Epicurean Rome (30 B.C. – 96 A.D.)

The People

Now we enter these houses, temples, theaters, and baths to see how these Romans lived; we shall find them more interesting than their art. We must remember at the outset that until the time of Nero they were Roman only geographically. The conditions that Augustus had been unable to check — celibacy, childlessness, abortion, infanticide among the old stock, and free breeding among the new — had changed the racial character, the moral fiber, and even the facial appearance of the Roman people.

Once the Romans, driven by sexual impulse, had bred rapidly, and, troubled about the care of their graves after death, had been encouraged to reproduction; now the upper and middle classes had learned that sexual relations could be separated from parenthood, and had begun to doubt the afterlife. Once the bringing and rearing of children had been a moral and honorable obligation to the state, guaranteed by public opinion; now the demand for offspring seemed foolish in a city whose population had become oppressively large. On the contrary, wealthy bachelors and childless husbands were still courted by legacy hunters eager for inheritance. Juvenal says: Nothing endears you to your friends so much as a barren wife. One of Petronius’s characters says: Crotona has only two classes of inhabitants: flatterers and the flattered, and the only crime in that city is to bear children, for they would inherit your estate. It is like a battlefield in peacetime: nothing but corpses and the crows that pick them up. Seneca consoles a mother who has just lost a child by reminding her how popular she has now become, for among us childlessness gives more strength than it takes away. The Gracchi came from a family of twelve children; perhaps in Nero’s age, among the patrician or equestrian families of Rome, not five could be found with as many offspring. Marriage, once an economic union for life between husband and wife, had now become, among tens of thousands of Romans, a brief episode without spiritual significance, a loose contract for mutual bodily comfort or political help. To evade the law forbidding inheritance by unmarried women, some women chose eunuchs as husbands who could not beget children for them. Others contracted sham marriages with poor men on condition that the wife should not become pregnant and might take as many lovers as she pleased. Contraception was practiced both mechanically and chemically. If these means failed, there were many ways of procuring abortion. Philosophers and the law condemned the practice, but large families resorted to it. Juvenal says: Poor women endure the hardships of childbirth and all the labors of child-rearing … but how often does a gilded bed shelter a pregnant woman? Abortionists are skilled in their art, and their drugs are so potent! Yet he tells the husband: Rejoice and give the drug to your wife … for if the child is born alive you will see yourself the father of an Ethiopian. In such an enlightened society infanticide was rarely practiced.

The childlessness of the wealthy classes was so balanced by the prolific breeding of the poor that the population of Rome continued to grow. Bloch estimated the population of Rome in the early Empire at 800,000, Gibbon at 1,200,000, and Marquardt at 1,600,000. Bloch calculated the population of the Empire at 54,000,000 and Gibbon at 120,000,000. The number of individuals in the aristocratic class was as large as before, but it had changed in lineage. There was no longer mention of the Aemilii, Claudii, Fabii, or Valerii. Of the proud families that even in Caesar’s time had strutted through Rome with such arrogance, only the Cornelii remained. Some had disappeared through war or political execution; others through family limitation, hereditary degeneration, or poverty that had reduced them to the level of the plebeian mass. Their places had been taken by Roman merchants, municipal officials, and provincial nobles. In A.D. 56 one senator announced: Most of the knights and many of the senators are descendants of slaves. After a generation or two the new nobles adopted the ways of their predecessors, reduced the number of their children, increased their luxury, and surrendered to the flood pouring in from the East.

Education

We have little news of Roman childhood, but from Roman art and tombstones it appears that children after birth were not always wisely loved, but their parents loved them excessively. Juvenal tempers his wrath a little to compose an affectionate chapter on the good examples and models we should set before our children, the ugly sights and sounds we should keep from them, and the respect we should show them even in excessive affection. Favorinus, in a discourse that anticipates Rousseau, begs mothers to nurse their own children. Seneca and Plutarch said the same, though apparently with little effect. The employment of wet nurses was the general rule in all families that could afford it, and it seems to have had no conspicuously unhappy results.

Elementary education was given by the nurse, who was usually Greek. Children’s stories were told, beginning with: Once upon a time there was a king and a queen …. Primary schooling was still left to the home tutor. The wealthy often hired teachers for their children, but Quintilian, like the American Emerson, opposed this practice on the ground that it deprived the child of formative friendships and stimulating rivalries. Ordinarily boys and girls of the free classes went at the age of seven, accompanied by a pedagogue, to elementary school and returned under his care to guard their morals and health. Such schools existed throughout the Empire and even in small towns. The wall inscriptions of Pompeii testify to widespread literacy, and it is probable that education in the Mediterranean world at that time was as general as before or after. Both the pedagogue and the teacher were usually Greek, slave or ex-slave. In Horace’s youth, in his native town, each pupil usually paid eighty asses (48 cents) a month. Three hundred and fifty years later Diocletian fixed the maximum fee for a teacher at fifty denarii ($20) a month per pupil; from this we can judge the rise in teachers’ pay and the fall of the as.

At thirteen the clever pupil, boy or girl, received a certificate from the elementary school and passed to the secondary school; in A.D. 130 there were twenty secondary schools in Rome. Here the students studied a little more grammar and Greek, Latin and Greek literature, music, astronomy, history, mythology, and philosophy, and the basis of instruction was the explanation and interpretation of the old poets. To this extent the girls apparently studied the same subjects as the boys, but they often received additional instruction in music and dancing. Since the secondary teachers were often freed Greeks, they naturally emphasized Greek literature and history. Roman culture took on a Greek coloring until in the late second century nearly all higher instruction was given in Greek, and Latin literature was absorbed into the Hellenistic culture of the age.

What in Rome at that time corresponded to college and university education was found in the schools and lecture halls of the rhetors. The Empire shone with the brilliance of rhetors who defended clients in the courts, drew up briefs for them, lectured in public halls, taught their art to pupils, or did all four at once. Many of them traveled from city to city, lecturing on literature or philosophy or politics, and practically demonstrating how to proceed with rhetorical skill on any subject. Pliny the Younger describes Isaeus the Greek, who was then sixty-three years old:

He proposes several subjects for discussion, allows the audience to choose which one they prefer and even sometimes to determine which side he shall take; then he rises, puts on his cloak, and begins. … He introduces the subject with perfect proportion; his expression is clear, his argument shrewd, his logic strong, and his eloquence superb.

Such men might open a school, employ assistants, and gather a large number of students. Pupils entered these schools at sixteen and paid up to 2,000 sesterces for a course. The chief subjects were rhetoric, geometry, astronomy, and philosophy — and the last included many topics now called science. These constituted the liberal studies — that is, studies intended for a free gentleman who presumably had no obligation to perform manual labor. As was usual in all ages, Petronius complained that the education of the young made them unfit to deal with the problems of maturity: The chief culprit in the matter of the young men’s extreme foolishness is the schools, for in these schools they hear and see nothing about the daily affairs of life. We can only say that those schools offered to the serious and diligent student that clarity and rapidity of thought that distinguished the legal profession in all periods, and that amoral power of eloquence that distinguished the orators of Rome. Apparently no diplomas were granted in these schools. The student could stay as long as he wished and study as many subjects as he chose. Aulus Gellius continued his studies in the school until he was twenty-five. Women also attended these schools, and some of them went after marriage. Those who sought further education followed philosophy to Athens — its source — medicine to Alexandria, and the refinements of rhetoric to Rhodes. Cicero paid $400 a year for his son’s board and tuition at the University of Athens.

