Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius Part 7

The colleges, of whose inner working we have tried to give a picture, are cla.s.sed as religious corporations in the collections of the inscriptions.

They bear the name of a G.o.d, and they provide a solemn interment for their members. But in these respects they do not differ from many other colleges which are regarded as purely secular. The truth is, that any attempt to make a sharp division of these societies on such lines seems futile.

Sepulture and religion being admitted by the government as legitimate objects for a.s.sociation, any college, however secular in its tone, might, and probably would, screen itself under sacred names. Nor would this be merely a hypocritical pretence. It is clear that many of the purely industrial colleges, composed as they were of poor people who found it impossible to purchase a separate burial-place, and not easy, unaided, to bear the expense of the last rites, at once consulted their convenience, and gratified the sentiment of fraternity, by arranging for a common place of interment. And with regard to religion, it is a commonplace to point out that all Graeco-Roman societies, great or small, rested on religion.

The state, the clan, the family, found their ideal and firmest bond in reverence for divine or heroic ancestors, a reverent piety towards the spirits who had pa.s.sed into the unseen world. The colleges, as we shall see presently, were formed on the lines of the city which they almost slavishly imitated.(1465) It would be strange and anomalous if they should desert their model in that which was its most original and striking characteristic. And just as Cleisthenes found divine and heroic patrons for his new tribes and demes,(1466) so would a Roman college naturally place itself under the protection of one of the great names of the Roman pantheon. Sometimes, no doubt, there may not have been much sincerity in this conformity to ancient pieties. But do we need to remind ourselves how long a life the form of ancient pieties may have, even when the faith which gave birth to them has become dim and faint?

The usual fashion of writing Roman history has concentrated attention on the doings of the emperor, the life of the n.o.ble cla.s.s in the capital, or on the stations of the legions and the political organisation of the provinces. It is a stately and magnificent panorama. But it is apt to throw the life of the ma.s.ses into even deeper shadow than that in which time has generally enwrapped them. We are p.r.o.ne to forget that, behind all this stately life, there was a quiet yet extraordinarily busy industrial activity which was its necessary basis and which catered for all its caprices. In the most cursory way Tacitus tells us that a great part of Italy was gathered for the great fair at Cremona, on the fateful days when the town was stormed by the army of Vespasian.(1467) Yet what a gathering it must have been! There were laid out in the booths the fine woollens of Parma and Mutina, the mantles of Ca.n.u.sium, the purples of Tarentum, the carpets of Patavium. Traders from Ilva brought their iron wares, Pompeii sent its fish sauces, and Lucania its famous sausages. Nor would there be missing in the display the oil of Venafrum, and the famous Setine and Falernian vintages.(1468) The improvement of the great roads in the reign of Trajan must have given a vast stimulus to inland commerce. And we may be sure that many a petty merchant with his pack was to be seen along the Aemilian or Flaminian ways, like the travelling vendor of honey and cheese, whom Lucius, in the tale of Apuleius, meets hurrying to Hypata.(1469) The great roads of Spain, since the days of Augustus, carried an immense traffic, which made even the distant Gades a magnificent emporium and one of the richest places in the Roman world.(1470)

The wandering traders in Germany, Spain, or Syria, by a natural instinct drew together in their exile. In the revolt of Julius Civilis, they are found settled among the Batavians, and a _collegium peregrinorum_ has left its memorial on the lower Rhine.(1471) The _sodalicium urbanum_ at Bracara Augusta is a similar society.(1472) Another mercantile college meets us at Apulum in Dacia.(1473) The Syrians of Berytus had a club at Puteoli, and there were at least two clubs of Syrian traders at Malaga.(1474) The graves of Syrian traders have been found at Sirmium in Pannonia, and, on the other hand, there are memorials of Roman merchants at Apamea and Tralles, at Salamis and Mitylene.(1475) Immense stimulus to this transmarine trade must have been given by the Emperor Claudius, who provided insurance against loss by storms, and a liberal system of bounties and rewards for shipping enterprise.(1476) Apollonius of Tyana once expostulated with a young Spartan, who claimed descent from Callicratidas, for having forsaken the true career of a man of his race, to soil himself with the trade of Carthage and Sicily. It is the sentiment of Juvenal who treats as a lunatic the man who will venture his life with a cargo on the wintry Aegean.(1477) But the antiquarian rhetoric attributed to Apollonius embalms the fact that at the opening of a springtime in the reign of Domitian, a great merchant fleet was lying at Malea, ready to sail to the western seas.(1478) These wandering merchants, wherever they went, banded themselves in colleges for mutual protection and for society. In the same way, old soldiers, on their return from long service on the frontiers, gathered in military brotherhoods at such places as Ostia or Misenum.(1479) The veterans of Augustus seem to have become a distinct and recognised cla.s.s, like the Augustales.(1480) Colleges of youth sprang up everywhere from the days of Nero, at Beneventum, Cremona, and Ameria, or at Moguntiac.u.m, Lauriac.u.m, and Poetovio.(1481) They were formed, like our own sporting clubs, for exercise and healthy rivalry, often under the patronage of the divine hero who, to all the moralists of that age, had become the mythic type of the continent vigour of early manhood. There is one sodality at least devoted to the preservation of chast.i.ty.(1482) But it is balanced by the clubs of the "late sleepers" and "late drinkers" of Pompeii.(1483)

The colleges in which the artisans and traders of the Antonine age grouped themselves are almost innumerable, even in the records which time has spared. They represent almost every conceivable branch of industry or special skill or social service, from the men who laid the fine sand in the arena, to the rich wine merchants of Lyons or Ostia.(1484) The mere catalogue of these a.s.sociations in an index will give an enlarged conception of the immense range and minute specialisation of Roman industry. It may be doubted whether a similar enumeration of our English crafts would be longer or more varied. The great trades, which minister to the first necessities of human life, occupy of course the largest s.p.a.ce, the bakers, the cloth-makers, the smiths, carpenters, and wood-merchants, trades often grouped together, the shoemakers and fullers and carders of wool. The mechanics, who made the arms and engines for the legions, naturally hold a prominent place. Nor less prominent are the boatmen of Ostia, and of the Rhone and the Saone.(1485) The sailors of these great rivers had several powerful corporations at Lyons, and, on many an inscription,(1486) claim the wealthiest citizens, men who have gained the whole series of munic.i.p.al honours, as their chiefs and patrons. Arles, which was then a great sea-port, had its five corporations of sailor-folk, and Ostia an equal number, charged with the momentous task of taking up the cargoes of the African corn-ships for the bakeries of Rome.(1487) Transport by land is represented by colleges of muleteers and a.s.s drivers in the Alps and Apennines.(1488) All the many trades and services which ministered to the wants or pleasures of the capital were similarly banded together, the actors and horn-blowers, the porters and paviors, down to the humble dealers in pastils and salt fish.(1489) We have seen that even the gladiators, in their barrack-prisons, were allowed to form their clubs. Although traces of these combinations are found in remote and obscure places all over the Roman world, it is at great commercial centres, at Ostia, Puteoli, Lyons, and Rome itself, that they have left the most numerous remains. They had probably for one of their objects the protection of their members against encroachments or fiscal oppression.

