PIAS academics ib gaan GREECE anp ROME Lala we ha a “ai AN a 0 a (ae 9) ‘ON 2 SSS ell Si Si Sl Si ee (SREECE anh RO 2 PE ESDR -Je-BE AN eae ae BY digi GB ovon oF A dak TRANSLATED BY WILLIAM HAND BROWNE f Fohns Hopkins University ILLUSTRATED NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1882 Copyright, 1881, By Henry Hott & Co. ted by Hen M. Tc ¥i Daniet G. F, dy SeyMou v.¥ Benepicr, ¥. TRANSLATOR’S NOTE. HE translator has retained the oviginal spelling of Greek proper names, except where there ts a well-established Eng- lish form, as Athens, Rhodes, Corinth. He also desives to state that a great part of the numerous poetical quotations scattered throughout the text have been taken Jrom the best versions, and only where no version could be found, or none that was satisfactory, has he invoked his private muse. He begs that this general acknowledgment may be allowed to pass instead of a multitude of references encumbering the margin or disfiguring the text. wn wr H wos ® BH wR OH COINDeE NEES: GREECE, 4. ART AND LITERATURE. Tue Acer or LrEcEND, E 3 é A Ace or Formation or States (To THE Persian Wars), ° Tue Periop or THE DEMOCRACY, AND CoNTESTS FOR THE HEGEMONY, Tue Makeponian PeEriop, AND Fatt or GREEK PouiticaL LiBerty, 2 LIFE AND MANNERS. YoutH AND EDUCATION, é PersonaL APPEARANCE AND DRESS, Tue Women, 2 A House, Furnitu AND DomeEsTt Hospiratiry AND ENTERTAINMENTS, Pusiic Lire, . ? 5 Lire or LetsuRE—Gymnastics AND GAMES, Rexicious Lire, 8. HISTORY AND POLITICAL CONDITION. Epocus or Art, Porrry, Prose Lirerat History, Oratory, PHILOsopHy, GIVE: 4. HISTORY OF THE STATE. Time or THE REPUBLIC, Tue Emperors, 2. LIFE AND MANNERS. Rome, THE Ciry AND THE Empire, Tue House AnD ITs FURNITURE ; D 5 Tue Roman Women, Domestic Lire, Pustic Lire, Re.icious Lirr, . 0 Tue VILLA AND THE GARDEN, AND PERSONAL ORNAMENTS 38, ART AND LITERATURE. Art 1n Rome AND IN THE Empire, Tue LITERATURE OF THE REPUBLIC, LITERATURE OF THE Empire, [vii] PAGE 14 37 45 55 73 84 94 105, 114. 131 145 166 178 IQt gor 319 339 F. BF. dj. ie Js Dy C. He O8 FE. ih, Ab J F. FULL-PAGE LeeUST RATIONS: Tuierscu. SLvontispiece (tit’e). KELLER-LEUZINGER. Greece, Horrmann. Mykenai, HorrMan Sparta, a 5 HorrMa The Dromos in Sparta, Horr Corinth, viewed from the 2S, . . . . Fiscurer. View of Modern Athens, . H. Fiscuer. Battle-field of Plataia, Kuimscu. Sports of Greek girls, 2, Kuimscu. Morning in the Gynaikonitis, . THUMANN. Flower-market at Athens, . Generis. Phryne before the Judges, Btuimann. View of Athens from the East at the Time of Hadrian, Bitutmann. Market of Athens, Knitte. Olympian Games, . TurerscH. Olympia, £ : : Gurtit View from Delphi over the Plain of Krissa, * ;: Biutmann, Inner Propylaia at Eleusis, Horrmann. The Island Sphairia . Tuierscu. Akropolis at Athens, F. Turerscu. Interior of the Parthenon, C. I Riess. Amphora of the rich style, Orro, Athenian Knights from the Pro- cession of the Panathenaia, . : z Nausikaa and’ Odysseus, =RBACH. Departure of Medea, Buutmann. Theatre of Dionysos at Athens, . 7 . é ° PAGE A. Feversacu. Iphigeneia in Tauris, I Tu. Grosse. Death of Sokrates, 13 A. Feuversacn, Agathon’s Feast, 15 | F. Kerier-Leuzincer. Rome, . 17 | F. Pretter. Romulus and Remus, | L. H. Frscuer. Tiberius at Capreae, . 19 | 4H. Siemirapvzxr. Nero’s Torches, 21 | J. BUuimann. Rome in the time of 27 lian, ‘ 3 8 3 53 | W. Friepricu, Street-scene in Pompeii, 69 | F. Kwas. Scenery at Cape Misenum, near 43 «| Baiae, é 83 F. Knaz. Roman Villa, 2 L. H. Fiscuer. Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli, 107 E. SrickeLBerc. Puppet-players at Pompeii, 109 L. Atma Taprema. At the Entrance of the 125 Theatre, . 5 a é 129 L. Atma Tapema. Scene from Roman life, L. Atma Tapema. The Improvisator, 135 W. Friepricu. Banquet, 137 C. Greurts. Carousal, 3 139 G. BavernreLtp, Forum Romanum, . I51 F. Turerscu. Baths of Caracalla, 153 F. Turerscu. Circus Maximus, 155 A. Wacner. Chariot-race in the Circus Max- imus, . < : * 3 161 J. Biutmann. Via Appia near Rome, 167 The Laokodn, 3 A : E 171 L Orro. Group from the recently-discovered Sculptures at Pergamon, > 5 173 J. Biutmann, Interior of the Pantheon, LEU Sa RAMEL@IN: SeiNea bebe ty Bex Athens from the road to Eleusis. H. Fiscuer, View of Drawn from nature, by L. Initial H. By O. Ké6nic, Tail-piece. By F. Tuierscu, Z Ascent to the Capital. History. By O. Kénic, PHIERSCH, Initial W. By F. 3 0 Drawn from nature, by Bes on Parna . GURLITT, 5 ae of Dodona, from the work of Carapanos. Drawn by G. FRANZ, Vale of Tempe, with Olympos and the Pe- neios. Drawn by L. H. Fiscuer, . Plain of Troy, Present appearance, ae IL, Jel, FISCHER, . Golden diadem feel iby Seniemann at Troy, by C. RiEss, Gate of the Lions, at Niyeena J. HorrMann, : : ; na of Schliemann’s Becayauionat My- Restored By Panors kenai. Drawn by G. FRANz, 3 Golden Vesselsfound at Mykenai. Drawn by C. Riess, . J é Terra-cotta Vases, “Sizer Cy prus. Drawn by C. Riess, Bs z 5 Ithaka. Drawn from nature, by L. H. FISCHER, - . ‘ 6 View of Athens, Fro the Peiraios. Drawn from nature, by L. H. FiscHer, Initial D., by F. THrerscu, é 5 Market-place of ‘Sate 21. Restoration. Drawn by J. Hor i, ; ; ; ; Gymnastic Exercises of the Spartan youth, by P. Grot’ Jonann, ° 4 2 Gulf of Corinth. From nature, by L. H. FIsCcHER, Greek Warriors, ligana ancient vases, View of Modern Athens. From nature, by L. Gurlitt. Drawn by H. NEsreEt, Tail-piece, by F. TH1rrscu, 2 0 The Parthenon in the time of Perikles. Res- toration. Drawn by F. Turerscu, Initial L. By F-. 5 Plain of Marathon. By L. H. Fiscuer, Soldier of Marathon. By W. Krauskopr, Coast of Thessalia and Pass of Thermopylai. By L. H. Fiscuer, THIERSCH, FRANZ, Miltiades and Themistokles. By G. Site of Megara, with the Island Salamis. From a sketch by L. Gurlitt, drawn by H. NeEsTEL, Perikles. by E. v. Liprart, From the bust inthe Louvre, Drawn Syracuse. By L. D. Fiscuer, . a ; Alkibiades. From the Monument [nediti, The Peir aios, with the Long Walls and build ings restored. By F. Turerscu, : 5 Site of Thebes. Sketch from nature, by L. Gurlitt. Drawn by H. Nester, Demosthenes. Drawn by H. Votz, Drawn by H. Vorz, Tail-piece. By F. Tuierscu, : 3 Entry of Ale. eat into Babylon. From the frieze by THORWALDSEN, Initial E. By F, Turerscu, Alexander the Great. From Louvre. Drawnby H. Vouz, Battle of Issos. Mosaic from Pomyadtl Bacchanalian Revel of Alexander. By C. GeEHRTS, 6 Sanctuary of From sketches, and drawn by J. Aischines, ander the Gr a bust in the Kalauria, restored. HorrmMann, Poseidon, Tail-piece, 5 5 a : ‘ Girl dancing. From a relief in the Villa Bor- ghese, Rome, Initial. By F. Greek Mother, the Louvre, THIERSCH, 2d 5 with her Children. Relief in bust in the Villa Albani, Aisop. From the Rome. Drawn by H. Vo1 c 5 : Pedagogue. From the Niobe-Group in the Uffizi Palace, Florence. Drawn by F. O. SCHULZE, Scene in a School. male Flute-play From a vase, sr. From a vase, the Girl with Cithara. Antique relief in Louvre, Girls dancing, : : ¢ Girl Playing with Dice. Museum at Berlin, Tail-piece. Bacchante. From an antique altar in the Louvre, . Tanagra. the British Museum, Initial G. By F. Tuterscn, : 5 Greek Ideal Head. From the original in the British Museum. Drawn by L. Orro, Girls from From the originals in Drawn by L, Orro, . Apollo Belvedere, Capitoline Venus, 4 é ‘ Lady of Tanagra. From the original British Museum. Drawn by L. Orro, Male Costume. Drawn by C. Geurts, : Female Costume. By C, Grnrrs, 5 3 Figures of Women. By C. Grurts, Z Ephebos, with chlamys and hat. From Hope’s Costume of the Anctents, in the PAGE 2g sf?) we we Ww wo An & w we a3 43 64 65 Girl of Tanagra,in the Chiton. From the original in the British Museum, Drawn by EOrTro; a ‘ 2 Parti-coloured Dress. Froma vase, . 5 Shoes, Boots and Sandals. By F.O. Scuunze. Greek Male Heads. From vases. Drawn by C. Kors, < Barber. Fi rom ae areca § in the Benin Mu- seum. Drawnby L.Orro, . 9 : Female Heads, with antique coiffures. From Stackelberg’s Graber der Hellenen. Drawn by C. Kors, . Klytie. By C. Kors, Female Head, from the G igsaleatine Toilet Implements, with Mirror, Scrapers and at Munich, Fans. Drawn by C, Riss, . ‘ iy 3ride Adorned for the Nuptials. From a Greek yase, 4 Sale of Flowers. By O. Konig, Greek Women at Home. Froma vase, Initial W. By C. Riess, “ ‘ Dorian Girl, victor in the state race. Drawn from the antique. By C. Kors, Sappho. Drawn by L. Micuavex, @ 2 Greek Lady, seated. From a vase. By C. Korn, Dancing-Girl. By C. Koxs, Domestic Scenes. From a vase, Eros of Praxiteles. By C. Kors, Aspasia. By C. Korn, Aphrodite. By L. MicHaex, Tail-piece, . " ‘i ; . 5 Entrance of a Greek House. Restoration. Drawn by J. BUHLMANN, Initial E. By F. Turerscn, Ground Plan ofa Greek House, Aula, with the Prostas and Statue ae Festi in the background. Restoration. Drawn by J. BUHLMANN, Chairs and Seats. Drawn b Couches. Drawn by F. Lamps and Candelabra. 5 Greek Women at Housel reld Work. By I yy F. O. Scuuze, KLIMscH, Tail-p 5 8 Carousal. By A. TApEMa, F Initial F. By F. Turerscu, é 3 Receiving a Guest-Friend. Froma vase. By C. Riess, ‘ " , Greeks at Table. By E. Kiimscn, Wine-jugs or ofnochoat, mixing-bowls, krateres. By C. Riess, . rc é > 4 Bacchos. Drawn by C. Ko.p, Female Acrobats. By E, Kuiimscu, Drinking Vessels: Bowls, beakers, < By C. Riess, . Tail-piece. By C. Riz e. Street in nen with the Tower 6h ihe: WwW ide! By J. Béuima f Initial By F. Turerscu, A Slave-girls at the Fountain. By E. Kuimscn, . Hippokrates. Drawn by C. Kors, Hermes and Asklepios, Drawn by C. Ko.s, PAGE 65 66 66 67 67 67 68 70 7 7 3 3 2 00 00 Cos ~x x wa ws Qrvxouortane 95 oh 98 100 IOI 102 104 105 105 106 107 108 ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT. [x] Athenians Conversing. From Hope’s Costume of the Ancients, ‘ 5 The Pnyx in its present appearance. By H. Tail-piece, 3 5 4 G Excavations at Olympia. By H. Neste, 6 Initial B. By F. Turerscu, 3 0 q Nocturnal Revellers. From a vase, Greek Chariot, . 6 Artemis, Goddess of the c hase. By I. Vouz. Plain of Athens, with Aigina and the distant mountains, seen from the Akropolis, Drawn from nature, by L. Guruirt, 8 Faun of Praxit 3y H. Vorz, F Road from Eleusis to Athens. By J. Biut- MANN, . . P 5 4 Apoxyomenos. By H. Vouz, a Diskobolos making the Cast. By H. Vouz, Diskobolos resting. By H. Vouz, Farnese Hercules. By H. Vowz, eS Hermes, God of the Gymnasts. By H. Vouz, . Nike of Paionios. By L. Micuaex, . Hermes of Praxiteles. By L. Micuavex, Interior of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia. Re- stored by J. BUHLMAN Bust of Zeus. Drawn by E, v. ita A Initial C. By F. Turerscn, P p ° Youth praying. From the bronze statue in the Berlin Museum, : j Ravine of Delphi. Sketched from nature, by L. Gurlitt. Drawn by H, Nester, Ruins of Delphi. Sketched from nature by i, Gurlitt. Drawn by H. NesrEx, ; 3acchanals. From the Borghese vase in the Louvre, : 2 6 Athenian Women in the TPanetinenytas Proces- sion. From the original in the British Museum. Drawn by L. Orvro, i srificial Victims in the Panathenaiac Pro cession. From the original in the British Museum. Drawn by L. Orro, ¢ Source of the Styx. By L. H. Fiscuerr, Opened Grave with its contents. By C. Ri Street of Tombs in Athens. Restoration. By F.THIERSCH, . ? o : Relief on a Greek Fos, From the original in the Louvre. Drawn by E. v. Lipnart, Funeral Cups. By C. Riss, 3 Ornaments from Schliemann’s discoveries at Troy. By C. Rigs Initial A. By F. Tx “Treasury of Atreus.” By C. Rigss, Temple of Poseidon at Paestum. By J. Biut- MANN, . 4 Propylaia at Athens. By F. Temata H, Doric and Ionic capitals. By C. Rtxss, b Karyatid of the Erechtheion, Drawn by L. Onto. : . . : ‘ s The Erechtheion. Restoration. By F. Tuerscu, Vases. By C. Riess, From the Ficoronian cista in the Museo iR RSCH, i cheriano at Rome, PAGE IIo Ti2 113 114 114 116 117 Ne) 135 138 140 141 141 143 144 145 145 146 147 148 150 151 152 154 157 ILLUSTRATIONS Draped Female Figures from the Frieze of the Parthenon. By H. Voz, t Niobe. By H. Vorz, . , . Aphrodite of Melos. By H. Vouz, 6 Dying Gaul. By H. Vo1z, ‘ : e Bull. By H. Vouz, Fi : Tail-piece. By C. Riess. é and Thersites. By O. Head-piece : cae K6nic, Homer. By E. Ai IPHART, 2 i Sophokles. In id Lateran Museum at Crome By H. Vouz, Scene from a Comedy. By C. Grnrts, Poseidippos. Statue in the Vatican. By H. Voz, 5 5 : 5 Menander. Statue in the Vatican, By H. Vouz, Mount Boman, L. H. Fiscuer, Initial H. By F. Tuimrscu, Drawn from nature, by Demosthenes. Bust in the Vatican. By H. VoLz, : ‘ 5 : ‘ Sokrates. Bust in the Vatican. By H. Vorz, Bust in the Villa Albani at Rome, By L. Ritter, Diogenes. Arch of Constantine. Initial W. By C. Ri Tail-piece. By C. Riess, 5 Monument of the Horatii and Ci uriatii. PRELLER, é By C. Ris By F. Initial S. Hannibal. By G. ~RKAUF, The elder Scipio. G, THEUERKAUF, Pompeius the Great. By G. THruERKAur, Julius Caesar. By G. THEv Marcus Brutus. By G. THEUE a Augustus and Livia, from the Gemma Augus- tea, : Initial F. B Augustus. ey G. Tiberius. By G. THEvERKAur, Nero. By G. me UERKAUF, Claudius. By G. THe The younger / Vv Titus. Galba. Trajan. Marcus y C. Riess, THEUERKAUF, UERKAUR, Agrippina. By G. spasian. By G. THEUERKAUr, By G. THEUERKAUF, By H. Vouz, By H. Votz, 3 ¢ ‘i Aurelius. from the equestrian statue at the Capitol. By G. THEUERKAUF, Constantine the Great. By G. 17 Capitol at Rome. Restoration. MANN, 3 © 2 Initial W. By O. Grrarp, 5 Aurelian Wall. By F. PRELLER, Fountain of Alexander Restoration. By J. BUHLMANN, Ruins of a Roman Aqueduct. By F. PRELLER, Ruins inthe Roman Campagna. By F. Pret- LER, : Augustus, on ne bust in the G lyptothe k in Munich, : ‘ Roman Amphitheatre in Astin By R, Pi TTNER, THEUERKAUF, “HEUERKAUF, By J. Bout- Severus at Rome. PAGE 159 161 162 163 164 165 166 166 oo a3 oo 182 184 188 189 189 190 191 IgI 194 “197 199 200 201 IN THE TEXT, Roman pt hesen in Verona, NER, By R. Porr- Roman Aqueduct near Gancl in te south & France. By R. PUTTNER, Porta Nigra, at Treves. Drawn by P. Roman Pavement. By C. a View of the Roman Campagna, from the Villa Appia. By F. s Roman Travelling Ca: RITTER, RIeEss, >. Riess, Roman Milestone. By Bay of Baiae. By L. H. The Maison Carré: By R. Pura Roman Bakery. Initial V. By O. Section of a Roman House. a Roman temple in Nimes. By W. FRriepricu, GIRARD, 6 s ByC. Ground Plan of a Roman House (the house of By C. Riess, Interior of a Roman House. By C. Riess, By P. Breckert, Pompeian Wall Decoration. By C. IRs ss, Hovering Figure, from a fresco at Pompeii. By P. BecKert, 5 5 : By C. By C. Russ, a Domestic Utensils. By C. Riess, Roman Garden. By P. Rirrer, ; View from the Tiburtine villa of the Emperor Hadrian. By J. Biutmann, Head-piece. Initial K. Romans w Riess, Pansa in Pompeii). Boy witha Swan. Roman Ceiling. Riess, Floor-mosaic. Restoration. By O. By F. : : earing the Toga. By P. Beckert, Sandals. By FROER, By P. Beckert, Coiffures of Roman Ladie: 2 Cc. KERT, . By A. DE KGnIG, THIERSCH, Roman Shoes and Roman Women Kous, Juno Ludovisi. By P. Bec Toilette of a Roman Lady Female Ornaments. By C. Riess, 2 < Toilette Articles. By C. Rtgss, F SS Tail-piece. By C. Reiss, Aldobrandini Wedding. Initial M. By O. Grrarp, Roman Maiden. By P. Matron. By P. Br rippina and Germanicus. CourTEN, By P. Brecker, BECKERT KERT, By P. Breckerv, ssalina. By P. Beckert, The Young Nero. By P. Beckerv, Faustina. By P. BEecKErT, Julia Domna. By P. Brckert, By P. Becker, By P. Becki . By P. Beckert, 3y W. FRIEDRICH, Saracalla. Roman Poet Roman Married P: House-philosopher. Tail-piece, 4 ‘ : Cato and ate iByale BECKERT, Initial A, By O. Girarp, Writing Implements. By C. Riess, School Scene. By P. BECKERT, Roman Girls. By P. Beckert, 5 i W. FRIEDRICH, . Sv Study. Vitellius. m of Clients. By By W. By P. BEcKERT, é : FRIEDRICH, 5 B 5 PAGE Glassware. By C. Rugss, d Silverware of the time of Rergiesines aeconened at Hildesheim. By C. Risss, Still-life. By C. Rtess, : > Romans at Table. By L. Atma Tapema, Roman Flowe Musical entertainment. By P. Becker’ 3 Tail-piece (from a Pompeian fresco). By P. BECKER 5 3 Q Roman racing ites By V. Froer, . Initial K. By O. Grrarp, : 3 The Forum (present appearance). By G. Bau- ERNFEIND, A : é ‘ Street in Pompeii. By W. Friepricu, . é Wall-inscription from Pompeii. By. C. Ri é . Theatrical masks. By V. Frorr, : Colosseum seen from the Palatine (present ap- pearance). By R. Pirrner, 5 Section of the Colosseum, showing the con- struction. By C. Riess, f. By P. BEG Gladiators. From a painting on the j of the amphitheatre at Pompeii. BECK Praetorians. From a rel Suovetaurilia. By P. Becker, . Tnitial D. By O. Girarp, Altar. By V. Frorr, ; . Roman making an offering. By P. Becker Flora. By P. Beckert, Haruspex. By P. Breckert, Pyramid of Cestius. Roman tomb. By R. Pivrner, 3S é . In the Street of Graves at Pompeii. By W. FRIEDRICH, é Columbarium. By C. Russ, In the Catacombs. By C. Risss, Tail-piece. By C Relief from T sketches, 6 " Initial N. By O. Grrarp, 3 3 Gaul killing his wife and himself. From the original in the Villa Ludovisi, : i Torso of Herakles in the Belvedere. From the Riess, jan’s column, From original original, 2 ; ' ; Venus de’ Medici. From the original in Flor- ence, ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE 8 S n 8 S33 25 Ann RE oS 289 290 299 291 293 294 295 296 207, 298 0f8) 300 301 301 i: JEN SUMZEE AGIA SG; PAGE Sleeping Ariadne. From the original in the Vatican, 6 a E : + 306 Borghese Boxer. From the original in the Louvre, . @ cf ago Forum and Clsiberaye of ‘Teen, Restoration. By J. Biutmann, 5 ; ~ 308 Villa of Hadrian at Tivoli. By R. Ptrrner, . 309 Antinoos. From the bust in relief in the Villa Albani, . 4 E 2 5 a eli Scene from the Odyssey-landscapes in the Vatican, 3 n F c 3 Bue Temple of Pallas. By J. Bintmann. Restora- tion of a Roman temple, Z 313 Corinthian and Composite capitals. By C. Riess, 314 Mouth of the Cloaca Maxima at the Tiber. By R. Pirrner, . re 315 Mausoleum of Hadrian (Gen the castle oi Sant’ Angelo). Restored and drawn by C. Rirss,. 316 Arch of Titus. By L. Rirrer, . 4 Sy Tail-piece. By P. Brc 5 : 5 res From the Gardens of Sallust. Drawn from nature, by F. PRELLER, . : 6 5 its) Initial E. By O. Grrarp, 3 : 5 Brie) Scipio Africanus the elder. By P. BECKERT,. 320 Sarcophagus of Cornelius Lucius Scipio, from the original in the Vatican, . , ae 2a Entrance to the Graves of the Scipios. Drawn from nature by F. PreLirr, 324 Terence. By H. Wotrr, . e . 5 as Sallust, from an ancient coin. Drawn by H. Wotrr, 9 326 Hortensius. By H. Wotrr, 5 + 328 Cicero. By H. Vouz, . = 320 Sarcophagus of the Muses, at the C epiton 330 Initial D. By O, Girarp, 330 By H. Wo. 3 From a painting by A. vc From a painting by A. von Wer» From ancient coins, By H. Wotrr, By H. Vorz, z 5 Villa of the younger Pliny, from wine restora- tion of K. F. Schinkel in the +k habitations more to their mind. The Herakleidai many adventurers of other tribes, to se brought forward their hereditary claim to the Peloponnesos, from which their ancestor had been driven by Eurystheus. Beaten back at the Isthmus, Oxylos, the Aitolian, led them across the gulf; and while he took for his own the land of Elis, the Dorians and Herakleidai acquired, not by a sudden invasion, but after much toil and fighting, and partly indeed by negotiation, the three states, Argolis, Lakonia and Messenia. The movement did not end here. A part of the Dorians went to Crete, and there founded a Dorian state, which became a pattern to the mother-country. Another part, leaving Argolis, turned back northwards over the Isthmus, and conquered and Dorzzed Megaris but at Attika A third part joined itself to a movement which had been brought about by the Dorians legend says through the self-sacrifice of Kodros—they were brought to a stand. indirectly. The peoples whom they had alarmed or pressed upon were again looking for new abodes, and among these were Achaians who had been forced to abandon their strong cities in Argolis, and now gave their name to the region of Achaia, on the south of the Gulf of Krissa or Corinth. In Attika, especially, and in the coast-towns of Boiotia, wanderers =f of all races took refuge; Aiolians, Ionians, Achaians; among them noble and wealthy families, such as the descendants of Nestor, from Pylos. Here they assembled, and from these ports, but especially from Aulis, they took ship, and passing from island to island, as so many stations on the way, reached, at last, the coast of Asia Minor, And here they , who had succeeded the old JIonians, such as_ the found everywhere kindred races Dardanians in the Troad, Not until after much hard fighting did the new-comers get 9 GREECE. PRESENT ASPECT OF THE PLAIN OF TROY, possession of the old towns, which they partly destroyed and partly reconstructed, In this way arose the Aiolian, Ionian and Dorian colonies, which were destined soon to surpass in culture the mother-land. Y Out of these struggles for settlements—at least such is the view taken by many writers— arose the legend of the Trojan war. All that is certain is that the Homeric songs had _ their origin and development there on the coast of Asia Minor. But whether the Atreidai and their companions among the princes of Greece really took any part in the war, and whether their and after the return, are not pure inventions, is more than questionable. adventures, durin; One contribution to the solution of these questions has been made by the discoveries of Schliemann in Mykenai and the Troad, but it is at best only a contribution. They have not answered with certainty, either the questions as to~ the existence and site of Troy, or those relating to the fates of the Atreidai. Where most of the scholars of to-day place the site GOLD DIADEM FOUND AT HISSARLIK. Composed of fine chains and leaves. HISTORY AND POLITICAL CONDITION. of Troy, absolutely nothing has been found proving the existence of such a city ; but there, where the ancients themselves fixed the position of Ilium, upon the present hill of Hissarlik, Schliemann has discovered, in countless abundance, relics proving the existence, not only of a town, but of one which had more than once been destroyed by fire and sword, exactly as is told of Troy. These general facts are not to be denied or ars sued away, and they will forever perpetuate the fame of their discoverer. But another contradiction presents itself, which, so far, has not been reconciled. The state of culture which meets us everywhere in the Homeric poems is one far more advanced than that revealed by the remains found at Hissarlik. Centuries must lie between them, GATE OF THE LIONS AT MYKENAI (RESTORED). but how many, who can say? for the relics found at Hissarlik are of the most primitive kind, while the culture in the Iliad and Odyssey is in no wise such. At all events, one characteristic which agrees with the legend of Troy, that is, high antiquity, is conceded by apparently a majority of scholars to that wonderful, fabulous treasure-trove so lately discovered in the stronghold of Mykenai, the ancient seat of Agamemnon. Schliemann, relying upon a tradition—which, it is true, we only have from the comparatively late report of Pausanias—believes that he has here found the graves of Agamemnon and his family; and his view has been accepted by scholars of good repute. From these graves he has brought to light whole treasures of gold ; utensils, pieces of armour, weapons, masks, ornaments of all kinds, The immense importance of these discoveries, as I by similar discoveries of antiquities belonging to nearly the same time, which Cesnola, within illustrating the development of Greek civilization, is denied by none. It is even enhanced II GREECE, VIEW OF SCHLIEMANN’S EXCAVATIONS AT MYKENA In the foreground is the so-called agua, in which are the gray the last ten years, has made at Cyprus; and which at least give us glimpses into the culture of a period in which all history floats in the mist of legend. Some even ascribe to these relics from Mykenai a higher antiquity than the time of the Atreidai, supporting their view by the fact that the remains of buildings, such as the walls and the Gate of the Lions, as well as that subterranean structure called the Treasury of Atreus, which were famous even in antiquity, exhibit such differences of architecture that they can hardly belong to one period. But to these it may be answered that the time of the Atreidai is itself undetermined, and can be pushed back at pleasure. Others again argue that it is the house of Atreus, and no other, to which the tradition preserved in Homer ascribes the golden treasures ; and Pelops, founder of this race, as was said above, came from the g old-land of Asia Minor, and brought, as the legend ran, his treasures thence. Even the graves, and the so-called treasury, tradition expressly associated with Atreus and his house, while it attributed the building of the walls of Mykenai to another race, But even if this discrepancy between the state of culture shown by the Homeric poems and that indicated by the antiquities found in the Troad and at Mykenai forbids our drawing conclusions from the latter which shall have a bearing upon the Iliad and Odys y, this fact does not | ssen the value of these poems for the history of civilization. They give a true picture of the time in which they arose. This picture corresponds to the state of things which existed when, as a consequence of the Dorian movement, the Aiolians, Ionians and Dorians crossed over to Asia Minor and struggled to establish themse If we would fix an approximate date to the period here described, we may take the tenth century before the Christian era, GOLDEN Wine-jugs and beakers, adorned with Gree! ELS OF THE AGE OF THE KI designs, drawn in their uninjured state 3S OF MYKENAI, Found by Schiiemann at the stronghold of Mykenai. 12 MYKENAI, HISTORY AND POLITICAL CONDITION. PREHISTORIC From Cesnola’s As before remarked, the state of cult from being a primitive one, either in the re Hike complete and closed company of gods ; indee or the political circumstances. Greek sat and the with human frailties, both the gre to lurk a shade of scepticism. state order prevails, and the king is still the authority is not restricted, but he listens to t to limit his power, and at last to overthrow insolent demagoguery ; but he has no followir and shameful chastisement. found on the side of these anticipations ar to the old order of things, the absolute mon POT’ The poet himself RY FROM RUS. vations. T CYP. ure that we find in the Homeric poems is far ations of man to man, in the religious system, polytheism here has assumed the form of a d, in the way in which these gods are depicted vetty, not without a touch of irony, there seems The priesthood has attained position and influence ; in the His nobles who, at a later date, are solitary ruler, the highest and last judge. he voices of t ity line ding: ng; there is r ne rsites alone do we find a trace of no Demos to save him from instant srevailing sentiment, and is not yet He still holds ace of God: shares the nd harbing of a new epoch, S archy—kingship by the Ill fares the state Where many masters rule: let one be Lord, One King supreme In token of his sover to whom wise Saturn’s son, eign power, hath given The sceptre’s sway and ministry of law. 1T HAKA, aS VIEW FROM THE ROCKS OF THE migration to the beg cee history three leading Sparta and of Athen for the hegemony—t it is a period of t political developmen Hellenism through the co Mediterranean. It was long ere the new n done before the new and the old in system of things. From the new front Lakonia, / 14 monarchy to democt firmly established in the Peloponnese PEIRAIOS, LOOKING TOWARD ATHENS. AGE OF THE FORMATION OF STRATES; TO THE PERSIAN WARS. URING its second period, that is, from the close of the Dorian inning of the Persian wars, or about five hundred years before the Christian era, we find in Greek movements. First, there is the growth of s, bringing about their rivalry and struggle he leadership of Hellenic policy ; secondly, he highest importance in the history of ate from t, the transformation of the racy; thirdly, we have the diffusion of onies and all the eastern half of the nasters, the Dorians and Herakleidai, were ;; and centuries of fighting had to be habitants had found their places in the new and the old states there finally came to the Argos and Messenia, the former the most Dorzzed, and the latter und beyond AGE OF THE FORMATION OF STATES. the least. Fora time it seemed as if Argos, now the new capital in the place of Mykenai, would secure the supremacy once wielded by Agamemnon; but she soon fell back before the greater strength and more vigorous policy of Sparta, that raised herself to the leadership of the Dorian peoples, and became the moving spirit of politics and culture. Perhaps nowhere were the circumstances more unfavourable to the establishment of a solid polity than in Lakonia. In addition to the dissension between the old inhabitants and the new, there was the evil of a double royal line and two simultaneous kings. At last, in their MARKET-PLACE OF SPARTA In the background the citadel ; in the foreground the statue of Hermes Agoreios, with the infant Bacchos ; in he middle distance the statue of the Spartan people, with the temple of the Moirai, containing the bones of Orestes, a ; on the right the je to the Persian hall, adorned with the spoils of the Persian war, utmost need, a deliverer arose in Lykurgos (884 8. c.), who, by his constitution, succeeded in reconciling the antagonisms, and bringing all into le al order. His success was such that he determined Sparta’s destiny and place in history for all succeeding time. Lykurgos had travelled much, and had found his model in Krete. Here, too, a body of Dorian warriors had come, too weak to seize the supremacy, but too strong to be driven out; and so distributed themselves through the whole political fabric of the state, that taking upon themselves the office of its defenders, they became its perpetual and hereditary soldiery. This was the principle from which Lykurgos started with his Dorians, or Spartans, as they were thenceforth called. As they had entered the land as soldiers, they were to be soldiers forever ; and no work, no business was to interfere with this their true vocation. To make them independent, he divided the whole fair and fruitful plain of the Eurotas equally between nine thousand Spartans. These, however, were not themselves to till the land, though they 15 GREE lived from its produce ; that work was to be performed by a class of serfs bound to the soil, the Helots. The remaining land, chiefly mountainous, he distributed in thirty thousand allot- ments among the old inhabitants, called Perioikoi, ‘dwellers around.” This land they held as a free people, who carried on agriculture, trade, manufactures and seafaring, and were liable to military service. The the two ki svernment, however, was altogether in the hands of the Spartans. Lykurgos left undisturbed, but beyond the leadership in war, they retained only the dignity, e themselves, but the without the power, of royalty. All decisions lay with the Spartan peo GYMNASTIC EXERCISES OF THE SPARTAN YOUTH. Court of the epheboi in a gymnasium, with wrestling, throwing the diskos, swinging the ball, &c, voice of each was to be a simple ay or no: there was none of that debating and wrangling, then growing, in the Greek colonies at least, to be the general democratic custom. Next to the king, Lykurgos placed the council of the Gerontes, ‘old men,” thirty in number, taken from the oldest and most distinguished citizens. He established—or rather continued, for the office already existed—the overseership of the six Ephoroi; an office which grew from mere super- intendence of the market to a supervisorship of the state and constitution, with a final voice in all public matters. The Ephoroi restrained all things within their fixed limits, and kept the kings in their restrictions. This was the cause why the kingly office survived in Sparta, when it had long been abolished in the rest of Greece, Lykurgos had made his Spartans free to devote themselves entirely to public and military affairs; now, to train them to the highest possible efficiency as soldiers, he placed the 16 SPARTA. ii i he Wy THE DROMOS IN AGE OF THE FORMATION OF STATES. education of the youth in the hands of the state. The state educated them in common, rigidly, austerely: what was needed were soldiers capable of any endurance, practised in every exer- cise, yet not wanting in intelligence, cunning, and shrewdness—soldiers able to command and ice of those exercises which lead as well as to obey. And the full-grown men continued the pr they had learned in youth. And so, naturally, with the Spartans, the family and the home fell into the background: all thoughts were for the state, and all training and education had war as its object. The unavoidable consequences were a passion for action, love of war, lust of rule; and the future of Sparta was fixed. She reached out over her borders, beyond the confines of Lakonia; and the first victim of her new spirit was the neighbouring state Messenia. Two long and bloody wars, in which not seldom the balance swayed, and Sparta almost despaired, completed Messenia’s overthrow. A like attempt upon Arkadia only succeeded in bringing the brave town Tegea to a military alliance. 