Until the time of Vespasian the schools of rhetoric had become so numerous and influential that the shrewd emperor decided to bring the more important schools in the capital under government control by paying salaries to the leading professors — the maximum salary for a professor was 100,000 sesterces ($10,000) a year. We do not know how many professors or cities Vespasian extended this subsidy to. There is information about private endowments for higher education, as when Pliny the Younger endowed a school at Comum. Trajan arranged for the education of 5,000 boys who had more brains than money. By the time Hadrian came to the throne, government payment for secondary schools had become common in many cities of the Empire, and retirement pensions had been provided for teachers. Hadrian and Antoninus exempted first-rank professors in every city from taxes and other municipal burdens. While superstition was increasing, moral principles were declining, and literature was decaying, education reached its highest level.

Relations Between Men and Women

The life of the young, morally, was strictly supervised if they were girls, and mildly supervised if they were boys. The Romans, like the Greeks, readily forgave men’s recourse to prostitutes. The profession was recognized and limited by law. Brothels were required by law to be outside the city walls and could receive customers only at night; prostitutes had to register their names with the aediles and were obliged to wear a short tunic instead of the long stola. Some women registered their names as prostitutes to escape the legal penalty for adultery. The fees of prostitutes were so arranged that debauchery was within everyone’s reach; everyone knows the story of the “half-as lady.” But by this time the number of educated courtesans, who tried to attract customers by reciting poetry, singing, knowing music and dancing, and conversation mixed with understanding and knowledge, was increasing. To find these easily accessible ladies one did not need to leave the city walls. Ovid assures his readers that one can meet them “as numerous as the stars in the sky” under the porticoes, in the circus, and in the theater. And Juvenal found them at the entrances of temples and especially the temple of Isis, a goddess not strict with lovers. Christian authors claimed that prostitution was practiced inside the cella and among the altars of Roman temples.

Homosexuality was also present. Pederasty, which had been forbidden by law and disapproved by Roman custom, flourished with the special abundance of the East. Horace sings that he is “pierced by the arrows of love” — and whose arrows? — “the love of Lyciscus, who in softness surpasses any woman;” and Horace finds relief from this love only by falling “into another flame for a beautiful maiden or a graceful youth.” The choicest themes of Martial relate to sodomy. One of Juvenal’s satires, which cannot be printed, expresses a woman’s complaint about this unnatural competition. The worthless and obscene erotic poem known as the Priapeia circulated freely among dissolute youths and immature elders.

Marriage bravely competed with these rival escapes and, with the help of anxious fathers and mothers and marriage brokers, arranged that almost every girl should have at least a temporary husband. Girls over nineteen who had not yet married were considered “overripe,” but there were not many such girls. The two betrothed saw little of each other, there was no period of courtship, and there was not even a word in the Latin language to express it; Seneca complained that the buyer of anything tests it before buying, except the bridegroom the bride. Attachment before marriage was not usual, love poems were addressed either to married women or to women with whom the poet never thought of marriage. Taking mistresses, like medieval and modern France, with similar conditions, began after marriage. The elder Seneca assumed that adultery was very common among married Roman women, and his philosopher son thought that a married woman who got along with two lovers was a model of fidelity. Ovid, with a crooked eye, sings: Chaste women are only those who have not been asked, and a man who is angry at his wife’s love affairs is a mere rustic. These may have been literary exaggerations. The simple epitaph that Quintus Vespillo wrote for his wife is more reassuring: A marriage without divorce rarely lasts until death, but our married life lasted forty-one years with happiness. Juvenal mentions a woman who married eight times in five years. Some women, who married more for money or position, if they entrusted their dowry to their husband and their body to their lover, considered their duty done. A wife in one of Juvenal’s poems explains to her husband who has suddenly arrived: Did we not agree that each of us could do whatever we pleased? Freedom for women was as complete then as now, and the only difference was the lack of the right for women to participate in voting and ineffective laws. The law had made women slaves, but custom had made them free.

In many cases, as in our time, the freedom of women meant an industrial movement. Some women worked in workshops or factories and especially in textiles, some became lawyers or doctors; some gained political power; women governors reviewed troops in the provinces and addressed them. Vestal Virgins secured political offices for their friends, and the women of Pompeii wrote on the walls the names of the politicians they most wanted. Cato had warned Rome that if women achieved equality with men they would turn it into superiority over men; and conservatives lamented the obvious fulfillment of this warning and stared in amazement. Juvenal was horrified to see women engaged in poetry, athletics, gladiatorship, and acting. Martial described women as wild animals, even lions, busy in the arena. Statius speaks of women who have lost their lives in such combats. Ladies, carried in litters, paraded the streets “exposing themselves to view from every side.” In the porticoes, public gardens, parks, and temple precincts they conversed with men; they went with men to private or public banquets and to the amphitheater, which, according to Ovid, “offered something delightful to see in their bare shoulders.” Roman society was a gay, colorful, and mixed society that would have terrified the Greeks of Pericles’ time if they could have imagined it. In spring the well-dressed women filled boats, shores, and villas at Baiae and other resort places with their laughter and proud beauty, amorous audacities, and political intrigues. Old men, out of regret, called them wicked.

Frivolous or loose women were then, as now, a small minority. Ladies who devoted themselves to the arts or religion or literature were as numerous as in this age, though they were not always conspicuous. The poems of Sulpicia were ranked with those of Tibullus. These poems were very erotic, but since their addressee was the poetess’s husband, they were considered almost sinless. Theophila, a friend of Martial, was a philosopher really expert in both Stoic and Epicurean philosophy. Some women occupied themselves with philanthropic and social work, donated temples, theaters, and porticoes to their cities, and helped guilds as patrons. An inscription at Lanuvium mentions a “congregation of women.” Rome had a “convent of mothers”; and perhaps Italy had a national union of women’s clubs. At any rate, after reading Martial and Juvenal we are astonished to find so many good women in Rome: Octavia, who remained faithful to Mark Antony despite all his infidelities and reared his foreign children; Antonia, Octavia’s beloved daughter, the chaste widow of Drusus and perfect mother of Germanicus; Mallonia, who openly rebuked Tiberius for his wickedness and then killed herself; Ariapaita, who when Claudius ordered her husband Caecina Paetus to death drove a dagger into her own breast and in her last moments gave the weapon to her husband; Paulina, Seneca’s wife, who tried to die with her husband; Polita, who when Nero executed her husband put herself on a death fast, and when the same sentence was pronounced on her father joined her father by suicide; Epicharis, that freedwoman who endured every torture but would not reveal the Pisonian conspiracy; and all those countless women who hid and protected their husbands from compulsory military service, or accompanied them into exile, or, like Fannia, the wife of Helvidius, defended their husbands with great dangers and at great cost. These alone tip the scale toward chaste women against all the harlots of Martial’s themes and the stings of Juvenal.

Behind such heroic women were the vast numbers of married women whose names we have never heard and whose wifely fidelity and maternal sacrifices upheld the entire structure of Roman life. The old Roman virtues — chastity, dignity, simplicity, mutual attachment of parents and children, a keen sense of responsibility, and avoidance of excess or ostentation — still survived in Roman homes and households. The healthy and well-bred families described in Pliny’s letters did not suddenly appear in the time of Nerva and Trajan; they had existed silently in the age of the despots, had endured the spying of the emperors, and had survived the helplessness of the unprotected and the vulgarity of the women of the propertied classes. In the epitaphs that a husband wrote for his wife, or a wife for her husband, or parents for their child, we catch a faint gleam of those homes and households. On one grave is written: Here lie the bones of Urbilla, wife of Primus. She was dearer to me than life. Twenty-three years old, beloved by all, a chatterbox. Farewell, my comfort! And on another: To my dear wife with whom I spent eighteen years in happiness, I have sworn for love’s sake that I will take no other wife. We can imagine these women in their homes: spinning wool, scolding and training their children, guiding the servants, spending carefully the little money they had, and sharing with their husbands the hereditary worship of the household gods. Although Rome lacked moral principles, the country that raised the family to an unprecedented height in the ancient world was Rome, not Greece.

