33. IV. VII. The Sulpician Laws.
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34. IV. VII. Legislation of Sulla.
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35. IV. IX. Government of Cinna.
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36. IV. VIII. Orders Issued from Ephesus for A General Massacre.
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37. IV. VIII. Thrace and Macedonia Occupied by the Pontic Armies.
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38. IV. VI. Roman Intervention.
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39. III. XII. Roman Wealth.
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40. IV. V. Taurisci.
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41. III. VI. Pressure of the War.
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42. II. VIII. Silver Standard of Value.
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43. III. VI. Pressure of the War.
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44. III. I. Comparison between Carthage and Rome.
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45. IV. X. Proscription-Lists.
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46. III. III. Autonomy, III. VII. the State of Culture in Spain, III. XII. Coins and Moneys.
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47. III. XII. Coins and Moneys.
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48. III. XIII. Increase of Amusements.
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49. In the house, which Sulla inhabited when a young man, he paid for the ground-floor a rent of 3000 sesterces, and the tenant of the upper story a rent of 2000 sesterces (Plutarch, Sull. 1); which, capitalized at two-thirds of the usual interest on capital, yields nearly the above amount. This was a cheap dwelling. That a rent of 6000 sesterces (60 pounds) in the capital is called a high one in the case of the year 629 (Vell. ii. 10) must have been due to special circumstances.
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50. III. I. Comparison between Carthage and Rome.
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51. IV. II. Tribunate of Gracchus.
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52. "If we could, citizens" - he said in his speech - "we should indeed all keep clear of this burden. But, as nature has so arranged it that we cannot either live comfortably with wives or live at all without them, it is proper to have regard rather to the permanent weal than to our own brief comfort."
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Chapter XII
Nationality, Religion, and Education
1. IV. XI. Money-Dealing and Commerce.
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2. IV. X. The Roman Municipal System.
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3. IV. I. The Subjects.
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4. IV. I. The Callaeci Conquered.
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5. IV. I. The New Organization of Spain.
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6. IV. VII. Second Year of the War.
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7. The statement that no "Greek games" were exhibited in Rome before 608 (Tac. Ann. xiv. 21) is not accurate: Greek artists (technitai) and athletes appeared as early as 568 (Liv. xxxix. 22), and Greek flute-players, tragedians, and pugilists in 587 (Pol. xxx, 13).
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8. III. XIII. Irreligious Spirit.
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9. A delightful specimen may be found in Cicero de Officiis, iii. 12, 13.
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10. IV. VI. Collision between the Senate and Equites in the Administration of the Provinces; IV. IX. Siege of Praeneste.
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11. In Varro's satire, "The Aborigines", he sarcastically set forth how the primitive men had not been content with the God who alone is recognized by thought, but had longed after puppets and effigies.
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12. III. XI. Interference of The Community in War and Administration.
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13. IV. VI. Political Projects of Marius.
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14. IV. X. Co-optation Restored in the Priestly Colleges.
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15. IV. VI. The Equestrian Party.
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16. III. XIV. Cato's Encyclopedia.
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17. Cicero says that he treated his learned slave Dionysius more respectfully than Scipio treated Panaetius, and in the same sense it is said in Lucilius:
Paenula, si quaeris, canteriu', servu', segestre Utilior mihi, quam sapiens.
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18. IV. XII. Panaetius.
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Chapter XIII
Literature and Art
1. Thus in the Paulus, an original piece, the following line occurred, probably in the description of the pass of Pythium (III. X. Perseus Is Driven Back to Pydna):
Qua vix caprigeno generi gradilis gressio est.
And in another piece the hearers are expected to understand the following description
Quadrupes tardigrada agrestis humilis aspera, Capite brevi, cervice anguina, aspectu truci, Eviscerata inanima cum animali sono.
To which they naturally reply
Ita saeptuosa dictione abs te datur, Quod conjectura sapiens aegre contuit; Non intellegimus, nisi si aperte dixeris.
Then follows the confession that the tortoise is referred to. Such enigmas, moreover, were not wanting even among the Attic tragedians, who on that account were often and sharply taken to task by the Middle Comedy.
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2. Perhaps the only exception is in the Andria (iv. 5) the answer to the question how matters go:
"Sic Ut quimus", aiunt, "quando ut volumus non licet"
in allusion to the line of Caecilius, which is, indeed, also imitated from a Greek proverb:
Vivas ut possis, quando non quis ut velis.