3ut though conquest was checked, the influence of Sparta widened. Around the sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia, situated where the Alpheios issues from the mountains into the plain, the towns Elis and Pisa contended for the wardenship and conduct of the Olympic ans to their aid, the latter the Argiv Pisa succumbed, games. The former called the Spz was destroyed, and vanished from the earth. Elis took the conduct of the games; but Sparta became their guardian, and thus placed herself at the head of the Amphiktyonic league, which state in the had formed around the sanctuary and the games. This made her the leadi Peloponnesos; and her influence rose to the hegemony when she had succeeded in freeing the states and cities from their local rulers, the so-called tyrants. But in the interval, while Sparta was consolidating herself under the constitution of Lykurgos, the other states had passed through a whole series of political changes, whose course, in the main, was the same in alls These began in the Ionian cities of Asia Minor, Miletos at their head. The mobile temperament of the Jonians, their rapid development, the possibility, in the narrow limits of the city, for the whole body of citizens to conduct their public affairs in person, made the office of king superfluous, and it was abolished. But what took the place of the king, at first, was not the whole body of citizens, but the rich and distinguished families. Thus royalty passed first into aristocracy; or, where there were but a few families to take the conduct of affairs, into oligarchy, the rule of a few. As by the development of commerce and industry the body of the people increased in wealth and importance, it grew at the same time to political power and influence, and began to struggle for a share in the government and for the control of its own interests. In this way an opposition to the aristocracy arose in the populace, the demos. But its time had not yet come. The demos, still in its minority, placed itself under the leadership of bold and shrewd heads, who aimed at their own advantage. Supported by the favour of the people, defended by a body-guard, they intrigued for absolute power; and in this they succeeded everywhere, except where, as in Sparta, the conditions were fixed and immovable. Thus, in the seventh and sixth centuries B. c, there was over all Greece an age of tyrants. These tyrants, having risen to power by force, could only maintain themselves by force, in strong citadels, with bodies of soldiers. They perpetrated cruelties of every description, and the worst acts of tyranny. Slavishness and demoralization followed, and the feeling of nation- ality gave way tc selfishness. But there were ways in which even this state of things—unin- had an elevating effect upon the nation. Bold and determined men tentionally, it is true turned the looks of their people outward, and by large enterprises widened their political hori- 3 17 GREECE. zon. They indulged in luxury, not only for gratification, but to keep the hands and minds of the people employed ; they patronized industry and art, and drew to their courts all celebri- ties in learning or in poetry. They adorned the temples of the gods with precious works of art. They built much, and on a noble cale—temples, palaces, citadels, as well as works of general utility, such as harbours, canals, aqueducts. Even in a political sense the tyrants wrought for the future. By abolishing the aristocracy, and humbling or banishing the ancient ruling fami- lies, they introduced political equality, and paved the way for the democracy that was ripening fast beneath them. Thus, in the light of politics as well as of civilization, the tyranny was a GULF OF CORINTH, On the left the peak Akro Akorinthos, at the foot of which, on the farther side, old Corinth was situated. On the right is the northern coast of Peloponnesos, with its mountains rising in the background. necessary stage of transition. Upon its fall arose spontaneously the rule of the demos, and the expansion of literature and art may be dated from this rise. Of these tyrants, the most influential and most powerful were Kleisthenes the Ortha- gorid in Sikyon, Kypselos and Periandros in Corinth, Polykrates in Samos, and Pei: stratos at Athens. They all ruled with vigour and unquestionable ability; to a certain extent even wisely and benevolently. Periandros was re ned one of the seven sages of Greece. But their sons or successors did not resemble them, and could not maintain their inherited position. It was not long before they fell, partly by internal conspiracies, and partly by the artions of Sparta, always the strongest opposer of the tyranny. Sparta, solidly established, with firmly. fixed rela- tions and a conservative constitution, saw in the tyrants, as the representatives of violent change, a perpetual danger to herself. In her efforts to enlarge her importance she everywher encountered the resistance of these tyrants, who drew close together and opposed league to league, Even nationality and national freedom were threatened when the tyrants, seeking to 18 auvry sAor8-ssard 43 “HLNINOO AGE OF THE FORMATION OF STAT. strengthen themselv: sought alliances with foreign princes and lands, with Egypt, Lydia, Persia, and thus brought the Barbarian world against Greece. Thus it was quite as much in their own immediate interest as for the sake of the whole Hellenic people that the Spartans undertook an energetic policy against the tyrants, and by expelling these became the champions and liberators of Greece. Out of this struggle they came with increased importance and influ- ence, an influence which now extended far beyond Peloponnesos. And now they came in con- tact with the power of Athens, which, in the meantime, had been strengthening itself, and had nearly completed a cycle of its peculiar and isolated history. Attika, a headland embraced by the sea, and separated from the mass of Hellas by mountain ranges, had been comparatively undisturbed by the invasion of the Herakleidai. At all events it had gone through no revolution like the other states. Immigrants, it is true, came inetans, for the snians, Tonians, Aiolians, Achaians, Ai in abundance, and from all sides : Mess 5 most part noble and wealthy families, who were received into the land and the community, and gave the population the more excitable and mobile blood of a mixed race. One of these families, the Neleids, or descendants of Nestor, from Pylos, even attained the kingly dignity in Athens after the extinction of the indigenous and legendary line of the Er ch- theidai. But the Neleids did not long retain the kingly name, even if the authority remained. After Kodros the Neleid, who offered himself to death for his country, none was found worthy of the throne. They left to the descendants of Kodros the hereditary station, but changed the title Baszleus, “king,” to Archon, “ rule Thirteen hereditary archons successively held the office for life. Then a long step further was taken toward the abolition of royalty ; the office ceased to be hereditary and for life, and the archons were chosen for ten years, but always from the family of the Kodrids. Then—and this was the third stage—all the nobles were made eligi- ble, the term of office was reduced to a year, and instead of one, nine archons were chosen, who shared the duties among them. In this way was kingship abolished, and the aristocracy, the great families, took its n other states of Greece, only by a more gradual series of place, just as had happened changes. The further political development went on in a similar progression. The aristocrats abused their power; from the oppression of the people arose the ¢yrannds, and from this the democracy. The population of Attika was divided into three classes, the Eupatridai, the Geomoroi, and the Demiourgoi, that is, nobles, tillers of the soil, and craftsmen. The Eupatridai, the owners of the best lands, trafficked with their own ships, and grew rich and powerful; while the other two classes, settled on the sterile, rocky hills, or working in the towns and villages, became debtors to the wealthy class, and more and more dependent upon them, and the Eupatridai harshly abused their position. With the fall of the monarchy they had attained the legislative power, and ‘wielded it only in their own interests. Wrong and oppression at last aroused the spirit of opposition in the growing multitude of the lower classes, who began to resist the severity of the written law, and of the code of Drako. Avaricious Eupatridai tried to turn this rising opposition to their personal advantage. Thus arose the attempt of the young Kylon, with the help of his father-in-law, the tyrant Theagenes of Megara, to set up a tyranny in Athens. The attempt failed; the Eupatridai, under the leadership of the Alkmaionids, their richest and most powerful family, remained victors. But the opposition was not subdued; the struggle of classes continued, and the confusion and _ peril grew more and more. Then, as Lykurgos had done in Sparta, a man arose in Athens who succeeded in “ yy }} | i GREECE. harmonizing the conflicting elements under a common political system, assigning to every class its rights and duties, and marking out a path for the future. This was Solon, a Eupatrid, a man of wealth and distinction, who had travelled in many lands, and was elevated above the prejudices and partisanships of his own ; a man whom his people reckoned among the seven sages ; and assuredly he deserved that title, if ever man did. The malady from which Athens was suffering was easy to recognize, but hard to cure. Old rights, existing powers, had to be considered, and hereditary station and property respected. Solon, though sustained by the confidence of his fellow-citizens, could not attempt an ideal and absolutely perfect system, such as was later wrought out by the philosophers ; GREEK WARRIORS. the best he could do was to provide something that was possible in the present, and left the way open to perfection in the future. The Eupatrids held the government and the power ; these he could not take away, but he could at least procure fase the other citizens a share of these, or open a way for their participation. This he contrived by apportioning rights and duties according to the amount of income, and that income arising from ered estates. Solon divided the community into four classes, of which only three paid taxes, and had a right to share in the government. These three constituted the defence of the state ; but the archons were chosen from the first alone. So as at that time it was only the Eupatrids who had large landed estates, it followed that for some time their ancient prescriptive right to the government was not disturbed. The fourth class was excluded from all honourable wines but had an equal voice in the popular assembly which decided in matters affecting the organic law, 20 SNHHLV NYYGOW JO MAIA AGE OF THE FORMATION OF STATES. or the question of peace and war, and from which were chosen the sworn judges. In this importance of the assembly lay the future of the Athenian democracy. But Solon had yet more to do for the fourth class, for this, impoverished and loaded with debt, had fallen into utter dependence upon the rich. He released them from imprisonment for debt and from the mortgages on their lands, and at least lightened their load of indebtedness by lowering the standard of the coin, and allowing their debts to be paid in the new and lighter issue. A hundred new drachmai were intrinsically worth only seventy-three of the old; but in the payment of these debts they were to be taken at their nominal value. Well knowing that these measures would in time lead to complete political equality, Solon took care to guard against a possible overturn before they had worked out their results. VIEW OF MODERN ATHENS. On the left the city, next the Akropolis and ruins of the Parthenon, the ancient theatre and hill of Ares ; below, the Theseion, the Museion, the Payx, and last, the present observatory. e to his system by placing at the head of all a body He therefore fastened a heavy counterpots g composed of men who had filled irreproachably the highest offices. These were to watch over morals and customs, and to oppose their authority to any over-hasty innovation. This was the Areiopagos, so called from its place of meeting, the hill of Ares, which stood over against the akropolis. Many other measures Solon introduced, intended to carry out, complete, or consolidate his stem. At last, when as archon, in the year 594 8. c, he had set up the new laws in writing in the public places, and thus literally laid the copestone of his work, he took a promise from the Athenians to leave these laws unchanged for ten years. He wished them to have a full trial, and to enter into the life of the peopl Thus were the laws received and observed, and they laid, as was intended, a foundation for future development. But they could not put a check to partisanship nor to the ambition of the powerful families and their heads, who here, as in the other states and cities of Greece, aimed at kingly rule—the ¢yrannzs, Despite Solon’s warnings and precautions, the fate that 21 GREECE. had befallen the rest befell Athens also. After various fortunes—twice successful and twice in banishment—Peisistratos finally established himself permanently in power. Peisistratos was the ideal of a tyrant, in the better sense of the word. A born ruler, by military enterprises he won for his city a consideration it had never before enjoyed. Royal in his instincts, he surrounded himself with splendour and luxury, encouraged arts, gathered about him poets, sages, and men of letters, and bound them to himself by his liberality. With their aid he founded a library, and the first academy of learning. He had the poems of Homer collected, and, so to speak, a critical edition prepared. These poems, sprung out of legend at the beginning of this period, had now at its close become objects of critical treatment; but they had also befome the common property of the whole Hellenic world, a mark that Greek literature was now advancing to its culmination, Peisistratos ruled with justice and mildness. He respected the laws, and left the consti- tution of Solon undisturbed, so far as it did not conflict with his rule. Otherwise was it with Hippias, his son and successor. When his brother Hipparchos fell by the hands of Harmodios and Aristogeiton at the Panathenaic festival, the antique ¢yrannos became a tyrant in the modern sense of the word. But this only hastened his fall. In a little time he had to yield to his antagonists, who had obtained the help of the Spartans. Athens, thus freed, only fell into new party-dissensions. The Eupatrids, brought back by the Spartans, tried to restore the old state of things, and to overthrow the constitution of Solon. But in the meantime the popular party had been so strengthened by this constitution and under the rule of Peisistratos, that it only needed a leader to advance to victory. This eader was found in the Alkmaionid Kleisthenes, whom ambition and lust o power placed at their head, and he, by the changes that he introduced into the constitution, broke the compact oower of the nobility. Regardless of the ancient adjustment, he divided the land and the »eople anew into ten classes, which, like modern departments, formed the districts of govern- ment and finance. He further admitted a host of new citizens, drawn from the class of crafts- men and tradesmen, who hitherto had only been tolerated, into the popular assembly, and thus increased its number and the democratic element. Finally—and this was a bold and thoroughly democratic innovation, resting upon the idea of political equality—he caused the highest offices to be assigned by lot: it is true, only among the few who were qualified to hold them. If Kleisthenes did not himself enjoy the fruit of his undertaking, as little successful was his antagonist Isagoras with the aristocratic party. These, brought back by the warlike Spartan king Kleomenes, and restored to power, aroused by their violence an outbreak of the people from which both they and Kleomenes barely escaped. In vain did the Spartan, who recognized in Athens the growing rival of his own state, summon the Peloponnesian league and the Boiotians to the contest, even calling in the banished Hippias. The Peloponnesians refused: they were little inclined to join the Spartans, who had won their fame and position by the deposition of the tyrants, in an attempt to replace a tyrant on the throne. The Boio- tians came, and were beaten by the Athenians; and the same fate, on the same day, befell the Chalkidians at Euboia, whose city, Chalkis, the mother of many colonies, now became herself a colony of Athens. Thus from all her struggles and combats Athens emerged victorious ; and in Athens the victory was won by the Solonian constitution, and in the latter by the democracy.’ To the democracy belonged the future. But Sparta and Athens, henceforth rivals for the hegemany, had come into sharp collision, and this contest could not fail to be renewed, although the com- mon necessity and peril of the Persian war kept it for a while in abeyance. And even for this AGE OF THE FORMATION OF STATES. war an opening had been made, partly in the way of interference in the contest about Athens, out chiefly through the colonies, and their relations to their powerful neighbour to the east. These colonies are a noteworthy phenomenon, not in Greek history alone, but in the his- tory of the world. The mother-land, first in her uneasy movements, and then in her flourishing rosperity, sends out the overplus of her population to found new cities on distant shores. These cities, prospering more rapidly than their parent, follow her example. Thus Hellenism, the Greek speech, Greek manners and organization was carried to all lands where a fertile soil, a good harbour, trade or traffic invited. Around the whole coast of the Black Sea, to the arther shore of the Sea of Azoy, extended t nese colonies; and Greek culture bloomed among the barbarous Scythians. The Thrakian coast is dotted with countless Greek towns; the colo- nies stretch along the Levant and r ach to the mouth of the Nile, then create a new Greece at Kyrene on the Lybian coast. All around the Adriatic extend Greek settlements, and southern Italy becomes Magna Graeci Even in Gaul, Massilia, the Phokaian city, diffuses Greek cul- ture; more than half Sicily becomes Greek. The western side alone remains to their rivals, the Phoinikians or Carthaginians, who try, moreover, to keep the western half of the Mediterranean for themselves ; but throughout the whole east a broad girdle of blooming daughter-states sur- rounds the mother-state. This girdle is an outwork < gainst the barbarians, but it also invites the barbarians, who strive to break through it. Kroisos, the Lydian king, had made the trial, not without success ; so much the less could his mighty conqueror, the Persian, refrain from the attempt. THE PARTH THE PERIOD OF DEMOCRACY AND THE CONTES i ORD, remem to be remir Wit which had empire, and inators and at a single light of the Und not hesitate. ENON AT THE TIME OF PERIKLES, HORS ARE RE, HEGEMONY. ber the Athenians !” So the Persian king ordered himself nded every day, that he might not forget his vengeance, and the punishment he had sworn to inflict on the handful of people that had dared to give help to his enemies. h the suppression of the Ionian revolt the barrier fell hitherto interposed between Greece and the great Persian the barbarian world was now free to sweep over the orig- diffusers of culture. Asia might fall upon Europe, and, blow, crush out the life which was just blooming as the world, a blessing to all coming time. The barbarian did er Dareios the Persian empire had grown to asolid power of immense strength, ruled by a single iron will. What resistance could Hel as, small, divided, and inharmonious, offer? All that 24. THE PERIOD OF DEMOCRACY. PLAIN OF MARATHON. seemed to be needed was an army and a fleet of moderate size. The first blow was aimed directly at Athens ; but on the plain of Marathon the courage of the citizens, and the firm- ness and skill of Miltiades, drove the Persian host of tenfold their number back to the sea and their ships, and Greece and Greek culture were saved for the time. But the danger was by no means over, though internal troubles in the Persian empire prevented its renewal until a new king mounted the throne, haughty and arrogant, mighty and boastful, a genuine Asiatic despot of the type often met in history. Xerxes gathered the nations of his vast empire, from the Aithiopians to the Massagetai beyond the Kaspian Sea, from the Indus to Thrace ; lack Nubians, brown Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians and hoinikians of the Shemitic races, all the white races of the ranians, the fleet horsemen of the steppe, Phrygians and Lydians— such an army and such a fleet as the world had never seen, Ten years after the overthrow at Marathon, this host of millions »oured over the Hellespont, which in vain broke down the bridges to re, Onward the march went, through Thrakia and »revent the passa: Makedonia, but between Thessalia and Hellas proper, at Thermopylai, where Mt. Oita leaves but a narrow pass between itself and the sea, a handful of Greeks—three hundred Spartans, under their king, sconidas, with a few allies ; a force hardly obtained from the careless confidence of the people—was awaiting them. Vain was the furious s onslaught of the Persians; charge after charge was hurled back, until A SOLDIER OF MARATHON From the monument of Aristion, GREECE, COAST OF THESSALIA AND PASS OF THERMOPYLAT, treachery brought the foe upon the rear of the Spartans. Then they perished to a man, faithful to their country’s orders, and earned their monu- ment and epitaph; Go tell the Spartans, thou who passest by, That here, obedient to their laws, we lie. The way was now open, and the Persian host swept down upon Attika. But Athens had made ready for it. In Themistokles she had found a man able to cope with the greatest perils. At once prudent and energetic, he had forced Athens to build a navy in almost breathless haste ; the women and children were conveyed to places of safety, and the men, embarking in the fleet, abandoned sank in ashes; but Athens was af their land and city to the foe. Temples and habitations oat, safe behind the ‘wooden walls” of her ships. The Persian fleet reckoned on shutting up and destroying its despised antagonist in the strait of Salamis; and Xerxes himself came to be a spectator of his victory. But the ruler of the world saw only his own overt and his fleet fled in haste to the Asiatic coast. Yet Greece was not yet safe. The Pe army, under Mardonios, wintered by the combined forces under the S secured Hellas finally and forever destruction. Salamis and Plataiai hrow. In desperation he hurried off to secure a retreat, an. in Thessaly; and only the Persian defeat at Plataiai, partan king Pausanias and the Athenian general Aristeides, rom the Persian yoke, and Hellenic culture from barbaric saved the civilization of the world. The blow was soon returned, and a Greek fleet crossed over to attack Asia. Mykale, Eurymedon, the Cypriot Salamis, mark the stages of this over Asia. new movement, so many trophies of Europe’s victories The great time produced great men: as Themistokles had succeeded Miltiades, so Kimon took Themistokles’ place to lead the Athenians to new triumphs. 26 PLATAIAI. BATTLE-FIELD OF THE PERIOD OF DEMOCRACY. MILTIADES. THEMISTOKLES, The Persians had been repulsed, all danger from Asia removed, and the house of Xerxes himself, as if in punishment of his arrogance, was filled with crime and horror. But already the antagonistic forces which were the moving springs in Greek history were once more in action. If Sparta’s jealousy had been aroused before, now it blazed out all the more fiercely that Athens had won a position of equal importance with her own. If Athens had voluntarily yielded to Sparta the chief command on land, the course of events would have naturally allotted to the former city the leadership at sea. It was due in chief to the exertions of Athens that the islands and the coast of Asia Minor were freed from the Persian yoke; and it was but natural that these should form a naval alliance, with Athens as its head. MEGARA AND SALAMIS, ai GREECE. In this way matters might have arranged themselves peacefully, Athens having the 1egemony at sea, and Sparta on land; and indeed for a while it seemed as if things would take this course. But the Spartans would not be altogether excluded from the sea, nor the Athe- nians from the land; and the discontented allies on both sides embroiled them in quarrels, so that even before the so-called Peloponnesian war, the inevitable struggle for supremacy, which yecame at last a struggle for existence, had actually begun. This de olitical principles were involved. The fundamental political trait of the Spartans was stead- ive struggle was all the more inevitable from the fact that two irreconcilable astness; that of Athens, mo- tribunal, composed of those nility. The constitution of who had filled the highest Sparta was aristocratic, and public offices, the guardian o yecame even more intensely morals and law, empowerec and rigidly so, as the number to annul every measure that of Spartan families diminished. seemed dangerous to the pub- rey held tenaciously to the lic good, was especially adaptec constitution of Lykurgos, de- to check the rapid march o: spite all changes in Hellas, and democracy, and save the state all the events of Greek history. from revolution, This right On the other hand, in Athens was now taken from it, anc all tended toward democracy only its judicial functions left. the spirit of Solon’s system So now all powers anc was breaking through the fetters all decisions were vested in the of formal ordinances. Aristeides general assembly of. citizens. himself, the head of the con- t was, indisputably, the de- servatives, after the Persian mocracy, still elate from the war made the motion that all -ersian victories, and embody- classes had an equal right to ing the liberation and develop- share in the government, since ment of all powers, which called all had suffered alike, and all orth the marvellous flowering alike striven to save their of culture at this epoch, and country. It was this that brought it to its early and brought him the name of “ The ; supreme — perfection. Athens ” TP c PERIKLES, . Just. The last barrier fell Ren Leesa seemed thronged with great with the Areiopagos, This men; statesmen and generals, poets, philosophers and historians, sculptors, painters and architects. A wondrous city rises from the ashes of the Persian conflagration; a city of works of art and monuments which g J have served as models for all succeeding time. But the other day the cart of Thespis was going from village to village, and now there is a theatre, a dramatic art, a tragedy full of thought, sublime, of thrilling power, of classic completeness, the admiration of which has lasted unimpaired to this day. If Athens, Greece, the world, owe all these creations to the democratic form of the polit- ical life, and if this raised patriotism to a lofty enthusiasm, yet the darker side of this unchecked s, Mil- tiades, Themistokles, Kimon, soon learned the fickleness of the aura populars, the speedy obliv- freedom soon began to be seen. The men who had been the creators of this greatne: ion of desert, the ingratitude of the people, and paid for their own and their country’s greatness with condemnation, ruin, or banishment. Participation in public affairs elevated the populace, 28 THE PERIOD OF DEMOCRACY. and made them acquainted with law, justice, and the constitution ; but it also kept them from honest work; and, all the more, that they were paid for this very participation, for their attend- ance at court, and even at the theatre. Easily led, as the multitude always is, it soon became a mere plaything for the popular orators, who knew its tastes, pandered to its passions, and flat- tered its prejudices. Thus, unavoidably, with time the bad elements rose to the surface and obtained the mastery ; the noisy haranguers, the crafty sophists, the venal sycophants. Customs and morals, law and right, began to decline ; unbelief and superstition, free thought and relig- scution, arrogance and cruelty, were alike and together the consequences of democracy. SYRACUSE. So long as Athens still followed her great men, so long as she still obeyed a Perikles— who himself was not altogether spared by ingratitude—the good results of democracy more than counterbalanced the bad. Perikles, of unimpeachable purity of character, standing high above the mass in intellect and culture, of an ideal nature, aiming at the highest and fairest ends for his native city, exerted all his powers to keep the people and the state at his own level. Never a flatterer, often a reprover of his fellow-citizens, he guided them with wisdom and firm- ness in the way of sound policy, while at the same time he made the city the centre and focus of the highest art and civilization. Perikles would willingly have prevented or deferred the decisive struggle, but affairs had reached such a pass that he had himself to advise it, and thus, in the year 431 3B. c, began that fatal contest of twenty-seven years, called the Peloponnesian war, but which in reality was a war of all Greece, in which Hellas mangled her own body and shed her own blood. For the , and islands were seat of war, continually changed, and one after another all states, cit involved, and even the farthest colonies felt the convulsions of the mother-country. Nor was it 29 GREECE. only an external foe who devastated the land or the city, and massacred prisoners in cold blood. In every state and city there was internal strife. Everywhere there were two parties, the aris- tocrats and the democrats, struggling for the mastery, the former with the help of Sparta, and the latter with that of Athens, and fighting with a sanguinary fury such as civil war alone can beget. The atrocities of Kerkyra are a specimen of the whole. The fortunes of the war were as variable as its seat. At first the star of Athens seemed to pale. Pestilence broke out among the population who had crowded within the walls at the invasion of the Spartans, and the frightful mortality broke their courage, and crippled their undertakings. But the suc- already rewarded this bold cess of Demosthenes in stroke of Brasidas, when Messenia, the siege of Pylos, death put an end to his the capture of the Spar- successful campaign. Fail- tans on the island of Sphak- ure, or doubtful success, had teria by the tanner Kleon, varied both cities, and chief of noisy demagogues, Nikias, the Athenian gen- the attacks of Nikias upon eral (in 421 B. c.) concluded Lakonia, these in turn a peace. brought Sparta almost to But in reality it was despair. Athens was at the no peace, nor does it count zenith of her power. Then as one in history. The fortune once more changed. war was kept alive by the Brasidas, Sparta’s ablest allies, and its theatre trans- general, adroitly changed ferred to a distance from the seat of war to the Stry- the parent states. In Sici- mon on the coast of Make- ly fortune held out a tempt- donia, where Athens had ing lure to the Athenians, colonies, and whence she where the contentions of ALKIBIADES. Bust in the Chiaramonti Museum in Rome, drew a large part of her the colonies seemed to in- revenues. Fortune had vite to the conquest of the lovely island, and to open beyond this a splendid perspective of victory and power, bright enough and uncertain enough to dazzle and bewilder them. Despite many warning voic they yielded to the temptation, made mightier preparations for war than ever before, and sent the flower of their warriors to the combat. At first they were successful, notwith- standing the mismanagement of their generals. Syracuse, the objective point of the expedition, was besieged and on the point of surrender, when one man changed the succes of Athens to ruin, and her triumph to despair. Sparta sent to the aid of Syracuse a single general, Gylippos. In the beleaguered city he created an army and a fleet, and sent them out to battle and to victory. Ships, troops, and leaders of the Athenians all perished or h ell into the hands of the Syracusans, who cruelly abused their triumph, Hardly were enoug spared to tell in Athens the story of the hideous disaster. Athens was a crushed, almost a ruined city; her brightest hopes had come to naught, her power and influence were lost, and her walls resounded with lamentations for the fall of her best and bravest. And yet she had wilfully driven from her the only man able to raise her once more from ruin and despair. Alkibiades, most. brilliant of her sons, had been sacrificed to party-hate and the fickleness of the people, and even—in his absence—condemned to death. But Alkibiades was no Aristides or Kimon, to think, even in banishment, only of the welfare 30 THE PERIOD OF DEMOCRACY. of his country. He was the child of his race and time, uniting the vices and the virtues of Athens; rich and noble, refined and reckless, ambitious and unscrupulous. The favourite pupil of Sokrates, that sage had never been able to moderate his passions and desires, and bring them within the bounds of reason and philosophy. Alkibiades was whatever he chose to be: orator, soldier, general, statesman and diplomatist; a Spartan with the Spartans, an Asiatic with the Persians, at home in every position, the ruling spirit in every danger or difficulty. There was no Athens without Alkibiades. If his city had cast him forth, he would force her to call him back as her deliverer. In vain did Athens strive, with the elasticity peculiar to popular governments, to raise herself from her prostrate condition. Fleet-after fleet she sent out to disaster after disaster. = ae = Sars: 1 THE PEIRAIOS, With Long Walls Restored, At length fortune seemed once more to smile upon her. The fleet itself summoned Alkibiades to the chief command, and at Kyzikos, in the Sea of Marmora, the Peloponnesians, under the Spartan Mindaros, were defeated as they had never been before. Triumphant, as victorious hero and the saviour of the state, Alkibiades returned to Athens, and for four years more he maintained the Athenian power. But while he was away with the army and the fleet, he could not manage the populace at home. The democracy was declining; misfortune had broken its spirit; the sophists, with their teachings, were confusing the conceptions of right and wrong ; the ancient patriotism was dying out, and the spirit of self-sacrifice no longer existed. In this state of things the old antagonists of democracy arose again to complete its overthrow and set up an oligarchy of the Spartan pattern in its place. Once more Alkibiades had to yield, and went a second time into exile. This sealed the fate of Athens. One victory more her ten generals won at Arginusai, but the Athenians rewarded them with death, because, hindered by a storm, they had not been able to recover the bodies of the slain, nor save the shipwrecked. Athens deserved her doom, 31 GREECE. and in the crafty Lysandros, like Alkibiades, at once diplomatist and general, Sparta had pro- vided the man to execute it. In the crushing defeat at Aigospotamos, on the Hellespont, he destroyed her last hope; then marched upon Athens, and the city, invested both by land and ison, the long walls which sea, surrendered (504 2B. c.). The akropolis received a Spartan gar connected the city with the harbour were destroyed, and the government was placed in the hands of-an oligarchy—“ the thir ints,” as they were called—under the protectorate of Lysandros. Democracy had fallen for a time; the naval supremacy of Athens was gone forever. Though the rule of the tyrants lasted but a few months, though Athens recovered her independence, and generals like Konon, Chabrias, Iphikrates, and Timotheos again led her fleets and armies to victory, yet her generalship was wanting in vigour and unity, and her policy in strength and consistency. Mediocrities ruled in the assembly. What was lost was not to be regained. Sparta now, after her victorious termination of the Peloponnesian war, stood at the zenith of her power; in all Greece she had no rival. Agesilaos won new victories over the hereditary foes of Greece, the Persians, and, penetrating repeatedly into Asia Minor, exposed the weakness and defencelessness of that colossus. Of this Xenophon had caught a glimpse when, a few years before, at the head of the ten thousand, he made his memorable retreat from e of its decline. In the arro- the battle-field of Kunaxa. But Sparta’s might was on the vers gance of victory she had—it was especially Lysandros’ policy—made subjects of her allies ; and this evoked a hatred of her rule fiercer than Athens had ever inspired. Everywhere she set up tyrannical oligarchies, gave the cities armostaé or commandants, and placed a garrison in every citadel. This policy proved her ruin. In the midst of peace a passing force of Spartans under Phoibidas, with the help of the oligarchic party, suddenly, and without warning, seized the Kadmeia of Thebes (383 B. c.). Sparta condemned the doer, but approved the deed which placed the most dangerous city of rchs ruled in Thebes. But in her hands. The Kadmeia was garrisoned, and the oli Greec g the fugitive leaders of the popular party, Pelopidas at their head, who had taken refuge in Athens, four years later delivered both citadel and city. A desperate war with the enraged and humiliated Spartans was sure to follow, and the Thebans addressec themselves to it with undaunted resolution. and firmness, but, Up to this time the Thebans had, it is true, the reputation of courag' ike all Boiotians, they were looked upon as dull anc heavy. The Greek culture of the time seemed more deficient there than elsewhere.