Dress

If we may judge from several hundred statues, Roman men of Nero’s time were fatter and softer in body and cheeks than the men of the early Republic. At first their mastery of the world had made them naturally hard, resistant, and terrifying rather than lovable; but food, wine, and disease had given many of them a form that would have made men like Scipio cry out if they had seen it. They still shaved their beards, or more usually had a barber shave them. The first day a youth shaved his beard was a holiday for him; often he piously dedicated his virgin down to a god. The common people of Rome continued the Republican tradition and kept their hair cut short almost to shaving, but a growing number of dandies ordered their hair to be artificially curled. Mark Antony and Domitian also appear in this guise. Many men wore wigs, and some had the shape of the hair painted on their scalps. All classes, both in homes and outside, now wore a simple tunic or shirt. The toga was worn only on formal occasions. Clients wore it at morning receptions and patricians in the Senate or when watching the gladiatorial sports. Caesar wore a purple cloak as a sign of his rank, and many nobles imitated him; but soon the purple garment became the special property of the emperors. No one wore those troublesome trousers, there were no buttons that would not fasten, and no one wore long stockings that would fall down. But in the second century men gradually began to cover the lower leg with puttees. Footwear began with heel-less sandals or wooden clogs like leather or cork, with a projection between the big toe and the fourth toe, and ended with high-heeled boots of all leather or leather and cloth that were usually worn with the tunic as complete dress.

Roman women of the early Empire, as seen on frescoes, in statues, and on coins, closely resembled American women at the beginning of the twentieth century — except that they were all brunettes, had rather slender figures, and their dress gave their bearing and manners a captivating grace. Those women knew the value of sun, exercise, and fresh air; some lifted weights, some swam with effort, and some followed a special diet; others bound their breasts with bands. Women usually combed their hair back and made a bun at the back of the neck. Most tied it in a net and knotted it with a ribbon or band above the head. Later fashions demanded more and longer hair arrangements from women; they arranged their hair high and held it with wire and adorned it with blond wigs bought from German girls and imported to Rome. A woman who was particular about etiquette might keep several maids and slaves busy for hours arranging and grooming her nails and styling her hair.

Make-up equipment was as varied as today. Juvenal describes “beautification” as one of the most important arts of his time; physicians, queens, and poets wrote many volumes on the subject. The bedroom of a Roman lady was a factory of toilet articles — tweezers, scissors, razors, files, pumice stones, combs, hairbrushes, hairnets, wigs, perfume jars and bottles, creams, oils, pastes, pumice, and soap. Various depilatory agents were used for hair removal, and various fragrant oils for curling and fixing the hair. Many women put a mask of paste and ass’s milk on their faces at night; Poppaea had made this paste, and finding it useful for restoring an unpleasant skin color, she took asses with her on all her travels; sometimes she had a whole herd of asses and bathed in ass’s milk. They painted their faces with white or red, blackened or colored their eyelashes and eyebrows, and sometimes strengthened the veins of the temples with fine blue lines. Juvenal complained that a wealthy woman “smells of the stench of Poppaea’s oil that clings to the lips of her unfortunate husband” who never sees his wife’s face. Ovid considered these arts deceptive and advised ladies to hide them from their lovers — all except combing the hair, which intoxicated him.

By this time delicate undergarments had been added to the simple feminine dresses of the pre-Hannibalic period. They threw a shawl over the shoulders, and a veil gave a mysterious charm to the face. In winter soft furs caressed the limbs of the wealthy. Silk had become so common that men as well as women wore it. Silk and linen fabrics were made in expensive colors. The Romans often paid a thousand denarii for five ounces of Tyrian purple of two colors. Dresses, curtains, carpets, and coverlets were all decorated with gold and silver embroidery. Women’s shoes were made of soft leather or cloth, and sometimes finely open-worked; the edges might be trimmed with gold and the shoes themselves studded with jewels. High heels often compensated for nature’s defects.

Jewelry formed a major part of women’s equipment. Rings and earrings, necklaces, armbands, bracelets, breast chains, and brooches were necessities of life. Lollia Paulina once wore a dress entirely of emeralds and pearls and had receipts with her showing that they were worth 40,000,000 sesterces. Pliny names over a hundred kinds of precious stones that were common in Rome. Clever imitations of these jewels were a busy industry. Roman “emeralds” of glass were better than modern artificial emeralds and jewelers sold them as genuine until the nineteenth century. Men too, like women, were fond of large and showy stones; a senator had an opal on his ring as large as a hazelnut; when Antony heard of it he ordered him to be summoned for military service. He fled, carrying 2,000,000 sesterces on his finger. Doubtless jewelry was then, as on many other occasions, a barrier against monetary inflation or revolution. At this time silverware, except among the lower classes, was common among all. Tiberius and later emperors issued edicts against luxury, but these edicts could not be enforced and were soon forgotten. Tiberius yielded and confessed that the extravagance of patricians and nouveaux riches gave work to the artisans of Rome and the East, and gave an opportunity for the taxes of the provinces to return to the capital. Tiberius said: Without luxury, how could Rome or the provinces live?

A Day in the Life of Rome

The luxury of the house was far greater than the luxury of dress. The marble and mosaic floors of the rooms, the colored marble columns, alabaster, and onyx; the walls with brilliant paintings or jewel-inlaid; ceilings sometimes gilded or covered with glass; tables of citrus wood with ivory legs; benches adorned with tortoiseshell, ivory, silver, or gold; Alexandrian gold-woven cloths or Babylonian tablecloths for which ordinary millionaires paid 800,000 and Nero 4,000,000 sesterces; bronze beds with mosquito nets; bronze, marble, or glass candelabra; statues and pictures and art objects; Corinthian bronze vases or rock-crystal glasses — all these were part of the decorations that filled the aristocratic houses of Nero’s age.

In such a house the master lived as if he were residing in a museum. Many slaves had to be bought to preserve that wealth and other slaves to watch the first group of slaves. In some houses there were 400 slaves engaged in personal service, supervision, or industry. The master’s life, even in the privacy of his rooms, passed in public among his slaves.

At mealtime two slaves attended, at undressing two slaves removed his boots, and during rest a guard stood at every door — this is not the promised paradise. As if to make certain of the misery of wealth, the master began the day by receiving his dependents and parasites and submitting to their kisses. After two hours of this business he took breakfast. Then he made formal visits to friends. Etiquette required that one return the visits of friends; help them in judicial and electoral matters; be present at the betrothal of their daughters, the coming of age of their sons, the reading of their poems, and the signing of their wills. These and other social obligations were performed with such grace and politeness as had no parallel in any civilization. Then the master went to the Senate or to a government mission or attended to his personal affairs.

