by Will Durant
The remains of the domestic interiors suggest a life of solid comfort and varied art. Windows were exceptional, central heating was rare; bathrooms appear in the richer homes, and a few houses had an outdoor pool in a peristyled garden. Floors were of cement or stone, sometimes of mosaic. One frank moneymaker had the words Salve lucrum—“Hail, gain!” lettered in his floor; another inscribed his with Lucrum gandium—“Gain is joy.”21 Little has been found of the ancient furniture; nearly all was of wood, and perished; but a few tables, couches, chairs, and lamps of marble or bronze have survived. In the museums at Pompeii and Naples may be seen the miscellanea of domestic life: pens, inkstands, scales, kitchen utensils, toilet articles, and musical instruments.
The art recovered from Pompeii or near it suggests that not only the aristocrats of the villas, but the merchants of the city enjoyed the cultural accessories of life. A private library unearthed at Herculaneum had 1756 volumes or rolls. We must not repeat what we have said of the Boscoreale cups, or the rich vistas and graceful women painted upon the walls of Pompeian homes. Many dwellings had excellent sculptures, and the forum contained 150 statues. In the Temple of Jupiter a head of the god was found which Pheidias himself might have carved—strength and justice framed in the curls of abounding hair and beard. In the Temple of Apollo was a statue of Diana, equipped with a hole in the back of the head through which a hidden ministrant might utter oracles. In one Herculanean villa enough first-class bronzes were found to fill a famous room at the Naples Museum. Presumably the masterpieces in this collection—the Resting Mercury, the Narcissus or Dionysus, the Drunken Satyr, and the Dancing Faun—were of Greek origin or workmanship; they reveal the skillful technique, and the shameless joy in the healthy body, characteristic of Praxitelean art. One of them, however, a bravely realistic bust in bronze, shows the bald head and sharp but not unkindly face of L. Caecilius Iucundus, a Pompeian auctioneer whose accounts, inscribed upon 154 wax tablets, were found in his house at Pompeii. Supremely human in its mixture of coarseness and intelligence, wisdom and warts, this work of a contemporary—perhaps Italian—sculptor is a welcome foil to the unwrinkled gods and goddesses who surround it in the Naples Museum, and who confess by their smooth and placid features that they never lived.
III. MUNICIPAL LIFE
Life, private and public, individual and corporate, has never been lived more intensely than in ancient Italy. But the events of our own time are too vital and absorbing to let us spare interest for the details of municipal organization under the Caesars; the confusing diversities of constitution and the jealous gradations of franchise are no longer a part of that living past which is our matrix and our theme.
It was a basic feature of the Roman Empire that though divided into provinces it was organized into an assemblage of relatively self-governed city-states each owning an extensive hinterland. Patriotism meant love of one’s city rather than of the Empire. Normally the freemen of each community were content to exercise a purely local franchise; and those non-Romans who had won Roman citizenship rarely went to Rome to vote. As the example of Pompeii shows, the decay of the assemblies in the capital was not accompanied by a similar debasement in the cities of the Empire. Most Italian municipalities had a senate (curia)—and most Eastern cities had a council (boulé)—that formulated ordinances, and an assembly (comitia, ekklesia) that chose the magistrates. Each magistrate was expected to give his city a substantial sum (summa honoraria, from honos, office) for the privilege of serving it, and custom required him also to make incidental donations for public benefits or games. As no pay attached to office, the democracy—or aristocracy—of freemen issued almost everywhere in an oligarchy of wealth and power.