Strabo once came across a deputation of fishermen on their way to plead with the Emperor for a reduction of their dues.(1490) Yet it would be a mistake to suppose that these trades unions were always organised for trade objects, or that the separate colleges were composed of people engaged in the same occupation. They had many honorary members from among the richer cla.s.ses, and, even in the lower ranks, in defiance of the law,(1491) a dealer in salt might be enrolled among the boatmen of the Rhone, and member of a college of builders.(1492) In truth, the great object of a.s.sociation among these humble people appears to have been not so much the protection of their trade, as the cheerfulness of intercourse, the promotion of fellowship and good-will, the relief of the dulness of humdrum lives.

Probably no age, not even our own, ever felt a greater craving for some form of social life, wider than the family, and narrower than the State.

It was a movement at which, as we have seen, even the greatest and strongest of the emperors had to connive. It penetrated society down to its lowest layers. Even the slaves and freedmen of great houses organised themselves in colleges. There were colleges in the imperial household.(1493) T. Aelius Primitivus, chief of the imperial kitchen, being a man of great posthumous ambition, left the care of his own and his wife's monument to the college of the palatine cooks.(1494) In the inscriptions of Moesia there is the alb.u.m of a Bacchic club of household slaves containing 80 names, with apparently different grades among them, designated by such t.i.tles as _archimysta_, _bouleuta_, _frater_ and _filius_.(1495) A similar club of the servile cla.s.s, devoted to the worship of Isis, existed at Tarraco.(1496) The officers of another bear the pompous t.i.tles of tribune, quaestor, and triumvir, and the slab records the thanks of one Hilara, that her ashes have been allowed to mingle in the same urn with those of Mida the chamberlain.(1497) A provincial treasurer at Ephesus, who was a _verna Augusti_, commits the custody of his wife's monument to five colleges of slaves and freedmen in the emperor's household. One of the colleges bears the name of Faustina.

Another college is devoted to the cult of the Lares and images of Antoninus Pius.(1498) Private masters seem to have encouraged the formation of such a.s.sociations among their dependents, and sometimes to have endowed them with a perpetual foundation.(1499) It was probably politic, as well as kind, to provide for slaves social pleasures within the circle of the household, and thus to forestall the attractions of the numerous clubs outside, which freely offered their hospitality.(1500) We may be sure that the college "which was in the house of Sergia Paulina"

was not encouraged by the mistress without good reason.

Thus it appears that in every part of the Roman world, in the decaying little country town, and in the great trading centres, the same great movement of a.s.sociation, is going on apace. It swept into its current almost every social grade, and every trade, handicraft or profession, the pastil-makers, the green-grocers and unguent sellers of Rome, the muleteers of the Alps, the fullers of Pompeii, the doctors at Beneventum, the boatmen of the Seine, the wine merchants of Lyons. Men formed themselves into these groups for the most trivial or whimsical reasons, or for no reason at all, except that they lived in the same quarter, and often met.(1501) From the view which the inscriptions give us of the interior of some of these clubs, it is clear that their main purpose was social pleasure. And this is especially true of the clubs of the humblest cla.s.s. M. Boissier has well remarked that the poor workman, the poor freedman, with the brand of recent slavery upon him, who was often engaged in some mean or disgusting occupation, amidst a society which from tradition regarded any industry soiled by servile touch with distant scorn, must have felt themselves solitary exiles in the desert of a great town, the most awful desert in the world. The remote splendour of the court and aristocratic life must have deepened the gloom of isolation and helplessness. Shut out for ever from that brilliant world of fashion and pleasure and power, whose social life seemed so charming and gay and friendly, the despised and lonely toiler sought a refuge in little gatherings of people as lonely as himself. At some chance meeting, some one, more energetic than the rest, would throw out the suggestion to form a club, on the model of some of the old trade societies which had always been authorised by the State from the days of Numa, or of those newer a.s.sociations which were now tacitly permitted under the guise of religion.

A small entrance fee would meet, for the time, their modest expenses. In that age of generous or ambitious profusion, it was not hard to find some influential patron, a kindly gracious n.o.ble, or an aspiring or generous _parvenu_, to give the infant society his countenance, along with a substantial donation for the building of a club-house, and for simple convivial pleasures on his birthday, and other festivals which could easily be multiplied. Then the brethren met in solemn form to frame their const.i.tution and commemorate their benefactor, on one of those many monuments which illuminate a social life on which the literature of the age is generally silent.