For those who were less wealthy life was simpler but not less laborious. Such persons, after the morning visits, were busy with their personal affairs until noon. Humble people were at their work at sunrise; since night life was very limited, the Romans made the maximum use of the day. A light lunch was eaten at noon, and dinner at three or four o’clock — and the higher the class the later the dinner hour. After lunch and a little rest, peasants and workers returned to work and labored until sunset; others sought amusement outside or in the public baths. The Romans of the imperial period performed bathing with more religious interest than the worship of the gods. Like the Japanese they preferred public odors to private perfumes, and in cleanliness no nation in the ancient world equaled them except the Egyptians. They carried handkerchiefs to wipe away sweat; and they cleaned their teeth with powder and paste. In the early Republic one bath a week was enough; but by this time one had to bathe once a day or expose oneself to the stings of a Martial. Galen says that even peasants bathed every day. In most houses a bath basin was seen; the homes of the rich had private baths that gleamed with marble or glass or silver fixtures. But the majority of free Romans relied on the public baths.

Usually the public baths belonged to private persons. In 23 B.C. there were 170 public baths in Rome; in the fourth century A.D. there were 856 baths, in addition to 1,352 public swimming pools. But the great baths, built by the government and managed by concessionaires with hundreds of slave workers, were more popular than the private ones. These thermae, built by Agrippa, Nero, Titus, Trajan, Caracalla, Alexander Severus, Diocletian, and Constantine, were surviving monuments of the social splendor of the government. Nero’s baths had 1,600 marble seats and could accommodate 1,600 persons bathing simultaneously. The baths of Caracalla and Diocletian each accommodated 3,000. Any citizen could go to the bath for a trifling sum; the government paid the deficit of the baths, and apparently oil and washing were included with the bath. The baths were open from early morning until one in the afternoon for women and from two in the afternoon until eight for men; but most emperors allowed men and women to bathe simultaneously. Usually the customer first went to the dressing room to change clothes, then entered the gymnasium to box or wrestle or run or jump or throw the discus or javelin or play ball. One ball game resembled the American “medicine ball”; in another kind of ball game two opposing teams clashed to get the ball to the opponents’ goal and used all the techniques of a team of present-day players. Sometimes professional ball players came to the bath and gave exhibitions. Old men who preferred to hire proxies for sports went to the massage rooms and had a slave reduce their fat by rubbing.

After exercise the customer went to the main bath and for this first entered a room with warm air and from there to a room with hot air, and if he wished to sweat more he went to the laconicum where very hot steam flowed. Then he washed himself in hot water and for this used something new that the Romans had learned from the Gauls — soap made from tallow and ash of beech or elm wood. This oil was no longer washed off but was wiped clean with a woolen cloth and dried with a towel, so that some oil remained in the skin to replace the fat that the hot bath had removed.

It rarely happened that the customer left the bath at this point. These baths were both baths and clubs; there were rooms for dice and chess, corridors full of paintings and statues, seats where friends could sit and talk, a library and reading room, halls where a musician or poet could play or recite a piece and a philosopher could explain the world. In these afternoon hours, after bathing, Roman society found its most important meeting point. Men and women mingled freely and gaily but politely, talked, flirted or debated; the Romans in the bath, at the gladiatorial sports, and in the national gardens satisfied their keen desire for conversation, gossip, and hearing the news and scandals of the day.

If they wished they could eat dinner in the bath restaurant, but most of them dined at home. Perhaps because of the laziness caused by exercise and the hot bath, it was customary to recline at meals. Once, when men reclined, women sat apart. But by this time women too reclined beside men. The dining room had three couches arranged around a large square table. Usually three persons sat on each couch. The person eating at the table rested his head on his left arm and placed his arm on a cushion, and his body lay opposite the table.

The poorer classes still ate grain, dairy products, vegetables, fruit, and nuts. Pliny in his list of Roman foods names various kinds of vegetable dishes from garlic to turnips. The wealthy ate meat and in this were as ruthless as meat-eaters. Pork was more popular than other meats. Pliny praises the pig because fifty good dishes can be made from it. Pork sausages were carried around in portable ovens along the streets, as is customary today on highways.

When someone ate in a banquet he expected rare food. The banquet began at four in the afternoon and lasted until late at night or the next day. Flowers and parsley were scattered on the table, the air was filled with the scent of foreign perfumes, cushions were placed on the couches, and servants wore uniform clothes and moved correctly. Between the main course and dessert came luxurious dishes in which the host and his chef took pride. Rare fish, rare birds, and rare fruit were both interesting and pleasing to the palate. Salmon was bought for a thousand sesterces per half kilo; Asinius Celer bought one fish for eight thousand sesterces. Juvenal complained that the price of fish was higher than that of the fisherman. To increase the guests’ pleasure, the fish might be brought alive and boiled before the guests’ eyes so that they might enjoy the various colors the fish took in the agony of death. Vedius Pollio raised these fish, which were half a meter long, in a large tank and fed slaves who had not pleased him to them. Eel and snails were considered excellent food, but the law forbade eating field mice. Ostrich wings, phoenix tongue, bird meat, and goose liver were favorite dishes. Apicius, a famous gourmet of Tiberius’s time, invented the dish of fattened liver by feeding figs to sows. The custom usually allowed guests to empty the stomach with an emetic after a heavy meal. Some gluttons did this in the middle of the meal and then resumed satisfying their appetite. Seneca says: They vomit to eat, they eat to vomit. Such behavior was exceptional and was no worse than the excessive drinking of modern Americans. More pleasant was the custom of giving gifts to the guests, or showering flowers and perfume from the ceiling, or entertaining them with music, dancing, poetry, and shows. Conversation, unrestrained by wine and heated by the presence of the opposite sex, ended the dinner.

One must not assume that such banquets were the usual end of every day for the Romans or that they were more common in Roman life than modern dinner parties accompanied by several speeches. History, like newspapers, presents life falsely because it enjoys exceptional cases and avoids recounting the respectable man or ordinary life that has no interesting news. Most Romans were like ourselves and our neighbors: they rose reluctantly from sleep, ate too much, worked too hard, played too little, loved much, rarely hated anyone, quarreled a little, talked a lot, daydreamed while awake, and slept.

Roman Holidays

The Theater

Since Rome had many gods to worship and many provinces to exploit, it also had many holidays that once had been mixed with religious ceremonies with dignity; and by this time they were mixed with worldly pleasures with gaiety. In summer many poor people fled from the damp heat to taverns or meadows by the river or the suburbs. In the open air they drank, ate, danced, and made love. Those who could afford it might go to the western coastal points, or with the rich amuse themselves at the Bay of Baiae. In winter every Roman’s desire was to go south and, if possible, to Regium or Tarentum and return with a sunburned skin as proof of membership in the upper class. But those who remained in Rome had abundant and cheap means of amusement: storytelling, poetry and music, lectures, conferences, silent shows, drama, athletic contests, ball games, horse races, chariot races, fights to the death between men or between men and beasts, and not entirely sham naval battles on artificial lakes — never had a city had so many means of entertainment.

In the early Empire, in every Roman year there were seventy-six festival or holiday days on which athletic spectacles were held. Of these festivals, fifty-five were scenic ceremonies devoted to drama or silent shows, and twenty-two were circus, stadium, or amphitheatrical sports. The number of athletic festivals was increasing until in A.D. 354 one hundred and seventy-five days a year were offered. But this by no means meant an increase or improvement in the art of drama in Rome. On the contrary, the more theaters there were, the more playwriting declined. Plays were now written more to be read than to be performed; the theater relied on the old Roman and Greek tragedies and old Roman comedies and silent plays. Stars dominated the stage and amassed great wealth. Aesopus, who played tragic roles, after a life of extravagance and waste left 20,000,000 sesterces at his death. Roscius, who played comic roles, earned 500,000 sesterces a year and became so rich that he worked several seasons without pay and, despite having once been a slave, became the darling of aristocratic circles. The circus and amphitheater sports attracted the people’s interest and hardened their taste, and Roman playwriting died in the gladiatorial arena and added one more victim to the victims of Roman holidays.