- But now the victory of the popular party, the impending struggle for freedom and even existence, and, above all, the leadership of men of the oo 55 first order, inspired even these sluggish souls with ardour and enthusiasm. The fiery Pelopidas was joined by Epaminondas, a philosopher of the school of Pythagoras, a quiet, unpretentious man, of whom little had hitherto been heard. Coming to the head of the Thebans, he showed himself suddenly to be a leader of genius, a sagacious innovator in the art of war, a far-sighted statesman, a patron of art—a complete Greek, in every sense of the word. At Leuktra (370 B: c.) he won the first decisive victory over the Spartans ; then pushed on into the Peloponnesos and carried the war into Lakonia. Since the days of the Herakleidai, more than five centuries before, the valley of the Eurotas and the city of Sparta had never seen a hostile army. Here now, unlooked-for, stood the dreaded foe on the opposite bank of the stream, and only the vigi- lance of Agesilaos saved the city. Again, he even forced his way into the streets, but had to retire before the resistance of desperation. He abandoned the city, but planted abiding foes in and her neighbourhood. He organized Arkadia, that land of perpetual discord and weakness gave it a capital ; he liberated Messenia, recalled the descendants of the fugitive families, built 32 THE PERIOD o 5S Messene, and Sparta’s ancient foe, with a lon But the gods saved Sparta in her utmost need. the Thebans conquered, but Epaminondas fell by in Thessalia, and Thebes was without a leader. he left to his native city—Leuktra and Mantine Thel his genius and carry on his bold policy. first rank, OF DEMOCRACY. arrear of vengeance, rose anew in her might. In the great battle at Mantineia in Arkadia a mortal wound. Pelopidas had already fallen Two beauteous daughters, Epaminondas said, ia: but he left no son, no successor, to inherit es sank from its eminence as a city of the A general peace followed, the result of fatigue and exhaustion, rather than conviction and good will. Three states now stood side by mony, but neither with the audacity to seize, or the strength to maintain it. side in Greece, each ambitious of the hege- Sparta, humbled, SITE OF THEBES. To the left the substruct but brooding revenge, bided her time: half her territory had gone hope of recovery. had wrought great changes in its spirit. ) and avaricious, forme to 700, and these, grasping though at times indeed the cratic state as before, but she had no longer attempts to regain the mastery of the sea either jealous of Sparta, now of Thebes, her policy flu Eubulos, who was long the leading spirit, counse The ancient constitution of L old pride and warlike s ure of the Kadmeia, with Messenia, almost past ykurgos continued in all its forms, but time The number of Spartan families had fallen from 9000 da hateful oligarchy. Equality had vanished, Athens was a demo- Timid >; and now pirit flashed up again. her old free and enterprising spirit. ailed or had only a partial succes ctuated from side to side. Mediocrities like led peace and self-restraint. True, there were men of mark still in Athens, but these were the philosophers, who kept aloof from politics and public affairs, led a life of meditation and instruction, and, like Plato, indulged in visions of ideal republics. Sokrates alone had encouraged but his teachings, in antagonism to the current of public opinion, had cost him his life. was otherwise. Life and theory, politics and Thebes, now without head or leadership, quarrel his pupils to active participation in public life, Now it yhilosophy, were distinct provinces. At last ed with the Boiotian cities and other of her neighbours, was stripped of her power, and her s os 33 hort-lived glory came to an untimely end. GREECE. If these three states, by their reciprocal antagonisms, were rendered incapable of taking the lead in Greek affairs, the strength of Hellas was yet by no means exhausted. Her culture was still the first in the world; her art was at its most splendid perfection; men gloried in being Athenians or Greeks. Greek mercenar es—for the laws forbidding foreign service had been relaxed—fought everywhere, and it was the common belief that no victory could be won without Hellenic skill and courage. Nothing was needed but a leader to gather into one the divided forces and direct them to some great end. While Greece was rending herself to pieces in incessant intestine wars, the unused might of the north had steadily grown. 5S Makedonia, bordered on three sides by the barba- rians, separated by the sea from the Greek coast- cities and colonies, had led for centuries an insignif- icant existence. The Greeks looked upon its inhabitants as half-bar- barians ; but the royal race, the Temenides, boasted an __ illustrious descent from an ancient ruling family of Argos. The young prince Philip, who had passed his early years in Thebes under the eyes of Pelopidas and Epaminondas, and from them learned the art of war, was a finished Greek. Raised to the sovereignty in his youth (359 B C.) he had first to wrest his the coast-cities to gain for M conquered, while others offered realm from internal foes, HES and then defend it against oo ow external enemies, the a) Thrakians and Illyrians : this accomplished, he was free to meditate great designs, in all probability first conceived in Thebes. His aim was to gain the hegemony over the Hel- lenic states, and with a united Greece to wage war against Asia and \ overthrow the Persian empire. It was a task requiring prudence, craft, and shrewdness, rather \ { than strength; to wait | patiently for opportuni- ties, or make them by adroit contrivance: he was not strong enough to conquer, and moreover the destruction of Hellas ae lay neither within his power nor his will. He first exercised Uy anh | his army and increased DeroccaNe his strength in wars Statue in the Vatican, against the Illyrians and Thrakians ; then attacked akedonia an outlet to the sea. Of the latter, some he a successful resistance. In Epeiros, whence he had taken his queen, Olympias, he strengthened his influence, and won over Thessalia completely to his service. He now really stoo open to the march of his d threatening at the gate of Greece, for Thermopylai was ohalanx; but he preferred to be invited in, to come as champion and deliverer, and the occasion soon presented itself. For ten years the so-called “Sacred War” had been ragin the Thebans and condemned treasure in the sanctuary Oo g in the heart of Greece. The Phokians, hard pressed by by the Amphiktyonic council, had seized the consecrated Delphi, and with the wealth thus obtained, the accu- 34 THE PERIOD OF DEMOCRACY. mulated gifts of centuries, successfully maintained for years the war against their powerful neighbours. The Boiotians in their need sought help from Philip, who instantly stepped in and soon brought the war to a close. As a reward he was received into the Amphiktyonic league as guardian of the sanctuary of Delphi in the place of the Phokians, and thus the Makedonian became an acknowledged Hellene. But not all Hellas looked upon him as a deliverer. Philip from the first had seen in Athens his most danger- eyes of the people, win- ous opponent; and there ning the Athenians to his were men in Athens who policy, and rousing them penetrated all his designs toa patriotic fervour as of and proposed to thwart old, to stand in the breach them. While he was for their country, and be spreading his snares and ready to meet the foe by surrounding all Greece land and sea. He was with his toils, they also successful in gaining watched with closest vigi- allies for his cause; and lance all the intrigues and even made an_ alliance every movement of this with the hated Thebans. crafty and insidious foe. It seemed as if the days Athens had been lulled to of the Persian invasion had returned. security by her leade but in Demosthenes arose Philip now saw once more a man like that the moment for ac- tion had come. A second r, that of Am- Themistokles and Peri- Stic: sacred we kles, fiery and er the first orator of his own phissa, which his own in- and of all time, who was trigues had fomented, strong enough to rouse gave him the pretext, and Athens from her sleep. promptly he passed Ther- Of course Philip had a mopylai with a veteran party in Athens, as every- and experienced army, where else; and his cause threatening Thebes and Athens. These cities has- was sustained by Ais- y Ta TTT ; ae i Hei } i] : chines, a brilliant orator ! ih Ma NW tily collected their forces and experienced _ politi- and encountered him in ; AISCHINES. cian. But Demosthenes Statue in Naples. Boiotia, but met with a succeeded in opening the decisive defeat on the field of Chaironeia (338 3. c.). Philip, ever mindful of his ultimate purpose, used his victory mildly and adroitly. Instead of driving Athens to the desperate resistance for which it was prepared, he concluded a peace which left it still free. The peace of Demades was, doubtless, in the main, more favourable in its terms than the Athenians had a right to expect, yet it contained the mortifying clause binding them to recognize Philip’s headship over all Greece, and to use their efforts to secure its recognition 35 | | | GREECE. They had often suffered more in disastrous wars, but had never by the other Greek states. ause contained the very essence of yet been so keenly wounded in national pride. Yet this cl Philip's life-long ambition, and was perhaps the only one in which no modification was possible. Boiotia and Attika being now subdued, Philip turned his attention to the Peloponnesos. All submitted except Sparta, which, too weak to resist, and too proud to humble herself, in sullen silence let him work his pleasure. He next called a conference of all the Greek cities xinst Persia, giving them a national char- at Corinth, where he made known his designs ai declaring that his objects were not only to avenge the invasion of Xerxes, but to g ) =s—except only Sparta, who main- acter by cities on the Asian coast. All the citie liberate the Gr of sullen non-recognition of Philip and his schemes—concurred in the l have doubted if the liberation of the Ionian cities meant any- However, they were in no position to offer objections ; tained her attitude design; though they may wel thing more than a change of masters. and a confederacy of Greek states was formed, of which Philip was the head, to undertake the Philip lost no time in the execution of his long-cherished design ; and himself (336 8. c.) fell by the hand of an war against Persia. his advance had already entered Asia when he assassin, ENTRY OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT INTO BABYLON. 4, THE MAKEDONIAN PERIOD AND! THE FALL OF GREEK POLITICAL JE AUSTIN UROPE had seen the vast hosts of Asia, led by Xerxes, pour like a torrent over Greece, but the flood had been rolled back, broken and powerless. With but a handful in comparison, Alexander returned the attack of Asia, and the blow shattered that vast colossus to fragments. Though it had ceased to produce rulers like Cyrus and Dareios, or even Xerxes, the enormous empire still held together. But it was diseased at the heart, in its royal line, and sick of its own overgrowth. The campaigns of Agesilaos had long before shown its weakness; and never again did it venture to repeat the attempt of Dareios and Xerxes. It had left Greece undisturbed, until the Greeks, bleeding in their long fraternal war, came as suppliants to the courts of the satraps and the palace of Susa, rivals for the favour and help of the Great King. Henow could accomplish what had been impossible for the mighty sssors. He dictated and enforced that armies and fleets of his prede shameful peace (387 ». c.) which from the name of the Spartan negotiator ANN is called the peace of Antalkidas. It is true this was due more to the im- posing appearance than the real power of Persia; and the peace only lasted while the Greeks were content with it. From this time only the gold of Persia exercised any influence in Greece. This design of the Greek king against Persia, or rather against Asia, had a history of its own. Agesilaos, in the midst of his victories and plans, had been called home by the troubles and dangers of his own country. Jason, the Thessalian tyrant of Pherai, then undertook the 37 GREG. <; but the dagger of an assassin prematurely cut short the career of that able general. King Philip next succeeded, and after years of incessant exertions he now stood at the goal of all his wishes, when he perished by the same fate. But he left in his son Alexander a mightier spirit than his own, and Persia had gained but a brief respite. When Alexander, but twenty years of age, was suddenly called to reign, he found him- self surrounded by foes and perils. In his own house there were rivals for the throne ; in the north the Thrakians and IIlyrians broke out in revolt ; in the south all Hellas stood threatening, and ready to throw off the Makedonian yoke ; on Asiatic soil stood a Makedonian army whose leader, Attalos, was his foremost antagonist; Persian gold was everywhere employed to kindle the embers of discord to flame. He succeeded in ridding himself of his antagonists, not without violence, beat the barbarians sand horse,—with which, in in a series of bloody battles, the year 334 8. c., Alexander and hastening by secret crossed over to Asia. The ways over the mountains, reinforcements afterwards before even the rumour of received from Makedonia his starting had gone abroad, and Greece only served to stood suddenly at the gate replace the losses by death of revolted Thebes. His or other causes. Yet with summons to surrender was this army he achieved deeds answered with scorn and surpas ing the wonders of defiance; the city was legend and romance. Like stormed and razed to the a meteor —splendid, daz- ground. Terrified Greece zling, and evanescent—he hastened to offer to the flashed across the world, young conqueror, as to his yet left the marks of his father before him, absolute brief life deeply engraven command of the war against in history. And in truth he Persia. possessed, as hardly another I ) t was but a small has done, all the qualities of From a bust in the Louvre. force,—not more than thirty a hero, all that were needed thousand foot and five thou- for the accomplishment of his mighty task. He took with him, Plutarch says, the best earnest of success: reverence for the gods; but he also took uprightness, simplicity, moderation, experience, a cheerful spirit and contempt of death, readiness of speech and love of truth, calmness in deliberation and prompt- ness in execution, love of fame, and a will firm to carry out the right. Before a battle, he ordered all according to a fixed plan; coolly considered everythiny, the nature of the ground, the strong and the weak points of the enemy, then, at the head of a chosen body of cavalry, threw himself upon the foe with the spring of a lion, drew his own men after him with an é/an that nothing could withstand, and decided the battle by personal prowess. Were rivers to be crossed, however wide and deep, or cities and fortresses to be taken, however high the walls or inaccessible the site, his inventive genius found means to pass the torrents, to climb the heights, and to scale the walls. And with this fertility of resource he had an unconquerable power of endurance, both in the battle and on the march. With his soldiers he traversed deserts, patient of hunger and thirst, cheering the way-worn and despondent with encouraging words and setting them an example of fortitude, At the river Graneikos, not far from the Hellespont, he found the first force awaiting 38 ' THE MAKEDONIAN PERIOD. him : a band of Persian horse under the satraps of Asia Minor, and one of Greek mercenaries ed by his ablest opponent, the Rhodian Memnon. But neither the swift stream, nor the steep bank, neither the resolute valour of the Greeks nor the personal courage of the satraps checked his irresistible advance. The first victory set free the Greek coast-towns, and made him master of Asia Minor. This was the result of his first campaign. When he set out in his second (333 8. c.), the Persian king Dareios Kodomannos had mustered the nations of his empire and placed-himself at their head. Alexander's plan was to conquer the provinces of the coast before he should penetrate deeper into Asia, in order to secure his rear from the enemies’ le at that angle of Syria where the coast, changing its easterly direction, trends southward toward But hardly had he crossed the mountain-passes s, and prevent any attempts on Gree Phrygia, when the vast Persian host appeared in his rear. Alexander at once changed front, THE BATTLE OF ISSOS. Mosaic from Pompeii. and at the battle of Issos cut the Persian army completely in two. Dareios, who had in vain tried to withstand the attack, fled from the field, leaving his camp, his family, and an immense »0oty in the hands of the conqueror. Alexander did not pursue the beaten foe. He turned southward, took, after an eight months’ siege, the great city of Tyre, too confident in her sea-washed walls, and Gaza, on her ofty height, hitherto deemed impregnable. Egypt, long weary of the Persian yoke, welcomed the victor with joy. Even the desert did not stay his march; and he penetrated to the oasis of Zeus Ammon, which Cambyses had never reached. The army of the Persian invader had nerished of heat and thirst in the desert sands; but Alexander seemed to be favoured by miracle. In their utmost need, a storm of rain, a thing of rarest occurrence in the desert, soured down to cool and refresh his fainting soldiers. Zeus and his priests showed themselves highly favourable to the renowned conqueror ; called him a son of the god, and he not unwill- Aristotle, whose philosophy ingly accepted the honour; though whether the pupil of the wi admitted nothing but what was founded on reason, and rejected all mythological legend and tradition, really credited this high paternity, can hardly be a matter of question. But he 39 GREECE. knew the value of popular superstitions which he did not share, especially to the founder of a world-empire that embraced so many peoples of so many beliefs. So in Lybia he allowed himself to be hailed as the son of Ammon; in Egypt he could worship the great Sun-god, and in Jerusalem sacrifice to Jehovah. In like manner he protected the religion of the Persians and in India listened with approval to the wisdom of the Gymnosophists and ascetics. Before Alexander left Egypt, his quick eye had discerned the site on which to found a city that should perpetuate his name to all time. And, as he wished, in a little while Alex- andreia became the cosmopolitan city, where Greek and Egyptian wisdom, and the culture of Asia and Europe met; where the East and the West made their exchanges. Then—in the second year after the battle of Issos, 331 ». c.—he set out from Egypt to conquer the other half of the Persian empire. Dareios, meanwhile, had had time enough to assemble a new army, and summon to his standard the remotest of his tributari Beyond the Tigris he awaited S. the foe. If the broad rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris, did not check the advance of the Greeks, he relied upon the advantage which an army outnumbering them ten to one would have in the wide plain. All was in vain: the battle of Gaugamela destroyed his last hope and the last vestige of his power, and Asia lay at the feet of the victor. The ancient Babylon, the queen of the East, received him in triumph: Susa, the royal residence, Persepolis, the holy city, Ekbatana, the capital of the Medes, without a blow fell into his hands with the accumulated treasures of generations. It cost but a hasty ride to overtake Dareios, a fugitive and dying, murdered by his own satraps. The order was given, and the assassin Bessos was S' ized at the northern frontier and executed. Alexander remained three years in these farthest provinces of his new empire, promptly quelling all opposition, founding new cities to secure and consolidate his power, and peopling them with Makedonians and Greeks. This done, he set out on new enterprises. All the possessions of the Persian monarch were his, but he was not satisfied: he wished to accomplish what Dareios had attempted in vain. Before him, rich and populous, lay India, the land of marvel and mystery, of tale and fable, never yet trodden by a western conqueror. With an army greater than he had ever before led, he crossed the lofty mountains and descended to the. streams that feed the Indus. Here he found warlike nations, strongly fortified towns, and the most stubborn resistance. He crossed the rivers, stormed the towns, himself the first to mount the wall, defeated King Porus and his army mounted on elephants, and conquered ull that opposed him. Victorious he stood at the Hyphasis, the last tributary of the Indus, ready to cross the intermediate region to the sacred Ganges. But here his own soldiers fe) hecked his advance, unanimously demanding to be led home. In vain he sought to persuade co hem, now using that fiery eloquence which had so often inflamed them to battle, then n hutting himself in his tent and refusing to be seen. He was forced to yield; and a shout of joy greeted the order to return (in the summer of 326 8. c.). . But he was resolved that the bold march should not have been in vain; even on his return he proposed new adventures and new exploits. For eight months longer he remained at the upper waters of the Indus, fighting and establishing order, and founding new cities to secure his conquests. With the help of a fleet that he had built during this interval, he descended the Indus to the ocean, and here prayed that no succeeding conqueror might ever do the like. Then he gave the fleet to Nearchos to explore the coast, sail to the Persian Gulf, and thence proceed to Babylon: He himself with ssible diffi- culties, setting them an example of courage and fortitude, until he reached the fertile Kara- the rest of his army marched by land through the desert of Gedrosia, amid inexpre mania, where toil and adventure were at an end. Here he resolved that all hardships should 40 THE MAKEDONIAN PERIOD. be forgotten in feasting and revelry. In mythical times Dionysos, the wine-god, coming from India as a conqueror, had followed the same route. In a mad revel Alexander and his retinue impersonated the god and his fantastic progress, with all the frantic crew of Bacchanals and Mainads and wild music, and kept up the orgie for seven days. When the disorders occasioned by the king’s long absence had been regulated, he went to Babylon to make ready for new expeditions. Babylon he had chosen as his capital : she was st and the to be the centre of the world, where the men and the merchandise of the farthest farthest west were to meet, and the products of the north, of Arabia, and of Africa were to be brought together. He constructed here an immense harbour capable of containing a thousand BACCHANALIAN FEAST OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT, ships. From this point he meant to explore the south, to seek a communication with Egypt around the coast of Arabia, and, if possible, to find a passage around Africa into the Mediter- ranean Sea, as an opening for the conquest of the west. The fleet, under Nearchos, stood ready, when he was seized with sickness, and in a few days Asia had lost her master. After a life of no more than thirty-two years, and a reign of only thirteen, the hero of perhaps the most extraordinary career that the world has ever known, died in June, 323 B. c. The death of Alexander left the great empire masterless. There was no heir, no suc- y cessor of the commanding spirit and powerful hand needed to hold it together ; and of neces it fell to pieces. His generals, who first called themselves governors, and afterwards kings, con- tended fiercely with each other for years with varying fortune ; and the subservient provinces of Asia awaited, in abject apathy, the result of the struggle. In the meantime, the remains of the Makedonian royal family perished by various tragical ends, and nearly all the generals died 4 GREECE. ors were called, is a violent deaths. The whole period of the Diadochoi, as Alexander’s succes time of strife and confusion. At last, from this wrangling chaos of nearly fifty years, a group of kingdoms arose, of greater or less stability, as that of the Ptolemies in E rypt, and that of the Seleukidai who, established in Syria, ruled the eastern provinces of the former Persian empire. Makedonia fell into the hands of the descendants of Antigonos and Demetrios Poliorketes. It would seem as if all the great achievements of Alexander had led to nothing, and as if all his work had been only to destroy. But it only seems so. Alexander had higher and vaster ian throne; he aimed at aims than merely to destroy an empire, or to place himself on the Per: uniting Asia and Europe, and joining all the populations in one people, with one civilization, in which Hellenism should be the ruling element. It was a conception natural to the pupil of Aristotle. Hence the many Graeco-Makedonian cities founded—seventy we count of them— from Alexandreia near the Libyan desert to the farthest limit of his Indian march; and hence the many ordinances and arrangements that he introduced after he had become master of Asia. In his adoption of Persian customs, and the respect he paid to foreign cults, he had no other end in view than to conciliate the people and make them favourable to his designs. And in this respect his achievements were by no means fruitless. Hellenic influences »ervaded Asia without interruption, under the Diadochoi and in the independent kingdoms. I i I g Even in the regions of the Indus evident traces of Greek art have lately been discovered. On the other side Alexandreia became the chief seat of Greek literature as this began to decline in the mother-country. It is true that in the conquered lands Greek culture was tinged with Asiatic influences; but the essential element was Hellenic, and the new civilization was Hel- lenic and not Asiatic. In this light we may look on Alexander as the fulfiller and completer of Greek history ; he it was that raised Greek civilization froma national toa cosmopolitan position, and this object he kept clearly in view. As Greek culture now spread over the East, which Rome and the West were afterwards to follow, as it began to fulfil its cosmopolitan mission, it lost, not its con- structive, but its creative power. It no longer produced new species of poetry, new styles of art; it followed—not without changes in taste, it is true—the old paths ; but what it had done made it the common property of the world; and what it had still to do was independent of the land of its ori Aristotle was the last of the great creative philosophers: his teachings scattered seeds and started impulses in all branches of knowledge. From his time onward the schools of philosophy spread in all directions : philosophy became the fashion, and every one with any pretence to culture must be initiated in it, must be a follower of some one of the schools. But the inward progress, the advance of intellect, was checked for a season. While in this way the vocation of Greece was being fulfilled, the interest in the history of Greece itself lessens. A nation so brave and so devoted to liberty, so proud and so gifted, does not perish altogether when it loses its independence. It will strive, and again strive, to regain its freedom. And this it did for almost two hundred years after the battle of Chaironeia had decided its fate. These strivings are the death-throes of a great and brilliant people. We watch them with sympathy ; we mark their failure with sorrow ; but we recognize the inevitable necessity. Even in Alexander’s time, the Spartans, who in their pride had not followed him, attempted a Grecian revolt, but the battle of Aigai (331 8.c.) destroyed their plans. After his death Athens in her turn endeavoured to free herself from Makedonian rule ; but she paid for the attempt with a restriction of her democratic freedom, the establishment of a Makedonian garrison in her harbour Munych at citizen and orator Demosthenes. and ‘the death of her gr THE MAKEDONIAN PERIOD. 3ut her spirit was not yet broken, Twice again she strove for independence, once against Demetrios Poliorketes, whom she had before hailed as her liberator, then against Antigonos Gonatas, whom she withstood for seven years, until at last (255 B. C.) compelled to succumb, Equally fruitless were the attempts of Sparta, which even tried to elevate and consolidate nerself by restoring the old system of Lykurgos. Here the whole landed property of the Spartans, originally divided into nine thousand equal allotments, had fallen into the hands of a SANCTUARY OF POSEIDON AT KALAUREIA. (Death-place of Demosthenes). Hydria. hundred opulent families, while the rest of the population were in the depths of poverty. Here was the point where reform should have begun; a distribution of the land, and an increase of number of the Spartans by admission of the Perioikoi. But the king Agis who made the attempt fell before the opposition of the rich and the ephoroi. More fortunate at first was the young king Kleomenes, the son of his opponent Leonidas. He carried out the reform, disciplined the people in the use of arms, according to the old Spartan usage, enforced temperance, and inspired them with so high a spirit that for three years they victoriously maintained the strife against the then powerful Achaian league and its skilful leader Aratos. But the defeated Achaians, in conjunction with his opponents, called to their aid the Makedonian king Antigonos 43 GREEC Doson; and in the battle of Sellasia (222 ». c.) Kleomenes and his new Sparta were defeated, despite the most heroic resistance. Kleomenes and his companions died by their own hands in captivity in Egypt; and Sparta’s power, influence, and liberty perished forever. At least the end was worthy her long and illustrious history. Since the time when Athens and Sparta began to withdraw from the political arena, two peoples had come to the front—the Aitolians and the cities of Achaia, both united in leagues. It was these who, in the Makedonian period, when Greece was fluctuating between freedom and dependence, contended with varying fortunes for the hegemony, as Athens and Sparta before. The fortunes of politics and war turned on the adhesion to this or the other league, giving opportunities to the Makedonian king to intermeddle, as was done, to Sparta’s ruin, in the battle of Sellasia, After this battle the Achaian league once more caught even a ol 5 am of splendour and renown which brightened the last days of Greek liberty. In Philo- poimen arose a truly great man, a man of the pattern of Perikles and Epaminondas, who, as military chief of the league was not only a successful and victorious general, but even under- stood how to elevate the character of the people, and inspire them with self-sacrificing devotion. But this influence was personal alone; and with his death the last ray of Greece’s glory was extinguished. At this very time a new power had appeared upon the stage of the world, against which all opposition was, sooner or later, to be in vain. Greece still preserved a phantom-life, a life full of feuds and intrigues, so long as the Romans permitted it. But when they (168 ». c.) had made an end of the Makedonian kingdom, they did not long delay with Greece. The Achaians, not to fall ingloriously, tried a last decisive struggle, and the result was their over- throw (146 8. c.) and the destruction of Corinth by Mummius. Even the name of Greece vanished from political history, and it became the Roman province of Achaia. But stricken from the roll of states, Greece conquered her conqueror in the realm of spirit. All that Hellas in the time of her freedom had achieved in art, in poetry, in science—in a word, in culture, now made its victorious march across the world beneath the Roman eagles. GIRLS DANCING, BOOK ne LIFE AND MANNERS. YOUTH AND TE DUe ATION: Na fair body a fair soul must dwell. This famous saying of Sok- rates had certainly in Greece though perhaps in Greece only—its full justification ; for all that it implies was to the Greek the ideal of humanity, the ideal of the Hellene. From the time that He ways, that is, from the time of lations for training anc the symmetrical culture lenism had become established in its Solon, whose constitution and regu- education were pervaded with this spirit, and c evelopment of all spiritual and cor- poreal faculties and powers, the harmony between body and soul, was the goal of all education, a And beauty—beauty o the first rank of things the be to be ¢ ophers themselves taught tha the first rank ; then fol 45 owed t nd the aim of all personal endeavour. »dy as well as of the soul—stood in esired and striven for, The philos- t the Beautiful and the Noble held ne Just, and last, the Useful. GREG. To correspond with this dearly-prized harmony, the education was twofold; spiritual and corporeal, The free and noble man should possess neither of these without the other; as the former by itself produced an enervate character, and the latter alone, rough and rude natures. The means to this twofold education, the Greeks called Music and Gymnastics ; ae nifying by music the arts of the Muses, and therefore poetry in chief, but including phil- osophy also; and by gymnastics a whole system of diverse, well-regulated bodily exercises. These two combined made a beautiful and complete man. They were meant to form the citizen, for the Greek only existed in the state and as a member of it; and they were intended to qualify him for discharging all the duties of a citizen, whether he were called to participate in the government and in was welcomed with family The first fes- the conduct of public affairs, rejoicir or whether his country tival took place on the third needed in the field the ser- day after the birth: the vices of her disciplined, val- oors of the house were orous, and vigorous sons. hung with garlands, and the In Sparta the child infant was carried rounc belonged to the state from the domestic hearth as the the moment of its birth, symbolic installation of a and the state had the right newly-admitted member o to determine not only its the household. On the future, but its life or death. tenth day the friends anc If the infant appeared fee- kindred were bidden to ble, it was another feast, the feast o xposed and left to its fate. Even in Athens the naming, to which they the father had the same brought gifts. The name right ; and the fear of over- —for but a single name was given, which was often taken rom that of some god—was population or of the sub- division of estates some- times gave occasion for its requently hereditary in the exercise ; though at times a amily, and very commonly friendly destiny interposed was that of the child’s to save the little outcast. grandfather. The infant, Except in such cases well wrapped in swaddling as these, in Greece as else- clothes—though the Spar- where, the birth of a child tans rejected this custom as . tending to effeminacy—either rocked in a basket ‘slung by cords, or borne about in the arms, and suckled by the mother, or oftener by a nurse, grew up amid the tenderest care. Baby- songs were sung to it and pretty stories told; and its imagination filled with old wives’ tales in which the spectral Lamiai and the goblin Mormo figured as the bugbe that punished naughty children. Then came the fables o Aesop, with their ancient yet ever-young lore, and tales of heroes of the olden time that awakened the youthful enthusiasm. Nor were games and toys wanting. A rattle, hung with jingling bits of metal, was the first trinket to amuse the eye and the ear. In the market was always to be found a variety of dolls, painted or unpainted figures of wax or clay, some even with jointed limbs ; a reed answered for a cock- horse, and was ridden even by King Agesilaos with his children; there were hoops to trundle and tops to spin, the latter toy being started with a string and then kept up with the whip. 46 YOUTH AND EDUCATION. The discipline of the house was maintained firmly by the mother and nursery-governess, for the latter had also the right of punishment, and the use of the rod and the slipper was as familiar as in later times. Obedience and good manners were enforced early, and wholesome teachings implanted. “So soon as a child understands what is said to him”—this Plato puts into the mouth of Protagoras—‘the nurse, the mother, the pedagogue, and the father vie in their endeavours to make him good, by showing him in all that he does that this is right and that wrong, this pretty and that ugly, so that he may learn what to follow and what to shun. If he obeys willingly, it is well; if not, they try by threats and blows to correct him, as men straighten a warped and crooked sapling.” Up to the sixth or seventh year the boy was left in the care of his mother, brought up with the girls in the seclusion of the house. The girls remained still longer under the mother’s care, taught by her alone, not provided by the or by the better female state, but was the under- taking of a private teacher ants, if they had any capability of teaching. who lived by the tuition gut the boy, on reaching fees. Both teacher and his seventh year, was put school, however, were to school. In well-to-do under state control; not amilies he had a special in respect of the teaching, guardian, the pedagogue, but of morals and man- who was usually chosen ners; and there were rom among the oldest, special officers charged most careful and_best- with this duty: pacdono- »ehaved _ slaves. This mot, school inspectors, all vedagogue was not a under the supervision of teacher, but he watched the Areiopagos, the chief over the boy’s manners guardian of public morals. and morals, attended him Education was not com- to and from school, and pulsory; but the father might correct him with who neglected to give blows, if necessary. AESOP, his children the necessary The. school was instruction incurred the censure of the Areiopagos, and thus education was universal. As far back as Solon’s time the state had made regulations for schools, and fixed the time and duration of the teaching ; for example, schools were not allowed to be open before sunrise or after sunset, a regulation made in the interest of good morals, At the hour of sunrise the schools opened. From all sides the boys came trooping, those of the wealthier families with their pedagogues carrying their books and instruments, the others unattended, but all behaving quietly and decently, At least such was the old custom, as Aristophanes has described it in the Clouds - No babbling then was suffered in our schools: The scholar’s test was silence. The whole group In orderly procession sallied forth, Right onwards, without straggling, to attend Their teacher in harmonics ; though the snow Fell on them thick as meal, the hardy brood Breasted the storm uncloaked. 