The continuity and repet.i.tion of proved political organisation is a notable characteristic of the great races which have left, or are destined to leave, their mark on history. The British settlers on the prairies of Oregon or Manitoba immediately order themselves into communities, which are modelled on a social system as old as the Heptarchy. The Latin race had perhaps an even more stubborn conservatism than the English. Under the most various circ.u.mstances, the Roman instinctively clung to forms and inst.i.tutions of tested strength and elasticity, and consecrated by the immemorial usage of his race. The most distant and most humble munic.i.p.ality was fashioned after the pattern of the great "city which had become a world."(1502) It had its senate, the _ordo splendidissimus et amplissimus_, and the popular a.s.sembly which elected the magistrates. The munic.i.p.al magistrates, if they do not always bear the ancient names, reproduce in shadowy form the dictators, the praetors, the aediles, quaestors, and censors of the old republic.(1503) The same continuity of form is seen in the colleges. As the munic.i.p.al town was modelled on the const.i.tution of the State, so we may say that the college was modelled on the munic.i.p.al town. The college, indeed, became a city for the brotherhood, at once a city and a home. They apply to it such terms as _respublica collegii_.(1504) The meetings often took place in a temple, whether of a patron deity or of an emperor, as those of the Roman Senate were held in the temple of Concord or of Bellona. There they elected their administrative officers, generally for a period of one year; in some cases, by way of special distinction, for life. The heads of these little societies bear various names, _magistri_, _curatores_, _quinquennales_, _praefecti_, or _praesides_.(1505) They have also quaestors,(1506) who managed their financial affairs, which, although perhaps on no great scale, still involved the investment of trust moneys to yield the prescribed amounts which had to be distributed either as burial payments, or in food and money on the high festivals. The number of the members was generally limited, either by the government in the interests of public order, or by the will of a benefactor, to prevent the progressive diminution in the value of the divisible shares of the income.(1507) A periodical revision of the roll of members was therefore conducted every five years, as it was in the munic.i.p.ality, by the chief officers, exercising for the time censorial powers in miniature. Fortunately the alb.u.ms of three or four colleges have been preserved. The lists throw a vivid light on their const.i.tution and social tone. We have drawn attention in a former chapter to the strict gradation of social rank in the city polity. The same characteristic is repeated in the collegiate organisation. In these humble plebeian coteries, composed of "men without a grandfather," of men, perhaps, whose father was a slave, or of men who were slaves themselves, there emerges, to our astonishment, a punctilious observance of shadowy social distinctions, which is an inheritance from the exclusive aristocratic pride of the old republic. This characteristic has excited in some French critics and historians a certain admiration,(1508) in which it is not altogether easy to join. Gradation of rank to ensure devotion and order in public service is a precious and admirable thing. But artificial and unreal distinctions, invented and conferred to flatter wealth, to stimulate or reward the largesses of the rich patron, to gratify the vulgar self-complacency of the _parvenu_, are only a degrading form of mendicancy. Some indulgence is no doubt due to men who were still under the yoke of slavery, or only just released from it; the iron had entered into their souls. But both the college and the munic.i.p.ality of the Antonine age cannot be relieved of the charge of purchased or expectant deference to mere wealth. Hence we cannot altogether share the pleasure of M. Boissier in these pale and vulgar reproductions of the hierarchy of a real aristocracy. But the image of the hierarchy is there, and it is very instructive. In a college of smiths in Tarraconensis, there were fifteen patrons at the head of the roll, followed by twelve decurions, including two doctors and a soothsayer, one man isolated by the honours of the _bisellium_, two honorary members, twenty-eight plain plebeians. There were also several "mothers" and "daughters" of the society.(1509) The alb.u.m of another club at Ostia shows a list of nine patrons, two holders of quinquennial rank, and one hundred and twenty-three plebeians.(1510) The plebs of many colleges included slaves, and in more than one inscription the men of ingenuous and those of servile birth are carefully distinguished, the slaves being sometimes placed at the bottom of the roll.(1511) Yet it was surely a great advance when slaves and freemen could meet together for the time, on a certain footing of equality, for business or convivial intercourse. The rigid lines of old pagan society are indeed still marked on the face of these clubs. And yet many an inscription leaves the impression that these little societies of the old pagan world are nurseries, in an imperfect way, of the gentle charities and brotherliness which, in shy retirement, the young Church was cultivating in her disciples to be the ideal of the world.

These colleges became homes for the homeless, a little fatherland, or _patria_, for those without a country. Sometimes they may have met in low taverns, which were on that account jealously watched by some of the emperors.(1512) But they generally attained to the possession of a club-room or _schola_, a name which had been previously given to the lounging-room of the public baths. Sometimes the _schola_ was erected at their own cost, the site being perhaps granted by some rich patron, or by the town council, on a vacant spot close to the basilica or the theatre.(1513) But frequently a hall was built for them by some generous friend. A like generosity often provided for them a little chapel of their patron deity, with a shaded court, or a balcony open to the air and sun, where the brethren took their common meals.(1514) Or a rich patron, anxious to secure some care and religious observance of his last resting-place, would bequeath to a college a pleasant garden adjoining the tomb, with a house in which to hold their meetings.(1515) And, as a further security against neglect and oblivion, a sum of 10,000 or 15,000 sesterces would be invested to provide a dinner for the college on their benefactor's birthday.(1516) As years went on, the scene of many a pleasant gathering became a centre round which cl.u.s.tered a great deal of sentiment, and even pride. We may imagine that, allowing for differences of time and faith, the little school or shrine would, in the course of years, attract something of the feeling which consecrates an ancient village church in England, or a little Bethel which was built in the year of the visit of John Wesley. It became a point of honour to make gifts to the schola, to add to its comfort or beauty. One benefactor would redeem a right of ancient lights, or build a boundary wall.(1517) Another would make a present of bronze candelabra on a marble stand, with the device of a Cupid holding baskets in his hands.(1518) Or a college would receive from its curator a gift of some silver statues of the G.o.ds, on the dedication of the _schola_, with a bra.s.s tablet, no doubt recording the event.(1519) The gift of a place where the brethren of the club might be buried beside their wives or concubines, was probably, to these poor people, not the least valued benefaction.(1520) Many a humble donation was probably made, which was too slight for a memorial. But it happens that we have one record of gifts evidently offered by poor, insignificant people.

It is contained in a very interesting inscription found upon a rock near the theatre at Philippi in Macedonia.(1521) It records that P. Hostilius Philadelphus, in recognition of the aedileship of the college, which had been conferred upon him, bore the expense of polishing the rock, and inscribing upon it the names of the members of a college of Silva.n.u.s, sixty-nine in number, together with a list of those who had presented gifts to their temple. The college was a religious one, with a priest who is named in the first place. It is also a funerary society, and seems to be composed of freedmen and of slaves, either belonging to the colony or private masters. They had just erected a temple of their patron G.o.d, to which some had given subscriptions in money, while others made various offerings for its adornment. One brother presents an image of the G.o.d in a little shrine, another statuettes of Hercules and Mercury. There is another donation of some stone-work in front of the temple, and Hostilius, at his own expense, cut away the rock to smooth the approach to the shrine. Most of the gifts are of trifling value, a poor little picture worth 15 _denarii_, a marble image of Bacchus costing not much more. But they were the offerings of an enthusiastic brotherhood, and the good Hostilius has given them an immortality of which they never dreamed.