Because of the insistence on play and stage instead of thought and plot, the theater gradually gave way to silent mimic shows. Mimic shows contained a little speech, took their subjects from the life of the lower classes, and relied on character sketches shown with skilled imitation. Freedom of speech, which had left the assemblies and forums, lived for a brief moment in these short satires, when an actor risked his life to make the audience applaud by saying a double-meaning sentence whose sting was directed at the emperor or one of his favorites. Caligula ordered an actor who had made such an allusion to be burned alive in the amphitheater. On the day Vespasian the miser was buried, an actor imitated the funeral. During the funeral procession the corpse sat up and asked how much the funeral cost the government. They answered: “Ten million sesterces”; the emperor’s corpse said: “Give me a hundred thousand sesterces and throw me into the Tiber.” It was only mimicry that accepted women as actresses, and since such women were themselves considered prostitutes because of their acting, they lost nothing by expressing and performing immoral acts. On special occasions, such as the Floralia, the spectators asked these actresses to remove all their clothing. Like today, both men and women attended these shows. Cicero found brides for himself in the theater, and those brides found him.

When they removed a few sentences spoken during the mimic show and turned the subject of the play to classical literature, the pantomime came into existence, in which no words are spoken and the story is expressed only by movements and gestures. There was an advantage in this abandonment of language. The population of Rome, which was of various races and most of whom understood nothing but very simple Latin, understood the actors’ actions better when they were not burdened with heavy speech. In A.D. 211 two actors, one Pylades the Cilician and the other Bathyllus the Alexandrian, came to Rome and made the pantomime — which had previously been popular in the Hellenistic East — usual by performing one-act plays composed only of music, acting, and dance. Rome, tired of the old-fashioned and pompous prepared plays, welcomed this new art, was excited by the grace of movements and the skill of the actors; it enjoyed their splendid costumes and the charm or humor of the masks, their trained and dieted bodies, the expressive Eastern hands, their rapid and varied transformations into different persons, and the erotic performance of erotic scenes. The spectators, in support of their favorite actors who competed with one another, divided into opposing factions; noble women fell in love with the actors; and with gifts and open arms they pursued them until one of the actors actually lost his head for Domitian’s wife. The pantomime gradually drove all its rivals, except the silent show, from the Roman stage. Drama too gave way to ballet.

Roman Music

This victory had been made possible by the vast development of music and dance. In the Republican period dancing was looked upon with contempt; Scipio the Elder had forced the government to close schools where music and dancing were taught, and Cicero had said that “only a madman would dance while sober.” But the pantomime shows made dancing usual and later extremely popular. Seneca says that almost every house had a dancing platform that echoed the sound of men’s and women’s feet. In the homes of the wealthy, by this time, a dancing master, a chef, and a philosopher were resident as part of the household equipment. Dancing, as it was practiced in Rome, involved more than the feet and legs; it included graceful movements of the hands and upper body. Women did not learn this art only for the charm of the dance itself, but also because it gave them grace and flexibility.

The Romans, after power, money, women, and blood, loved music. Like everything else in Roman cultural life, Roman music came from Greece and inevitably had to fight its way against conservatives who identified art with decadence. In 115 B.C. the censors had forbidden the playing of all musical instruments except the Italian flute. A century later the elder Seneca still did not consider music worthy of men, but during this interval “Varro” had written a book on music, and this treatise with its Greek sources supported many Roman works on the principles of music. Finally the refined and sensual Greek manners and instruments triumphed over Roman roughness and simplicity, and music became a main part of the education of women and often of men. By A.D. 50 it had enslaved all classes, both men and women; men as well as women spent the whole day and even several days listening to, composing, and singing melodies. Finally even the emperors joined the ranks of musicians, and the philosophic Hadrian, like the womanizing Nero, prided himself on his skill in playing the lyre. Lyric poems were composed to be sung with music, and music was mostly made for poetry. Ancient music was overshadowed by verse, while in our time music dominates speech to the point that it almost destroys it. Choral music was popular and was often heard at weddings, gladiatorial sports, religious ceremonies, and funerals. Horace was deeply moved at seeing youths and maidens singing his composition for the return of the golden age of Saturn. In those choral songs the choristers sang all the tones of one melody, but in different keys. Apparently at that time the division of song into different parts was not known.

The main instruments were the flute and the lyre. Modern wind and string orchestras are still variations on those instruments: the most heroic symphonies consist of a scholarly combination of blowing, filling, scraping, and striking. The flute was played with theatrical performances and was supposed to stimulate emotion. The lyre accompanied song and was expected to elevate the spirit. The flute at that time was long and had many holes and produced more sounds than the modern flute. The lyre was the harp of that time, but made in more varied shapes. The Greek lyre was of medium size, but the Romans increased its size until Ammianus described them as “as large as a wagon.” On the whole the instruments of the Romans, like those of our time, were improved over earlier ones more in loudness and size. The strings of the lyre were made of gut or sinew, and every lyre had eighteen strings; it was played with a plectrum or the fingers — but fast passages could only be played with the fingers. In the early first century the water organ was brought from Alexandria, which had several stops and keys and sound pipes. Nero fell in love with it, and the calm Quintilian was impressed by its loudness and power.

Formal concerts were given. And in some public competitions there was a section for musical contests. Even in informal dinner parties a little music was necessary; Martial in a poem promises his guest that there will be at least a flute player. But as for Trimalchio’s banquet, the tables are cleared to the rhythm of singing. Caligula had an orchestra and choir on his pleasure ship. In the pantomimes a symphony was performed — that is, a group of singers sang with the musical group and danced. Sometimes the actor sang solo pieces, and sometimes a professional singer sang and the actor danced and performed the necessary movements. It was not unusual for a pantomime to have 3,000 singers and 3,000 dancers. The orchestra was led by the flute and helped by the lyre, cymbals, trumpet, pipe, and ankle bones — and the ankle bones were boards tied to the actor’s feet that produced such a loud noise that it was more terrifying than the loudest sounds of modern orchestras. Seneca mentioned that people played in harmony. But there is no evidence that ancient orchestras used harmony with measured melody. The instrument played with the song was usually one note higher, but, as far as we know, it did not follow a definite melodic line.

There were many solo artists, and many second-rate female musicians. Talent poured into the center of the world’s gold from all the provinces, and the custom of slavery gave an opportunity to train choirs and orchestras in large numbers and cheaply. Many wealthy institutions had their own musicians and sent those with great talent to famous masters for further training. Some became lyre players and gave concerts in which they sang; some specialized in singing and usually composed the song they sang; and some gave concerts on the organ or flute, like Canus who boasted in Beethoven’s style that his music could alleviate sorrow, increase joy, elevate virtue, and kindle the fire of love. These professional musicians traveled throughout the Empire to give concerts and found applause, pay, monuments, and love; according to Juvenal some of them sold their love for extra pay. Women competed for the plectrums with which great players had struck the lyre strings and, for the victory of their favorite musicians in the Tarentine and Capitoline contests, made sacrifices at the altars. It is hard to imagine that charming scene where musicians and poets from throughout the Empire competed before large audiences, and the winners received a crown of oak leaves from the emperor’s hand.