The comedy is the oldest of Terence's, and was exhibited by the theatrical authorities on the recommendation of Caecilius. The gentle expression of gratitude is characteristic.
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3. A counterpart to the hind chased by dogs and with tears calling on a young man for help, which Terence ridicules (Phorm. prol. 4), may be recognized in the far from ingenious Plautine allegory of the goat and the ape (Merc, ii. 1). Such excrescences are ultimately traceable to the rhetoric of Euripides (e. g. Eurip. Hec. 90).
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4. Micio in the Adelphi (i. i) praises his good fortune in life, more particularly because he has never had a wife, "which those (the Greeks) reckon a piece of good fortune".
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5. In the prologue of the Heauton Timorumenos he puts the objection into the mouth of his censors:
Repente ad studium hunc se applicasse musicum Amicum ingenio fretum, haud natura sua.
And in the later prologue (594) to the Adelphi he says
Nam quod isti dicunt malevoli, homines nobiles Eum adiutare, adsidueque una scribere; Quod illi maledictum vehemens esse existimant Eam laudem hic ducit maximam, quum illis placet Qui vobis universis et populo placent; Quorum opera in bello, in otio, in negotio, Suo quisque tempore usus est sine superbia.
As early as the time of Cicero it was the general supposition that Laelius and Scipio Aemilianus were here meant: the scenes were designated which were alleged to proceed from them; stories were told of the journeys of the poor poet with his genteel patrons to their estates near Rome; and it was reckoned unpardonable that they should have done nothing at all for the improvement of his financial circumstances. But the power which creates legend is, as is well known, nowhere more potent than in the history of literature. It is clear, and even judicious Roman critics acknowledged, that these lines could not possibly apply to Scipio who was then twenty-five years of age, and to his friend Laelius who was not much older. Others with at least more judgment thought of the poets of quality Quintus Labeo (consul in 571) and Marcus Popillius (consul in 581), and of the learned patron of art and mathematician, Lucius Sulpicius Gallus (consul in 588); but this too is evidently mere conjecture. That Terence was in close relations with the Scipionic house cannot, however, be doubted: it is a significant fact, that the first exhibition of the Adelphiand the second of the Hecyra took place at the funeral games of Lucius Paullus, which were provided by his sons Scip
io and Fabius.
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6. IV. XI. Token-Money.
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7. III. XIV. National Comedy.
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8. External circumstances also, it may be presumed, co-operated in bringing about this change. After all the Italian communities had obtained the Roman franchise in consequence of the Social war, it was no longer allowable to transfer the scene of a comedy to any such community, and the poet had either to keep to general ground or to choose places that had fallen into ruin or were situated abroad. Certainly this circumstance, which was taken into account even in the production of the older comedies, exercised an unfavourable effect on the national comedy.
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9. I. XV. Masks.
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10. With these names there has been associated from ancient times a series of errors. The utter mistake of Greek reporters, that these farces were played at Rome in the Oscan language, is now with justice universally rejected; but it is, on a closer consideration, little short of impossible to bring these pieces, which are laid in the midst of Latin town and country life, into relation with the national Oscan character at all. The appellation of "Atellan play" is to be explained in another way. The Latin farce with its fixed characters and standing jests needed a permanent scenery: the fool-world everywhere seeks for itself a local habitation. Of course under the Roman stage-police none of the Roman communities, or of the Latin communities allied with Rome, could be taken for this purpose, although it was allowable to transfer the togatae to these. But Atella, which, although destroyed de jure along with Capua in 543 (III. VI. Capua Capitulates, III. VI. In Italy), continued practically to subsist as a village inhabited by Roman farmers, was adapted in every respect for the purpose. This conjecture is changed into certainty by our observing that several of these farces are laid in other communities within the domain of the Latin tongue, which existed no longer at all, or no longer at any rate in the eye of the law-such as the Campani of Pomponius and perhaps also his Adelphi and his Quinquatria in Capua, and the Milites Pometinenses of Novius in Suessa Pometia - while no existing community was subjected to similar maltreatment. The real home of these pieces was therefore Latium, their poetical stage was the Latinized Oscan land; with the Oscan nation they have no connection. The statement that a piece of Naevius (d. after 550) was for want of proper actors performed by "Atellan players" and was therefore called personata (Festus, s. v.), proves nothing against this view: the appellation "Atellan players" comes to stand here proleptically, and we might even conjecture from this passage that they were formerly termed "masked players" (personati). An explanation quite similar may be given of the "lays of Fescennium", which likewise belong to the burlesque poetry of the Romans and were localized in the South Etruscan village of Fescennium; it is not necessary on that account to class them with Etruscan poetry any more than the Atellanae with Oscan. That Fescennium was in historical times not a town but a village, cannot certainly be directly proved, but is in the highest degree probable from the way in which authors mention the place and from the silence of inscriptions.