The contributions of the members would generally have been but a sorry provision for the social and religious life of a college. Reproducing, as it did, the const.i.tution and the tone of the city in so many traits, the college in nothing follows its model so closely as in its reliance on the generosity of patronage. At the head of the alb.u.m of the society there is a list, sometimes disproportionately long, of its _patroni_. Countless inscriptions leave us in no doubt as to the reason why the patron was elected. His _raison d'etre_ in the club is the same as in the city; it is to provide luxuries or amus.e.m.e.nts for the society, which the society could not generally obtain for itself. The relation of patron and client is, of all the features of ancient life, the one which, being so remote from the spirit of our democratic society, is perhaps most difficult for us to understand. The mutual obligations, enforced by a powerful traditional sentiment, were of the most binding, and sometimes burdensome character.

And in that form of relation, between former master and freedman, which became so common in the first age of the Empire, the old master was bound to continue his support and protection to the emanc.i.p.ated slave.(1522) Although there was much that was sordid and repulsive in the position of the client in Juvenal's and Martial's days, we must still recognise the fact that the fortune of the rich patron had to pay a heavy price for social deference. Not less heavy was the demand made on the patrons of munic.i.p.alities and colleges.

There must have been wide distinctions of dignity and importance among the industrial colleges of the Empire. The _centonarii_, the _fabri_, and _dendrophori_ of the more important centres, such as Aquileia, Lyons and Milan, the boatmen of Arles or Ostia, would probably have looked down with scorn on the flute-players of the Via Sacra, the hunters of Corfinium, or the muleteers of the Porta Gallica.(1523) And there was a corresponding variety in the rank of the patrons. Some are high officials of the Empire, procurators of provinces, curators of great public works, or distinguished officers of the legions. Or they are men evidently of high position and commanding influence in their province, priests of the altar of Augustus, augurs of the colony, magistrates or decurions of two or three cities.(1524) Sometimes the patron is a great merchant, with warehouses of oil or wine at Lyons or Tarragona or Ostia.(1525) Yet in spite of his wealth, the patron's social position in those days might be rather uncertain, and we may without difficulty, from modern a.n.a.logies, believe that a new man might find his vanity soothed, or his position made less obscure, by being known as the t.i.tular head of an ancient corporation of the clothworkers, or _dendrophori_, or of the boatmen on the Saone.

Probably in obscure country towns, remote from the seat of Empire, these bourgeois dignities were even more valued.(1526) The humbler colleges would have to be content with one of the new freedmen, such as the vulgar friends of Trimalchio, who, after a youth of shameful servitude, had leapt into fortune by some happy chance or stroke of shrewdness, and who sought a compensation for the contempt of the great world in the deference and adulation of those who waited for their largesses.

The election of a patron was an event of great moment, especially to a poor college. And it was conducted with a formal preciseness, and an a.s.sumption of dignity, which, at this distance of time, are sometimes rather ludicrous. In a little town of Cisalpine Gaul in the year 190, the college of smiths and clothworkers met in solemn session in their temple.

Their quaestors, who may have had the financial condition of the college in view, made a formal proposal that the college should set an example of the judicious reward of merit, by electing one Tutilius Julia.n.u.s, a man distinguished by his modesty and liberality, as the patron of their society. The meeting commended the sage proposal of the quaestors, and formally resolved that the honourable Julia.n.u.s should be requested to accept the distinction, with an apology for so tardy a recognition of his merits, and that a bra.s.s plate, containing a copy of this decree, should be placed above his door.(1527)

It is significant that the patrons were, in very many cases, Seviri and Augustales, a body which in the provinces, as we have seen, was generally composed of new men of the freedman cla.s.s. Although they were steadily rising in importance and in strength of organisation, the provincial Augustales always ranked after the decurions of a town. They often displayed boundless liberality to their city and to their own order.(1528) But the leading Augustales seem to have been quite as generous to the other corporations who placed themselves under their patronage. And they were not unfrequently patrons of several colleges.(1529) It is no long task to find men who were the t.i.tular protectors of two or three, of eight, or even of as many as twelve or fifteen colleges. One inscription to Cn. Sentius of Ostia would seem to include among his dependents almost every industrial college in that busy port.(1530) Sentius must have been a very wealthy and a very generous man to accept the patronage of so many societies, which in those days expected or demanded that their honours should be paid for in solid cash. The crowning distinction of a statue, or a durable inscription, was often solemnly decreed with all seemly forms of deference or unstinted flattery in a full meeting of the society. But in a great majority of cases we are amused or disgusted to read that, after all his other liberalities, the benefactor or his heir is permitted to pay for the record of popular grat.i.tude.(1531) This fact may explain the extraordinary abundance of these honours, if it somewhat lowers their value in the eyes of posterity.

But, besides the benefactions which sprang either from ambition or real generosity, a vast number were inspired by the Roman pa.s.sion for long remembrance, and for the continuity of funerary ritual. The very position of so many tombs by the side of the great roads beyond the city gates, was a silent appeal to the pa.s.sing traveller not to forget the departed. The appeal is also often expressly made on the stone by those who had no other means of prolonging their own memory or that of some one they loved. It is impossible to read without some emotion the prayer of an old Spanish soldier, that his brethren of the college may never suffer grief like his, if they will only keep the lamp burning for ever over the tomb of his child.(1532) The more opulent took more elaborate measures to provide for the guardianship of their "last home."(1533) They often attached to the tomb a field or gardens of considerable extent, to be cultivated for profit, or to bear the roses for the annual offering. The whole area, the dimensions of which, in many inscriptions, are defined with mathematical precision, would be surrounded by a wall. Within the enclosure there would be a little shrine containing statues of the dead, an arbour and a well, and a hall in which the kindred of coming generations might hold their annual banquet, till the tie was dissolved by the cruel oblivion of time.(1534) There will be a cottage (_taberna_) in which a freedman or dependent of the house may be lodged, to watch over the repose of the dead.(1535) But all these precautions, as the testator feels, were likely to be defeated in the end by the vicissitudes of human fortunes.(1536) He had, indeed, before his eyes the fate of many a forsaken and forgotten tomb of old worthies of the Republic. Families die out; faithful freedmen and their children cannot keep their watch for ever. The garden will grow wild, a time may come when no kindly hand will pour the libation or scatter the roses on the natal day. Families will die out, but a college may go on for ever by the perpetual renewal of its members. Inspired with this idea, a worthy of Nimes created a funerary college to dine regularly in his honour.(1537) It was to consist of thirty persons, and the number was to be maintained by co-optation into the places of deceased members.

