History Of Ancient Civilization Part 18

=The Priests.=--The priest in Rome, as in Greece, is not charged with the care of souls, he exists only for the service of the G.o.d. He guards his temple, administers his property, and performs the ceremonies in his honor. Thus the guild of the Salii (the leapers) watches over a s.h.i.+eld which fell from heaven, they said, and which was adored as an idol; every year they perform a dance in arms, and this is their sole function.

The augurs predict the future. The pontiffs superintend the ceremonies of wors.h.i.+p; they regulate the calendar and fix the festivals to be celebrated on the various days of the year.

Neither the priests, the augurs, nor the pontiffs form a separate cla.s.s. They are chosen from among the great families and continue to exercise all the functions of state--judging, presiding over a.s.semblies, and commanding armies. This is the reason that the Roman priests, potent as they were, did not const.i.tute, as in Egypt, a sacerdotal caste. At Rome it was a state religion, but not a government by the priests.

=The Dead.=--The Romans, like the Hindoos and the Greeks, believed that the soul survived the body. If care were taken to bury the body according to the proper rites, the soul went to the lower world and became a G.o.d; otherwise the soul could not enter the abode of the dead, but returned to the earth terrifying the living and tormenting them until suitable burial was performed. Pliny the Younger[113]

relates the story of a ghost which haunted a house and terrified to death all the inhabitants of the dwelling; a philosopher who was brave enough to follow it discovered at the place where the spectre stopped some bones which had not been buried in the proper manner. The shade of the Emperor Caligula wandered in the gardens of the palace; it was necessary to disinter the body and bury it anew in regular form.

=Cult of the Dead.=--It was of importance, therefore, to both the living and the dead that the rites should be observed. The family of the deceased erected a funeral pile, burned the body on it, and placed the ashes in an urn which was deposited in the tomb, a little chapel dedicated to the Manes,[114] _i.e._, the souls that had become G.o.ds.

On fixed days of the year the relatives came to the tomb to bring food; doubtless they believed that the soul was in need of nourishment, for wine and milk were poured on the earth, flesh of victims was burned, and vessels of milk and cakes were left behind.

These funeral ceremonies were perpetuated for an indefinite period; a family could not abandon the souls of its ancestors, but continued to maintain their tomb and the funeral feasts. In return, these souls which had become G.o.ds loved and protected their posterity. Each family, therefore, had its guardian deities which they called Lares.

=Cult of the Hearth.=--Each family had a hearth, also, that it adored.

For the Romans, as for the Hindoos, fire was a G.o.d and the hearth an altar. The flame was to be maintained day and night, and offerings made on the hearth of oil, fat, wine, and incense; the fire then became brilliant and rose higher as if nourished by the offering.

Before beginning his meal the Roman thanked the G.o.d of the hearth, gave him a part of the food, and poured out for him a little wine (this was the libation). Even the sceptical Horace supped with his slaves before the hearth and offered libation and prayer.

Every Roman family had in its house a sanctuary where were to be found the Lares, the souls of the ancestors, and the altar of the hearth.

Rome also had its sacred hearth, called Vesta, an ancient word signifying the hearth itself. Four virgins of the n.o.blest families, the Vestals, were charged with keeping the hearth, for it was necessary that the flame should never be extinguished, and the care of it could be confided only to pure beings. If a Vestal broke her vow, she was buried alive in a cave, for she had committed sacrilege and had endangered the whole Roman people.

THE FAMILY

=Religion of the Family.=--All the members of a family render wors.h.i.+p to the same ancestors and unite about the same hearth. They have therefore the same G.o.ds, and these are their peculiar possession. The sanctuary where the Lares[115] were kept was concealed in the house and no stranger was to approach it. Thus the Roman family was a little church; it had its religion and its wors.h.i.+p to which no others than its members had access. The ancient family was very different from the modern, having its basis in the principles of religion.

=Marriage.=--The first rule of this religion is that one should be the issue of a regular marriage if one is to have the right of adoring the ancestors of the family. Roman marriage, therefore, is at the start a religious ceremony. The father of the bride gives her away outside the house when a procession conducts her to the house of the groom chanting an ancient sacred refrain, "Hymen, O Hymen!" The bride is then led before the altar of the husband where water and fire are presented, and there in the presence of the G.o.ds of the family the bride and groom divide between them a cake of meal. Marriage at this period was called confarreatio (communion through the cake). Later another form of marriage was invented. A relative of the bride in the presence of witnesses sells her to the husband who declares that he buys her for his wife. This is marriage by sale (coemptio).