For two hundred years, from Augustus to Aurelius, the municipalities of Italy prospered. There was a majority of poor in them, of course; nature and privilege had seen to this; but never before or since, so far as history tells, have the rich done so much for the poor. Practically all the expenses of operating the city, of financing dramas, spectacles, and games, of building temples, theaters, stadiums, palaestras, libraries, basilicas, aqueducts, bridges; and baths, and adorning these with arches, porticoes, painting, and statuary, fell upon men of means; and in the first two centuries of the Empire these philanthropies were carried out with a competitive patriotism that in some cases bankrupted the families that contributed, or the cities that maintained, the benefactions. In time of famine it was usual for the wealthy to buy food and distribute it gratis among the poor; on occasion they furnished free oil or wine, or a public banquet, or a gift of money, to all citizens, sometimes to all inhabitants. Extant inscriptions abound in commemorations of such generosity. A millionaire gave Altinum, in Venetia, 1,600,000 sesterces for public baths; a rich lady built a temple and an amphitheater for Casinum; Desumius Tullus gave Tarquinii baths costing 5,000,000 sesterces; Cremona, destroyed by Vespasian’s troops, was rapidly rebuilt by the contributions of private citizens; and two physicians exhausted their fortunes in gifts to Naples. At populous Ostia, Lucilius Gemala invited all the inhabitants to dinner, paved a long and spacious avenue, repaired or restored seven temples, rebuilt the municipal baths, and donated 3,000,000 sesterces to the city treasury.22 It was the custom of many rich men to invite a considerable portion of the citizenry to a feast on the occasion of their birthday, their election to office, their daughter’s marriage, their son’s assumption of the toga virilis of manhood, or the dedication of a building which they had presented to the community. In return for such favors the city voted the giver an office, a statue, a panegyric, or an inscription. The poor were not overwhelmed with all these gifts; they accused the rich of deriving the means of philanthropy from exploitation, and they demanded less ornate buildings and cheaper corn, less statuary and more games.23
When we add to private munificence the donations of the emperors to the towns, the buildings erected, and the catastrophes mitigated, in them by imperial funds, and the public works and functions financed by the municipal treasury, we begin to feel the splendor and pride of the Italian cities under the Principate. Streets were paved, drained, policed, and adorned, free medical service was maintained for the poor, clean water was piped into private homes for a small fee, food was offered to the poor at a low price, public baths were often free through private subsidies, alimenta were paid to straitened families to help them rear their children, schools and libraries were built, plays were presented, concerts were given, games were arranged in reckless emulation of Rome. Civilization in the Italian towns was not so materialistic as in the capital. They rivaled one another in erecting amphitheaters, but also they raised noble temples, sometimes equaling Rome’s best,24 and made the months gay with picturesque religious festivals. They spent freely on works of art and provided halls for lecturers, poets, sophists, rhetors, philosophers, and musicians. They supplied their citizens with facilities for health, cleanliness, recreation, and a vigorous cultural life. From them, not from Rome, came most of the great Latin authors, and some of the finest sculptural masterpieces in our museums, like the Nike of Naples, the Eros of Centumcellae, the Zeus of Otricoli. They supported as large a population as their modern successors before our century, and gave it an unparalleled security from war. The first two hundred years of our era saw the zenith of the great peninsula.
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I The reader may follow this pilgrimage on the end maps of this book.
II Tusculum’s heir, Frascati, is still the resort of the Italian rich; there are the villas Aldobrandini. Torlonia, Mondragone, etc.3
CHAPTER XXII
Civilizing the West
I. ROME AND THE PROVINCES
THE blot on Italian prosperity—aside from a system of slavery common to ancient states—was its partial dependence upon provincial exploitation. Italy was free of taxation because the provinces had yielded so much in plunder and tribute; and to them could be traced some of the wealth that came to flower in the Italian towns. Rome, before Caesar, frankly classed the provinces as conqu
ered territory; all their inhabitants were Roman subjects, only a few were Roman citizens; all their land was the property of the Roman state and was held by the possessors on revocable grants from the imperial government. To lessen the likelihood of revolt Rome cut conquered regions into smaller states, forbade any province to have direct political dealings with another, and favored the business classes against the lower classes everywhere. Divide et impera was the secret of Roman rule.