Members of the college who were obliged to be absent might send one of their friends to join in the repast. Thus the dead man, who had taken such care to prolong his memory, would at no distant date be festively celebrated by people who barely knew his name. Many another left a bequest to a college to be spent in a feast on the testator's memorial day.(1538) A freedman of Mevania leaves a tiny legacy of HS.1000 to the guild of clothworkers, of whom he is patron, with the condition that not less than twelve of their number shall feast once a year in memory of him.(1539) A more liberal provision for convivial enjoyment was left to a college of Silva.n.u.s in honour of Domitian. It consisted of the rents of four estates, with their appurtenances, which were to be spent on the birthdays of the emperor and his wife, "for all time to come," with the sacrifices proper to such a holy season.(1540) Due provision is often made for the seemly and impressive performance of a rite which was at once a religious duty and a convivial pleasure. There is a curious letter of the time of Antoninus Pius containing a deed of gift to the college of the _fabri_ at Narbo, in return for their constant favours to the donor. One s.e.xtus Fadius presents them with the sum of 16,000 sesterces, the interest of which is to be divided every year at the end of April for ever, at a banquet on his birthday; the guests on this festive occasion are to be habited in their handsomest attire.(1541)

But the fullest and minutest arrangements for these modest meals are to be found in the doc.u.ment relating to the foundation of the poor college of Diana and Antinous, to which reference has already been made. The master of the feast was taken in regular order from the roll of the society. Each brother had to accept this office in his turn, or pay a fine of five shillings of our money. The regular festivals of the club were six in the year, on the natal days of Diana and Antinous, and those of the founder and some of his relatives. There is some obscurity in the regulations for these common feasts, and at first sight they are a ludicrous contrast to the pontiff's famous banquet in the days of Julius Caesar, described by Macrobius.(1542) M. Boissier naturally refuses to imagine that even the poor brethren of the club of Diana and Antinous would be contented with bread, four sardines, a bottle of good wine, with hot water and the proper table service. The slave steward of Horace probably found much better fare in his _popina_.(1543) Dr. Mommsen has resolved the mystery. It is evident, from several inscriptions, that _sportulae_ were sharply distinguished from distributions of bread and wine.(1544) The _sportula_ was a gift of richer food or dainties, which in public distributions might be carried home; it was sometimes an equivalent in money. If those who received the _sportula_ preferred to enjoy it at a common table, an appointed member of the college would have the food prepared, or convert the money into dishes for the feast. The bread and wine he might add from his own pocket, if they were not provided by the foundation. How much for these meals came from the club funds, and how much out of the pocket of the _magister coenae_, is not always clearly stated. But we may be sure, from the tone of the times, that additions to a modest _menu_ were often made by the generosity of patrons and officers of the club.

It would be futile and uninteresting to pursue into all its minute details throughout the inscriptions, the system of _sportulae_ founded by so many patrons and benefactors. Any one who wishes can temperately regale himself for hours at these shadowy club-feasts of the second century. Perhaps the clearest example of such distributions is the donation of Marcellina and Aelius Zeno to the little college of Aesculapius, to which reference has been made for another purpose.(1545) On seven different anniversaries and festivals, sums of money, with bread and wine, were distributed to the brethren of the college in due proportions, according to their official dignity and social rank. Thus, in the division on the 4th of November, the fete-day of the society, the shares in money, according to the various grades, from the father of the college downwards, are six, four, and two.

The division of the wine, according to social rank, follows the proportion of nine, six, and three. A slightly different scale is followed on the birthday of the Emperor Antoninus Pius in September, and on the day for New Year's gifts in January. But in these benefactions the difference of grade is always observed, the patron and the chief magistrates and magnates of the society always receiving a larger share than the obscure brethren at the bottom of the list. In the college of Aesculapius, Marcellina herself, and Aelius Zeno, the two great benefactors of the society, along with the highest of its dignitaries, are allotted three times as much as the plebeian brother. The excellent Marcellina, who, in the fourth century might perhaps have followed S. Jerome and Paula to Bethlehem, was the widow of a good and tender husband, who had been curator of the imperial picture galleries.(1546) Had she been drawn into the ranks of that hidden society, who were beginning to lay their dead in the winding vaults beneath the Appian Way, she would certainly have dealt out her bounty on a different scale and on different principles. Her bequest to the college of Aesculapius reveals how deep in the soul of a charitable pagan woman, who was probably sprung from servile stock, lay that aristocratic instinct of the Roman world which survived the advent of the Divine Peasant and the preaching of the fishermen of Galilee, for far more than four hundred years.

The most curious and interesting among the regulations for these club entertainments are those relating to order and decorum. The club of Diana and Antinous was not very select, being probably composed of poor freedmen and slaves.(1547) The manners of this cla.s.s, if we may judge by the picture given by Petronius, were, to say the least, wanting in reserve and self-restraint. The great object of such reunions was, as the founder tells us, that the brethren might dine together cheerfully and quietly.(1548) Hence he most wisely orders that all serious proposals and complaints shall be reserved for business meetings. If any member quits his place or makes a disturbance, he is to pay a fine of four sesterces.

Twelve sesterces is the penalty for insulting a fellow-guest. The man who, under the influence of good wine, so far forgot himself as to insult the chief officer of the society, was to be punished by a forfeit of twenty sesterces, which would probably be a powerful discouragement of bad manners to most of the brotherhood of Antinous.

Many another gift or bequest, of the same character as Marcellina's, meets the eye of the student of the inscriptions The motives are singularly uniform-to repay the honours conferred by a college, to celebrate the dedication of a statue, to save from forgetfulness a name which to us is only a bit of the wreckage of time. Everything is conventional about these bequests. The money is nearly always left for the same purpose, an anniversary repast in honour of the humble dead, of the emperor, or of the patron G.o.ds. Sometimes the burial fee is refunded to the college, with the prayer that on the natal day the poor pittance derived from the gift be spent on pious rites, with roses strewn upon the grave.(1549) Another will beg only that the lamp in the humble vault may be kept for ever burning.