We know so little about Roman music that we cannot describe its quality. Apparently it was louder, fuller, and wilder than Greek music, and a magical Eastern quality from Egypt, Asia Minor, and Syria had entered it. Old men lamented that recent composers were abandoning the restraint and dignity of the old style and were shattering the spirits and nerves of the young with extravagant melodies and loud instruments. It is certain that no nation at any time loved music as much. The songs sung on the stage were learned by the lively and quick-witted people and were heard in the streets and through the windows of Rome. The intricate melodies of the pantomimes were remembered so eagerly that enthusiasts could tell from the first few notes what melody belonged to what show and which scene of it. Rome gave no help to the world of music except perhaps a better and more effective arrangement of musicians in larger groups. But by its extensive use and flexible response it honored music; it gathered the musical heritage of the ancient world in its temples, theaters, and homes; and when the Roman age passed, it left the instruments and elements of music to the Church, which still moves listeners today.

Roman Games

By this time, when war had apparently disappeared, the games or great athletic contests were the most exciting events of the Roman year. These contests were held chiefly on the occasion of religious festivals — the festival of the Great Mother (Earth), the festival of Ceres, the festival of Flora, the festival of Apollo, the festival of Augustus. They might be “public games” to please the public, or “Roman games” in honor of the city and its goddess Roma; they might be on the occasion of victories, the nomination of individuals in elections, the elections themselves, or the emperor’s birthday; they might be, like the secular games of Augustus’s time, a period in Roman history. Italian athletic contests, like those that Achilles arranged after the death of Patroclus, were originally offered as sacrifices to the dead. In the funeral of Brutus Pera in 264 B.C. his sons gave a show of three single combats; in the funeral of Marcus Lepidus in 216 B.C. twenty-two single combats were performed; and in 174 B.C. Titus Flamininus celebrated the memory of his father’s death with gladiatorial combats in which seventy-four men fought.

The simplest public games were the athletic contests usually held in the gymnasium. The competitors, who were often professionals and foreigners, ran races, threw the discus, wrestled, and boxed. The people of Rome, trained in the bloody gladiatorial shows, had only a weak interest in athletic contests, but they enjoyed ball games in which gigantic Greeks fought to the death with gloves reinforced at the wrist with iron three-quarters of an inch thick. The kindly Virgil describes a mild warlike festival almost in the terms of our time:

Then the son of Anchises brought out the leather gloves of equal weight and bound them on the hands of the combatants. … The combatants took their places and stood on tiptoe and raised one arm. … From the blows they give, they guard hand against hand and draw back the head. They exchange many heavy blows, savagely striking each other’s sides and chests and ears and cheeks, and fill the air with the sound of their blows. … Entellus advances his hand. Dares the nimble dodges. … Entellus in anger drives Dares swiftly toward the field, doubling his blows, and striking now with the right and now with the left. … Then Aeneas ended the fight, his comrades led Dares with his trembling knees to the ships, his head nodding from side to side, and blood and teeth falling from his mouth.

And more exciting than this were the horse races and chariot races in the Circus Maximus. On two consecutive days forty-four races were held, some of them horse and jockey races, and some with light two-wheeled chariots drawn by two or three or four horses in a row. The expenses of these races were paid by rival stables belonging to the wealthy. The jockeys and charioteers and chariots of each stable wore distinctive clothing or colors — white and green and red or blue; and as the time of these races approached, all Rome was divided into factions named after those colors, especially red and green. In homes and schools, in conferences and forums, half the discussions were about the favorite jockeys and charioteers. Their pictures were everywhere, and their victories were announced in the daily acts. Some of them amassed great wealth, and for some of them statues were erected in public squares. On the appointed day 180,000 men and women in colorful clothes went to the vast racecourse. The crowd’s excitement reached the point of madness. Enthusiastic supporters smelled the dung of the animals to make sure that the horses of their favorite charioteers had been properly fed. The spectators passed by shops and brothels located along the outer walls of the city and entered through hundreds of entrances one after another and sat sweating with anxiety in the horseshoe-shaped seats prepared for watching. Itinerant vendors sold them cushions, for the seats were mostly hard wood, and the program lasted the whole day. Senators and other dignitaries had special marble seats decorated with bronze. Behind the imperial box was a suite of luxurious rooms where the emperor and his family could drink, rest, bathe, and sleep. Betting was very common, and during the progress of the day fortunes changed hands. From the entrances under the seats the horses and jockeys and charioteers and chariots came out, and each group of supporters, when the color of their faction appeared, shook the seats with loud applause. The charioteers, who were often slaves, wore bright tunics and shining helmets, held a whip in one hand, and had a knife at their waist to cut, in case of accident, the reins tied around their waists. Parallel to the middle of the oval field was an island 300 meters long decorated with statues and columns. At one end were round columns that served as gates. The usual length of a chariot race was seven laps, about eight kilometers. Skill was tested in turning sharply at the gate without creating danger. Accidents were frequent there, and men and chariots and animals mixed in a tragically interesting display. As soon as the horses or chariots thundered near the last lap, the stunned crowd rose like a surging sea, waved their hands, shook handkerchiefs, shouted and prayed, groaned and cursed, and fell into a relatively supernatural ecstasy. That shout of joy that congratulated the winner could be heard at great distances from the city.

The most astonishing of all the spectacles offered to the people in the Roman festivals was the sham naval battle. The first great naval battle was offered by Caesar to the people in a pit dug for this purpose in the suburbs. Augustus, when dedicating his temple to Mars the Avenger, had 3,000 fighters imitate the battle of Salamis in an artificial lake 545 meters long and 365 meters wide. Claudius too, as we said, celebrated the completion of the Fucine tunnel with a battle of ships with three banks of oars against ships with four banks of oars, totaling 19,000 men. Those men fought with unexpected politeness, and as a result some soldiers were sent among them to ensure real bloodshed. When the Colosseum was dedicated, Titus ordered its arena to be filled with floodwater, and imitated the battle of the Corinthians and Corcyreans that led to the Peloponnesian War in it. The fighters in these battles were prisoners of war or condemned criminals. They fought each other with such desperation that finally one side or the other was wiped out, and the victorious group, if it had fought bravely, might be freed.

The gladiatorial combats reached their peak by mixing animals and gladiators in the amphitheater — and after Vespasian in the Colosseum. The place was a vast wooden surface covered with sand; part of this surface could be lowered and then quickly raised to change the scene and, in a short time, the entire surface could be covered with water. In the vast rooms below, the animals and equipment and people participating in the day’s program were kept. Right above the protective wall of the arena or pit was a marble balcony or gallery on whose luxurious seats sat senators and former high officials; above this balcony was a high platform or box where the emperor and empress, on thrones of ivory and gold, sat among their relatives and attendants. Behind this aristocratic ring the equestrian class sat in twenty rows. A high protective wall decorated with statues separated the upper social classes from the lower classes in the upper seats. Every free person, man or woman, could come, and apparently nothing was charged. The people used the emperor’s presence here and in the circus to shout their desires for him to hear — such as pardon for a prisoner or a defeated fighter, the freeing of a brave slave, the appearance of popular gladiators, or minor reforms. From the highest wall a curtain could be opened to reach the railing of the pit and thus shade those parts suffering from sunlight. At various points fountains sprayed scented water into the air to cool it. When noon came, most spectators hurried down to eat lunch; vendors were ready to sell them food, sweets, and drinks. In some cases the entire audience might be fed, by the emperor’s command and kindness, or delicacies and gifts distributed among the surging crowd. If, as sometimes happened, the contests were held at night, a ring of lights might be lowered over the arena and spectators. Groups of musicians took turns playing and accompanied the sensitive parts of the combats and single fights with exciting melodies.