Cicero perhaps exaggerated when, in excoriating Verres, he pictured the Mediterranean nations as desolate under the Republic: “All the provinces mourn, all free peoples cry out, all kingdoms protest against our cruelty and greed; from one ocean to another there is no place, however hidden or remote, that has not felt our lust and our iniquity.”1 The Principate dealt more liberally with the provinces, not from generosity so much as from husbandry. Taxation was made bearable, local religions, languages, and customs were respected, freedom of speech was allowed except for attacks against the sovereign power, and local laws were retained so far as they did not conflict with Roman profit and mastery. A wise flexibility created a useful diversity of rank and privilege among and within the subject states. Certain municipalities, like Athens and Rhodes, were “free cities”; they paid no tribute, were not subject to the provincial governor, and managed their domestic affairs without Roman interference so long as they maintained social order and peace. Some old kingdoms, like Numidia and Cappadocia, were allowed to keep their kings, but these were “clients” of Rome—dependent upon her protection and her policy and required to aid her with men and materials at her call. In the provinces the governor (proconsul or propraetor) combined in himself the power to legislate, to administer, and to judge; his power was limited only by the free cities, by a Roman citizen’s right of appeal to the emperor, and by the financial supervision exercised by the provincial quaestor or procurator. Such near-omnipotence invited abuse; and though the lengthening of the governor’s term under the Principate, his ample salary and allowance, and his financial responsibility to the emperor considerably lessened malfeasance, we may see from the letters of Pliny and some passages in Tacitus 2 that extortion and corruption were still no rarities at the end of the first century.
Taxation was a primary industry of the governor and his aides. Under the Empire a census was taken of every province for the purpose of assessing the tax on land and the tax on property—which included animals and slaves. To stimulate production a fixed tribute was substituted for the tithe. “Publicans” no longer gathered these taxes, but they collected port duties and managed some state forests, mines, and public works. The provinces were expected to contribute towards a golden crown for each new emperor, pay the cost of provincial administration, and in some cases send heavy shipments of grain to Rome. The old custom of liturgies was maintained in the East, and spread through the West, by which the local or the Roman government might “ask” rich men to provide Joans for war, ships for the navy, buildings for public purposes, food for famine victims, or choruses for festivals and plays.
Cicero, having joined the Ins, contended that the taxes paid by the provinces barely covered the cost of administration and defense; 3 “defense” included the suppression of revolts, and “administration” presumably embraced the perquisites that made so many Roman millionaires. We must reconcile ourselves to the probability that whatever power establishes security and order will send taxgatherers to collect something more than the cost. Despite all levies the provinces prospered under the Principate. The emperor and the Senate exercised a more careful supervision over provincial staffs and severely punished those who stole beyond their station. Ultimately the excess taken from the provinces flowed back to them in payment for their goods; and in the end the industries so supported made the provinces stronger than a precariously parasitic Italy. A government, said Plutarch, ought to give a people two boons above all: liberty and peace. “As to peace,” he wrote, “there is no need to occupy ourselves, for all war has ceased. As to liberty, we have that which the government [Rome] leaves us; and perhaps it would not be good if we had any more.”4
II. AFRICA
Corsica and Sardinia were classed together as a province, not as parts of Italy. Corsica was for the most part a mountainous wilderness, in which Romans hunted the natives with dogs to sell them as slaves.5 Sardinia provided slaves, silver, copper, iron, and grain; it had a thousand miles of road and one excellent harbor, Carales (Cagliari). Sicily had been reduced to an almost purely agricultural province as one of the “frumentary supports” of Rome; its arable soil was largely taken up with latifundia devoted to cattle raising, and manned by slaves so poorly clothed and fed that they periodically revolted and escaped to form robber bands. The island had in Augustus’ days some 750,000 souls. (In 1930 it had 3,972,000.) Of its sixty-five cities the most flourishing were Catania, Syracuse, Tauromenium (Taormina), Messana, Agrigentum, and Panormus (Palermo). Syracuse and Tauromenium had magnificent Greek theaters, still in use today. Despite Verres’ depredations Syracuse was so full of impressive architecture, famous sculptures, and historic sites that professional guides prospered on the tourist trade,6 and Cicero considered it the finest city in the world. Most well-to-do urban families had farms or orchards in the suburbs, and the whole Sicilian countryside was fragrant with fruit trees and vineyards, as it is today.