These pieties and longings, which have their roots in a rude pagan past before the dawn of history, were destined to prolong their existence far into Christian times. The lamp will be kept burning over many a tomb of saint or martyr in the fourth or fifth century. And the simple feasts which the clothworkers of Brescia, or the boatmen of Ostia or Lyons, observed to do honour to some departed patron, will be celebrated, often in riotous fashion, over the Christian dead in the days of S. Augustine and S. Paulinus of Nola.(1550)

Dr. Mommsen believes that the collegiate life which blossomed forth so luxuriantly in the early Empire, was modelled on the sacred union of the Roman family.(1551) And the instinct of the Roman nature for continuity in inst.i.tutions prepossesses us in favour of the theory. In the college endowed by Marcellina and Zeno, there are a father and a mother, and elsewhere we read of daughters of a college. The members sometimes call themselves brethren and sisters.(1552) One of the feasts of the brotherhood is on the day sacred to "dear kinship," when relations gathered round a common table, to forget in kindly intercourse any disturbance of affection.(1553) They also met in the early days of January, when presents were exchanged. Above all, like the primal society, they gathered on the birthdays of the revered dead to whom they owed duty and remembrance. And in many cases the members of the society reposed beside one another in death.(1554) The college was a home of fraternal equality in one sense. As M. Boissier has pointed out, the members had equal rights in the full a.s.sembly of the club. A quorum was needed to pa.s.s decrees and to elect the officers. And, in the full conclave, the slave member had an equal voice with the freeman, and might, perchance, himself even be elected to a place of dignity.(1555) He might thus, in a very humble realm, wield authority for the time over those who were accustomed to despise him. It is true that he needed his master's leave to join a college, and his master had the legal power to deny to him the last boon of burial by the hands of his collegiate brethren.(1556) Yet it was undoubtedly a great stride in advance when a slave could sit at table or in council on equal terms with free-born men, and might receive pious Roman burial, instead of being tossed like a piece of carrion into a nameless grave. The society of one of these humble colleges must have often for the moment relieved the weariness and misery of the servile life, and awakened, or kept alive, some sense of self-respect and dignity.

The slave may have now and then felt himself even on the edge of political influence, as when his college placarded its sympathies in an election contest on the walls of Pompeii. Yet we must not allow ourselves to be deceived by words and appearances. In spite of legislative reform, in spite of a growing humane sentiment, whether in the Porch or the Christian Church, the lot of the slave and of the poor plebeian will be in many respects as hopeless and degraded in the reign of Honorius as it was in the reign of Trajan.(1557) Even in the reign of Trajan, it is true, perhaps even in the reign of Nero, there were great houses like the younger Pliny's, where the slaves were treated as humble friends, where their weddings were honoured by the presence of the master, where, in spite of legal disabilities, they were allowed to dispose of their savings by will.(1558) And the inscriptions record the grat.i.tude and affection to their masters and mistresses of many who were in actual slavery, or who had but just emerged from it. But these instances cannot make us forget the cruel contempt and barbarity of which the slave was still the victim, and which was to be his lot for many generations yet to run. And therefore the improvement in the condition of the slave or of his poor plebeian brother by the theoretical equality in the colleges, may be easily exaggerated. In the humblest of these clubs, the distribution of good fare and money is not according to the needs of the members, but regulated by their social and official rank. We cannot feel confident that in social intercourse the same distinction may not have been coldly observed. In modern times we often see a readiness to accord an equality of material enjoyment, along with a stiff guardianship of social distinctions which are often microscopic to the detached observer. And it would not be surprising to discover that the "master" or the "mother" of the college of Antinous protected their dignity by an icy reserve at its festive meetings.

The question has been raised whether the ordinary colleges were in any sense charitable inst.i.tutions for mutual help. And certainly the inscriptions are singularly wanting in records of bequests made directly for the relief of poverty, for widows and orphans or the sick. The donations or bequests of rich patrons seem to have had chiefly two objects in view, the commemoration of the dead and the provision for social and convivial enjoyment. It is true that, just as in munic.i.p.al feasts, there is often a distribution of money among the members of colleges. But this appears to be deprived of an eleemosynary character by the fact that by far the largest shares are a.s.signed to those who were presumably the least in need of them. Yet it is to be recollected that we probably have left to us the memorial of only a small proportion of these gifts, and that, if we had a full list of all the benefactions bequeathed to some of the colleges, the total amount received by each member in the year might be very considerable, if judged by the standard of ordinary plebeian incomes.

To the ambitious slave any addition, however small, to his growing _peculium_, which might enable him to buy his freedom, would certainly be grateful.

There is one cla.s.s of colleges, however, which were undoubtedly formed to meet various exigencies in the course of life, as well as to make a provision for decent burial. These are the military clubs, on the objects and const.i.tution of which a flood of light has been thrown by the study of the inscriptions in the great legionary camps of North Africa.(1559) A pa.s.sage of Vegetius shows us the provident arrangement made by government for the future of the ordinary legionary.(1560) It is well known that, on the accession of each new emperor, or on the occurrence of some interesting event in the history of the prince's family, or of some great military success, and often without any particular justification, a donative was distributed throughout the army. It sometimes reached a considerable amount, ranging from the 25 _denarii_ granted by Vespasian, to the 5000 of M. Aurelius.(1561) One half of this largess was by orders set aside, and retained under the custody of the standard-bearers, to provide a pension on the soldier's retirement from the service. Another fund, entirely different, was formed by the soldiers' own contributions, to furnish a decent burial for those who died on service. But the law against the formation of colleges fell with peculiar severity on the soldier.(1562) Not even for a religious purpose was he permitted to join such a society. This prohibition, however, seems to have been relaxed in the case of the officers, and some of the more highly skilled corps.(1563) And we have among the inscriptions of Lambaesis a few instructive records of these military colleges.(1564)

Lambaesis, as we have seen, was one of those camps which developed into a regular munic.i.p.ality, after the recognition of soldiers' marriages by Septimius Severus. Henceforth the camp became only a place of drill and exercise, and ceased to be the soldier's home. And on the ground where the soldiers' huts used to stand, there are left the remains of a number of buildings of the basilica shape, erected probably in the third century, which were the club-houses of the officers of the Tertia Augusta. The interior was adorned with statues of imperial personages, and on the wall was inscribed the law of the college, commencing with an expression of grat.i.tude for the very liberal pay which enabled the college to make provision for the future of its members.(1565) The provision was made in various ways. An ambitious young officer was allowed a liberal viatic.u.m for a journey across the sea to seek promotion. If promotion came, he received another grant to equip him. One half the amount granted in these cases was mercifully paid to him in the unpleasant contingency of his losing his grade. If he died on active service, his heir received a payment on the larger scale. And, when a man, in due course, retired from the army, he received the same sum under the name of _anularium_, which has puzzled the antiquary.(1566)

