpian, Modestinus, and Paullus were the most noted of these lawyers; their works definitively fixed the Roman law.

This law of the third century has little resemblance to the old Roman law, so severe on the weak. The jurisconsults adopt the ideas of the Greek philosophers, especially of the Stoics. They consider that all men have the right of liberty: "By the law of nature all men are born free," which is to say that slavery is contrary to nature. They also admit that a slave could claim redress even against his master, and that the master, if he killed his slave, should be punished as a murderer. Likewise they protect the child against the tyranny of the father.

It is this new law that was in later times called Written Reason. In fact, it is a philosophical law such as reason can conceive for all men. And so there remains no longer an atom of the strict and gross law of the Twelve Tables. The Roman law which has for a long time governed all Europe, and which today is preserved in part in the laws of several European states is not the law of the old Romans. It is constructed, on the contrary, of the customs of all the peoples of antiquity and the maxims of Greek philosophers fused together and codified in the course of centuries by Roman magistrates and jurisconsults.

FOOTNOTES:

[157] Sometimes called the Age of Cicero.

[158] Lucretius.--ED.

[159] One of the most noted, the plea for Milo, was written much later.

Cicero at the time of the delivery was distracted and said almost nothing.

[160] See the "Dialogue of the Orators," attributed to Tacitus.

[161] The word "rhetor" signified in Greek simply orator; the Romans used the word in a mistaken sense to designate the men who made a profession of speaking.

[162] The same reserve must be maintained with regard to the arts as to the literature. The builders of the Roman monuments were not Romans, but provincials, often slaves; the only Roman would be the master for whom the slaves worked.