The simplest events in the amphitheater were shows of foreign animals. Elephants, camels, tigers, whales, hippopotamuses, lynxes, monkeys, leopards, bears, boars, wolves, giraffes, ostriches, deer, panthers, gazelles, and rare birds were collected from the ends of the world and kept and trained in the emperors’ and wealthy men’s zoos to give skilled and amusing performances; monkeys were trained to ride dogs, drive chariots, or play in shows; bulls were trained so that boys could dance on their backs; sea lions were taught to bark in answer when their names were called. Elephants danced to the sound of cymbals played by other elephants, or walked on ropes, or sat at tables, or wrote Greek and Latin letters. The animals might be merely paraded in bright or humorous costumes; but usually they were arranged to fight each other or men, or spears and javelins were thrown at them to kill them. In Nero’s time, on one day four hundred tigers fought with bulls and elephants. On another day in Caligula’s time four hundred bears were killed. When the Colosseum was dedicated, 5,000 animals died. If the animals wanted to make peace with each other, they were driven to fight with whips and red-hot irons. Claudius sent a legion of the imperial guard to fight with leopards; Nero forced them to fight with four hundred bears and three hundred lions.

Bullfighting with men, which had long been popular in Crete and Thessaly, was brought to Rome by Caesar and often shown in the amphitheater. Condemned criminals, sometimes dressed in animal skins to resemble animals, were thrown to beasts that had been kept especially hungry for the occasion. In these cases death came with all possible pain and suffering, and the wounds were so deep that doctors used those individuals for the study of internal anatomy. Everyone in the world knows the story of Androcles. He was a runaway slave who, when caught, was thrown into the arena with a lion; but the lion is said to have remembered that Androcles had pulled a thorn from its paw and refused to harm him. Androcles was pardoned and made his living by exhibiting his civilized lion in taverns. A condemned man was sometimes asked to play a famous tragic role in a real and non-imitative way: he might imitate the rival of Medea, wear a beautiful garment that suddenly caught fire and burned him; he might be burned like Hercules on a pile of fire, or (if we can trust Tertullian) publicly castrated like Attis; he might imitate Mucius Scaevola and hold his hand over burning coals until it weighed and contracted; he might become Icarus and fall from the sky instead of into the Cretan sea among wild beasts; and he might become Pasiphaë and endure union with a bull. A condemned man was dressed like Orpheus, sent with his lyre into a field made to look like a grove and spring; suddenly hungry animals leaped from the crevices and tore him to pieces. The robber Laureolus was crucified in the arena for the people’s amusement; but since his death was slow, a bear was brought into the arena and forced to tear him to pieces while he hung from the cross. Martial has described this scene with personal enthusiasm and approval.

The important and supreme events were the combats of armed men, single or in groups. The fighters were prisoners of war, condemned criminals, or rebellious slaves. The right of conquerors to kill their prisoners was generally accepted throughout the ancient world, and the Romans considered themselves generous in giving the prisoners a chance to save their lives in the arena. Men condemned for murder were brought to Rome from all over the Empire, sent to gladiatorial schools, and soon taken to the gladiatorial arena. If they fought with exceptional bravery they might be freed immediately; if they merely survived the fight they had to fight again and again on holidays; if they lasted three years they became slaves, and after that if they satisfied their masters for two years they were freed. The crimes that led to condemnation to gladiatorship were murder, robbery, arson, sacrilege, and rebellion. But zealous governors who were alert to the emperor’s needs might ignore these rules if the arena was short of men. Even senators and knights might be condemned to fight like gladiators, and sometimes the desire for praise stimulated some of the equestrian class to volunteer. Under the attraction and honor of adventure and danger, many registered in the gladiatorial schools.

These schools existed in Rome before 105 B.C. In the imperial period there were four schools in Rome, several others in Italy, and one in Alexandria. In Caesar’s time wealthy individuals had private schools where slaves were trained to become gladiators. Those who graduated from the school were kept in peacetime as personal guards and in wartime as assistants, or hired for fights in private banquets, or rented for participation in gladiatorial contests. Upon entering a professional gladiatorial school, many trainees swore to “let themselves be beaten with rods and burned with fire and killed with steel.” The training and discipline were severe, and the food was under the supervision of doctors who prescribed barley to strengthen the muscles. Violations of the rules were punished with whips, branding, and chains. Among these volunteers for death there were also those who were not dissatisfied with their lot. Some were proud of their victories and thought more of their power than of the calamity ahead. Some complained that they did not fight enough. And such individuals hated Tiberius who arranged few more gladiatorial contests. Their incentive and consolation was fame. Admirers wrote their names on the walls of streets, women fell in love with them, poets wrote poems about them, painters painted their pictures, and sculptors carved their iron muscles and terrifying buttocks for posterity. Nevertheless, many of them despaired of their imprisonment, their violent life, and their waiting for death. A few committed suicide: one by thrusting a sponge used for cleaning latrines down his throat, another by thrusting his head between the bars of a moving wheel, and several by committing hara-kiri in the arena.

The night before they went into the arena they were given a great feast. Those who were harsher ate and drank with all their hearts; others sadly said farewell to their wives and children; and those who were Christians ate the last supper of love with one another. On the morning of the next day, in coarse clothing, they stepped into the arena. And they paraded from one end of it to the other. They were usually armed with swords or spears or daggers and had bronze helmets, shields, shoulder guards, breastplates, and knee guards. They were classified according to the weapons they carried: retiarii were those who caught their opponents with nets and sent them to the realm of nothingness with daggers; secutores were skilled in fighting with sword and shield; laquearii threw lassos; dimachae held two short swords in two hands; essedarii fought from chariots; bestiarii fought with wild beasts. In addition to these actions the gladiators fought one by one or in groups with each other. If someone in a single one-on-one fight was seriously wounded, the supervisor of the gladiatorial contests inquired about the desire of the spectators. If they raised their thumbs — or waved handkerchiefs — it was a sign of mercy, and if they turned their thumbs downward it was a sign that the victor must kill the defeated. Every fighter who showed his aversion to death aroused the hatred of the people and was forced with red-hot irons to show courage. More profitable slaughter was offered by group combats in which thousands fought with desperate ferocity. In eight shows given by Augustus 10,000 men participated in these general combats. Attendants in the dress of Charon thrust spikes into the fallen to make sure they had not pretended to be dead, and anyone who had made such a pretense was killed with club blows. Other attendants dressed as Mercury dragged the corpses with hooks, and African slaves gathered the bloody sand with shovels and scattered fresh sand for fresh death.

Most Romans defended the gladiatorial combats with the excuse that the victims had already been condemned to death for serious crimes and the suffering they endured served to punish others, and the courage that condemned men acquired in facing death with wounds inspired Spartan virtues in the people, and finally the frequent sight of combat accustomed Romans to the necessities and sacrifices of war. Juvenal, who had satirized everything, left the combats unharmed. Pliny the Younger, a very civilized man, praised Trajan because he had provided things for the people to see that “drive men to noble wounds and the sting of death”; and Tacitus in his history says that the blood shed in the gladiatorial arena was in any case the blood of the lowly common people. Cicero, who had been disturbed by that slaughter, asked: “What pleasure can it give to a refined human spirit to see a noble animal struck in the heart by a cruel hunter, or to see one of our own weak kind savagely crushed by a much stronger animal?” But he adds: “When guilty men are forced to fight, no better discipline can be offered for the eye against suffering and death.” Seneca, who had entered the amphitheater at noon when most spectators had gone to lunch, was shocked at seeing hundreds of criminals driven by force into the arena to provide entertainment with their blood for those spectators who had remained:

I come home greedier, more cruel, and more inhuman, because I have been among men. I happened to go to a show at noon and expected amusement and wit and relaxation. … A place where the human eye can find escape from slaughter of its own kind. But it was quite the opposite. … These fighters are sent out without any armor; they are ready to receive blows from all sides, and no one strikes without effect. … In the morning men are thrown to the lions, at noon to the spectators. The people want the victor who has killed his opponent to face a man who in turn will kill him, and they keep the final victor for the next slaughter. … Such things are done when the seats are almost empty. … Man, who is sacred to man, is killed for amusement and pleasure.