47 GREECE. To nothing was more attention given than to modesty and propriety of behaviour, both aid, with head held down, his in school and out. The boy should go to school, the ordinance eyes cast upon the ground, his arms and hands covered by the folds of his garment, making way for elder men whom he chanced to meet, and blushing if spoken to. The market-places where men congregated and where business of all kinds was carried on, he was to avoid as far as possible ; and un- der no circumstances was he to linger there. But sport and youthful plays in the open air were by no means denied him. The Greek boy knew all the games which boys of the present day play at; he played ball in many ways; he had the see-saw, which was game of “king,” in which one boy was chosen as king, and issued orders which his comrades had to obey. They had, also, games peculiar to themselves, as, for instance, leaping on an inflated leather bag smeared with grease, the art being to keep one’s footing without slipping off ; especially a girls’ or rope-pulling, in play; he had the fin- which the rope passed ger- counting, the over a post, and two mora, that the Ital- at opposite ends tried ians delight in to this which could pull up day ; he played pitch- the other. It was a and-toss with pot- frolic to catch an ass sherds or coins, blind- ze and have a grotesque ni f Iho f man’s buff and hot gallop on his back, butter-beans ; _ hide- and this performance 5 and-whoop, hull-gull, was often tried with or guessing the num- a patriarchal goat, as ber of beans or nuts the poets and many PEDAGOGUE. in the closed hand, From the group of Niobe. designs on vases jack-stones, and the teach us. The fruit- trees were not safe from the peltings of the merry crew; and an epigram represents a walnut- —« tree complaining: By the roadside a mark I stand For ev passing schoolboy’s hand : A helpless butt whereon to try The skill of their rude archery. The ride on the goat is the subject of another epigram : Thy shaggy neck, thou ancient goat, the wanton boys have bound, And thy bearded muzzle bridled with purple cords around ; Now round the temple-court they race and put thee to thy speed: Worthy such gallant cavaliers is such a noble steed. It would not seem that the boys had too much time for these merry doings in the open air, for their school-hours and gymnastic exercises took up pretty well the whole day. The 48 YOUTH AND EDUCATION. schools could not be said to be comfortably arranged, nor were there all those ingenious contri- vances in desks and seats which we moderns fancy necessary for the children’s health. The slender provision of stools without backs, on which the boys sat and wrote with their tablets resting on their knees, was the teacher's affair. Indeed the instruction was often given in the open air. But the discipline was strict and enforced by the rod. ‘When the boy is sent to a master,” says Plato in the passage previously referred to, “the latter is enjoined to pay more attention to his morals and behaviour than to his progress in reading or in music.” Yet even blunders in reading and in grammar were very apt to leave stripes on the skin; for the Greek school knew nothing of our sentimental humanitarianism in this department. The instruction began with reading and writing. The teacher wrote the letters and the boy copied them. On arithmetic less stress was laid; but it was taught by the aid of counting- stones, apples, or the like. As soon as the boy was fairly proficient in reading and writing, he took the poets in hand, and thus began that branch of education which was the proper cultivation of the soul. In this the Greeks concerned themselves as little about a multitude SCHOOL-SCENE. From a vase, of acquirements, as about the practical utility of the things learned. To study with an eye to the use of learning, or its subsequent application, was considered mechanical and illiberal to the last degree. The only thing had in view was the cultivation of the mind and the body, and the formation of a fair, noble, free, and lofty character. Thus it was that in all their spiritual education, poetry was the central point. So it was even in Solon’s time, nor did it change later, though a few new studies, such as drawing or geometry, were introduced. To seemed to the Greeks an impossibility. Theognis says : inculcate wisdom or virtue by teaching sy ; but to teach Morals and manners is beyond our reach. To make the foolish wise, the wicked good, That science never yet was understood. To the poets, however, they looked to familiarize youth with the love of virtue and the hatred of vice; their songs and poems, it was thought, would have a magic power over youthful minds, and without obvious intention, in mere sport apparently, lead to serious ends. Above all, they trusted in the efficacy of Homer, and his grand picture of the heroic deeds of their own ancestors. They were not blind to the fact that even in the poems of Homer there was much that was not precisely adapted to the mind of youth; but they looked at the soul 49 GREECE. that lived in them, at the enthusiasm which they inspired, and the grand and noble spirit in which men and things are so powerfully portrayed. They even believed that the rhythm, the harmony, the melody of these verses had a tempering, softening, and purifying effect on the passions. To Homer were added the hymns to the gods, with their wondrous religious meaning and their primitive devotional legends; the practical shrewd common-sense of Hesiod; the pithy wisdom of the gnomic writers; the inspiriting verses of Tyrtaios and the yrists, which nerved and fired men to patriotism, fortitude, valour, self-sacrifice for their city and country. Strangely enough, nearly all these poets lived at the beginning of Greek history, at least long before its culmination, as if to lead the people on to that result. In the schools these poems were read continually, copied, learned by heart, and sung. ‘or from the very beginning, poesy had music as her inseparable companion. In the oldest times, poet and musician were of the state and of the army, one; and only after Plato’s day it was accounted to his honour the music began to dissociate that he was not only a good itself from the words and _ be- musician but even an accom- come an independent art, there- plished dancer. Music was by sinking rather than rising taught in the school, not as a in estimation. He who prac- source of pleasure and enter- tised music as a_ profession, tainment, but because it was ranked as a_handicraftsman, believed to possess purifying and was but indifferently es- and elevating qualities; and it teemed; but as a part of edu- was practised on account of the cation and culture, song and noble influence it was con- harp-playing were accomplish- sidered to have upon the soul. ments of a free man. In “Education in music,” says Plato, ‘is essential, because Homer Achilleus sang and played: and even in Epamin- Es rhythm and harmony pene- i * . FEMALE FL E-PLAYER ondas, the disciple of the phil- bee money muah trate to the depths of the om a vase, osophers, the victorious leader soul, affect it powerfully, and ” teach it measure and control For this reason music in the schools was not allowed to have that vr¢éwoso, pretentious character which aims at dravuras and tours de force: simple, noble, dignified melodies alone must accompany the words, and therefore it was that the Dorian mode was in highest esteem; its melodies for the most part being considered to have a manly character, and rousing the soul to action instead of softening it. Yet even in the time of Aristophanes, the vzrtwoso style of music had found its way into the schools; for we find that poet praising the old custom which visited with condign punishment all such innovations: Let no capricious quav’ring on a note, No running of divisions high and low, Break the pure stream of harmony : no Phrynis, Practising wanton warblings out of place. Woe to his back that so was found offending ! The poems were both recited and sung. The instrument that usually accompanied, that was especially learned in the schools, and afterwards practised for private gratification, was the cithara. The flute also was much in use, but less in the schools, and rather by dz/e¢- tantd, partly because on it one could not accompany his own singing, partly because it required 5° YOUTH AND EDUCATION. a dexterity of execution which was foreign to the scope of Greek education; and finally, because the performance distorted the features of the player. This last was the reason why Alkibiades, a good citharist, and ready to acquire everything, refused to learn the flute, though urged by his teacher. The flute, however, and for this purpose the particular variety called Boiotian, was in highest esteem, was the indispensable concomitant of all festivities, both eligious and secular, processions, banquets and triumphs; but in these cases they secured the services of professional flautists, male and female. From the days of Lykurgos music formed also a part of Spartan education ; and here its influence on the mind was all the more needed that the other element of “musical” education, the scientific, namely, was far more deficient in Sparta than was the case in Athens and the other Greek states. In Athens, music—using the word in the antique sense,—and gymnastics combined, were designed as an education to produce the most complete and harmonious devel- opment of mind and body ; those bodily exercises, the while in Sparta the only aim srrrmom hardening of the frame, and was to turn out stout defend- the endurance of pain and ers of the city; or perhaps it hardship, which in Athens were only the means, in would be more correct to say, brave and tough soldiers. | Sparta became the end of Reading and writing were education. taught in the schools; but all | So while in Athens beyond these that was neces- | education, even the gymnas- tic part, was voluntary, in Sparta the state took the sary to be known, the boy learned by intercourse with elder men; and this associa- boy, from his seventh year, into its own hand. The tion was favoured in Sparta while from the earliest time young soldiers were brought ) in Athens the boy was rather | up in barracks ; and mustered, excluded from men’s society. | according to their ages, into With this direction of the Arie aN SE, companies, each under the education to military affairs, control of the most forward boy, and all under that of the paidonomos, or overseer of the youth. The state knew no mercy; it held the youth under an iron discipline, and they grew up hard to pitilessness, From. the twelfth year on, a short cloak was summer and winter clothing alike; their feet were bare; their beds hard and cold, gathered by the boys themselves from the rushes of the Eurotas without the help of a knife. A simple and spare diet inured them early to abstin- ence. If pinched with hunger, they were allowed to steal food; indeed this practice was approved, provided the theft were cunningly and successfully accomplished; but if caught, stripes and starvation were the penalty. To sharpen the wits of the young Spartan, they looked to the continued intercourse and the life in common. Jests and sarcasms quickened the wit and taught prompt repartee ; if keen and couched in laconic brevity, the greater the applause. The gymnastic exercises on the other hand, were taught as in a school, and were practised not only by boys and youths, but by men up to their thirtieth year. Then, though they had long been soldiers, they were, so to speak, se allowed to quit school. The exercises here were in kind not different from those practised else- where in Greece, and which we shall come to learn later ; only the more violent contests, those which were especially athletic, were excluded. In the states where a free and more genial ideal 51 GREECE. of life prevailed, the Spartan discipline was not approved. Sparta, they said, was a perpetual camp ; life there was a continual imprisonment to which death brought the only release ; nor was it the harsh, rude characters, so the philosophers thought, on which the country could rely in perils, but the free and noble-minded. In Athens, as said before, the gymnastic exercises were free; that is, they were not under state control. The state only supervised the morals, and built and kept up the public gymnasia for adults. Though the older boys were not excluded from these, yet the proper gymnastic training of the youth was carried on in private schools, which, as has been stated, like the schools of music, were established and maintained by the teachers at their private expense. The appointments were simple enough, for the gymnastics of the Greeks were carried on with- out the imposing apparatus and ingenious engines which our own gymnasia boast. This DANCING GIRLS, school was called a fadazstra, a name which afterwards received a wider application, and became almost synonymous with gymnasium. The boys’ exercises were carried on simultaneously with those in the school of music, but at different hours, either in the morning or evening, They practised naked; whence the ymnastics; for in the Greek mind the derivation of gymnasium (from gywnos, naked) and ¢ idea of nakedness was inseparable from these exerci In the earliest times a light tunic, the chzton, was worn by the gymnasts ; but with the increased refinement of the people sprang up that passionate admiration of beauty, that delight in fair human forms, that led to the rejec- tion of all clothing in these exercises. Nudity was so natural, so much a matter of course, to the Hellenic mind, that even the maidens, when engaged in similar exercises, laid aside their garments. Gymnastics, however, were not a regular part of the education of girls. In the greater portion of Greece, especially in Athens and the states which followed Athenian customs, it was the male sex alone that devoted itself to them. The girls, kept in the quiet and seclusion SPORTS OF GREEK GIRLS. YOUTH AND EDUCATION. of the house, might find exercise in dancing, ball-play, or the like; but the gymnasia were closed to them, as were the public schools, and indeed the world. Only the public festivals in which the maidens joined with choirs and dances, brought them out into life and into contact with the youths and the men. Otherwise was it in Sparta and the other Dorian states. Here the girls grew up more free, and a certain amount of association with the boys and youths was neither forbidden by law, nor rendered impossible by the customs of domestic life. Festivals, dances, and games brought them frequently together. In Sparta too the girls practised gymnastic exercises among themselves, such as running, wrestling and leaping. Lightly clad, as they usually went, with a short tunic reaching barely to the knees, and uncovering the thighs in any rapid move- GIRL PLAYING AT DICE, ment, they readily threw off even this in their exercises. But these were not practised, as has been often thought, in common with the boys; nor had they any of the male sex as spectators. They alone, the Dorians, of all the women of Greece, were admitted as spectators of the Olympic games; but though expert in them, they were not allowed to take part in those contests. With the close of the sixteenth year, the teaching at school was usually ended, and in this period every free Hellene had completed what we may call his curriculum. After this, it is true, the gymnastic exer ses continued; and with them the military drill, riding and sword-play, the exercises of youths and full-grown men, were combined. But the mental culture did not alwa cease, for many who aimed at filling the higher public offices needed knowledge of law and equity, of administrative details, and of eloquence, all which demanded many arts and acquirements. There had also been, from the time of Perikles, when the first Ionian philosophers came over to Athens, an unconquerable thirst for knowledge and culture 53 GREECE. among the Greeks, but especially in Athens. And thus the young men of noble, influential and wealthy families, for this instruction was expensive, flocked to Athens to complete the ordinary education in the schools of the rhetoricians, sophists, and philosophers. But of these and of the gymnasia some account will be given in a future chapter. FEMALE FIGURES FROM TANAGRA, Pe PERSONAL APPEARANCE AND? DRESS: Hellas, resplendent in martial fame, unconquered in battle, Willingly bent her haughty neck to the power of beauty. ‘ECE in this epigram commemorates Lais, the most celebrated neauty of her time. In fact, no people ever paid such homage to beauty as did the Greeks; none like them lay as it were in adoration at its eet. Greece established contests of beauty, and at festivals and proces- sions gave to the fairest the first and most honoured place; she selected or priests the handsomest men, and at times chose statesmen and ambassadors merely for their personal beauty. Indeed, one Greek city, Segesta in Sicily, erected a temple and instituted sacrifices in honour of her most beautiful inhabitant, who was not even one of her citizens. The reason of this—infatuation if we choose to call it so—lay in the fact that the Greeks were preéminently endowed with physical gifts ; ‘ar surpassing all their neighbours, and all the nations whom they knew. It was their own beauty that inspired that passionate love of the beauti- ul which pervaded all their culture and all their life. And this beauty 55) GREECE, was as much a gift of nature as the result of their own endeavours. Nature had planted them in a fortunate land, in a climate removed from those extremes which give rise to strange and abnormal forms, evenly balanced between heat and cold, moisture and drought, and by this happy mean favouring all regular and normal types. From their childhood they strove to make their bodies not merely strong and enduring, but also beautiful. So Lucian’s Solon explains to the Scythian Anacharsis who had gone with him to the gymnasium, and, being a he saw :—‘ Thou seést,” Solon says, ‘ what barbarian, could not understand many of the thing kind of bodies are the result of these exercises ; neither loaded with flaccid flesh, nor thin and pale like the bodies of women, attenuated to shadows. What would you do with weaklings who in the heat of the sun grow faint with thirst and half-dead with exhaustion before they have even come to blows with the enemy? Our ruddy sun-burned youths are of different stuff. They have a manly In this des- look, are full of spirit, cription Solon lays fire and vigour; nei- down a kind of canon ther dry and with- of manly beauty as ered, nor heavy and the Greek conceived unwieldy, but of a it ; the man he wished form at once graceful to be, and to a great and strong. They extent succeeded in have worked and being. Here nature sweated off all super- and the ideal met; fluous flesh, and only and thus, to a certain retained what is pure, extent, we may draw firm and healthy. inferences to nature This perfection they from what has been could not attain with- left us by art. The out these physical ex- information that the ercises and the regi- IDEAL GREEK HEAD. Greeks have given us men that accompa- Bis Ge Hee Gi Reanaem, of themselves in this nies them.” way is in the main much the same as if we had it directly from nature; except that the idealising tendency of art passes over details, and elevates certain characteristics to a type which it even carries further than nature allows. The chief characteristic of the male form was a graceful but vigorous figure, with a srcises broad and well-arched chest, and straight limbs. The gymnastic e» gave that noble, proud, but easy carriage which is the crowning grace of the free man. These exercises, while they strengthened and developed the sinews and muscles, removed all superfluities, and hin- dered the overgrowth of the less beautiful parts; they kept the proportion and gracious flow of the lin »s, whether in the youthful or the adult form. The Greeks inherited from their race a fair skin with warm tones; but a pure white colour in men was not admired, and the habit of exercising naked in the open air and in glowing sunshine covered the whole body, as well as the face, with a slightly bronzed tint. Upon a slender round neck was poised an expressive head with dark-blonde or brown hair and glowing eyes. The familiar Greek profile with brow and nose in one unbroken vertical line is doubtless partly an idealisation ; though it is hard to avoid believing that it existed in nature, so universal is its representation. Wherever Greek art represents Greeks 56 PERSONAL API 1RANCE AND DRESS. THE APOLLO BELVEDERE. of either sex, be it in sculpture, in painting, on vessels of pottery, in the little figures of terra- cotta, everywhere we find the vertical profile as the type. The cause may lie in a real ten- dency of the actual profile toward t his type; and possibly also in the influence of Asiatic art, where we find this continuous line, though not vertical, but oblique with retreating forehead. Gree k art took this up, but changed the sculptures of Aigina and on the the b godli ree. row forward, an expression of ke majesty. k head. It produced an unnatural les This advanced b between the eyes, and gave rise to t too d it from the oblique direction, of which traces are found in older vases, to the vertical; doubtless because by throwing higher intellectual power and nobility was obtained, more of row it was which determined the whole form of the ideal sening of the hind-head ; raised the base of the nose he sheer fall of the brow above, which again set the eyes eep. As the upper part of the face had become so massive, the under part could not be dwar: ed by it; and the result was a swelling mouth with fine curves, and a strong, round, 57 GREECE. rather prominent chin. The whole ideal head had thus received noble and expressive form and feature. Doubtless the real Greek head had much of this type; but it was not without slight curves in the line of the nose, and individual conformation of brow, which, as we see from the portrait busts, in more advanced age was often strongly marked. With such dif erences as depend on sex, the female form was of the same type. Here we find the same tall, graceful figure and noble carriage, which we not only see in the statues of goddesses, but also in the female figures of terra-cotta recently found at Tanagra, and modelled with great art from the life. They did not, as did the Orientals, admire a voluptuous fulness of form, but a chastened proportion, which did not destroy the gentle flow of soft and graceful lines. They admired in woman the feminine, not the masculine, type, which latter occasionally appeared among the Spartan women as a result of their athletic exercises, if we may trust the mocking Aristophanes, who makes his Lysistrata accost a Spartan lady— Lys. O you dear Spartan! Welcome, Lampito! You darling girl, how beautiful you are ! Ruddy of colour, firm of limb, and strong Enough to choke a bull ! Lam. I think I could: You see I practise leaping, running, wrestling, And all sorts of gymnastic exercises. Lucian sketches another portrait of female beauty in his description of the Smyrnaian Panthea; but it is a description which hardly gives us a distinct conception, being merely an assemblage of parts of the most renowned statues, now unhappily perished, one furnishing the head, another the figure, and another again the hand or the foot. Still, single traits show us what the ancients regarded as beauty in this or the other part of the body. So, for ssion, taken from the restored statues, that the hands of example, there is a common impr ; but Greek women were not beautiful, but thick and clumsy, with broad and stumpy fing this is an error. Lucian expressly speaks of the “beautiful form of the hands, the delicate juncture of the wrist, and the slender and finely tapering fingers.” The few specimens remaining of the hands of ancient statues fully accord with this. The Capitoline Venus, for eveloped female beauty, and which has lost example, the best preserved statue representing only some parts of the fingers, has a hand with fingers round and delicately tapering, of a orm which the most modern taste would concede to be perfectly beautiful. Just so the hands of the figures of Tanagra, so far as they have been preserved, are finely executed, of great beauty, rounded but well proportioned above, with round tapering fingers of moderate length; gives of the Greek female exactly corresponding with the description which Winckelmann hand :—“ The beauty of a youthful hand,” he says, ‘consists in a very moderate plumpness, with scarcely perceptible indentations, like soft shadings, over the knuckles, where on really olump hands we see dimples: the fingers taper delicately like well-proportioned columns, and in art their knuckles are not indicated.” Other descriptions enable us to complete the portrait of female beauty. We learn that much stress was laid on a well-arched foot; and that Aspasia, for example, was renowned for the beauty of her feet. That we can well understand, as the loose and easy foot-gear of the Greeks allowed the feet a natural growth, uncramped and undistorted; while with us a natural foot and an elegant foot are two very different things; and moreover, this style of dress presented the uncovered foot constantly to view. The face was the especial abode of the Graces ; their throne was upon the brows, which were finely drawn with a pure curve, not too PERSONAL APPEARANCE AND DRESS. much arched ; while long, dark lashes shaded the large, liquid, and vivacious eyes. The original Greek type was the dark-blonde, with auburn hair and blue eyes, as the painted figures of Tanagra plainly show; but the scattering of the Hellenic race, their intercourse and connexion with foreigners on all coasts and at all marts, had brought the brunette type into favour, and given a preference for black hair and eyes, With the auburn hair was associated the white skin, tinted either with a their works of art; which, warm ivory hue, or with with innumerable exam- a light roseate flush; the ples continually before the cheeks also had but a artist’s eye, could not but delicate rosy tinge; but have been copied from the the mouth, as we are told life. The figures lately in the description of a discovered at Tanagra, beautiful woman, had the and already alluded to— red of a just-opening rose. female forms full of nat- If not all Greek women could boast these ural grace—give addi- tional confirmation of this. charms, still all possessed The Boiotians, to which a general style of beauty, people the inhabitants of Tanagra belonged, were and the grace of an easy and natural attitude and not in the highest estima- carriage. Whether the tion among the Greeks: Greek girl stood, sat, or but an exception was walked, in her attitude made in favour of their and gesture, in the mo- women. “Shun not the tions of her hand and Boiotian girl,” says a poet, head, spoke that noble, “for she is full of lovely cination.” And to the calm, graceful nature which is the peculiar Theban women above all charm of cla was conceded the palm cal antiq- of beauty. A contempo- e lity, and especially of the female sex, derived from rary tells us that in point the happy temperament of noble stature and fig- of the external world, anc ure, of elegant walk and the perfect balance anc carriage, they were the symmetry of their physica most stately and graceful ind mental natures. I of all Greek women; and this quality shows itsel re : even their speech, which in every creation of the = een in the men was thought Greek mind, so is it es- CAPITOLINE VENUS, harsh and rude, was full pecially marked in al of melody and charm. This freedom, dignity and grace also characterised the Greek style of dress. It is at once natural and beautiful: natural, because it does not depend upon any ingenious‘and artifi- cial cut, but takes its form from the figure it covers; and beautiful, because it offers to art forms and lines in harmony with art’s unchanging laws. And this character it preserved from first to last, though by no means without variety and chang of fashion. In the earlier days of Greece the dress was more ample, richer, and more varied in colour than in the period of her highest glory. Th had there developed a and rich attire. In th rich patterns, we may art ; for example, in th belonging to the Tro- jan cyclus of legend, From Ionia, with phi osophers, poets, and other men of letters came literary culture to Athens, and with them also came sump- tuousn of apparel. Athens then, in the time of Solon, had just entered on her period of flowering, and her wealthy citizens made no opposition to the innovations. They wore robes which fell in heavy folds to the feet, wound the hair in a knot over the brow and secured it with a golden pin bearing the figure of a cicada; and when they went abroad, had cushioned chairs borne after them by their slaves. This was the case in Athens even at the time of the Aristophanes calls the GREECE. e sudden flourishing of the Ionian states, and their intercourse with Asia, taste for luxury which displayed itself, among other things, in striking is splendour of costume, in the use of golden embroidery and stuffs of plainly see Asiatic influences; and these effects were afterwards used in e representations of Amazons, of Paris, or any personages of Asiatic race battle of Marathon, and it almost makes us wonder that that battle was ever won. But those who won it were not merely the long -robed cicada- wearers, but the sim- ple, strong, healthy country-folk, who came to the front in a time of anxiety and _ peril. After the Persian wars rich apparel grew out of fashion with the Greeks ; and they came at last to that n imple and noble style of dress with which ancient sculpture has made us so familiar. This change was part- ly due to the great development of plastic art; and at times pride and the taste for showy dress broke out again; and young f) Athenian nobles,— LADY OF xRA, WITH CHITON, CLOAK AND HAT, “ ring - loaded - curly S locked coxcombs,” as 2m, with one of his grotesque compound epithets—indulged their vanity with long trailing robes, with hair curled and oiled, and fingers loaded with rings to the very nails. Alkibiades in of youth, rather encouraged than checked these fopperies. Yet still, thoug whole history of Greel first to last, and the his day was their leader; and the sophists, those teachers or corrupters h these extravagancies of fashion and vanity accompany to the last the k costume, the general character of the dress remained the same from primitive design never changed. And the same holds good for the Romans as for the Greeks. The chief characteristic of antique classic costume consists in its being—not a dre put on, laid on, or fol 3s, like our modern garb, but a covering. The garments of the Greeks were ded about, not drawn on, the person: at least, this was the rule. Two 60 PERSONAL APPEARANCE AND DRESS. garments completed the dress of man and of woman; and the general pattern was the same for both sexes, This dress consisted of an under and an upper garment; the former being the chz¢on, the latter the Azmatéon. Each consisted of an oblong piece of cloth; the differences lay in the different length or breadth, and in the style of wearing it. We will first take the men’s chiton; and our readers by referring to the illustrations will easily understand the description. Imagine a rectangular piece of cloth, from one to one-and-a-half metres wide and twice as long, and folded in the middle like a sheet of paper. This is put on from the left side, so that one half covers the back and the other the front of the body. Over both shoulders it is fastened; on the left side there is left an opening, through which the left arm is thrust, while all the right side remains open. This is the primitive form of the chiton, from which all changes and fashions were but variations. Over the left shoulder it might be sewed together, and over the right fastened with a clasp or brooch, The open right side might be partially closed, so as to give it much the form of a blouse; or the chiton might have short sleeves g as low as the elbow; or the right side might 5 covering the upper part of the arm, or reachin be slipped off the shoulder and let fall as low as the hip, so that the right arm and half the breast were left naked and free. Worn in this way, the chiton was called an exomzs, and because it was handy for work, the exomis was the garb of slaves and handicraftsmen, and as such was worn by Hephaistos or Vulcan, the divine smith. The chiton, girded into folds at the waist, usually descended to the knee. ops, as we have seen, sometimes wore it so long that it trailed on the ground; while, on the other hand, hunters, or soldiers on a march, drew it still higher by means of the girdle. The chiton worn by women was of the same pattern, only much ampler; for here, as a rule, it fell to the feet, and enfolded the whole body. The doubled cloth was laid from the left side over the back and front of the body, fastened over the shoulders, and let fall to the fe Often it was made much longer than the wearer’s height, and in this case it could be drawn up so that, while remaining open on the right side, it still wra oped around the whole person, under the girdle so that the upper part fell over the breast in a kind of loose pouch. Artemis, dressed for the chase, wore a chiton which did not reach to the knee; and the Lakonian maidens, always lightly and freely clad, wore it only to the knee, and open at the side, or “split,” as it was called. But female art and vanity, even more than male, were far from being satisfied with the primitive simplicity of the chiton, They threw the o/fos or breast-pouch into a series of folds which surrounded the bosom like a valance, as is seen im many statues of goddesses. Again, they threw over the neck and shoulders, down to the breast, and even below it, a kind of cape called difploidion, a piece of stuff, which originally was only the upper part of the chiton folded over throughout its whole breadth. But fashion, aided perhaps by local customs, took this in hand, changed it, and made it a separate article of dress, which was laid over the chiton. At the arms and shoulders the chiton assumed many variations. In its primitive form it was sleeveless and fastened with a brooch; but soon sleeves were added, either square and reaching to the elbows, or slit open and fastened with three brooches down the upper arm. The vases give us numerous examples of these varieties of fashion. When the chiton was sewed up on the right side, then, indeed, it could no longer be laid on, but had to be drawn over the head. This was never the case with the Azmation, the second article of male apparel, which 61 GREECE. remained a cloak from first to last. In form and use this may best be compared to an Indian shawl, but not in point of decoration, and far less in respect to the inartistic way in which the latter is worn at present by European ladies. The himation was an oblong piece of cloth, much like the chiton in its original form, and, like it, much longer than wide; but in its other dimensions quite different. A man, in putting this on, threw one end from behind over the left shoulder, drew the whole then over his back and under the right arm, or over it, and threw the other end again over the left shoulder, so that it hung down the back in vertical folds. This is the primitive style, but it admitted of many variations. The wearer might thus envelop himself in the himation from foot to chin; he might cover both arms and hands or leave both free; he might draw it tighter, or let it hang looser over the shoulders. So also with the himation worn by females, which had the same form, was put on in the MALE COSTUME. 