It has been maintained that these military clubs were really and primarily funerary societies.(1567) And provision for burial was certainly one of their objects. Yet, on a reading of the law of the society of the _Cornicines_, it may be doubted whether the subject of burial is more prominent than the other contingencies of the officer's life, and in some of the inscriptions, burial is not even alluded to. The grant on retirement or promotion, and the grant to his heir on the death of a member, are the same. But probably the majority of officers had the good fortune to carry the money with them into peaceful retirement, if not into higher rank in another corps. In this case they would probably join another college, whether of soldiers or veterans, and secure once more the all-important object of a decent and pious interment. The military clubs seem rather intended to furnish an insurance against the princ.i.p.al risks and occasions of expenditure in a soldier's career. A calculation shows that, after providing for all these liabilities, the military college must have had a considerable surplus.(1568) How it was spent, it is not hazardous to conjecture. If the poor freedmen and slaves at Ostia or Lanuvium could afford their modest meals, with a fair allowance of good wine, drunk to the memory of a generous benefactor, we may be sure that the college of the _Cornicines_ at Lambesi would relieve the tedium of the camp by many a pleasant mess dinner, and that they would have been astonished and amused on such occasions to hear themselves described merely as a burial society.

The foundation law of the college of Diana and Antinous betrays some anxiety lest the continuity of the society should be broken. And in many a bequest, the greatest care is taken to prevent malversation or the diversion of the funds from their original purpose.(1569) We feel a certain pathetic curiosity, in reading these records of a futile effort to prolong the memory of obscure lives, to know how long the brotherhoods continued their meetings, or when the stated offerings of wine and flowers ceased to be made. In one case the curiosity is satisfied and we have before our eyes the formal record of the extinction of a college. It is contained in a pair of wooden tablets found in some quarry pits near Alburnus, a remote village of Dacia. The doc.u.ment was drawn up, as the names of the consuls show, in the year 167, the year following the fierce irruption of the Quadi and Marcomanni into Dacia, Pannonia, and Noric.u.m, in which Alburnus was given to the flames.(1570) Artemidorus the slave of Apollonius, and Master of the college of Jupiter Cernenius, along with the two quaestors, places it on record, with the attestation of seven witnesses, that the college has ceased to exist. Out of a membership of fifty-four, only seventeen remain. The colleague of Artemidorus in the mastership has never set foot in Alburnus since his election. The accounts have been wound up, and no balance is left in the chest. For a long time no member has attended on the days fixed for meetings, and, as a matter of course, no subscriptions have been paid. All this is expressed in the rudest, most ungrammatical Latin, and Artemidorus quaintly concludes by saying, that, if a member has just died, he must not imagine that he has any longer a college or any claim to funeral payments! The humble brothers of the society, whom Artemidorus reproaches for their faithless negligence, may probably have fled to some refuge when their masters'

lands were devastated by the Marcomanni, or been swept on in the fierce torrent of invaders which finally broke upon the walls of Aquileia.

BOOK III.

_NEC PHILOSOPHIA SINE VIRTUTE EST NEC SINE PHILOSOPHIA VIRTUS_

CHAPTER I

THE PHILOSOPHIC DIRECTOR

Philosophy in the time of Seneca was a very different thing from the great cosmic systems of Ionia and Magna Graecia, or even from the system of the older Stoicism. Speculative interest had long before his time given way to the study of moral problems with a definite practical aim. If the stimulus of the searching method of Socrates gave an impetus for a century to abstract speculation, it had an even more decided and long-lived influence in diverting thought to moral questions from the old ambitious paths. His disciples Antisthenes and Aristippus prepared the way for the Stoic and Epicurean schools which dominated the Roman world in the last century of the Republic and the first of the Empire. And even Plato and Aristotle indirectly helped forward the movement. It is not merely that, for both these great spirits, the cultivation of character and the reform of society have a profound interest. But even in their metaphysics, they were paving the way for the more introspective and practical turn which was taken by post-Aristotelian philosophy, by giving to what were mere conceptions of the mind a more real existence than to the things of sense.(1571) The "ideas" or "forms" which they contrast with the world of concrete things, are really creations of the individual mind of which the reality must be sought in the depths of consciousness, however they may be divinised and elevated to some transcendental region beyond the limits of sense and time. With Aristotle, as with Plato, in the last resort, the higher reason is the true essence of man, coming into the body from a diviner world, and capable of lifting itself to the ideal from the cramping limitations of sensuous life. The philosopher in the _Phaedo_ who turns his gaze persistently from the confusing phantasmagoria of the senses to that realm of real existence, eternal and immutable, of which he has once had a vision, is really the distant progenitor of the sage of Stoicism, who cuts himself off from the external objects of desire, to find within a higher law, and the peace which springs from a life in harmony with the Reason of the world.

The ancient schools, if they maintained a formal individuality even to the days of Justinian,(1572) had worked themselves out. A host of scholarchs, from all the cities of the Greek East, failed to break fresh ground, and were content to guard the most precious or the least vulnerable parts of an ancient tradition. Moreover, the scrutiny of the long course of speculation, issuing in such various conclusions, with no criterion to decide between their claims, gave birth to a scepticism which sheltered itself even under the great name of the Academy. And as the faith in the truth of systems dwindled, the marks of demarcation between them faded; men were less inclined to dogmatise, and began to select and combine elements from long discordant schools. In this movement the eclectic and the sceptic had very much the same object in view-the support and culture of the individual moral life.(1573) The sceptic sought his ideal in restrained suspense of judgment and in moral calm. The eclectic, without regard to speculative consistency, and with only a secondary interest in speculation, sought for doctrines from any quarter which provided a basis for the moral life, and, in the conflict of systems on the deeper questions, would fall back, like Cicero, on intuition and the consent of consciousness.(1574) Creative power in philosophy was no more. Speculative curiosity, as pictured in the _Phaedo_ or the _Theaetetus_, had lost its keenness. The imperious craving was for some guide of life, some medicine for the deeply-felt maladies of the soul.