New Cults

Religion accepted the gladiatorial combats as the proper form of religious ceremony and opened them with a solemn procession. Vestal Virgins and priests had reserved seats of honor in the theaters, circus, and before the gladiatorial arena. The emperor, who was the high priest of the state religion, presided over the religious assembly.

Augustus and his successors did everything they could to revive the old cult anew with fervor, except that they themselves lived with moral principles; even atheists who openly declared their atheism — such as Caligula and Nero — performed all the ceremonies that by tradition had to be performed toward the official gods. The Luperci priests still danced in the streets on their festival day. The Arval Brotherhood still prayed to Mars in old Latin that no one understood. Divination and prophecy were still popular and highly trusted. Except for a few philosophers, all people believed in astrology. The emperor, who had himself exiled the scholars of this science, consulted them. Magic and sorcery, spells and superstitions, amulets and incantations, “omens” and dream interpretation were deeply woven into the fabric of Roman life. Augustus, with the shrewdness of a modern psychologist, studied his own dreams. Seneca saw a number of women sitting on the steps of the Capitol waiting for Jupiter’s coming and union with him; because they had dreamed that the god desired them. Every consul celebrated the inauguration of his office by sacrificing a calf: Juvenal, who laughed at everything, with perfect piety slit the throats of two lambs and a bull calf in thanksgiving for a friend’s safe journey. The temples were rich with silver and gold offerings, candles burned before the altars, and the lips and feet and hands of the statues were worn from being kissed by the faithful. The old religion still seemed strong and created new gods like Annona (food supply), revived the worship of Fortuna and Roma, and supported law and order and fate with intensity. If Augustus had returned a year after his death he could have fully claimed that the revival of religious traditions by his hand had been successful and had borne good fruit.

Despite these appearances the old cult was sick from above and below. Deifying emperors did not show how much the upper classes valued their rulers but revealed how worthless the gods seemed to them. Among the educated, philosophy, especially Stoic philosophy which had gained a cold and dry superiority, while supporting faith undermined its foundations; Lucretius was not without influence; people did not mention him, but only because it was easier to lead a life mixed with pleasure-seeking (Epicurean) than to read the works of Epicurus or his fervent interpreter. Wealthy youths who went to Athens, Alexandria, and Rhodes for higher education found nothing there to sustain the Roman cult. Greek poets mocked the Roman pantheon, and Roman poets quickly imitated them. In Ovid’s poems it is assumed that the gods are legends, in Martial’s themes it is assumed that the gods are jokes, and apparently no one complained about either of them. Many actors also mocked the gods; one of them drove Diana from the stage with a whip, another showed Jupiter making his will while waiting for death. Juvenal, like Plato five centuries before him and like us eighteen centuries after, noted that fear of a watching god was no longer able to prevent false oaths. Even on the graves of the poor there are signs of increasing complaint and a little sincere worldliness. On one is written: I was not, I was, I am not, I don’t care; on another: I was, I was not, I am not, I don’t know; and on another: What I have eaten and drunk is part of me; I have lived my life. On a grave is written: I believe in nothing beyond the grave; another confirms: There is no hell, no Charon, no Cerberus. A suffering soul writes about the buried body: The elements from which man was made return to their own state. Life was only lent to man; he cannot keep it forever. Man with his death repays the debt he owes to nature.

But doubt, however sincere, cannot long take the place of belief. This society amid all its pleasures had not found happiness. The pursuit and achievement of refinement had exhausted society; its debaucheries had exhausted it; everyone, rich and poor, was still subject to pain, sorrow, and death. Philosophy — especially a philosophy like Stoicism that had gained a cold and dry superiority — could never give the common people a faith that would make them endure their poverty, be comforted in their chastity, console their sorrows, and inspire their hopes. The old religion had done the first work but had fallen short of the rest. The people needed revelation; religion had brought them rituals; the people longed for eternal life; religion offered them gladiatorial combats. Men who had come as slaves or freedmen from other countries found themselves excluded from this worship peculiar to the nation. For this reason they brought their own gods with them, built their own temples, performed their own ceremonies, and planted the seeds of Eastern religions in the heart of the West. Between the cults of the conquerors and the faith of the defeated there took place a war in which the soldiers’ weapons had no effect, but the needs of the heart determined the victor.

The new gods came to Rome with prisoners of war, soldiers returning to Rome, and merchants. Merchants from Asia and Egypt built temples in Puteoli, Ostia, and Rome for the worship of their old gods. The Roman government was largely tolerant toward these foreign cults; since it did not admit foreigners to its own religion, it preferred that they perform their original ceremonies rather than have no religion at all. In return, it asked every new religion to be tolerant toward other faiths in the manner of the government’s tolerance toward them and to perform in their rituals a bow to the “genius” of the emperor and the goddess of the city of Rome as a sign of loyalty to the state. The Eastern religions that had penetrated Rome were encouraged by this leniency and became the main religions of the population. Claudius, hoping to civilize the cult of the Great Mother, removed the restrictions that had harmed her worship, allowed Romans to become her priests, and fixed her festival around the spring equinox between the twenty-sixth of February and the fifth of April. The rival of the Great Mother in the first centuries A.D. was Isis, the Egyptian goddess of fertility, abundance, and commerce. The Roman government had repeatedly forbidden the worship of Isis in Rome, but it always revived. The firm belief of the devotees overcame the power of the state and Caligula sealed the state’s surrender by building a vast temple to Isis in the Campus Martius with public money. Otho and Domitian participated in the festivals of Isis. Commodus, with a shaved head, humbly followed the priests while carrying the statue of Anubis, the Egyptian monkey god, with reverence.

The influx of new gods increased year by year. From southern Italy came the worship of Pythagoras — with vegetarianism and reincarnation. From Hierapolis came the relics of Gatis whom the Romans knew as the Syrian goddess, Aziza — “Zeus Dolichenus” — and other strange gods. The worship of these gods was spread by Syrian merchants and slaves; and finally a young Syrian priest of Baal ascended the throne as Elagabalus or the worshiper of the sun god. From Parthia, Rome’s enemy, came the cult of another sun god named Mithras — Mitra. Its devotees were soldiers who in the great world war between light and darkness or good and evil fought on the side of light or good. This was a masculine cult that attracted men more than women and was pleasing to the Roman legions stationed on distant frontiers who did not hear the voice of their native gods. From Judea came Yahweh, a monotheist who accepted no compromise and prescribed the hardest life mixed with piety and regulations; but it gave its followers moral principles and courage that supported them in suffering and clothed the life of the lowliest poor with a kind of garment of dignity and nobility. Among the Roman Jews who prayed to Yahweh there were some who were still vaguely distinguished from others, and this group worshiped his incarnate and resurrected son.