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11. The close and original connection, which Livy in particular represents as subsisting between the Atellan farce and the Saturawith the drama thence developed, is not at all tenable. The difference between the histrio and the Atellan player was just about as great as is at present the difference between a professional actor and a man who goes to a masked ball; between the dramatic piece, which down to Terence's time had no masks, and the Atellan, which was essentially based on the character-mask, there subsisted an original distinction in no way to be effaced. The drama arose out of the flute-piece, which at first without any recitation was confined merely to song and dance, then acquired a text (Satura), and lastly obtained through Andronicus a libretto borrowed from the Greek stage, in which the old flute-lays occupied nearly the place of the Greek chorus. This course of development nowhere in its earlier stages comes into contact with the farce, which was performed by amateurs.
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12. In the time of the empire the Atellana was represented by professional actors (Friedlander in Becker's Handbuch. vi. 549). The time at which these began to engage in it is not reported, but it can hardly have been other than the time at which the Atellan was admitted among the regular stage-plays, i. e. the epoch before Cicero (Cic. ad Fam. ix. 16). This view is not inconsistent with the circumstance that still in Livy's time (vii. 2) the Atellan players retained their honorary rights as contrasted with other actors; for the statement that professional actors began to take part in performing the Atellana for pay does not imply that the Atellana was no longer performed, in the country towns for instance, by unpaid amateurs, and the privilege therefore still remained applicable.
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13. It deserves attention that the Greek farce was not only especially at home in Lower Italy, but that several of its pieces (e. g. among those of Sopater, the "Lentile-Porridge", the "Wooers of Bacchis", the "Valet of Mystakos", the "Bookworms", the "Physiologist") strikingly remind us of the Atellanae. This composition of farces must have reached down to the time at which the Greeks in and around Neapolis formed a circle enclosed within the Latin-speaking Campania; for one of these writers of farces, Blaesus of Capreae, bears even a Roman name and wrote a farce "Saturnus."
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14. According to Eusebius, Pomponius flourished about 664; Velleius calls him a contemporary of Lucius Crassus (614-663) and Marcus Antonius (611-667). The former statement is probably about a generation too late; the reckoning by victoriati (p. 182) which was discontinued about 650 still occurs in his Pictores, and about the end of this period we already meet the mimes which displaced the Atellanae from the stage.
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15. It was probably merry enough in this form. In the Phoenissae of Novius, for instance, there was the line: Sume arma, iam te occidam clava scirpea, Just as Menander's Pseudeirakleis makes his appearance.
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16. Hitherto the person providing the play had been obliged to fit up the stage and scenic apparatus out of the round sum assigned to him or at his own expense, and probably much money would not often be expended on these. But in 580 the censors made the erection of the stage for the games of the praetors and aediles a matter of special contract (Liv. xli. 27); the circumstance that the stage-apparatus was now no longer erected merely for a single performance must have led to a perceptible improvement of it.
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17. The attention given to the acoustic arrangements of the Greeks may be inferred from Vitruv. v. 5, 8. Ritschl (Parerg. i. 227, xx.) has discussed the question of the seats; but it is probable (according to Plautus, Capt. prol. 11) that those only who were not capite censi had a claim to a seat. It is probable, moreover, that the words of Horace that "captive Greece led captive her conqueror" primarily refer to these epoch-making theatrical games of Mummius (Tac. Ann. xiv. 21).
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18. The scenery of Pulcher must have been regularly painted, since the birds are said to have attempted to perch on the tiles (Plin. H. N. xxxv. 4, 23; Val. Max. ii. 4, 6). Hitherto the machinery for thunder had consisted in the shaking of nails and stones in a copper kettle; Pulcher first produced a better thunder by rolling stones, which was thenceforth named "Claudian thunder" (Festus, v. Claudiana, p. 57).
The history of Rome Page 64