1, Figure with the chiton. 2. Hephaistos with the exomis. 3. Youth dressed in the chiton, and putting on the himation, 4. The himation worn alone. same way, and underwent similar variations in its arrangement. But in this last respect the himation was of more consequence to the woman than to the man. By universal and strict custom, no Greek lady could leave the house without putting on the himation, though in the house she wore the chiton alone; so in the arrangement of the latter article she had to be mind- ful of modesty and decorum, as well as of elegance and the desire to please. And thus, bringing an inventive genius to the aid of long practice, she had raised the art of wearing the himation to the dignity of a fineart. In this she showed her taste, and found opportunity for the display of various little coquetries. When dignified and modest, she folded the himation round her whole person, covering both arms and hands; and even drew it over the face so that only eyes and nose were left visible. This was the style in vogue among the Theban women, and many of the terra-cottas from Tanagra exhibit it. Tall and well-developed figures, the head proudly erect, now in an attitude of studied elegance, now walking with deliberate and majestic step, they were abley though shrouded in these heavy folds, to display not merely forms of matronly dignity, but real figures of beauty. Younger women, conscious of their -youthful grace, and not perhaps without a spice of coquetry, drew the fine fabric closer around waist and shoulders, 62 PERSONAL APPEARANCE AND DRESS. and so brought all their charms into play, while they allowed the forms to be seen through the dress; an art which Greek ladies as well as Greek artists well understood. But not only age and design, season and weather also had their effect upon the dress, The heat of summer demanded lighter fabrics and a less ample pattern. Then the himation became only a light shawl, worn free and loose from the shoulders or arms, and exposing the form; or, drawn over the face, served the purpose of a veil. Worn in this style it was called kalyptra, while in the other it often bore the name of peplos » and in its use the Greek ladies displayed great art. The himation of men had also a variety of forms. In Athens, after the Persian wars, when men, in Kimon’s time, began to Lakonzze, the short Spartan dress came into fashion, and with it a short cloak, in which the philosophers, in haughty renunciation of the vanities ALE DRESS. rand 2, Various stages in putting on the chiton. he simple chiton. 4. Chiton with diploidion in the act of fastening. of the world, were wont to wrap their naked bodies. They wore it mostly without the chiton ; and indeed it was not uncommon for men to wear the himation alone; but this was never the case with women. Of more importance was a third form of the mantle, of Thessalian origin apparently, and called the chlamys, a comparatively small piece of cloth with tags at the corners, which was laid over the left shoulder and fastened over the right with a brooch, thus loosely covering the upper part of the body. This was the especial dress of youths, while boys wore the chiton only. It was also the garb of travellers, and thus of Hermes, the messenger of the gods, and particularly of horsemen, the regular riding-cloak. So we see numerous examples of the chlamys in statuary, for instance among the riders on the frieze of the Parthenon. Such was the national dress of Greece at the most flourishing period of her history, and the flowering-time of her art. Its plastic value was of great value to art, inasmuch that even in the costume all the lines and folds were of importance, and carefully studied by the wearers. And in this respect the nature of the fabric was of great advantage, which fulfilled all the requirements of beauty in the simplicity and elegance of its folds. Woollen cloth, the 63 GREECE. softest and most flexible material, was almost exclusively used. Down to the Persian wars the Athenians had worn a long linen chiton, but after that time linen fell into disuse among men ; folds of the undergarment. Cotton, though not unknown, was rarely worn; and only in later times though that it was still worn by women we may learn from the statues, by the light and wavy did silk come into use. But woollen fabrics, varying in thickness, fineness and texture, were worn universally and in all seasons; in winter, coarse heavy cloaks, with rough outside, and in summer, garments thin, li rht and transparent as muslin. Between these extremes lay a great variety, some giving massive folds with heavy shadows, and others a flow of soft and delicate lines. Not only sculpture but painting found in the Greek dress material for its use, for not only form was there, but colour also. It is true that, theoretically, the native white of the wool was looked upon as the stuffs had been intro- most becoming colour; duced; and if their use and doubtless it was much worn, both by men and women; as for example we are told of the The- ban women that the robes in which they wrapped their heads and faces were white ; and so in the terra- cottas of Tanagra white is the prevailing colour of in the best days of Greece was less common, the coloured patterns were re- placed by embroidery worked in the borders, in the corners, and even over the surface itself. When this was not the case, the himation or its equivalent was often of a the undergarments. But single colour, blue, violet, in real life great varieties yellow, red or purple. of hue were indulged in. The ladies of Tanagra Even before the Persian seem to have had a FIGURES OF WOMEN. wars, bright-coloured gar- 1. Chiton with diploidion and kolpos, mand himation, Special fondness for rose- ments and even figured colour ; and it is the usual tint of their mantles, to which sometimes a border of a different hue, or even of gold, is added. Colour was even used in the coverings for head and feet, the use of which, in ancient times, may perhaps appear inadequate as compared with our own. At home a man needed no foot-covering at all; and when visiting he took off his shoes at the door. It is recorded of Sokrates himself, that once, when going to a banquet, he put on a handsome pair of shoes, though usually he went, like the poorer class, unshod, even in winter. This, however, was not the rule; as with us, a man with any claim to respectability had to possess at least one ecent pair of shoes. He who aimed at being well dressed must have foot-gear conforming ; and so neither craftsman’s skill nor artistic taste was neglected in their fabrication; and even = he simple soles or sandals were cut to fit the foot of the wearer. The forms worn were various, from the plain sandal to high horseman’s boots reaching to mid-thigh. Sandals were the most usual every-day wear, but regularly formed shoes were also in frequent use. A lacing of straps, simpler or more complex, and occasionally reaching as high as the calf, fastened the sandal to the foot; and it was sometimes of bright colour or even gilt. The Theban women wore red shoes, laced in such a manner as to show the bare foot. The ladies of Tanagra wore thick red soles, with yellow upper-leathers. Boots and half-boots were worn by travellers and 64 YOUTH WITH CHLAMYS AND day, that the head, inured to exposure, could dispense with a’ usually went bare-headed. as travellers and horse- men; they wore a hat which seems almost in- separable from the chla- mys. So is Hermes con- stantly depicted, who despite his divinity usu- ally has the hat doffed in courteous salutation, as indeed was the cus- tom of antiquity. This hat, generally of felt, had a round crown, and broader or narrower brim, stiff or limp, and bent sometimes up and imes down. Sail- some ors wore a brimless felt cap in the form of half an egg, a costume we sce in figures of Charon, the PERSONAL HAT, “GIRL APPEARANCE AND hunters, and so formed part of the costume of the huntress Artemis. “ops often indulged in right - coloured laced oots; but on the whole black was the prevailing colour for men, The wearing of either as head-gear, a matter of comfort or pro- yriety, was not so uni- versal as that of shoes, though probably not altogether so infrequent as is commonly sup- posed. Indeed the edu- cation of the youth, as well as the gymnastic exercises of men, was carried on so largely in the open air and under the burning sun of mid- OF TANAGRA WEARING 65 THE CHIT DRESS. YOUT! Otherwise, however, was it with those who wore the chlamys COVEY. H WITH CHLAMYS AND HAT, ing, and young and old such ferryman, and Odysseus, the seafarer. Among the Greeks the hat was neither a necessity nor a “mark ‘of FANCE } a 10ugh with the women, one or the other seems to have been sometimes t At least in the he case. female figures from Tan- agra, the hat appears so frequently that we may infer its general use in that prosperous city. The Tanagra ladies’ hat has quite a _ peculiar form, being a nearly flat disk with a high peak in the middle; and is so put on as to seem al- most floating above the —— —— GREECE. head which it shades. How it was attached to the head is not known. This hat has various colours; for example, blue with red or gold border ; it has rather an elegant effect, and certainly might be worn coquettishly, though, when placed above a muffled head, it has quite a venerable appearance. The less the importance attached to the hat, the more care and art was bestowed by both men and women upon the hair; and to have this well dressed was a mark of respectability and gentility. Special circumstances, moreover, required special attention to the hair. Thus, the Spartans always combed and dressed their hair before a battle, as if making ready for a festival. Xerxes, when he was told that the Spartans in Thermopylai were engaged in combing their long ength, but both style and length differed with the hair, could not comprehend how men in view of im- age of the wearer, mediate death could his native country, be thus occupied and at different onal yeriods; as, for in- with their pers adornment; but in stance, after the Sparta it was con- ersian wars the sidered that well- Athenians aban- dressed hair made doned the knot of the handsome more hair over the fore- beautiful and the read, fastened with the cicada—an ar- ugly more terrible. In general rangement called the Greek custom hrobylos. In Spar- was to wear the PARTI-COLOURED DRESS. ta boys wore the hair of moderate hair short, and youths long. In Athens, on the other hand, when the boys reached the age of epheboz (youths) they cut their hair and offered it with ceremonies in the temple of some god; but the men allowed it to grow long again. But long or short, all took great care of the hair, and of the beard also, which nowhere was entirely shaved off: on the contrary, a fine, thick seard was considered a manly ornament. It was never worn, however, in its natural untrimmed growth, which was thought a mark of clownishness or eccentricity. A smoothly-shaven, beard- ess face came into vogue in the time of Alexander the Great. This was an Oriental fashion ; but although there was at first much opposition to it as a mark of effeminacy, it soon became universal in Greece, only philosophers and sophists adhering to the old style. SHOES, BOOTS AND SANDALS, 66 PERSONAL APPEARANCE AND DRESS. GREEK MALE HEADS. To have the beard trimmed, or the hair cut or dressed, men went to the barbers’ shops, which abounded in all the Greek cities, Athens included. As at the present day, these artists were noted for their loquacity, and knew how to entertain a customer with all the latest gossip. Indeed, their shops were fre- of the women, which were quented on this account, and dressed with consummate art. became resorts of the idle, the In the style of coiffure there curious, and the talkative, who were many varieties; some passed there a considerable simple, others more elaborate. Youth and age had different part of the day. Curled or wavy hair styles; and the style worn at was much admired in Greece, home was different from that as we may see everywhere in worn on a visit or to a public and the Greeks festival. Other differences the statues ; knew how to produce this there were, according to rank grace by artificial means. or station, the prevailing This, as a matter of course, mode, and individual taste. was especially the case with Hate Ue tek The innumerable busts and Terra-cotta group from Tanagra, the long and luxuriant tresses statues exhibit an almost infi- nite variety, and the ancient writers furnish us with a multitude of names of styles; but it were a task equally impossible to describe the former or to explain the latter. Still, certain well-marked and characteristic styles may be identified. Although the Greek women were fond of displaying curled or wavy hair, long tresses hanging around the face and over the neck were not in favour. Priestesses wore them; and the = COIFFURES, FEMALE HEADS WITH ANTIQ 67 GREECE. s. Bacchos is often so repre- Bacchantes let the hair fly loose around the head and shoulde sented, as is the so-called head of Ariadne, which some think a Bacchos: otherwise this style was left to courtesans. The rule was rather to leave neck and shoulders free, but to bring the hair down over the brows ; for a high forehead in women was not considered a beauty. One of the loveliest heads of antiquity, the so-called Klytie, a head which has all the character- istics of a portrait, has the forehead remarkably low. The hair—and here too we may take the Klytie as the simplest type—is parted in the middle, falls wavily to the temples, and is drawn in very artistic tr s to the back of the head. The arrangement of this mass of hair at the back was arrangements the principal upon the head source of the or at the neck; varieties in coif- these were of inre; AY” very bright — colours usual style was or golden, and to bind the hair started either into a bunch (the from the back of korymbos) either the head or at at the crown of the forehead. A the head or just wider band, above the neck. which encircled The former style the brow like a was favoured by diadem, was the Theban wo- called from its men, who called it lampadion— “Vittle torch ”— form, sphendone —‘sling.” Nets were also worn, as much from its made of coloured silk or xold bright = auburn g hue as from the thread, and of Jamelike form. coloured _ stuff, *illets were also serving as a bag used, single, or to hold the mass double and trip- of hair upon the e, to secure the KLYTIE neck, At the Bust in the British Museum. hair in various bottom of all these simpler forms and contrivances lay a certain need of convenience; but the taste of the Greek knew how to draw variety from simplicity, and art from necessity. Countless as are the styles which the statues present, they all seem to us artistic, decorative, and tasteful, yet natural as well, without that elaboration of art and bizarre caprice so characteristic of the Roman ladies in the days of the Empire. Yet the Greek lady possessed not only the art, but also the arts of the toilette. She well understood how to defend her beauty from the attacks of advancing age, and was provided with the means of making a long resistance, though at last she had to yield to the universal conqueror, Time. Nothing was then left but to abandon the hopeless struggle, and suspend her arms in the temple of the goddess of love, as the epigrams tell us. For example: 68 MORNING IN THE PERISTYLE OF THE GYNAIKONITIS. PERSONAL APPEARANCE AND DRESS. Thou mad’st me, Kythereia, fair to see, 3ut stealthy Time has stol’n thy gifts from me ; Now, since they have departed, I resign The only proof that once those gifts were mine. Even Lais, after so many triumphs, had to yield at last, and dedicated her mirror to the Paphian Aphrodite : Venus, take my votive glass, Since I am not what I was: What from this day I shall be, Venus, let me never see. An elegant Greek lady needed for the completion of her toilette no less than fifty nt articles, all of which a garrulous writer has enumerated. In the list we find mirrors, jars and phials, unguents and oils, combs and brushes, pencils and colours. For the fair Greek knew well how to remedy the imperfections of nature, to add a wanting grace, or hide a defect. They laid rouge and ceruse upon the cheeks, gave with the pencil a finer curve to the brows, or darkened these and the eyelashes. They wore false hair, and dyed grey locks black, or faded tres ses auburn, Of course, all this was fair game for the epigrammatists ; for example : The golden hair Nikylla wears Is hers : who would have thought it ? She swears tis hers, and true she swears, For I know where she bought it. Another says: Rouge and ceruse, teeth and hair, Salves of wax and honey ;— Surely you might buy a new Face for half the money. And another: You give your cheeks a rosy stain, With washes dye your hair ; But paint and washes both are vain To give a youthful air. An art so fruitless then forsake, Which, though you much excel in, You never can contrive to make Old Hecuba young Helen. To dye the hair auburn, the Greeks used precisely the same process which we are told was resorted to by the Venetian ladies in the sixteenth century; they dressed their tresses with a caustic wash, and then exposed them to the rays of the sun. In this point the men were scarcely behind the women, and they too used cosmetics to dye the hair and beard black when they began to turn grey. Dyeing them brown or blonde, though sometimes practised, was considered effeminate and foppish. The cosmetic part of the Greek lady’s toilette consisted chiefly in the us of perfumed oils and pomades. Perfumes, the growth of Asia, and especially of Arabia, were in general I = y s favour with the Greeks. Homer's goddesses are surrounded with ambrosial odours ; they know how to employ these to make themselves or favoured mortals attractive. Athene thus sheds a fragrance on the sleeping Penelope, and Juno delicately perfumes herself when she wishes to delude her stern spouse. No public festival, no celebration in a temple, no 69 banquet was complete to a time, Queen Berenike among others, that they invented, prepared and a variety of new scents a the cosmetic art, which, to the irrepara Alexandreia. After the Greek lad occurrence, and decarum di washed by a maid, who pour rubbed with perfumes. So various tolerably satisfactory substitutes. rank had A 2 large fan, one ady of began, was em- oloyed in dressing her hair, another held before her a round, metallic hand-mirror, and a third stood by with her jewel-case, from which she selected rings, ear-rings, of gold, chains for her neck bracelets and armlets and her hair, and brooches to fasten her attire. If she were going abroad, her mantle was laid over her shoulders. She then either bore a fan in the shape of a palm-leaf, and_ brightly tinted—the ladies of Tana- gra seem to have preferred them blue with a red border —or else a maid held over her in the open air a large head and around the breast and wreathed with flowers wine-jug and goblet. Greeks were, there must be without GREECE. perfumes. The Athenians a high perfection; and it is recorded of certain ladies of rank nd es Aspasia herself wrote sences, le loss of posterity, f£ y had bathed, or rather—for the dom d not permit her to visit the public ed water over her from a ewer, her hai ap, such as we use, was unknown to t Then the lady put on quite a bevy 0 dressing-maids ; and w FEMALE HEAD FROM THE GLYPTOTHEK AT MUNICH, wine, perfumes, and garlands. my temples with roses,” sings Anakreon. Flowers and wreaths were bought at the market, where flower-girls were always to be found. In Athens their place was the myrtle-market. manufacture their carried in the Alexandrian prought into fashion a work in two volumes on yerished in the library of nestic bath-tub was of rare baths—after she had been rand her whole body were he Greeks, though they had the chiton, and the toilette hile she fanned herself with parasol, If she were bound to a festival, a garland was a necessary part of her equipment. Flowers and gar- lands were a quite indispen- sable adornment of Greek li life, even every-day ey At no festival or celebra- tion, whether of joy or mourning, could they be wanting; they adorned the } the statues, and the temple, the house, the altars, yersons d. of in their of both young and o Young people were fond carrying them about hands, as young men of the present day wear them in the button-hole ; at banquets they placed garlands on the W LETEVEr «“ Anoint me with odours, crown Leafy garlands were made of myrtle, ivy, foliage of the silver poplar, such as the women of Tanagra wore, and sprays of other plants, and flowers were woven in among these. I'll twine white violets and the myrtle green, Narcissus will I twine and lilies sheen ; I'll twine sweet crocus and the hyacinth blue And last I'll twine the rose, love’s token true That all may form a wreath of beauty meet To deck my Heliodora’s tresses sweet. jo PERSONAL APPEARANCE AND DKESS. TOILET UTENSILS, WITH MIRROR, SCRAPERS AND FANS, Of all flowe it is to-day in the East, so all classical antiquity is redolent of the praises and poetry of the , the favourite was the rose, the flower of flowers, the flower of love. As rose. Out of innumerable examples, we will take but one—from Anakreon : Roses, Love’s delight, I join To the rosy god of wine; Roses crown us while we laugh And the gift of Bacchus quaff. Of all flowers the rose is king, Fairest bloom of all the spring, Joy of every deity. Love, when with the Gre For the dance himself disposes, es he Crowns his golden hair with roses. BRIDE ADORNED FOR HER NUPTIALS. Kassandra and Bellerophon. Vase painting. yp 7 GREECE, | ins 4 i & maiden binding | ¢ Ik 5 g BE wart thou binding | 2 2 SF eattsaswell? a SELLING FLOWERS. The faded wreath which had served at the banquet was not unfrequently suspended by a lover at the door of his mistress, at once a mark of his affection and an intimation that youth and beauty, like it, were trans ito ry: Fair as these flowers, like them thou soon shalt fade. And so it was with the Greeks. Their beauty, their grace, endured longer than their national freedom. As long as their exercises and games were kept up, even under the Roman emperors, Greece still furnished the perfection of human form, perfect types of beauty. But all passed away in the dissolution of later times, as the free and noble beauty of Greek dress sank to the stiff costume of the Byzantine empire, and even this last remaining grace of antiquity was swept away at the invasion of the barbarians. FLOWER-MARKET AT ATHENS. GREEK WOMEN AT HOME. From a vase, 3. iE WiOMVE ENT ONDERFULLY noble and perfect female figures, true ideals f fair and lofty womanhood, stand at the very threshold of Greek culture, shining with pure radiance in a dark time of wild confusion and unbridled passions. There is Alkestis who voluntarily offers herself to death, to give life and health to her husband ; Iphigencia, who goes to the sacrifice, with no bitter thought in her heart, no reproachful word on her i sriest. There we see Antigone, who, faithful to filial duty, | 5 y )s, obedient to the cruel command of her father and the even in opposition to paternal command, follows her wretched, blind, outcast father into misery and banishment, and buries her brother’s corse, though her life is the forfeit. There is Nausikaa, the lovely daughter of a king, joyous, naive, as befits a princess, innocent, and yet free and self-possessed in her charmingly described interview with Ulysses, when that storm-beaten and shipwrecked wayfarer emerges from the thicket and throws himself upon her protection. The whole Odyssey is a glorification of Penelope, who for twenty years waits and longs for her absent lord; whose memory strengthens him to bear ever- renewed misfortune; and who, wise and noble, lives for years amid the insolence of the suitors in unassailable dignity, and keeps unstained her faith and her honour. Nowhere in all history or poetry is conjugal love depicted more touchingly, more tenderly, more truly, than is shown in Hector and Andromache, under the impending shadow of a terrible fate, that threatens him with death in battle, her with slavery, and Troy and the whole house of Priam with destruction. Even Helena, who is more the victim of Aphrodite than of her own heart, has 73 GREECE. only to appear, and youth and age bow before her irresistible beauty, and are willing for the sake of her, the stranger, to bear all the misery of the ten years’ siege. The only words of complaint against her are those which she herself utters. And how unrestricted are the actions of these women: how free they move among the men! The Trojan prince attendant, mingle with the throng of old men, anc progress of the fight. Helena, on her return, is a true queen in the palace of Menelaos, rul- ing and directing, hon- oured and obeyed, receiv- ing guests, enlivening the converse of the men, giv- ing to the whole princely house that indescribable charm which emanates from the high-born lady, from commanding beauty. Arete, the queen of the Phaiakians, who is hon- oured by her husband as HeEVer woman was upon earth, walks through the city, and meets on all sides the joyous salutations of the people, who gaze upon her as upon something di- vine; full of quick and noble intelligence, she appeases the quarrel among the men; she it is, enthroned at the side of Alkinods, whose knees the suppliant Ulysses embraces, as Nau- sikaa has taught him, know- whence all art, science, and intel case in all Greece. The cause of this effacement of woman is not far to seek: evolution of Greek civil life, in w to the advantage of the man, but public life, ies 5 pany of his friends, in the mar s hasten through streets, accompanied only by a single female DORIAN GIRL. Victor in the race, rew less and less domestic, and pas busied in state affairs, or only talking politics. this became a habit, and from a habit grew to a fixed with the other s not of the woman. DANCING-GIRI - remains unchanged. — It Marble statue in the Vatican female of the lower class. is true she was the mis- So wealthy and distin- guished ladies were attended by a whole bevy of handmaids, though the judges of man- ners censured this as ostentation, and praised the wife of Phokion, who was never attended in public by more than a single maid. If, in addition to all this, we tak our ideas from the expressions of writers and poets, as for instance the woman-hating Euripides, who makes his Iphigeneia say that one man is worth more than ten thousand women, or the malicious scoffs of the comic poets against the whole sex—we must suppose that the Greek woman, and the Athenian woman above all, was held in extreme contempt, and looked upon as little better than a slave. But it was not really so bad as this. In many lands and at all times there have been peoples among whom the 77 GREECE. women stood more or less in the position of minors, where a strict custom kept them secluded ; and even in our own day the old phrase, mauler taceat in ecclesta, is, to a certain extent, the expression of a fact. And yet all this has never hindered women from obtaining their befitting positions in the family and in society. Woman possesses, in her beauty and her grace, an st. Anakreon may be our irresistible weapon, which the beauty-loving Greek could least r witness to this: Nature gives all creatures arms To defend from hostile harms ; Gives, the lion to defend, Fearful jaws that wide extend : Horns, the bull, resistless force, Solid hoofs, the vigorous horse ; Nimble feet the timid hare, Wings for flight the birds of air ; Fins to swim, the watery kind ; Man, the bold undaunted mind. Nature, lavishing her store, What for woman had she more? Helpless woman! To be fair: Beauty falls to woman’s share. Armed with this she need not fear Sword or flame or dart or spear: Beauty surer aid affords, Stronger far than flames or swords. We have attempted to portray the free Greek woman of the better classes not as a slave, nor in the humble condition of a mere domestic drudge, but in all respects lady-like. The innumerable representations of women in sculpture and painting must be universally false if their originals were not ladies in the modern sense of the word; elegant women full of grace in every line and movement, and also full of nobility and matronly dignity. That highest means of spiritual culture which the men possessed, namely poetry, was not denied her; for there were copies of the poets in the house, and she might visit the theatres, except when the indecorousness of the piece, as was often the case with the comedies, prevented a modest woman from attending. With these weapons, in addition to her power of beauty, the Greek woman broke through the barriers of law and prejudice, and compelled an unconditional recognition of her rights in that province which was properly her own. And she succeeded so far that she was treated by the stronger sex, if not with chivalry, at least with great consideration and tenderne No man uttered a word in her presence offensive to her modesty or dignity; no stranger presumed to enter a house where the mistress was alone or even the master absent. Even the woman of Homeric times owed to herself her free and lofty position; law and custom sed. Penel- gave her no rights other than those which the Greek woman of later times posse’ ope, when she rebuked the suitors, was checked by her own son; and though surprised, she held her peace. If the men took public life with its occupations and duties for their province, in return they left to the women the control of household affairs, reserving to themselves at most only the right of supery ision. The wife ruled the whole body of domestics, allotted the tasks, had - of the provisions, and was occupied in directing and supervising from early morning until night. Not seldom her authority extended to her husband; for as there were male domestic tyrants, so there were also female, scolding Xanthippes, who spared neither gods 78 7 THE WOMEN. STIC SCENE, ‘ase-painting. nor mortals, neither the all-powerful Zeus nor the wise Sokrates. Sometimes it was the heavy dower that gave the wife this superiority ; at others it was a better education, or more distin- guished family, that brought the husband to this inferior position, and made him the slave to all her caprices. In the Clouds of Aristophanes the unlucky Strepsiades bewails his fate, loaded with debts because he married a high-flying fantastic city-dame, “redolent of saffron and pomade, fashion and extravagance.” But on the other side, neither was a unity of feeling, a complete harmony of soul, alto- gether excluded. Although as a rule it was the parents who arranged and concluded the mar- riage, yet it was by no means seldom that love linked the tie, and for love’s sake difficulties were overcome and sacrifices made, as in the case of Kallias, who, wishing to marry the sister of Kimon, had to pay the debts of his father Miltiades. And as the husband usually received his bride young, shy, and undeveloped, so it lay for the most part in his power, and was his Thus we have task, to form her to his wishes, in the Ozéonomzkos of Xenophon a sketch of a young married pair of this kind, evidently drawn from the life. Sokrates, who in his usual style pretends ignorance, makes a young and wealthy Athenian of rank tell him how he has brought his housekeeping to such a model of perfection. ‘“ What do you do,” he asks, “when you are at home?” “Nothing whatever,” answers the other; “that is my wife's business.” « “And had she this e3 perience when you received her from her parents?” 