For the Romans as for the Greeks marriage is a religious duty; religion ordains that the family should not become extinct. The Roman, therefore, declares when he marries that he takes his wife to perpetuate the family through their children. A n.o.ble Roman who sincerely loved his wife repudiated her because she brought him no children.

=The Roman Woman.=--The Roman woman is never free. As a young girl, she belongs to her father who chooses her husband for her; married, she comes under the power of her husband--the jurisconsults say she is under his "ma.n.u.s," _i.e._, she is in the same position as his daughter. The woman always has a master who has the right of life and death over her. And yet, she is never treated like a slave. She is the equal in dignity of her husband; she is called the mother of the family (materfamilias) just as her husband is called the father of the family (paterfamilias). She is the mistress in the house, as he is the master. She gives orders to the slaves whom she charges with all the heavy tasks--the grinding of the grain, the making of bread, and the cooking. She sits in the seat of honor (the atrium), spins and weaves, apportions work to the slaves, watches the children, and directs the house. She is not excluded from a.s.sociation with the men, like the Greek woman; she eats at the table with her husband, receives visitors, goes into town to dinner, appears at the public ceremonies, at the theatre, and even at the courts. And still she is ordinarily uncultured; the Romans do not care to instruct their daughters; the quality which they most admire in woman is gravity, and on her tomb they write by way of eulogy, "She kept the house and spun linen."

=The Children.=--The Roman child belongs to the father like a piece of property. The father has the right of exposing him in the street. If he accepts the child, the latter is brought up at first in the house.

Girls remain here until marriage; they spin and weave under the supervision of their mother. The boys walk to the fields with their father and exercise themselves in arms. The Romans are not an artistic people; they require no more of their children than that they know how to read, write, and reckon; neither music nor poetry is taught them.

They are brought up to be sober, silent, modest in their demeanor, and obedient.

=The Father of the Family.=--The master of the house was called by the Romans the father of the family. The paterfamilias is at once the proprietor of the domain, the priest of the cult of the ancestors, and the sovereign of the family. He reigns as master in his house. He has the right of repudiating his wife, of rejecting his children, of selling them, and marrying them at his pleasure. He can take for himself all that belongs to them, everything that his wife brings to him, and everything that his children gain; for neither the wife nor the children may be proprietors. Finally he has over them all[116] the "right of life and death," that is to say, he is their only judge. If they commit crime, it is not the magistrate who punishes them, but the father of the family who condemns them. One day (186 B.C.) the Roman Senate decreed the penalty of death for all those who had partic.i.p.ated in the orgies of the cult of Bacchus. The men were executed, but for all the women who were discovered among the guilty, it was necessary that the Senate should address itself to the fathers of families, and it was these who condemned to death their wives or their daughters.

"The husband," said the elder Cato, "is the judge of the wife, he can do with her as he will; if she has committed any fault, he chastises her; if she has drunk wine, he condemns her; if she has been unfaithful to him, he kills her." When Catiline conspired against the Senate, a senator perceived that his own son had taken part in the conspiracy; he had him arrested, judged him, and condemned him to death.

The power of the father of the family endured as long as life; the son was never freed from it. Even if he became consul, he remained subject to the power of his father. When the father died, the sons became in turn fathers of families. As for the wife, she could never attain freedom; she fell under the power of the heir of her husband; she could, then, become subject to her own son.

FOOTNOTES:

[110] A legend represents King Numa debating with Jupiter the terms of a contract: "You will sacrifice a head to me?" says Jupiter. "Very well,"

says Numa, "the head of an onion that I shall take in my garden." "No,"

replies Jupiter, "but I want something that pertains to a man." "We will give you then the tip of the hair." "But it must be alive." "Then we will add to this a little fish." Jupiter laughed and consented to this.

[111] In Rome, as in Greece, the temple was called a house.

[112] The remark is Cicero's.

[113] Pliny, Epistles, vii, 27. See another story in Plautus's Mostellaria.

[114] The letters D.M. found on Roman tombs are the initials of Dei Manes.

[115] They were called the Penates, that is to say, the G.o.ds of the interior.

