The Historians' History of the World 05

The long career of conquest which Rome had enjoyed had tended to throw all her noblest energies into the sole profession of arms, which is naturally inclined above all others to measure excellence by success, and to confound virtue with valour. When the Roman returned from the wars for a short breathing time to his own country, he beheld few objects around him which were calculated to allay the fever of his excited imagination. His pride was fed by trophies and triumphs, by the retinue of captive slaves which attended him, by the spoils of conquered palaces which decorated his home. In the intervals of danger and rapine few cared to yield themselves to the vapid enjoyments of taste and literature, or could refrain from ridiculing the arts which had failed to save Greece from subjugation. The poets, historians, and philosophers of Rome were few in number, and exercised but a transient influence on a small circle of admirers. Nor were the habits of civil life such as to soften the brutal manners of the camp. The Romans knew nothing of the relations of modern society, in which the sexes mutually encourage each other in the virtues appropriate to each, and where ranks and classes mingle unaffectedly together under the shelter of a common civilisation. The Romans lived at first in castes, afterwards in parties; even in the public places there was little fusion or intercourse of ranks, while at home they domineered over their clients as patrons, their slaves as masters, their wives and children as husbands and fathers.

The instruction of boyhood was general in the upper ranks, but it was imparted by slaves, who corrupted the temper of their pupils far more than they improved their understanding; and when, already exhausted by premature indulgence, they were married while young from motives of convenience, they were found incapable of guiding and elevating their still more neglected consorts. The women were never associated in their husbands’ occupations, knew little of their affairs, and were less closely attached to their interests than even their bondmen. They seldom partook of their recreations, which accordingly degenerated for the most part into debauches. Systematically deprived of instruction, the Roman matron was taught indeed to vaunt her ignorance as a virtue. If in the first century B.C., those Sabine housewives were no longer to be found who shut themselves up in their apartments and spun wool among their handmaids, yet to exercise their intellects or cultivate their tastes passed almost for a crime. To know Greek and Latin books, to sing and dance, to make verses, to please with conversation,—these, in the opinion of the historian Sallust, were no better than seductive fascinations, such as formed the charm and fixed the price of the courtesan. Rarely therefore did any woman break through this mental bondage, without losing in character what she gained in intellect and attraction. In either case she was almost equally despised. The men’s indifference to the conduct of their spouses is a frightful feature in the social aspect of the times. Their language, it has been observed, had no word to express the sentiment of jealousy. The laws which gave them such facility of divorce show how little regard they had for the dearest interests of the married state; just as their common practice of adoption proves the weakness among them of the paternal sentiment.

Thus did the morose and haughty Roman stand isolated and alone in the centre of his family and of society around him; nor did he strive to exalt his moral nature by sympathy with the divinity above him. A century indeed had scarcely elapsed since Polybius had lauded the character of the Romans for the earnestness of its religious sentiment. Undoubtedly the moral sanctions of religion had at that time been strongly felt; the gods were actually regarded as the avengers of crime and the patrons of virtue. Even then however the principle of setting up the deity as a model for imitation, which alone is efficacious for elevating and purifying the soul, was unknown or disregarded. The coarse and sensuous pagans of Greece and Rome gloated over the wretched stories of lust and violence ascribed to the objects of their worship, and if they feared their power never dreamed of adoring their goodness or their justice. Their religious practices therefore were not moral actions, but merely adopted as charms to preserve them from the caprice or ill-nature of their divinities. From this debasing superstition even their strongest intellects could not wholly release themselves, while in the seventh century the vulgar at least were as devoutly addicted to it as at any former period. Indeed the general relaxation of positive belief in the minds of the educated class was accompanied, as is not unfrequently the case in the history of nations, by still more grovelling prostration on the part of the ignorant multitude.

THE CONSPIRACY

[63 B.C.]