3y no means, since she was only fifteen when I married her. She could do nothing but make a garment, and set the maids their tasks. That was not much, you will admit; but she had one virtue—mod- esty.” Ischomachos, for such is the husband’s name, now goes on further to tell how he trained his young wife to her duties. First, he says, they sacrificed to the gods and prayed that he might be able well to instruct his wife, and that she might well retain his instructions, and profit by them to their common advantage. When she had grown a little more familiar with him, and would speak without restraint, he asked her if she understood why their parents had made the match. We thought, he says, that in these things the choice should be carefully considered, since the fortune of a household and of a family depend upon it. If the gods send us children, I trust that you will co-operate with me in giving them the best education in our power, since they will be companions for us, and a source of happiness that we must carefully watch over. They will be the hope of our old age, and the heirs of our possessions. And these we must both do our best to increase, since they are the common property of us both. And in so doing, each of us will have a share. The duties of a family are two-fold, external y g, and internal: the former belong to the husband, the latter to the wife. Nature has given the one courage and strength to bear cold and heat, and the hardships of travel and of warfare; § § 79 GREECE. to the other weakness, that she may lead a more peaceful life, and timidity, that she may be doubly watchful. This is the reason that the wife has the charge of the interior concerns of the household. Both have the same care; but the activities are different, and each completes the other. Is it not, he asks her, better and more natural that a wife should take care of the house than that she should gad about the streets? And w hat is more unnatural than for a man to neglect his out-door duties, and shut himself up in the house like a woman? Vion must remain at home to send out the servants when anything is to be attended to out of the house; to oversee their domestic duties, to receive the stores and provisions and give them out as needed, to take the wool after the shearing, and have it spun and woven; when the grain is brought in, to see that it is kept dry and clean for use; and—though this may not be so pleasant a duty—to and when in the take care of the performance of your servants when sick.” duties you are more “On the contrary,” perfect than I, I answers the young shall own the au- wife, “I shall finda thority of your vir- pleasure in that tues; your highest duty, for it will in- wishes will be com- crease their grati- mands to me, and tude and devotion advancing years will forme. © Then,” only increase my the husband con- love and_ tender- tinues, ‘when you ness.” have done and or- Thus speaks dered all this, you - the young Athenian. will enjoy in your ERUS CHAE REET EES It proves, at least, i < Statue in the Vatican. heart the purest and that love and hap- highest —_ pleasure ; piness were not ex- cluded from Greek marriages; and many a wife might in her declining years have spoken as did she of whom this epigram was written : Kallirhoé to Pallas dedicates Her hair, her zone to virgin Artemis, Her crown to Aphrodite, having wed The man she loved the best, and passed a youth Happy and pure, and borne a beauteous son. The quality for which the Greek, and especially the Athenian women were most renowned was conjugal fidelity. The law in this respect was extremely severe upon the female sex J y [ ) I re g and invested the men with rights to which no corresponding duties were attached. But law and public opinion gave the man entire liberty in this respect, and he used it freely, though g J y, g marriage brought with it comparative restraint. This license of the men, this weakness of their moral judgment, is the shaded side of the Greek love of beauty. They drew into publicity a class of females that elsewhere veil themselves in obscurity, and gave them a position in society and in culture which can not be passed without notice. The hetacraz, “female friends,” votaresse s of “the golden Aphrodite,” form a feature of Greek life. They gave to the men female society with that charm which the matrons, secluded as they were from the world, could rarely give. They brought the fas inations of graceful and highly cultivated 80 THE WOMEN. minds, and the attractions of brilliant conversation, and to these they not seldom added sincere attachment and devotion. But those hetairai whose names have been preserved in history are but a few which appear rising above the obscure crowd. The chief seats of their influence were those where woman enjoyed least freedom, in the Ionian cities, and especially in Athens, next in Corinth, the certre of commerce, with its motley adventurous crowd, where Kypris had fixed her abode, and where she was honoured and served by women of this class, the Azerodulaz, as her priestesses. Sparta, on the other hand, was ignorant of them. This hetatre class arose in the Ionian states of Asia Minor in the time of their sudden prosperity and wealth, when the democracy consolidated its power. In this democracy they found the sphere of their activity, though they by no means limited themselves to it. They came into Attika, one after another, with philosophers and frequented the many-coloured apparel their schools. And in return and the philosophers, and they received visits from these found in Athens, as it rose sages, and even enjoyed their more and more into import- intimate friendship. This state ance, a favourable field for the of things hardly resulted in a exercise of their talents. It gain for philosophy, even was not without reason that though Sokrates averred that their coming coincided with that he had learned eloquence of of the philosophers; there ex- Aspasia, and ascribed to a cer- isted between these two classes tain Diotima all the wondrous of persons a certain connexion revelations concerning the na- g which long continued. Many ture of love, which he sets g of these hetairai, desirous of forth in the Sympostum of improvement in knowledge and Plato. The history of philoso- education, were it but to en- phy neither names nor knows ASPASIA ¢ hance and to refine their fasci- Bust in the Vatican, one of these women. nations, sought the society of One of the first Ionian hetairai who attained fame and influence was the Milesian Thargelia, of whom, as of others of her class, it was said that she was in the service of the King of Persia, and sought to produce an interest in his favour in Greece. She then became the favourite of Antiochos, a Thes- salian prince, and retained, even after his death, the power she had thus acquired. But still more celebrated—we may say more honoured—was the name of Aspasia, who, through her connexion with Perikles, the first and noblest statesman of Greece, has shed almost a glory upon the whole class. She was a Milesian by birth, and came to Athens unknown. But suddenly she comes conspicuously into view as the favourite and companion of the great man. who ruled the destinies of his native city. For her sake he repudiated his wife, and took Aspasia to his home. For her sake he bore the sarcasms of the comic poets; he humbled himself before the people, and when she was accused of impiety, pleaded for her to the judges with prayers and tears, until he had extorted an acquittal from their compassion, There can be no doubt that she was not only fair, but of remarkable mental gifts; and assuredly she exercised, as contemporaries tell us, considerable influence in political affairs. Not only Sokrates, but Perikles also is reported to have learned from her the art of public speaking, and that mighty stream of words with which he, “ flashing and thundering like Olympian Zeus, shook all Hellas ;’? from which cause she was looked upon as the Hera of this Zeus, It was said that she assisted him in the preparation or of his orations, and especially the famous panegyric on the soldiers who fell in the Samian war is ascribed to her. Sokrates himself Plato represents as declaring that he heard this, partly impromptu, and _ partly from previous preparation. ner delivering After the death of Perikles, Aspasia married a nonentity named Lysikles, whom she managed to raise to some prominence, but afterwards she sank finally into the obscurity from which she had risen. None of her success: rounded the name of Aspasia. 5 ever attained to such distinction, nor to the splenc True one and another became noted for brilliant our that sur- wit, and were able to charm men of intelligence, like Diogenes “ the dog,” the despiser of all worldly vanities and pleasures, who was en- tangled in the snares of Lais. But the devotion was all paid to their beauty, and their influ- ence seldom éxtended beyond the hearts and purses of their adorers. The Corinthian Lais, the fairest woman of her time, saw all Greece at her feet ; and even after her death, the mem- ory or the report of her beauty inspired many a poem. Then there was Phryne, a Boiotian of Eros, whose beauty wrought from -Thespiai, the city wonders and won her wealth. like fell undef an accusation of impiety, Once, Aspasia, she and was on the point of being condemned to death. Prayers and appeals were alike in vain, when Hyperides, her lover and defender, tore away her gar- ment and displayed, unveiled, The ers; and at her entreaty he her ravishing beauty. dedicated in one of the temples With Phryne avarice was the ruling passion. so that even the wealthy Demosthenes, when he heard the amount, saying that he did not buy repentance at so dear a price. APHRODI1 Variant of the Venus of K idos in the Glyptothek at Munich, of her native city. But She barterec judges were not proof against such loveliness, and pronounced her acquittal. But otherwise she was chary of the exhibition of her charms, and only per- mitted the perfection of her orm to be inferred beneath the garment. Once only she showed herself unveiled to the then and religion It eople ; afforded her the pretext. was at Eleusis, at the feast of -oseidon, when, in sight of an immense the concourse on »each, she loosened her hair, disrobed herself, and descendec the like Praxiteles took into water the sea- born Venus. this attitude, as the of - the Knidos; and Apelles paintec her, in model Aphrodite 0 her as the goddess born of the foam and arising from the sea. Praxiteles indeed was one o the most favoured of her loy- gave her his master piece, Eros with the Satyr, which she her favours for large sums, turned away from her door, others were less prudent; and the golden rain descended on her in such profusion that she proposed to rebuild at her own cost the walls of Thebes, which Alexander had destroyed, providec the inscription, ‘Destroyed by Alexander: rebuilt by Phryne the hetaire.” least a proof how high her wealth was estimated. from the fact that at Thespiai her statue by Praxiteles stood by t The estimate she might place upon them The story is at of her beauty may be had he side of the Aphrodite of the same master; and at Delphi another statue of her, in gold, was placed between the votive gifts of the Spartan king Archidamos and those cf Philip of Makedon. Many another hetaire attained to wealth and celebrit 82 7; the names of many such are PHRYNE BEFORE THE JUDGES. THE WOMEN, preserved ; but none ever reached the renown of Phryne, Lais, and Aspasia. It seems as though the position of the virtuous matrons improved with the political decline of the state; their liberty was greater, and their consideration increased, as if domestic life was taking a stronger ladies of sinks to hold upon the people. Long after the loss of her political liberty, Athens could boast learning and distinction. Self-sacrificit patriotic women again appear, as Greece stars, we see its fall. Thus, like evening devoted Spartan women, such as the mother of the unfortunate Agis, and his young widow, who became the wife of his successor Kleomenes, and after the disastrous attempt of her first husband, inspired the second to an effort to restore the old Sparta of Lykurgos to its pristine might and glory; and when this attempt also failed, followed Corinth, her husband to wretchedness and death: so even in the luxurious and dissolute when it was taken and destroyed by Mummius, ther were still women who sought refuge from slavery in a self-inflicted death, Here I, Rhodope, lie, and beside me my mother, Bois Not from a s a, althy disea 2, not from the spear of the foe: But we two, when the hostile flames swept over Korinthos, Both undaunted of heart, knew how to baffle our fate. Pierced by her hand I fell: a cord released her from thraldom— Never chose noble soul slavery rather than death. ae if ENTRANCE OF GREEK HOUSE, 4, TRE WA HOUSE, FURNITURE, AND DOMESTIC ECONOMY. 7B Ws XAMPLES of Roman houses of almost every description have been fortunately preserved to our time; but not a single Greek dwelling that we can certainly recognize as such; so to form an idea of one we must have recourse to the C accounts of events which occurred in them. undertaking to lay down a ground- thing that we are told. nature of the subject. city required one arrangement, the demanded a different plan from level; wea family, the station in life, or the fancy of the ties in the design. escriptions of writers, and their It is, however, a vain ylan which shall agree with every- Indeed this discrepancy lies in the very In the course of time customs changed; the country another; sloping ground th and poverty, the size of the proprietor, all gave rise to varie- Still, the Greek house was constructec 84 on one general plan, which we may recognize in Homer, which is preserved in the houses of Pompeii, and has HOUSE, FURNITURE, AND DOMESTIC ECONOMY. essentially survived in the present domestic architecture of the East. It is not difficult to recognize this fundamental design everywhere, when we keep in mind its essential character- istics, and have a moderately clear conception of the early history of human habitations. We start then with the hut, the mere sheltering shed, such as necessity provides every- where, only differing in the materials the region affords. Remains of such buildings of the most remote antiquity are to be found in Greece in what are called the Cyclopean construc- tions ; but they have but little interest for the student of civilization. dwelling, which is stamped with a certain character, a well-marked and national phy We care more for the ognomy, dependent on the civilization, and which has grown or changed in correspondence with it. We say the funda- mental design is not hard to recognize, when we keep in view the history of the dwelling. Throughout all this history two radically different designs, and two only, appear: the northern and the southern house. The northern house, in its earliest and typical form, is a single great room, the hall, lighted from without and covered with a steep roof. The southern house is a building inclosing an open rectangular court, from which it receives light into its vari- ous apartments, while it is shut off from the world with- out. These two designs, the house of the hall and the house of the court, mark the fundamental distinction of the plan, and these, in all the infinite constructive varia- tions of dwelling and palace, remain to the present day. The Greek house is the southern house — the house of the court; and this character it had in the ear- liest times of which any defi- nite accounts are preserved. The palaces, if we may call them so, of Odysseus, Menelaos, Alkinoos, have all the house of the court as their type, merely enlarged and with additions. Of course the real palaces of those chiefs could not have been what Homer describes (en) ese eye them; but he drew his de- ; p i 1e™ scriptions from the dwellings GROUND PLAN OF A GR ula with surrounding K HOUSE. artments (7, 8, 9, of princes in his own time, 12) composing the andronitis. B. Peristyle with surrounding apartments (15) compos- and we can not doubt that ing the gynaikonitis. 1. Vestibule. 2, Passage to the aula. 3, 4. Baths. 5. Stables. 9. Prostas with statue of Hestia. they WEES truthfully drawn. 10. Passage to gynaikonitis. The enlargement grew not only from the needs of a princely abode, but also from the advance in civilization; but neither cause altered the fundamental plan, which was only doubled or tripled. In the palace of Odysseus three of these houses were arranged in a row, all three connected, but the second and third so united as to make one continuous structure, while the fir. t was partially detached. The first court is enclosed by the guest-chambers; the second with its apartments is the abode of the men, and in it the suitors hold their carousals; the third belongs to the family, to the lady of the house and all that is under her immediate control or protection. half and the women’s half had already been introduced. Thus we see that even in this early time the division of the house into the men’s But according to Homer’s description more than this had been done. The second and third courts had been converted, by a circuit of columns, into a hall which might be used as a continuous abode, though we are not informed how this hall was covered in. This must have been in such a manner as to admit sufficient 85 GREECE. light to the surrounding apartments. More than this, the third division hvJ an upper storey, which, naturally, did not extend over the court or hall, but only over the apartments. This contained the accommodations for the servants, especially the females. All these arrangements, with the exception of the guest-house, which the city residence could dispense with, are to be found in the Greek dwelling of historic times; only it has received a more specific development. The fundamental plan remains in two features : first in the construction around a quadrangular court, and next in the division into the men’s half and the women’s half, or, as they termed them, the azdronzt7s and gynatkonites. The more the state developed in the democratic direction, and the men devoted themselves more and more to public and out-door life, so much the more the women retired into seclusion and insigni- ficance, and this separation was architecturally expre: ed in the arrangement of the dwelling. Of course when poverty built itself a hut, there was a retrogression to the primitive design of a single court, either with an upper storey that took the place of the gynaikonitis, or without it, leaving men and women to arrange their accommodation as best they could. The alienation of the men from their homes had this further result, that the historical Greek dwelling, as compared with that of Homeric times, seems neglected both architecturally and artistically, a phenomenon which otherwise, in the extraordinary development of all arts, it would be hard to explain. And we notice again that just in proportion as public life declines, and the family and the wife rise in importance, so art penetrates into the interior and makes it fairer, richer, and more decorated. And especially, as the Pompeian houses show us, did this change affect the cynaikonitis, an evidence that woman had emerged from her seclusion again into social life. The small area of the unwalled cities was the cause that the houses were built wall to wall, and with narrow frontage. Their enlargement therefore had to be either upwards or in their depth. The latter was the rule, because otherwise the gynaikonitis must have lost its court. Nor can there be any doubt that the rule was for the gynaikonitis to be in the rear of the andronitis; and if ever it was placed beside it, this was only an exceptional arrange- ment due to local circumstances. The usual dwelling of a family in good circumstances was built, therefore, deep, with a narrow frontage. A light coat of plaster, slightly tinted, covered the unpretentious exterior. If there were an upper storey there were a few small windows looking on the street, of which, however, a good view could be had from the flat roof. Two columns with a small vestibule sometimes adorned the entrance, but this was by no means the rule. The house door was gen- erally in the middle. This door, guarded by a porter, one of the domestic slaves, was opened at a call or knock: and if the visitor was a stranger, he had his name announced to the master age (thé ¢hyrorezon) on of the house. Between the house-door and the street was a pa either side of which were rooms for various domestic purposes, lodgings for the slaves, or guest- chambers, much as was the case in the palace of Odysseus; but they were also occasionally occupied as shops. Beyond this passage lay the court of the andronitis, the aw/a. This might have a circuit of columns, and be converted into a hall, by the addition of a roof, of course with wide openings to admit light to the surrounding apartments, which were arranged according to * Dikaiopolis, in the Acharnians, when about to lead the procession in the rural Dionysia, says to his wife: “Wife, you must be spectator: go within, And from the house-top you can sce us pass.”—TR. 86 HOUSE, FURNITURE, AND DOMESTIC ECONOMY. om ne tastes or wants of the proprietor. Here in the front building the master of the house attended to his affairs, with his stewards or slav here he rested, read, wrote, or studied ; > (the mesaulos) with a and here he entertained his guests at table. From the aula a passag door that could be opened or shut, led to the court or hall of the gynaikonitis. Here again the arrangements of the apartments varied; while the rooms in the rear of the gynaikonitis yy were used for the lodging and occupations of the female slaves, for spinning, weaving and washing. From these a door led into the garden, if there was a garden; or into the street, if the house extended the whole depth of the square, AULA WITH PROSTAS AND STATUE OF HESTIA IN THE BACKGROUND. Certain motives of convenience or comfort regulated the arrangement and selection of the various apartments. For the dining-room it was desirable to choose one that should be as cool in summer and as warm in winter as possible. For his study the master selected a well-lighted room, and so did the mistress for her work-room. Grain required a dry place, and wine and provisions one that should be cool and well ventilated. All these dispositions depended upon the orientation of the house, or other local conditions. One apartment, how- ever, had its fixed place in the plan—that called the Avus¢as or pastas. This was the central point of the whole establishment; the place for sacrifices and religious ceremonies ; for here stood the family altar, a feature of the highest importance in Greek domestic life. Here stood the statue of Hestia, the goddess of the hearth, of the house, and of the whole family ; here all offerings and celebrations took place when important family events occurred. Around this 87 GREECE. altar the new-born infant was carried as a sign of its reception into the family; here departures and returns were celebrated, and name-giving and marriage, birth and death, solemnized. Here a new slave was formally admitted as an inmate of the family, which assembled to receive him at the altar of Hestia. Hither ran the slave in fear of punishment, and hither came the fugi- tive seeking the protection of the house, as Odysseus, entering the palace of Alkinoos, took his seat in the ashes of the hearth, which at that time was also the domestic altar. So, with this importance and significance, the place of the prostas was predetermined. Ina house with a single court it was situated in the rear of this court, into which it opened. In the double house it was placed at the end of the gynaikonitis, probably between it and the andronitis, so Auary Class jo CHAIRS AND SEATS, that in this situation as well as in its whole significance it corresponded to the /addénum of the Roman house. The domestic altar, as it was held a place of special importance, was honoured with espe- cial decoration, though otherwise, as has been mentioned, the house was rather slighted by the arts in the historic period. In Homer's time, however, this was not the case; at least in princely dwellings, if we may rely upon the descriptions in the Odyssey. Palaces such as those of Menelaos and Alkinoos gleamed with decorations in polished metal which ran along the cornice, and extended over the walls. Even if we pass by as fabulous the silver door turning on a brazen threshold in the palace of Alkinoos, it is still certain that if not in Homeric, at least in heroic times, the walls were covered with plates of beaten metal, which were doubtless polished and had a brilliant effect. An evidence of this may be seen in the most ancient ruins, for example in the Treasury of Atreus at Mykenai, where we still find in their places the bronze nails which fastened the plates. This decoration disappeared in that dark period which lies between the heroic and the historic periods. The latter for a long time substituted nothing in its place ; absence of orna- 88 HOUSE, FURNITURE, AND DOMESTIC ECONOMY. ment being in fact rather the rule than the exception. Nor was it better with the floor, which was composed of plain stone flags. Alkibiades is said to have been the first who employed a painter to decorate his house; an embellishment previously restricted to temples and public buildings, and thenceforth it grew more and more the fashion, especially in the time after Alex- ander the Great, when public life began to decline, even painters of the highest reputation, such as Zeuxis, not refusing to employ their pencils in the decoration of houses. To this wall-painting a corresponding art was joined in the mosaic designs for the floors; and thus was developed that peculiar, richly-imaginative, and graceful system of decoration, which in inex- haustible variety, though dating only from Roman times, has been revealed in the buried cities COUCHES. Herculaneum and Pompeii. As nothing similar has been preserved in Greece, this decorative art will be treated at length in the second part of this work. Of the furniture and utensils of the house we can speak with more certainty. Although the furniture could scarcely compare with that of modern times in completeness and variety, still art was by no means wanting in its design and construction. Chairs, couches, tables were often richly adorned, not seldom cast of bronze, or inlaid with ivory and silver, the feet grace- fully formed, of bold des ign and elegant proportions, ending, usually, in lions’ paws. Figures of men and of animals also frequently occur in these decorations. Peculiarly rich and ornamental were the chairs and couches, the former more used by the women and the latter by the men, who loved to read, to write, and to take their meals in a reclining position, resting the arm on a cushion. The chairs stood on four legs, either straight, curved, or crossed; and some had backs, so shaped as to fit comfortably to the person; on the seats were laid coverings or cushions ; and even arm-chairs were used. We can not deny that the antique chair, with its spreading feet and curved back, was a really elegant piece of furni- GREECE. ture, though not so well adapted to our uses and comfort, nor exactly conforming to modern taste, But designed for the Greek lady, it harmonized perfectly with her costume, and espec: ially with the noble carriage, the grace and dignity with which she sat; an attitude in which, perhaps, she appeared even to greater advantage than when walking or standing, The couch, which in day time was chiefly used by the men, had as a bedstead a kind of bench, either without a back, or with a low head-board; a foot-board was not so common. The covers which were laid over it, which were afterwards superseded by cushions filled with feathers, were of various kinds, rough or smooth, heavy or light, sometimes woven in coloured designs, or embroidered with gold and silver, and trimmed with fringes and tassels; and a similar drapery often surrounded the lower part of the couch and concealed the feet. Of these coverings, which were often brought from the East, there was always an ample supply. They were used on the couches for reclining, as well as for the bed, which only differed from the former in having a coverlid, and sheets of linen. These coverings, and the smaller utensils and appliances of the table and toilette—of which the latter were far the most numerous and varied—were not kept in presses or cup- boards, but in chests, of the same form as the caskets for cosmetics and jewelry, which we often see represented in the pictures of domestic life. Their form is simple: a mere quad- rangular box with a lid; but art soon took these in hand and adorned them richly with decora- tions in metal, which was worked very artistically and with great skill, So with the tables, in which, indeed, considerable luxury was displayed. They were made in various forms, round, oval, rectangular, but were small, and, as still in the East, so low that they only reached as high as the couches on which the guests reclined. An elegant, but rather imperfect class of utensils were those which served for lighting. The ancient arrangements for lighting the houses we should consider decidedly unsatisfactory ; and a man accustomed to conveniences naturally wonders why the Greeks did not rather employ their remarkable genius in improving this most necessary, and certainly very imperfect part of their household apparatus, instead of elaborating new systems of philosophy. But centuries went by, and still no advance had been made. It is still possible that, not following the modern custom of turning night into day, they did not feel the inadequacy as much as we should. At all events, for the house they had only an oil-lamp with wicks, and for the street The light of the lamp simply torches. Wax-lights did not come into use until Roman tim could only be increased by multiplying the wicks, or placing severa lamps together ; and the elegant and artistic forms that they gave their lamps were, at best, but a poor indemnification for their imperfect light. But in this application of art they were unexcelled. The innumer- able lamps that are preserved in our museums, even the simplest terra-cotta affairs, have in their flat, bowllike form, with handle and nozzle, a striking and pleasing effect ; while many are perfect models of the art of giving graceful and elegant form to the simplest and most ordinary utensils. Many are adorned with charming ornaments and small figures in relief, By far the greater number were of terra-cotta ; others of bronze; and the richest of more precious metals. The general form is always the same, though when there were several wicks, there was necessarily some modification of the pattern. Most were standing lamps, though some were arranged for hanging. For the former they had candelabra with slender shafts of various heights, and a disk above on which the lamp was set; for the latter they had stands with projecting arms from which it was hung by a chain. In poorer houses these candelabra were of wood; in the richer, of bronze or costlier metal. Writers and readers used these candelabra, which stood by the couch, and illuminated go HOUSE, FURNITURE, AND DOMESTIC ECONOMY. the book—that is to say the manuscript, for both then were one. Their earliest material for writing on was a sheet of prepared papyrus brought from Egypt; afterwards superseded by parchment. The book had the form of a roll, which the reader unrolled as he proceeded. This roll was kept, either singly or with others, in a cylindrical box, and these boxes took the place of the cases of our libraries. In the houses of persons of education and re -finement books were never wanting; and when, after the time of Alexander, public libraries arose the Ptolemies in Alexandreia taking the lead, and then the Attali in Pergamon—the private citizen procured for him- self at least copies. of his favourite poets. The writings of the philosophers and others were also diligently copied by scribes, and sold in the book-market. Many, as for in- stance the poet Euripides, were distinguished as lovers and collectors of books; and Aristotle possessed a collection which might fairly be called a library. As there were book-lovers, so there were also dilet- tanti and bric-a-brac hunters, who collected works of art and rarities, either for their artistic value, their singularity, their antiquity, or their association with some historical or per- sonal event. One lavished pains and money to obtain pos- session of the lyre of Orpheus; another had a passion for minute curiosities, such as the little carvings of ivory, of one of which we are told that it represented a chariot with four horses, and could be covered by the wings of a fly; or a grain of sesame on which were written two verses of Homer. Another made a collection of wax figures, such as fruits, &c., represented with the most exact fidelity to nature —all mere artistic trifles, for which neither the artists nor the virtuosi were wanting. So we may see that, taking these tastes and fancies into account, there was furniture enough, even leaving out the kitchen and the store-rooms, to prevent the Greek home from having an empty appearance. And what with cleaning and taking care of its numerous rooms and chambers, it gave work enough to do, and required a considerable number of LAMPS AND CANDELABRA. active, careful hands. As a rule, there was never any want of these in a Greek household. This work was done by the slaves, who were an essential part of all good housekeeping, and no family, unless the very poorest, was entirely without them. Slaves were a necessary part of Greek life. So far from excludit x slavery, Greek liberty is not even conceivable without it; for without it it would have been impossible for the free men to devote themselves so entirely to public life and fulfil their duties as soldiers and citi- zens. The rightfulness of slavery was never for an instant questioned by the Greeks: even philosophers like Aristotle and Plato never had an idea of universal human freedom. On that subject they had but one opinion, and it was held by all—no Hellene should be a slave. Greeks therefore, when taken prisoners in war, if their lives were spared, were invariably ran- gt GREECE. somed. The slaves held by the Greeks were always of barbarian race, either taken in bat- tle, or bought in the slave-market. A single exception must be made in the case of the Lake- daimonian helots, who, as an indigenous race, early subjugated, and to a certain extent forming part of the Lakonian state, differ from the rest ; and indeed, being attached to the soil and not to the person, had a worse position than the ordinary Greek slave. In general the treatment of slaves among the Greeks was milder than elsewhere, Rome and Italy included. They could contract marriage ; they could, while working for the master, set up a sort of housekeeping of their own; they were cared for in sickness and old age; and as bailiffs and overseers they might acquire their master’s confidence, and associate with him GREEK WOMEN AT THEIR HOUSEHOLD OCCUPATIONS. on almost a footing of intimacy. Once irrevocably destined to a servile lot, their interests became identified with those of the master; and in this way the relation was regarded by both. The number of slaves in Attika was far greater than that of free persons. To 21,000 adult male citizens, giving the free population a total of about 150,000, there were 400,000 slaves. Of course not all these were domestic servants. Many worked upon the farms, in the factories, in the mines; and many were employed as artisans for the profit of their owner. A well-ordered and comfortable domestic establishment needed, as a rule, the services of from ten to twenty slaves, male and female. There might be more, though never to such an excess as in Rome in later times; but less than this number indicated a humble style of housekeeping. The slaves had to do all the work that the house required, even such things as properly come under the hands of mechanics. The cleaning and keeping in order was their duty; they had to grind the corn and bake the bread; to take charge of the cellar and the kitchen, serve 92 HOU. FURNITURE, AND DOMESTIC ECONOMY. and wait at table; they went out to make purchases and do errands; they had to wait person- ally on the master and mistress, the latter of whom had certain of the female slaves especially devoted to the services of her toilette. The female slaves also spun, wove, made garments, in which work the mistress and her daughters sat among them to oversee and direct. Ina well-regulated family, all these things were duly ordered. As every piece of furniture had its lace, and every utensil and appliance, whether for the table, the bed, or the person, had its sroper repository, so to every one was allotted his work, or the objects of his care. In larger households one of the trustiest male or female slaves was selected as steward or housekeeper to relieve the employers of a part of their care: and such an assistant was indispensable to the mistress, on whom the charge of the whole household devolved, Sometimes it was not in 1ousehold matters alone that the fair Greek dame needed a confidante. Even she, at times, allowed her heart to stray into forbidden paths, and sunk in reveries let her wool and spindle all. Then it was the favourite and trusted slave-girl to whom she confided her secret, and who »ecame the stealthy messenger of love. But the presence of a housekeeper did not exempt the mistress from the duty of per- sonal supervision of the house. She it was who had to direct and order all, to keep an eye upon all; and to maintain a kind, it might be, but a strict and just rule. Had she so fulfilled her duties, her grateful spouse might then inscribe upon her tomb such an epitaph as has been preserved in the following verses of Antipatros of Sidon :— Wonder not that on Myro’s tomb a scourge is engraven, With it an owl, a bow, a goose, and a swift-running dog : The bow betokens the wise, firm sway she bore o’er the household ; The dog, that her children she watched and guarded with vigilant care. Not by the scourge is meant that her rule was harsh and oppressive, But it was strict and just, dealing due measure to all. The goose marks her guard of the house: the wakeful owl, that unwearied, All her active life in the service of Pallas she passed. Virtues like these made happy the days of Biton her husband, Who to her honour has placed here this memorial stone. CAROUSAL, HOSPITALITY AND ENTERTAINMENTS. — “Who loves thee, him invite thou to thy board: AR off be he who hates!” A pleasing saying of Hesiod’s; but in the earlier times Greek hospitality went far beyond this. Every stranger or traveller who knocked at the door had a claim upon it; he stood under the protection of the highest god, Zeus Xenios, guardian of the guest. And the hospitality was a matter of moment to the wanderer whom an evil destiny—for so it was accounted—compelled to leave his home; for the inhospitable road had no inn nor shelter for the wayfarer, and perils not a few. Every guest must therefore be received and entertained before the ques- tion