[116] In the language of the Roman law the wife, children, and slaves "are not their own masters."

CHAPTER XIX

THE ROMAN CITY

FORMATION OF THE ROMAN PEOPLE

=The Kings.=--Tradition relates that Rome for two centuries and a half was governed by kings. They told not only the names of these kings and the date of their death, but the life of each.

They said there were seven kings. Romulus, the first king, came from the Latin city of Alba, founded the hamlet on the Palatine, and killed his brother who committed the sacrilege of leaping over the sacred furrow encircling the settlement; he then allied himself with Tatius, a Sabine king. (A legend of later origin added that he had founded at the foot of the hill-city a quarter surrounded with a palisade where he received all the adventurers who wished to come to him.)

Numa Pompilius, the second king, was a Sabine. It was he who organized the Roman religion, taking counsel with a G.o.ddess, the nymph Egeria who dwelt in a wood.

The third king, Tullus Hostilius, was a warrior. He made war on Alba, the capital of the Latin confederation, took and destroyed it.

Ancus Martius, the fourth king, was the grandson of Numa and built the wooden bridge over the Tiber and founded the port of Ostia through which commerce pa.s.sed up the river to Rome.

The last three kings were Etruscans. Tarquin the Elder enlarged the territory of Rome and introduced religious ceremonies from Etruria.

Servius Tullius organized the Roman army, admitting all the citizens without distinction of birth and separating them into centuries (companies) according to wealth. The last king, Tarquinius Superbus, oppressed the great families of Rome; some of the n.o.bles conspired against him and succeeded in expelling him. Since this time there were no longer any kings. The Roman state, or as they said, the commonwealth (res publica) was governed by the consuls, two magistrates elected each year.

It is impossible to know how much truth there is in this tradition, for it took shape a long time after the Romans began to write their history, and it includes so many legends that we cannot accept it in its entirety.

Attempt has been made to explain these names of kings as symbols of a race or cla.s.s. The early history of Rome has been reconstructed in a variety of ways, but the greater the labor applied to it, the less the agreement among students with regard to it.

=The Roman People.=--About the fifth century before Christ there were in Rome two cla.s.ses of people, the patricians and the plebeians. The patricians were the descendants of the old families who had lived from remote antiquity on the little territory in the vicinity of the city; they alone had the right to appear in the a.s.sembly of the people, to a.s.sist in religious ceremonies, and to hold office. Their ancestors had founded the Roman state, or as they called it, the Roman city (Civitas), and these had bequeathed it to them. And so they were the true people of Rome.

=The Plebs.=--The plebeians were descended from the foreigners[117]

established in the city, and especially from the conquered peoples of the neighboring cities; for Rome had gradually subjected all the Latin cities and had forcibly annexed their inhabitants. Subjects and yet aliens, they obeyed the government of Rome, but they could have no part in it. They did not possess the Roman religion and could not partic.i.p.ate in its ceremonies. They had not even the right of intermarrying with the patrician families. They were called the plebs (the mult.i.tude) and were not considered a part of the Roman people. In the old prayers we still find this formula: "For the welfare of the people and the plebs of Rome."

=Strife between Patricians and Plebeians.=--The people and the plebs were like two distinct peoples, one of masters, the other of subjects.

And yet the plebeians were much like the patricians. Soldiers, like them, they served in the army at their own cost and suffered death in the service of the Roman people; peasants like them, they lived on their domains. Many of the plebeians were rich and of ancient family.

The only difference was that they were descended from a great family of some conquered Latin city, while the patricians were the scions of an old family in the conquering city.

=Tribunes of the Plebs.=--One day, says the legend, the plebeians, finding themselves mistreated, withdrew under arms to a mountain, determined to break with the Roman people. The patricians in consternation sent to them Menenius Agrippa who told them the fable of the members and the stomach. The plebs consented to return but they made a treaty with the people. It was agreed that their chiefs (they called them tribunes of the plebs) should have the right of protecting the plebeians against the magistrates of the people and of prohibiting any measure against them. All that was necessary was to p.r.o.nounce the word "Veto" (I forbid); this single word stopped everything; for religion prevented attacks on a tribune under penalty of being devoted to the infernal G.o.ds.

=Triumph of the Plebs.=--The strife between the two orders beginning at the end of the fifth century continued for two centuries (494 B.C.