All that Sicily lost through Roman domination Africa gained. It gradually replaced Sicily as an unwilling granary for Rome; but in return Roman soldiers, colonists, businessmen, and engineers made it blossom into a hardly credible affluence. Doubtless the new conquerors had found certain regions thriving when they came; between the mountains that frowned upon the Mediterranean, and the Atlas range that kept out the Sahara, ran a semitropical valley sufficiently watered by the Bagradas (Medjerda) River, and two months of rain, to repay the patient husbandry that Mago had taught and Masinissa had enforced. But Rome improved and expanded what she found. Her engineers built dams across the rivers that flowed down from the southern hills; they gathered the surplus water in reservoirs in the rainy season, and poured it into irrigation canals in the hot months when the streams ran dry.7 Rome asked no heavier taxes than native chiefs had levied, but her legion and fortifications gave better protection against nomad raiders from the mountains; mile by mile new soil was won from desert or savagery for cultivation and settlement. The valley produced so much olive oil that when in our seventh century the Arabs came, they were amazed to find that they could ride from Tripoli to Tangier without ever moving from the shade of olive trees.8 Towns and cities multiplied, architecture exalted them, and literature found new voice. The ruins of Roman forums, temples, aqueducts, and theaters on now arid wastes reveal the reach and wealth of Roman Africa. Those fields decayed and became dead sand not through a change in climate but through a change in government—from a state that gave economic security, order, and discipline to one that allowed chaos and negligence to ruin the roads, reservoirs, and canals.
At the head of this restored prosperity was the resurrected city of Carthage. After the battle of Actium Augustus took up the frustrated project of Caius Gracchus and Caesar and sent to Carthage as colonists some of the soldiers whose fidelity and victories he wished to reward with land. The geographical advantages of the site, the perfect harbor, the fertile Bagradaa delta, the excellent roads opened or reopened by Roman engineers, soon enabled Carthage to recapture from Utica the export and import trade of the region; within a century of its refounding it had become the largest city in the western provinces. Rich merchants and landowners built mansions on the historic Byrsa, or villas in the flowering suburbs, while peasants driven from the soil by the competition of latifundia joined prolétaires and slaves in slums whose fetid poverty would welcome the egalitarian gospel of Christianity. Houses rose to six or seven stories, public buildings gleamed with marble, and statuary of good Greek style abounded in the streets and squares. Temples were built again to the old Carthaginian gods, and Melkart enjoyed till
our second century the sacrifice of living children.9 The people rivaled the Romans in their passion for luxuries, cosmetics, jewelry, dyed hair, chariot races, and gladiatorial games. Among the sights of the city were the great public baths presented by Marcus Aurelius. There were lecture halls, schools of rhetoric, philosophy, medicine, and law; Carthage ranked only after Athens and Alexandria as a university town. Here Apuleius and Tertullian came to study everything, and Saint Augustine marveled at the pranks and immorality of the students, whose favorite philanthropy was to break into a lecture room and dismiss both the professor and his class.10
Carthage was the capital of the province called “Africa,” now eastern Tunisia. South of it commerce bedecked the eastern coast with cities whose ancient wealth was reviving after twelve centuries when war struck them in our time: Hadrumetum (Sousse), Leptis Minor, Thapsus, and Tacapae (Gabes). Farther east on the Mediterranean lay a district named Tripolis from its federation of three cities: Oea (Tripoli), founded by the Phoenicians in 900 B.C.., Sabrata, and Leptis Magna (Lebda). In this last city the Emperor Septimius Severus was born (A.D. 146); he rewarded it with a basilica and municipal bath whose ruins astonish the traveler or warrior today. Paved roads busy with camel caravans connected these ports with the towns of the interior: Sufetula, now a tiny village with the remains of a great Roman temple; Thysdrus (El Djem), which had an amphitheater seating 60,000; and Thugga (Dougga), whose ruined theater attests, by its graceful Corinthian columns, the wealth and taste of its citizens.