was asked, “ Whence and whither?” “Thou speakest folly,” said Mene- laos to Eteoneus when he asked if he should direct the strangers—Telemachos and Nestor’s son—to another dwelling. He who came toa meal at once took his place at the board ; he who came as a fugitive or suppliant first seated himself at the domestic altar or hearth. Not until the guest had eaten and drunk was he expected to tell to what land and family he belonged. A visit, even a casual 94 HOSPITALITY AND ENTERTAINMENTS. one, might result in a permanent hospitable bond—the guest-friendship, which had its recipro- cal rights and duties, and descended from the parents to the children. Those bound by such ties avoided each other in battle, if engaged on opposite sides, or even exchanged armour, like Diomedes and Glaukos, though the armour of one was worth a hundred oxen, and that of the other but a tenth the price. In Homeric times the guest of distinction was usually first offered the refreshment of a bath. At Pylos, in Nestor’s palace, it is. the king’s daughter herself who prepares the bath for Telemachos, and afterwards anoints and perfumes him; but as the venerable monarch had at that time “seen three generations of men,” it is probable that the princess was of so mature an age as to make this attention hardly an indiscretion. In the palace of Menelaos it is the female slaves who render this service to the son of Ulysses. The bath was followed by a repast. In the times just referred to, the guests sat upon chairs, and maids went round with ewers and basins, pouring water over their hands. Male ervants placed before each a small table, brought meat in dishes and bread in baskets, mixed D ne wine in the wine-jugs and distributed it in beakers. Then came in the minstrel, the singer, 2 vho played and sang of the deeds of heroes, and the talk went round. The mistress of the house came, not to share the meal, but to take part in the conversation. Thus Helena appears: one of her maids places for her the ornamented seat, another spreads a soft woollen covering over it, a third brings the spindle and a silver basket with wool of bright hues ; and she takes her seat and begins to work and to talk. When the repast, which was prolonged over + ne wine, was at an end, all retired to rest, for the principal meal took place in the evening. A couch was spread in the hall for the guest; for at that time the guest-chamber was unknown. When the guest departed, he bore with him friendly wishes, and a hospitable gift to remind him of his host. New times brought new manners. Early in the historical period travelling became more common. The relations of the states to each other, the festivals celebrated in common 95 GREECE. by all Greeks, the extension of commerce, politics, ambition which reached beyond the bound- aries of the city and the state, intercourse with the circuit of colonies beyond the sea, filled with travel all the ways by land and water, and the old patriarchal hospitality was at an end. In the cities arose inns and taverns in which the traveller might find tolerable entertainment for his money, and there was no further necessity for him to rely on private hospitality. But if guests were lodged less frequently,and less consequence attached to their arrival, their entertainment was not neglected. The Greek was a social creature who hated to dine alone; and therefore either invited guests, or dined abroad. But in this also many changes had come in: the manners were less simple, and the fare, if not richer, at least more varied. The fare of the Homeric heroes is simple enough. The sacrificial victim, whether bullock, swine, or ram, furnished the meat, which the guests stuck on spits and broiled at he fire. Bread, baked in the house, was handed round, and this constituted the repast. ct The Greeks were never gourmets and epicures, like the coarser Romans ; though in time co hey learned other pleasures of the table. Game and poultry now graced the board; to the meat they added fish, and to the milk, cheese. Salted fish, which was brought in great a uantities, formed a staple article of food for the poorer classes and slaves in addition to ct heir humble barley-porridge. Those in easier circumstances had fresh salt-water fish on co heir tables, and loved the fat Boiotian eels from the marshy Kopaic lake. Even tortoises, crabs, and oysters were eaten as delicacies. Vegetables of various kinds, some made into salads, and especially leguminous fruits like peas, beans, and lentils, were added; and for the ent sorts, for which Attika, with the aromatic honey ae sert they had cakes and pastry of diff of Hymettos, was particularly famed. The growth and manufacture of wine was hardly raised by the Greeks to the dignity such as those of Lesbos and of an art or a science; but they had their favourite vinta, Chios, and on the mainland, the growths of Sikyon and Phlios. Some wines were dark red, others bright yellow, or whitish, but all strong and fiery. The Greeks seldom drank these unmixed; even at carousals the drinkers as a rule added three parts of water to two of wine The mistress of the house saw to the preparation of the meal; at least she gave the necessary directions and supervised the cookery. If, on especial occasions, the culinary resources of the house were insufficient, there were professional artists who could be hired for the occasion, and who stood in the markets waiting for any demand for their services. Though the housewife had had all the cares of the preparation, she was not entitled to a place at the board. Even her right of presence there, which we find in Homeric times, had been rescinded. An e ception was made in the case of the hetairai, who, when they had good establishments and plenty of slaves, gave entertainments to friends and guests ; but the wife only dined with her husband; or rather, when he had no guests, he dined with her in the gynaikonitis. But this was an exceptional case. Fond of conviviality, he rarely let an occasion slip ; the birth of a child, the arrival or departure of a friend, a victory in the theatre or arena, a feast-day or a day otherwise memorable, any noteworthy occurrence, or the mere whim of the moment, was sufficient cause for a banquet. Agathon the poet, when he won the prize with his tragedy, celebrated the event by a feast to those who had assisted in its representation, and on the following evening by an entertainment to his friends. The invitations were easily given, for men met daily in the +s gymnasia, in the market, or other places of public resort. An old friend went uninvited, sure of a welcome; and he might even bring a guest with him. Among other unbidden guests came a new char- acter, the parasite and buffoon, who followed wit and jocosity as a profession, and who was 96 HOSPITALITY AND EN ERTAINMENTS. expected to pay for his unasked and not a ways welcome participation, with jokes, better or worse. Before the invited guest went to the entertainment, he made his toilette—that is, he bathed, perfumed himself, and donned his best clothes and shoes, The board was usually spread in the andronitis, and the guest, after exchanging salutations with his entertainers, took the place assigned to him, the most honourable being that at the side of the host. Servants ig g removed the shoes of the guests, and purified their feet from the dust of the streets. Then —for the Homeric fashion of sitting at table had been abandoned -they reclined upon couches with bright coverings and hangings, resting the left arm upon a cushion, so as to leave the right free, As a rule, there were two guests to each couch. Before each the slaves placed a GREEKS AT TABLE. table spread with viands, and brought meat, fish, and sauces in dishes, and bread, cakes, and fruit in baskets. The guest had no plate or knife to himself, and as for forks, they were unknown; but a spoon was placed. at his disposal. The meat was served cut into small vieces, which he took with the fingers of his right hand and dipped into the sauces. After the meal, as before it, the servants carried around water to wash the hands; and during the meal the fingers were wiped, if necessary, on bread or a piece of dough placed for the purpose. The general arrangement of the meal was simpler or more splendid among different yeoples ; very simple at the common repasts of the Spartans ; more splendid, in an increasing srogression, with the Athenians, Corinthians, Boiotians; most luxurious of all in Sicily. The repast usually consisted of two courses, of which the first was fish and meat, with the ve e€ tables and other ors-d’euvre, and the second the dessert of pastry, cakes, and fruit. While the meal proper continued, there was no drinking; only at its beginning a drink-offering of unmingled wine was offered to the gods, and one ‘to the good spirit” at its close. Nor was 97 GREECE. it the custom to converse while eating. Conversation began with the second part of the enter- tainment, the sywzfoszon or carousal, for which the tables were removed, and the floor cleansed of all fragments, Other tables were then brought by the servants, covered with salted cakes, chees », and other viands provocative of thirst. The great mixing-bowls were brought in, also pitchers of water cooled in snow,and jugs of unmixed wine, ladle-shaped dippers, beakers ,and cups deep or shallow, of graceful forms, and the queer horn-shaped vessels called rAy¢a. The te UGS OR O/NVOCHOAL youngest and handsomest slaves were chosen to wait on the guests, who crowned their heads and garlanded their breasts with myrtle and violets, ivy and roses, not merely as a sign of festivity, but to cool their glowing temples, and, as they thought, to counteract the heady qualities of the wine. Music was then brought in, song and dance delighted ear and eye, and Bacchos, attended by the Muses and the Graces, ruled the hour, often until all were sunk in intoxication, The Greek loved wine, and honoured it in art and song. He loved it not merely as a means of sensual enjoyment: he used it as the care-dispeller, the bringer of joy and mirth, 98 HOSPITALITY AND ENTERTAINMENTS. ard its Wine infirmities : wine chased away thoughts of the hated underworld, the cheerle aised the spirits of youth, and taught age to forget its grey hairs and disr s endless abode in the dreary and dark realm of shadows. The more dismal, comfortless, joyless the life of departed souls, so much the more the Greek felt bound to drink the cup of earthly joy to the dregs. All the world drinks, sings Anakreon, why should he not drink? Thirsty earth drinks up the rain, Trees from earth drink that again, Ocean drinks the air, the sun Drinks the sea, and him the moon, Any reason canst thou think I should thirst while all these drink ? Greek lyric poetry abounds with exhortations to drink and enjoy the fleeting hour ; for example : Drink, enjoy the hour: what the morrow bringeth None can tell; then vex not thy soul with idle care: Being and Not-Being but a point divideth ; Life is but a moment; then make that moment fair. Piles of hoarded treasure, heaps of gold and silver— Hades’ self might chuckle when thou call’st them thine: Surely thou hast nothing but that which thou enjoyest; “« Only while enjoying canst thou say “’tis mine.” If the lavish indulgence in wine brings its penalties with it, what matters it? the poet asks : What can it matter whether slowly limping, Or racer-swift I hasten to Death’s dark abode? Many feet will bear me when my own have failed me; Then let me halt at pleasure over life’s short road. Surely at that banquet is a place reserved me Whether late or early to the board I come; What should then forbid me to dally by the wayside With laughter, song, and kisses, ere these lips are dumb? “ Never alone appear the Immortals,” sings Schiller, and so it was held in antiquity. Bacchos brings Eros with him, the wine brings love, and love and wine are followed by the Muses, the goddesses of song and poetry, music and dancing. When they attend the feast, the challenge to drink is at the same time a challenge to song, play, and the dance, He who joy has never found In the flute’s entrancing sound, Bacchos’ gifts who dares despise, Song and laugh and maidens’ eyes, He who at his grudging board Thinks upon his growing hoard, Reckoning interest in his head— Him I count already dead usted, I Shuddering and dis. Pass the mez Thus in the company of the gods was the banquet a festival, as Anakreon describes it, who was himself a tipsy Silenus, an old man with white hair and bald head, dancing and swinging the thyrsus, as he mingled with the youthful throng: Now with roses we are crowned, Let our mirth and cups go round, While a girl, whose hand a spear Wound with ivy twines doth bear, 99 GREECE. With her white feet beats the ground, To the lyre’s harmonious sound Played by some fair boy, whose choice Skill is heightened by 3right-haired Love, with his divine Mother, and the god of wine Will flock hither, glad to see y his voice ; Old men of their company. At the Greek banquets it was not, as a rule, the guests who danced and played. True, at the beginning they might sing an ode, or perhaps a verse in succession; but for the musical part the entertainer en- danced, enchanting all by gaged professional artists. his beauty and the grace At the feast of Kallias of his movements and which Xenophon de- attitudes. The girl then scribes, as soon as the began a dangerous feat, wine-drinking set in, a which gave the spectators Syracusan entered the hall more uneasiness than accompanied by a female pleasure. A large hoop flute-player, a young and was brought in, to which pretty dancing-girl, and a were attached swords, lovely boy, who at once with the points upward, began to display their and the girl threw herself arts. The boy played head foremost into it and the cithara, the flute- out again, and danced player her instrument, and over the swords, making the dancer accompanied her dancing movements with graceful motion the and bounds with the rhythm of the music. greatest skill and precis- Then she took a number ion without receiving the of hoops and tossed them slightest wound. in the air, one after the Such acrobatic other, catching each as it feats were carried to fell and tossing it up great perfection among again, always dancing in RAGEHOS: the Greeks; and such as time to the music, until Statue iin’ the, Louvre. could be combined with twelve were in the air at dancing were often exhib- once. Then the boy ited at entertainments. Female performers danced upon their hands, and used their feet as hands, tossing balls, and filling a cup from the mixing-bowl, holding the cup with one foot and the wine-dipper with the other. At the feast of Kallias, Sokrates took little pleasure in these performances, and least of all in the dangerous sword-dance, as not befitting the hilarity of a banquet; while on the other hand he praised the mimetic art as offering fair and pleasing spectacles to the eye. For this too the Syracusan was prepared, for performances of this kind belonged to the arts of these itinerant artists, as well as to festive entertainments. After a little preparation the dancing girl makes her appearance as Ariadne in a rich bridal robe, and seats herself in a chair ; then, to the sound of the flute, the boy enters and draws near the forsaken maiden, and the first awakening of love is then represented by the two with such grace, such truth 100 HOSPITALITY AND El! ERTAINMENTS. and nature, that the enchanted spectators are forced to believe that a scene of true and not mimic love is acted before their eyes. 3ut these and similar entertainments were not always expected by the guests. The Greeks had a multitude of games, of which some, such as dice-playing with as¢ragali (small bones) or draughts, of which there were many kinds, were less suited for amusement at a carousal ; but there were others quite adapted to this. Of the latter was the favourite £o¢éalos, as well as can a game of skill, of which there were several varieties. One of these was played be made out, for the descriptions are not perfectly clear—in the following manner :—a horizon- tal rod or scale-beam bearing a shallow bowl at one end, hung balanced in such a way that this bowl was above a little metallic figure called Manes, a common name of slaves. The art con- EMALE ACROBATS, Sword-dani snd the trick of filling a vessel by use of the fect. From a vase-painting. sisted in throwing from a distance a small quantity of wine so adroitly into the bowl that it sank and struck the head of the figure with a clang. This was considered a token of good omen in love affairs. The cast was usually made from a cup—some writers say, spirted from the mouth—and it demanded considerable practice and address to throw the whole of it into the bowl. Another and less difficult variety of the kottabos was played with miniature ships swimming in a great bowl or pan, and the art was to sink them by the cast of the wine. The successful player was rewarded with a crown or bright fillet to wind around his head, and often with a kiss; the unlucky one was condemned to some sportive penalty, such as drinking a cup of unmixed wine, or one mingled with salt water. To assign these rewards and punishments was the duty of the master of the feast, the archon. At every entertainment in which drinking formed a prominent feature, an archon was chosen by ballot, or even by acclamation, if a guest happened to be present who was well versed in convivial laws and usages, Part of his duty consisted in determining the proportion of wine to water, and the size of the cups from which it should be drunk. They liked to begin with small cups, and progress to larger ones, These were shallow bowls, or tall beakers with slender stems, almost always provided with two handles, through one of which, as the paintings show Ior GREECE. us, it was the fashion to thrust the forefinger, and swing the capacity of these cups was not unusual; but sometimes, when archon had mighty bowls brought in; or one of the drinkers, mixing-bowl to his lips and drained off the whole. It was the archon’s duty also to guide and rule the cot hinder word and wit, but rather stimulated them. Verses we empty cups gracefully. The the revel was at its height, the onscious of his powers, set the nversation. The wine did not ere composed and riddles pro- pounded, with the penalties mentioned before in case of failure to solve them; and tales were told and discourses delivered upon some assigned topic. This last was the case at that celebrated banquet which the poet Agathon gave his friends (416 8. c.) the day after his first victory as a tragic poet it, or perhaps invented it, for though there is no doubt that sv occasion, the great philosopher seems to have availed himself . Plato himself has described ich a feast was given on that of it asa groundwork for the discourses which make up his book, the ‘“Syaoszon,” a treatise or discourse upon love, which, DRINKING VESS in elegance, grace, and completeness, in true classicity, though the best and choicest productions of the literature of all time. A company of the most richly-gifted men of Athens are of the best-known disciples of Sokrates, and himself, the chie and answer; Aristophanes the comic poet, Eryximachos a we BOWLS, BEAKERS, AND RHYTA. thoroughly Greek, belong 5 » assembled, among them some master of the art of question nown physician, and Agathon the host, a poet with all the enthusiasm that youth, genius, beauty, and recent victory could bestow. Most of the guests had been left by the indulgence o dition not favourable to hard drinking; and so it was agreec drink as much or as little as he pleased; that the female flute-p engaged should be dismissed or sent to entertain the ladies, evening in conversation. Upon a suggestion of Phaidros it is reat a god, Phaic shall utter a discourse in praise of Love. So ¢ and praised by the poets; and now they should try to make some reparation for this n Then follow a series of discourses on Love, each characteristic the previous night in a con- that each should be allowed to ayer whose services had been and that they would pass the resolved that each in his turn ros said, was far too little sung lect. of the speaker. One celebrates Eros as the oldest and mightiest of the gods, who rules both gods and men; another as the youngest and fairest, who never grows old; yet there is a twof distinguish between the earthly love, and the heavenly, which old Eros, and it is needful to leads to virtue. Eryximachos the physician, takes the ground of the student of nature, everywhere in which he discovers 102 HOSPITALITY AND ENTERTAINMENTS, love Aristophanes on the other hand, true to his character, tells a most grotesquely comic mythos of the origin of love among mankind. According to his view, men originally were double creatures with four arms and four le; who rolled about like wheels, but proving too mighty and dangerous in this form, Zeus split them in two, and now each half seeks to be re-united to its fellow. He is followed by the poet Agathon, who with eloquent words raises the subject once more to a poetic height, from which Sokrates, the last of the speakers, after exposing the contradictions of Agathon by a piece of calm clear dialectic, brings back the whole theme to prosaic reality. Then, starting from this solid ground, he developes his own views on love, and on beauty as the goal of its aim, as he himself, he says, received them from the Mantinean Diotima, a lady equally versed in love and philosophy. Repeating the conver- sations in which he was instructed by her, he leads his disciples gradually to purer regions, to the realm of ideas, to the eternal archetype of all beauty, free from all earthly admixture, the recognition and contemplation of which is all that makes life worth living. The guests, however, do not tarry long on these sublime ethereal heights, and are soon reminded of the object of their assembling. During the discourse not only had the wine been neglected, but the night had grown late, and the hour arrived when parties usually broke up and guests sought their homes. And so, almost as Sokrates ended his discourse, there arose admission. Presently he a noise at the door, and the voice of Alkibiades was heard, aski himself appeared, intoxicated, supported by a flute-player and one of his companions, his head adorned with crowns and fillets, which he said he had brought to decorate Agathon. This he did, and then, seeing Sokrates beside him, placed a wreath on the satyr-head of his wise and loved friend. Yet still he did not depart, and observing that all the guests were sober, consti- ghty bowl of wine, drank it off. Then he orderec tuted himself symposiarch, and seizing a mi it to be filled for Sokrates, saying that he could gain no glory over the latter, whom no quantity of wine could intoxicate. Now began the carousal; but the subject of discourse was love. In its stead not forgotten, and Alkibiades was called upon to take his turn in praising he gave them a eulogy of Sokrates, the strange and admirable man, Sokrates was next to follow with the praise of Agathon; but a new crowd of tipsy revellers burst in, who filled the hall with clamour. All order was now at an end; the drinking went on in wild confusion, and some departed, while others sank into drunken sleep. When the cocks began to crow, anc the pale light of dawn streamed into the room, there sat only Sokrates with the poets Agathon and Aristophanes, whom he was trying to convince that a genuine tragic poet must be a comic poet also. Wearied out they both yielded the point, and fell asleep, Aristophanes first, then A gait, went to the Lyceum, bathed, and spent the day there as was his custom. athon. ‘Then at last, as it was now broad day, Sokrates arose, with cool head and steady Such noisy endings to these banquets were not ‘uncommon, especially when the guests were young men, With garlands on their heads they would then rush forth and wreathe flowers around the Hermes that stood at the door, or traversing the streets, disturbing the quiet of night with their drunken excesses and boisterous clamour, would seek the doors of some beauty and hang there their withered garlands, an offering often trampled under foot by the disdainful fair. During the night the streets remained in charge of public slaves, mostly Scythians, armed with their natural weapon, the bow, whence they are usually called ¢oao¢az, or bowmen, couth manners and broken Greek are mimicked by the and their captains foxarchoc. Their u comic poets, by whom they are sometimes brought upon the stage to play the part of the exempt in the old French comedy. The number of these policemen was about 1200, and they 103 GREECE. encamped upon the Areiopagos. They were detailed for various duties, one of which was that of patrolling the streets at night, arresting thieves, and checking night-brawls. The young roysterers of Athens not only at times made night hideous with unmelodious howlings, but were known even to break in locked doors and intrude forcibly upon the premises of sober citizens. We have glimpses of an outrageous crew, who called themselves by the barbarous names of Triballoi, and delighted to go about beating and variously maltreating whomsoever they chanced to meet. Those whom they met, however, at least in the small hours, were probably not much more orderly than themselves; and the police, if not everywhere, were at least somewhere ; and altogether the peaceable citizen enjoyed a moderate share of security, if not of quiet, during the hours of darkness. = S 13 A STREET IN ATHENS WITH THE TOWER OF THE WINDS. In the interior stands a clepsydra. alls are sun-dials, ov top serves as a weather-vane, and poi liefs, The bronze Triton at the which the winds are ina se with its re of the prevailing wind, 6. IP UP IB LIC Is IE 13), IDNIGHT is past, the nightly revellers have sought their nomes, day is just breaking over Athens. The regular night- watch, which on its rounds has stopped many a suspicious per- son, and here and there caught a prowling thief watching to ounce from the shadow upon the mantle of a passer-by, has dis- yanded and gone to rest. It is quiet in the narrow and steep irregular streets, quiet in the small unpretentious houses, in the public halls, the temple-squares, the market. As the dawn yroadens, the public buildings are) seen towering above the ow and broken masses of dwellings ; in the squares the num- erous altars grow visible, and in the streets before each house the Hermai, busts of the god upon short quadrangular columns, in the antique traditional form the expression of hereditary piety, the symbol that both city and home have placed them- selves under divine protection. 105 GREEGE. But as the day brightens and the sun darts its first rays over the horizon, new life awakes in the streets. The Athenian, as indeed did every Greek, arose at break of day, and as soon as he had broken his fast on a piece of bread dipped in wine, left the house to attend to his private or public business. But a still earlier riser is the countryman, who in the first grey of the morning brings his wares to the city to sell to the hucksters and small dealers; the products of the field and of the garden, vegetables and fruit, milk and honey, the aromatic honey of Hymettos, or whatever else his husbandry has produced, to supply the wants of the town-folk. Then come the slave-girls out of the house 3, carrying upon their heads the gracefully-shaped pitchers, to be filled at the fountains adorned with genii and workshops, to festoons, and = their booths and gushing with stalls, all bend- an abundant ing their courses supply of clear to one point, for and pure water their occupa- fed by conduits tions lie mostly hewn — through in the market- the rocks, monu- place or its ments of the Pei- neighbourhood. sistratidai. Boys The mar- come — trooping ket-place is the to school, some heart of the poorly clad and Greek city ; from unattended, oth- it run out, like ers accompanied arteries, the by their peda- great streets gogues, carrying which traverse their writing city and country, apparatus and and from it they musical _ instru- are measured, ments. Next The city is proud come from. all of its market; quarters the ar- and the towns- tisans and shop- folk do their best keepers, hast- SLAVE-GIRLS AT THE FOUNTAIN. to make it state- ening to their ly and beautiful. They adorn it with temples, altars, and a host of statues and monuments ; they surround it with colonnaded porticoes whither the lounger, who loves to watch the gay life of the market, resorts, and in which he promenades. Here too is the place to seek and meet one’s friends. The market is not always symmetrically built, for it grows in conformity with the needs of the population, with the expansion of the city; and in its growth and monuments preserves a record of the city’s history, and of its own. Thus it was with the market-place of Athens, which, taking its rise from the necessities of an insignificant manufacturing suburb, the Kerameikos, had to expand itself to meet the wants of a growing metropolis, and so widened to a large and irregular square, which indeed might rather be considered a quarter of the city, 106 (Country house.) City gate. op HADRIAN, Roman The OF TIME THE emple of Aph EAST, IN Gardens and Museion, ATHENS FROM THE ig S a LUBE EU. Everything, every branch of trade and business, had here its allotted place; and the whole g, traffic was regulated by ordinances, enforced by the market-police, the agoranomoz, whose duty it was to maintain order, and who checked quarrels, looked to the goodness of the wares and their prices, saw that all weights and measures were of the proper standard, and the coin genuine rht. The visitor to the market, therefore, found everything in its place. In one part, some and of full wei in the open air, others in booths of reeds or boards, stood the sellers of onions and garlic, a favourite vegetable with the lower class ; in another the dealers in wine, fruit and other garden produce, in peas and lentils, which were sold cooked as well as raw; in another the girls who sold flowers, wreaths and fillets of bright hues, to deck the heads of banqueters; or the bread- sellers, on whose stalls might be seen towering piles of the cylindrical loaves. Wo to the unlucky wight whose awk- daily life, but drew to itself wardness toppled over one many other branches of of these piles, for a perfect trade and art. In it and deluge of abuse was poured around it gathered the shops upon him from the lips of of artisans and studios of these famous scolds. Else- artists, which were always full of loungers, partly to where might be seen the pottery-market, the clothes- look at the work, and partly market, the fish-market, the to talk away the time. Es- latter a favourite resort of pecial gossipping-places, not epicures, to which they all for the lower classes only, hurried when a bell an- | were the .barbe shops ; nounced the arrival of a lot and close to these were the of fish just from the sea, stalls or offices of the phy- and where, too, the lan- sicians. For Greece had ssors of the heal- guage was apt to be strong her profe and idiomatic. HIPPOKRATES ing art, like Hippokrates at From a bust in the Louvre. But the market not Athens; men truly learned only supplied the needs of and held in high considera- tion, who, although they did not complete their knowledge of anatomy by human dissections— this was not done until Alexandrian times—yet by long experience and faithful observation had attained much and sound knowledge, and were well worthy the confidence reposed in them. But among them were many charlatans of the most pernicious sort, of some of whom it was said that their mere appearance was fatal to the patient :— The surgeon Menedemos, as men say, Touched as he passed a Zeus of marble white: Neither the marble nor his Zeus-ship might Avail the god—they buried him to-day. Even in a dream they were dangerous :— Diophantes, sleeping, saw Hermas, the physician : Diophantes never woke From that fatal vision. Beside the physicians, who, in their open stalls or offices, examined patients and pre- scribed for their ailments at market-time, there were also quacks and mountebanks, w ho extolled 107 °7 GRE the virtues of ointments and nostrums of their own manufacture, sold amulets and charms, rings that protected the bearer from sickness and the bite of wild animals, and a variety of sim- ilar trash for which the populace were ready customers. Though noisy and bustling enough here, a more solid and quiet business went on in that part of the market where the money-changers and bankers—called ¢vapezttaz from ¢rapeza, a table—transacted business; and where the merchants and shippers mostly congregated. The trapezitai changed the foreign money, which the extension of commerce and the influx of strangers brought in considerable quantity to Athens and the larger coast-cities; and from HERMES, ASKLEPIOS, Statue in the Villa Borghese, Rome. Statue in the illa Albani, Rome. them the traveller going abroad provided himself with foreign currency. There was plenty of counterfeit and light money afloat; so they carefully tested every piece, its fineness as well as its wei ght. These trapezitai also made collections for distant merchants and bankers, and made payments to their written orders. They took charge of estates, received cash deposits, and paid checks drawn on them, receiving a commission for their services: for men did not like to keep much money in their houses, and in this way were relieved of both risk and trouble. All this business was done in the market-place. And thus these booths were much frequented, especially by the wealthy, who availed themselves of the banker's services to buy and sell property, to lend or borrow money on interest, and often deposited their wills in his keeping. These bankers had safe cash-boxes, and a regular system of book-keeping. Petty as well as large dealings, all centred in the market. True, criers and peddlers went about the streets, and there were shops and booths for provisions, and wine-shops scat- 108 Bema, < Bi i= & irene with the child P Et a bo 2 % ATHENS, OF MARKET PUBLIC LIE re. The swarm tered throughout the city; but the great bulk of the city’s trade went on he of petty shopkeepers and hucksters were held rather in contempt, though with the artisans they formed a formidable tool in the hands of demagogues, sycophants and sophists, and more than once played an important and even decisive part in the policy of the democracy. The wholesale dealers were held in higher estimation, of whom some were manufacturers whose works were carried on by slaves, and others merchants who exported and imported goods. Their ships, protected by the Athenian fleet, coasted along all the eastern half of the Medi- terranean, and visited Sicily, Egypt, and even the ports of the Black Se Cargoes were sold by sample in the market, the warehouses being mostly in the harbour-town, the Peiraios, where large buildings stretched along the shore, separated from the sea only by a wide street. Nearly all the dealers in the market were men; but the bread-sellers and flower-girls formed exceptions. They did not enjoy the best reputation, the latter especially, who, when young and pretty, had to listen to many things, and probably listened without excessive prudery. Here for instance is a question whose pretty turn may excuse its reproduction here : Thou with the basket of roses, thyself a rose, what art selling? Roses? Thyself? Thyself, perchance, and thy roses together? As the selling, so the purchasing, was done almost entirely by men. It would have been @; so the master came him- thought highly improper for the lady of the house to go marketin self, at least when he had invited friends for the evening, and wished to make a special prepara- tion. At other times this was the duty of a chosen and trusted servant, who daily visited the market in the early morning to cater for the day’s requirements. He who was so poor as not to possess a slave, had of course to go in person to buy the boiled lentils, the peas or beans, the onions or garlic, which composed his frugal meal. This was the custom of the