The extinction of the free civic life of Greece, the conquests of Macedon, the foundation of the world-wide empire of Rome, had wrought a momentous moral change. In the old city-state, religion, morals, and political duty were linked in a gracious unity and harmony. The citizen drew moral support and inspiration from ancestral laws and inst.i.tutions clothed with almost divine authority. Even Plato does not break away from the old trammels, but requires the elders of his Utopia as a duty, after they have seen the vision of G.o.d, to descend again to the ordinary tasks of government. But when the corporate life which supplied such vivid interests and moral support was wrecked, the individual was thrown back upon himself. Morals were finally separated from politics. Henceforth the great problem of philosophy was how to make character self-sufficing and independent; how to find the beat.i.tude of man in the autonomous will, fenced against all a.s.saults of chance and change.(1575) At the same time, the foundation of great monarchies, Macedonian or Roman, embracing many tribes and races and submerging old civic or national barriers, brought into clearer light the idea of a universal commonwealth, and placed morals on the broad foundation of a common human nature and universal brotherhood. The mundane city of old days, which absorbed, perhaps too completely, the moral life and conscience of her sons, has vanished for ever. And in its place and over its ruins has risen an all-embracing power which seems to have all the sweep of an impersonal force of nature, though it is sometimes impelled by one wild, lawless will. If, in return for the loss of civic freedom, ambitious and patriotic energy, or pride of civic life, it has given to its subjects a marvellous peace and order and culture, have not the ma.s.s of men become grosser and more materialised? If there is greater material well-being and better administration, have not the moral tone and ideal, in the lack of stimulus, been lowered? Has not vice become more shameless, and the greed for all things pleasant grown harder and more cruel? Are not the ma.s.s of men hopelessly and wearily wandering in a tangled maze without a clue?(1576)

With such questionings ringing in his inner ear, the man with some lingering instinct of goodness might well crave, beyond anything else, for an inner law of life which should bring order into the chaos of his conduct and desires.(1577) And philosophy, having in magnificent effort failed to scale the virgin heights, fell back on conduct, which seemed then, even more than to a lost teacher of our youth, "three-fourths of life." The great science which, in the glory and fresh vigour of the h.e.l.lenic prime, aspired to embrace all existence and all knowledge, to penetrate the secret of the universe and G.o.d, by general consent narrowed its efforts to relieve the struggles of this transient life set "between two eternities." The human spirit, weary of the fruitless quest of an ever-vanishing ideal of knowledge, took up the humbler task of solving the ever-recurring problem of human happiness and conduct. Henceforth, in spite of traditional dialectic discordance, all the schools, Stoic or Epicurean, Sceptic or Eclectic, are seeking for the secret of inner peace, and are singularly unanimous in their report of the discovery.(1578) The inner life of the spirit becomes all in all. Speculation and political activity are equally unimportant to the true life of the soul. Calm equipoise of the inner nature, undisturbed by the changes of fortunes or the solicitations of desire, is the ideal of all, under whatever difference of phrase. What has he to do with any single state who realises his citizenship in the great commonwealth of man? If the secret of peace cannot be won by launching in adventurous thought into the Infinite, perchance it may be found in discipline of the rebellious will.

Philosophy, then, must become the guide of life, the healer of spiritual maladies.(1579) It must teach the whole duty of man, to the G.o.ds, to the state, to parents and elders, to women and to slaves. It must attempt the harder task of bringing some principle of order into the turmoil of emotion and pa.s.sion: it must teach us, amid the keen claims of competing objects of desire, to distinguish the true from the false, the permanent from the fleeting.

The moral reformer cannot indeed dispense with theory and a ground of general principles,(1580) but he will not forget that his main business is to impart the _ars vivendi_; he will be more occupied with rules which may be immediately applied in practice, than with the theory of morals. A profound acquaintance with the pathology of the soul, minute study of the weaknesses of character, long experience of the devices for counteracting them, will be worth far more than an encyclopaedic knowledge of centuries of speculation.(1581) He will not undervalue the moral discourse, with the practical object of turning souls from their evil ways; but he has only contempt for the rhetoric of the cla.s.s-room which desecrates solemn themes by the vanities of phrase-making.(1582) The best and most fruitful work of practical philosophy is done by private counsel, adapted to the special needs of the spiritual patient. He must be encouraged to make a full confession of the diseases of his soul.(1583) He must be trained in daily self-examination, to observe any signs of moral growth or of backsliding.

He must be checked when over confident, and cheered in discouragement. He must have his enthusiasm kindled by appropriate examples of those who have trodden the same path and reached the heights.(1584)

This serious aim of philosophy commended itself to the intensely practical and strenuous spirit of the Romans. And although there were plenty of showy lecturers or preachers in the first century who could draw fashionable audiences, the private philosophic director was a far more real power. The triumph of Aemilius Paulus brought numbers of Greek exiles to Italy, many of whom found a home as teachers in Roman families.(1585) Panaetius, who revolutionised Stoicism, and made it a working system, profoundly influenced the circle of Scipio Aemilia.n.u.s, in whose house he lived. Great generals and leaders of the last age of the Republic, a Lucullus or a Pompey, often carried philosophers in their train. From Augustus to Elagabalus we hear of their presence at the imperial court.

The wife of Augustus sought consolation on the death of Drusus from Areus, her husband's philosophic director.(1586) Many of these men indeed did not take their profession very seriously, and in too many cases they were mere flatterers and parasites whom the rich patron hired from ostentation and treated with contumely.(1587) Both Nero and Hadrian used to amuse themselves with the quarrels and vanity of their philosophers.(1588) But in the terror of the Claudian Caesars, the Stoic director is often seen performing his proper part. Julius Ca.n.u.s, when ordered to execution by Caligula, had his philosopher by his side, with whom he discussed till the last fatal moment the future of the soul.(1589) The officer who brought the sentence of death to Thrasea found him absorbed in conversation with the Cynic Demetrius on the mystery which the lancet was in a few moments to resolve.(1590)

Of this great movement to cultivate a moral life in paganism L. Annaeus Seneca was not the least ill.u.s.trious representative. Musonius, his younger contemporary, and Epictetus, the pupil of Musonius, were engaged in the same cure of souls, and taught practically the same philosophic gospel.