workmen, the humbler artisans, and the soldiers, who carried off their measure of peas in their helmets. But it was not business alone that took men to the market; Athens and the other Greek cities had plenty of loungers and gossippers who knew no more agreeable way to pass a morning than here, where they were amused by the busy crowd and the ever-changing series of pictures presented. There were the young men of fashion, the dandies, with Howers in their hands, displaying affectedly their new and fine dresses. Here also were the serious men, the venerable ay heads, taking their morning exercise in the shady porticoes, or, watchful of men and their ways, moving through the busy throng, and here and there chatting with a friend. Now you might see two or three together, with the short Lakonian mantle, the philosopher's garb, thrown over the shoulders, leaning with both hands on the long knotty staff, their con- stant companion. So Sokrates was a daily visitor of the market and the work-shops, entering into conversation with any and everybody, and drawing him out with questions: no one was too humble or insi gnificant for him. Thus appeared—a grotesque interlude to the usual daily performance—Diogenes ‘ the dog,” the gray-beard sage, bearing his lantern in broad daylight through the thronged market, looking for men, real men, such as he could not find; while the wonder and laughter of the crowd followed the despiser of worldly vanity and human folly. Yet not all Greeks, and especially not all Athenians, had time to visit the market, and many were obliged to sacrifice even their private business to public duties. The market-hours, from sunrise to mid-day, were also those claimed by the state, which every day demanded the services of a considerable part of the citizens. In the earlier times, administrative duties, pub- lic affairs, and judicial matters rested in the hands of the noble and wealthy, who could attend was then nec to them all without any care for payment, The working cla: sarily excluded 109 GREECE. by the very fact that they had to think of earning their subsistence, and had no time to spare from that for public duties. As a class, also, they did not enjoy such consideration that their fellow citizens would have been content to see them in the government or the courts. Only the really free man whose hereditary possessions gave him complete independence, and whose landed estates secured him an influential position, was originally deemed fit to hold an admin- istrative or judicial office. This was all different in those states where the democracy prevailed, and so in Athens beyond all others. Here Solon’s system, as expanded by Kleisthenes, had opened the door to the democracy, though some time elapsed ere this obtained the entire control. So long as the service of the state required wealth and independence, it was hard for the working-classes ATHENIANS CONVERSING, to avail themselves fully of their right. But as soon as their presence in the assembly and at the courts was paid for, and especially after the juryman’s fee, through Kleon’s efforts, was fixed at three obols,—a sum which sufficed for the day’s necessities, and about equalled the daily earnings of the workingman,—then the populace rushed into public affairs and became possessed with that inextinguishable passion for politics which is the constant concomitant of democracy. This state of things had its good and its bad side ; and such a population as that 0 Athens and Attika exhibited both in the highest degree. That which made Greece the wondrous land it was—the extraordinary receptivity and excitability of the Greek mind—was the fundamental characteristic of the Athenians above all others. This excitability and elasticity explains a host of phenomena in their culture and contradictions in their history. Their mood changed with an almost childish impulsiveness. In one moment carried away in a passion of enthusiasm to the most arduous exertions, the most self-sacrificing devotion, the boldest enterprises, on the first disaster they sank into deep despondency, fear and dejection, only to rise up presently with fresh hope and energy. This free and intellectual people, the world’s teachers 110 PUBLIC LIFE. of culture and refinement, creators of the most liberal philosophical systems, in their comedies mocking and scoffing at all that tradition had handed down as venerable and divine,—this free people was plunged in the deepest superstition, and with pitiless intolerance banished or put to death its best and freest spirits. Quick to recognize whatever was lofty, noble and fair, ready to acknowledge and reward the deserts of its great men, it now greets them with triumphant acclaim, then persecutes them with ingratitude and injustice, and even with cruelty. Thus close together stood the noble and the base; the strong and the weak side of freedom, its virtues and its vices. Gifted with such a nature, the people, by the democratic system, was thrown into the stream of public affairs and politics. The populace was certainly elevated by its participation in these ; it learned the constitution of the state, the practice of law and equity, and grew more patriotic ; it learned to interest itself in matters above its mere mechanical life, such as the works of art and architecture with which Perikles adorned his native city. But on the other hand it was withdrawn from its proper occupation, it grew fond of idleness and the amusing and exciting life of the assembly and the courts, and did not attain wisdom enough to prevent its becoming a tool in the hands of ambitious and unprincipled demagogues. These men flattered the vanity of the people, for which the fame and greatness of Athens gave a plausible excuse ; and in this way they gained the ear of the populace and filled it with hate, distrust, and suspicion. Their game was made easier for them by the really free, independent, and cultivated men withdrawing: g, weary and disgusted, from political life; so that at last to’ the question, what is the state? the answer might have been given, the rabble of the poor, hungry, low-born, and base. 3ut such demagogues as Kleon and his peers were not the worst breed that throve under the democracy. Beside them flourished the sycophants, a class whose proper business was to involve men in lawsuits. Originally used by the popular leaders to weaken their political adversaries by entangling them in webs of litigation and chicane, the sycophants became a gang of spies and practised their trade of delation against private citizens, partly to gratify their own or others’ grudges, but chiefly for the extortion of black-mail. Anything that gave a handle for a prosecution they hunted up, invented evidence, provided false witnesses, and drove their business with such skill that at last no one, not even the most upright, but especially not the rich and distinguished, was safe from being dragged before the courts on a false charge bolstered up by perjury, and condemned by suspicious and partisan judges. Athens became a genuine tilting-ground for lawyers, a camp of courts, a mere nest of lawsuits. The people were infected with a murrain of litigation, and thought of nothing but judges, lawyers, and suitors. “The cicada,” says Aristophanes, “sings but a month, while the Jeol ) g people of Athens are buzzing with lawsuits and trials their whole life long.” And to satirise this evil he brings on the stage in his Bzrds two citizens who, havir g found Athens a city whose only use is “To waste one’s wealth and property in lawsuits travel forth to found, in the clouds, by help of the birds, a new city bearing the name of “ Cloud-cuckoo-town.” And hardly is the new -city founded, and the report of it come to Athens, when the whole swarm of sycophants and others of that kidney comes flocking in hot haste to it. At early morning the streets of Athens began to be alive with the people going to the courts. A fourth or fifth part of the whole population was in motion toward the ten different TIT nba ts ap asc a = GREECE. ENT APPEARANCE. PNYX IN ITS quarters of the city where they were held. After the judicial authority had been assumed by the whole body of citizens, except in certain special classes of suits, every day five thousand citizens sat in the seats of justice. From all who were over thirty years of age, six thousand were drawn by lot every year as jurymen for the Heliaia; of these one thousand were set aside as talesmen, and the other five thousand fe/cas¢s distributed themselves into ten dikasteries throughout the city, the court to which each belonged being assigned him by lot. Every day ssemblies alone excepted, they sat from early morning in the year, public festivals and popular < res on high benches, and the suitors on a platform. The place of justice was g 5 till noon, the jud inclosed, but the proceedings were public, and were attended by large audiences. Plaintiff, defendant, and witnesses had to appear in person; and each must, at first at least, speak for himself, after which the orator or lawyer was allowed to plead the case. These orators were a class well versed in all the turns and quirks of the law, trained in the school of the sophists, masters of every quibble, evasion, and equivocation, fluent and ready in debate. The Athenians loved to attend the courts; the pleadings and wranglings gratified their litigious taste, and the fees for attendance compensated the most of them for the loss of time. Otherwise was it with the great popular assembly which was held four times a month on the terraces of the Pnyx, a piece of raised ground west of the acropolis, for the fee for attendance here was very small. So the populace preferred to lounge and chatter in the mar- ket, and leave the Pnyx deserted. But the chiefs of the assembly, the Prytanes, who were often reproached with with slackness, not coming until near noon, devised a drastic means to compel attendance. Two policemen stretched a rope freshly smeared with red paint across the streets leading from the market to the Pnyx, and drove the crowd before them; the unlucky ones that were touched with the rope having to pay a fine. So at their appearance the whole ts. Here all was throng scurried to the assembly, each trying to get a place on the foremost sez kept in order by special bailiffs and policemen; the business was opened with religious cere- monies, after which, motions, to use the modern phrase, were in order, Each citizen of full age 112 PEON G TEINRE: had the right to make or speak to a motion, and while he spoke he wore a crown, the sign of inviolability. The assembly decided on all public matters, but the conduct and execution of its decis- ions lay in the Boule or council, a select body of five hundred members, chosen, after the time of Kleisthenes, by lot, and changed every year. The council held its sessions in the Bouleuterton, a building between the Akropolis and the market, not in a full body, but in sections of fifty, called Pry¢anedaz, the members being the Prytanes. These sections took their turns by lot. It was these who had the conduct of important business; they guided the assembly and carried out decisions; they had the initiative in legislative matters, the control of the public finances, the soldiery and the marine, of war and peace, so far as the ecision of the assembly was not necessary; they received foreign envoys and despatched } their own. As the Boule was changed every year, every Athenian citizen, the proudest and humblest, as well as the wealthy and influential, might hope once or twice in his life, if not oftener, to be a member of the chief administrative body of the state. While obeying the laws he had the proud and ennobling feeling that in reality he was also one of the masters and rulers; a right, it is true, which he not seldom used with extreme tyranny, EXCAVATIONS AT OLYMPIA, LIFE OF LEISURE—GYMNASTICS AND GAMES. UT, though the Greek state claimed the entire surrender of the citi- zen, it was not over-exacting in its demands upon him. Neither political life, nor the duties of the courts, nor military service, nor even official duties entirely absorbed his time and energies. The state left him leisure enough for his cultivation, mental and phy- sical, for his tastes and enjoyments. And in fact in the enjoyment and occupation of this leisure the free, well-born, and independent man saw the true business of his life, a life worthy of him; while & the making of money and acquisition of property, even on a large scale, was considered as having something ignoble, mean, and peddling about it. This view prevailed even in the time of Perikles, while the avzstoc or “best men” still took part in government and public affairs; it grew and strengthened as the democracy became more unmanageable and the nobles stood aside ; and it was the constant teaching of the philosophers and their disciples. Leisure, says Aristotle, is the proper goa of activity; not, it is Leisure is true, for mere amusement, for amusement is not the object of life. not indolence, but the recreation of the soul anda noble occupation of the 114 LIFE OF LEISURE—GYMNASTICS AND GAMES. unoccupied. Leisure itself is an art; an art of life, which carries with it its own enjoy- ment, It must be admitted that, though the number increased, yet relatively there were but few, and those only the highest and most refined, who were capable of thus enjoying leisure and making an art of life. This faculty indeed presupposes a certain calm and settled age, which has left behind the stormy and turbulent period of life, both within and without. Passionate youth, energetic and ambitious manhood, demand other occupations and pleasures to fill up the hours of leisure. In Sparta the youth had no leisure; Lykurgos allowed rest to the old alone. The youths and younger men passed the time in perpetual exercises and preparations for war, or else in war itself; the only rest they had was the very moderate allowance of sleep. Even hunting was followed not as an amusement, but as a training for war. But it was otherwise in Athens. When the young Athenian had reached the age of an ep/edos, and had performed the obligatory garrison-duty in the frontier fortresses of Attika from his eighteenth to his twentieth year, then his public duties and military exercises—for the courts had no claim upon him until he had reached the age of thirty—left him sufficient time to employ as befitted a young noble, As to the way in which this life was led, the ideas prevalent in Athens, and indeed in all Greece, were in a high degree liberal and tolerant. The soul, they thought, should develop freely and naturally; they did not seek to quench or dampen the fire of youth, believing that after the age of passion, a thoughtful, self-controlling period would naturally follow ; so they let nature take her course. The result was that unaffected, simple, natural character of the Hellenes, combining the candour, amiability and grace of the child, with the intelligence and calm of mature age: the result was that perpetual youth with which the life and works of the Greeks are saturated. Brief is the time that the roses bloom, and when they have vanished Findest thou roses no more: nothing is left but the thorns. That is—youth passes swiftly, and then come the cares and troubles of the man, the infirmities of age, and behind all, death, with the dreary and comfortless existence in the realm of shades, Youth was to be enjoyed: that was the teaching of all sages as well as all poets. While the bioom of beautiful youth is upon thee, While thy soul is full of life’s glory and might, Live, enjoy ; for no second youth is allowed thee, No dawn comes to cheer that perennial night. In love-matters, both custom and public opinion allowed the young man great liberty. In proportion as they were strict in their views of conjugal morality, so were they lenient to the life before marri Bacchos and Eros were the gods whom the young Greek wor- shipped, and whose might completely subjugated him. “ard is Eros, hard!" “Hard is Eros, hard!” with sighs of bitter woe? What helps me my lamenting Still he mocks my sorrow, rejoices in my anguish, And all my sharpest chiding but makes him thrive and grow. Love-intrigues were allowed to the young man, and the public saw nothing objectionable in them, whether carried on openly or secretly. The poets are fond of telling how neither 115 the dangers of jealousy, nor mistress. found him sleeping on the t far from obdurate. with song, and the music of Wild seldom came to blows with ea garlanded revellers. disturbances. The hetairai o gave entertainments to their or at a tavern. Gay parties of GREEC beating storm could hinder the lover from stealing to meet his But he was not always admitted; and it might even happen that the dawning day hreshold of the obdurate fair. Many of these fair, however, were girls and young men would traverse the streets at night flutes and citharas, while torches threw a red. light over the pranks and riotous mirth were never wanting; and they not ch other, or with the watchmen who tried to check these nightly the better classes, some of whom lived even sumptuously, often friends, or were entertained by them, either at their own homes There were many of t came thither to converse, to “friendships,” some of which social. After the Peloponnesi clubs. This familiar associa opportunities of mirth and me The young men also singing-birds were favourite p quails, both kept for fighting. were laid on the wagers me hors es, and good horsemansh ment throughout all Greece, b Horsemanship seems to times knew the horse almost hese taverns in which the gay youth were frequent guests. it was a particular coterie; for They NOCTURNAL From a v REVEL: se-painting. Often x men had established clubs called hetazrzaz, game, to drink, or to feast in the fashion of a picnic, in Athens the your were political associations, but the greater number were simply an war it was the fashionable thing to belong to one of these tion of intelligent, cultivated young men, gave rise to many rriment. Hounds ets, but the fashionable youth gave the preference to cocks delighted in sport with dogs, birds and horses. and and and They were bred for this purpose, and brought high prices ; itches. A higher taste was shown in the fondness for fine hariot-racing, was a favourite ip, which, as well as cl g, accomplish- ut most of all, at Athens. ) have been a comparatively modern art. Homer and the heroic exclusively as a draught-animal. 116 The heroes fought, not on LIFE OF LEISURE—GYMNASTICS AND GAMES. horseback, but in chariots; a pair of powerful steeds were attached to the two-wheeled vehicle, in which the warrior stood, having his charioteer on his left, At a later time, chariot-racing was introduced in the great Olympic games, and became the chief of all the combats, that which brought the most renown; and as it was expensive, it was the richest and most distinguished of the Greeks, the princes and tyrants of the cities and states, that sent chariots and horses to Olympia. So it became the fashion and ambition to maintain a costly and magnificent stud, as Alkibiades did, who sent at once seven teams to Olympia; but it was an ambition that not seldom ruined those that indulged it. It had, however, the good result that it GREEK CHARIOT, ainting. improved the breed of horses, especially when skilful horsemanship as well as charioteering was cultivated; and introduced into Greece the arts of the manége, and the lighter race of and for Oriental horses. The first horse known in Greece had been brought over the sea this reason the animal was sacred to Poseidon. When it was trained for riding, Pallas Athene, the goddess of the arts, the patroness of Attika, became the patroness also of horsemanship. At the battles of Marathon and Plataia the Athenians had no cavalry; but not a century later the procession of the Panathenaia was escorted by a cavalcade of horsemen well skilled in the equestrian art, horsemen who, as Pheidias has carved them, seem as if rider and steed were but one. These were the Athenian horses, strong and sinewy, light and active, life in every muscle, with an eye of fire and intelligence, but a fire moderated and disciplined: horses of Barbary race, made Greek by careful breeding and training. The Athenians raised horsemanship to an art; their training, as Xenophon describes it io us, did not consist of severe breaking, harsh restraint, and rough treatment; they iooked 117 GREECE. ature, and treated it sensibly, gently, and affec- upon the horse as a friend, an intelligent cr tionately. If we have an inexpressible pleasure in contemplating the riders on the frieze of the Parthenon, their easy and firm seat, without saddle or stirrups, maintained by the grasp of the thighs upon the fiery and yet docile animal, so noble, free, and graceful in their attitudes and movement, we can understand how the young Athenian nobles, “the knights,” were pas- sionately devoted to a luxury, whose expensiveness often drove their parents almost to desperation. This is the case with the unlucky Strepsiades in the Clouds of Aristophanes, who can not sleep for his horse-racing son Pheidippides : “T can not sleep a wink, they bite me so : All my expense, I mean: my debts, my debts ; All through this son of mine. The long-haired scamp Is riding n and driving cur 2S And dreaming of his hors Am tortured by the sight of that curst moon That’s bringing on the 2oth of the month When interest must be paid.” s, while poor I Hunting was less in favour as an amusement with the Greeks. It was not a business ; neither was it followed with passion, as in the middle < nor yet was it a high art, as in modern times. Anybody might hunt, and hunt anywhere, except where some proprietor refused to let strangers hunt over his grounds. The young Spartan hunted with the spear on Mount Taygetos, in whose gorges roamed bears and wild boars: he hunted for the simple pleasure in exercise and excitement, and because it was thought a good training for a soldier, demanding courage, strength, presence of mind, and resolution. Stags, roes, and hares were hunted with bows and arrows, by the help of dogs: and Artemis the patroness of hunting is represented with chiton girded high, and hunter's boots, bow in hand, quiver on shoulder, and hound at her side. Birds were caught with snares and limed twi and the fowler invoked g § the aid of Pan. This woodland deity knew the haunts of all forest creatures, and could drive the game to the snares ; therefore a part was offered to him: and at last when the old hunter, weary of his toilsome life and its meagre gains, had renounced it forever and taken his final rest, his bow and spear were dedicated to Pan. We are not told if the hunter, beside his pleasure in tracking and ensnaring the game, found a delight in the free life of field and forest; if he had a sense for the perfumes of the woodland, the air of the mountain, the charms of the landscape. It has of late been rather the fashion to maintain that the Greeks had no feeling or sensibility for the beauty of nature. It is true, nature can claim no division of Greek literature as her own ; just as they had no land- scape-painting as a separate branch of art; the description of natural scenery in beautiful words was never the aim of their writers and poets, as little as was that of their artists to portray landscapes or sketch views. The Greeks devoted themselves but little, if at all, to the study of nature in the sense of endeavouring scientifically to penetrate her secrets, and the causes of the origin and the decay of things, or to trace her mysterious forces; and just as little did they occupy themselves with attempts to avail themselves of these powers for the gation were not in material improvement of life. Such portrayal, contemplation, and inves their way. But hence it by no means follows that they were insensible to the manifold charms and beauties of landscape in which their country abounded, and that they had not keen feelings for the changing aspects of nature: on the contrary, there is abundant evidence that the Greek soul vibrated to the tones of nature and sympathised with her moods. Indeed, how is it conceivable that the Greeks, who had that incomparable feeling for 118 JED LEISURE—GYMNASTICS AND the beauty of the human body, who, without the help of anatomy and dissections, almost from mere observation and study of the surface, produced such admirable and life-like sculptured forms—how is it conceivable that they should have lacked the sense for all the other beauties of form, and line, and colour which nature offer Akropolis, and see- ing beneath him marble ter aces, gates, temples, porticoes, and co- lossal statues all glowing in the ruddy light of the evening sun, was presented one of the most splendid and impressive views that the world has to offer ; and can we im- agine that when they stood there y and looked out over land and sea, their eyes were blind to all the glory anc lov (es) liness that sur- rounded them ? At their feet lay the hills upon which old Athens was built, here abrupt and rugged as the Areiopa- gos, there soft and rounded as the hill of the Mu- seum and the blue waves into the softly indented bays. And out of this For example, to one standin ARTEMIS, THE GODDESS OF THE CHASE, Statue in the Louvre. on the Nymphs. Grow- ing ever higher as they advance, these hills stretch away north and east to the noble mountains of Pen- telikos and Par- nes; while with an infinity of lines and masses they slope away southward to the sea. The glance, in one direction bounded by a cir- cuit of pine-clad mountains, in an- other sweeps over the wide _ plain with its olive- groves, gardens, and vineyards, through which ow the Kephis- sos and the Ilis- sos, dotted with dwellings and aamlets and tem- nles embowered IDICDICKetSmmmOt aurel and_ pine, away to the sea that rolls its deep islands, larger and smaller, immortal Salamis, Aigina with its rocky terraces, behind it, to the south, the shore of the P oponnesos, the rocky coast of Argolis with its bold mountain-range, even the Kyllenian mountains, the pride of Arkadia, relieved in tints of soft silvery gray against the deep blue ky. A vast prospect, embracing an infinity of details; but in this transparent air all pure, clear, distinct, the lights and the shadows, the relief, the play of soft flowing contours, melting into each other, appearing and vanishing, and over all the heavenly light which floods land and sea, near and far, with a wealth of hues and tints, in endless harmony of colour. 119 GREECE. But it is not necessary for us to have recourse to the beauty of the land which generations after generations have admired and celebrated, down to our own time. The Greek writers and poets, from Homer—the “blind” Homer, who had the surest eye for sublimity and beauty, and for all characteristic features of nature, and ever found the happiest and s and exactest words in which to describe them—down to the bucolic writers, the idyll epigrammatists, early and late, all are full of passages, which, though not long descriptions, 1 ‘ g breathe the very poetry of nature. All show the feeling for the great and mighty, as well as for the small and delicate; for the effect anc harmony of the whole, as for the minute details. Brightly glitters the rosy sea, and the blast of the tempest No more drives the waves on in a fury of foam ; Now the raging surf no more, on the rocky wall broken, Leaps aloft to the stars, plung Zephyros now breathes soft o’er the plain, and the twittering swallow, Hastes to her work, and with straw busily buildeth her nest. again in the deep, SS. SS PLAIN OF ATHENS WITH AIGINA AND THE MOUNTAINS BEYOND, SEEN FROM THE AKROPOLIS. As the storm and the calm of the sea, as the breathing of the west-wind, and the nest- building swallow, so the poets love to describe the deep shades of the forest and the crystal brook beneath them, to which the weary and thirsty wayfarer comes for refreshment and rest. Weary wanderer, rest in the shade of the pine-trees, Whose leaves, wind-stirred, ever light whisperings keep : Hard by flows a murmuring rivulet, while the Flute’s soft tones shall tenderly lull thee to sleep. Thus also they sing the plains bright with flowers and spring, the roses unfolding their crimson chalices, the ivy softly winding its twines about a grave, the vine loaded with grapes ; they sing the denizens of wood and plain, the lamenting nightingale, the chirping cicada, and the humming bee, the messenger of spring. All know the beautiful choral song in which Sophokles sings of the grove at Kolonos: Kolonos, glistening bright, Where evermore, in thickets freshly green, The clear-voiced nightingale Still haunts and pours her sung, 120 LIFE OF LEISURE—GYMNASTICS AND GAMES. By purpling ivy hid And the thick leafa; With all its myriad fruits, By mortal’s foot untrod, e sacred to the god, By sun’s hot ray unscathed, Sheltered from every blast, —where under the dew of heaven the narcissus blooms, and the crocus flaming with gold, and unslumbering rivulets flow. But this is not a solitary case. Even in the comic poet Aris- tophanes we may see bursts of true feeling for nature break through the very midst of his wild- est mockery and mirth, whether he summons the nightingale to pour the flood of sacred song from her breast, “for sweetly mourns thy heavenly mouth,” or lets the chorus of birds sing their own praises, how they dwell On the lap of the land, in flowery meads, or the frost-sheltered clefts of the mountains— or when he depicts the delights of a walk in the country about Athens— In the olive-grove of the Academe thou wilt walk with a pleasing companion, Breathing sweet odours and indolent ease and the balm of the leaf-tossing aspen, Glad in the season of spring, when the plane to the elm is whispering softly. Is not that a touch of the sentimentality of the eighteenth-century poets of nature and riendship? But this is antique; it is Greek; it is Aristophanes. Plato, the poet-philosopher, once at least, seems an idyllic poet like Gessner, in that passage in the Phaidros where he rep- resents Sokrates as admiring and describing the beauty of a chosen spot. Their conversation nas led the sage, whose whole interest centred in men, out into the open air, to the cool green yanks of the Ilissos, and Phaidros proposes that they shall rest in the shade on the soft turf, and discourse of love and beauty. ‘ By Hera,” says Sokrates, ‘‘a delightful resting-place ; the great plane-trees spread their branches wide; the tall agnus castus casts a broad shade, and its olossoms, now in their fullest bloom, fill the air with fragrance. Beneath the plane gushes a spring of cool water, probably sacred to the nymphs, or to Acheloés, if we may judge from the statues which adorn it. Observe further how sweet and truly delightful is the air here ; and how summer-like and pleasant resounds the song of the cicadas, But pleasantest of all is the green sward which invites us to recline upon it and repose our heads.” What is it but true and deep feeling for nature, sympathy with her moods, when the Greek animates all the external world with divinities, in the tree sees a dryad, on mountains and in glens catches glances of the flitting oreads, when streams and rivers are naiads, and the fountain a nymph bathing in its clear water her delicate, rosy feet? The sea he peoples with the companies of tritons and nereids, the forest with tailed fauns and goat-footed satyrs, at their head Pan the horned god of the herds, the lover of the woods, the mountain-ranger, dweller in the forest and on lofty mountain-peaks, who with the wild notes of the syrinx gathers about him all these divine powers of nature. When the hot noon lies upon forest and mountain, and nature seems sunk in repose, and the air quivers and glitters in the fierce rays, then Pan sleeps. There is a touch of romanticism in Herodotos when he tells of that Athenian herald who at the landing of the Persians was sent in haste to ask help from Sparta, and to whom Pan appeared as he was crossing the mountain-heights. It was the sense of mountain desolation, the deep loneliness of the forest, that came upon him and mastered him. There is a touch of romanticism too in the myth of Artemis-Selene, the moon-goddess, who love-story, full became enamoured of the sleeping Endymion, the beautiful shepherd; a strang of moonlight and forest-odours, which fascinated even the Greek soul. 121 GREECE. So we may be sure that if the Greek loved to rove and ramble, and made it part of the ution as enjoyment of his leisure, he felt the charm of nature. True, he reckoned on conver: a necessary part of this enjoyment. Conversation, lively talk, witty, intelligent discourse, was and in it he found the best, most agreeable, and at the same time FAUN OF PRAXITELES, In the Vatican, most profitable recreation. Nowhere did conversation reach higher perfection than among the lively, susceptible, versatile, and witty Athenians. The conflux of men of all races and lands, Egyptians and Babylonians not excepted, in this cosmopolitan city, the attraction which drew all the richly-gifted to this centre of culture, science and art, gave continually fresh stimulus, fresh charms, and new elements. So in Athens conversation grew to be a refined pleasure, and then an art, which was cultivated with exquisite taste, after Sokrates 422 LIFE OF LEISURE—GYMNASTICS AND GAMES. had made it a method of instruction and investigation. From him and his school the philosophical conversational form passed into literature and science. But if nature was an element of delight in walks and ramblings, it had but slight charms for men upon a journey. There was much travelling in the flowering time of but no one travelled as Greek history, and the ways by land and sea were never desertec now to see beautiful lands, or to enjoy the grandeur of mountains or the loveliness of blooming plains. If such presented themselves, they were looked at with approval, and that was all. Travelling, too, was more or less uncomfortable. Voyaging in open boats or sailing vessels was not without danger as well aS inconvenience; and it was customary ROAD FROM ELEUSIS Temple of Aphrodite. Castle. to sacrifice to the marine deities for protection, or pray to Priapos, the god of ports, fora safe passage to the desired haven. [he roads were not everywhere bad; those, for instance, which led to celebrated temples or other holy places were reasonably good, and beside them stood sanctuaries, monuments, altars, benches or other resting-places for the wayfarer, and here and there inns, though poor enough for the most part, and rarely provided to accommodate wheeled vehicles. For this reason men preferred to travel on foot, and have their luggage carried by slaves. When vehicles were used, those with two wheels were pre- ferred, and generally drawn by mules: women and sick persons were carried in litters. The traveller had a special purpose and destination. Travel was mostly for trading pur- poses, or to visit the great festivals and games. Political objects, or the love of adventure, also gave occasion for travel; for after the Peloponnesian war Hellenic mercenaries served in all ands, and no war, no victory, was without them. The men of art of science, and of letters, also travelled, to see men and their ways; but visiting lands and cities in order to describe 123 GREEC. whatever was worthy of note, as did Dikaiarchos, Pausanias and Strabo, came into vogue later. Yet even before this time a thirst for knowledge had impelled a few individuals to visit far lands; and in this way Herodotos, the Father of History, collected the materials for his great work. Then men of high rank, the princes and tyrants, loved to collect about them the notabilities of the day, who gave splendour to their courts and refinement to their pleasures : and thus in early times had done the Peisistratidai, Polykrates of Samos, and above all, the tyrants of Sicily. Upon their invitations came the poets Simonides, Pindar and Aischy- los, and later, Plato; while on the other hand the philosophers from all sides streamed to Athens. But this travelling and wandering was not really consonant with the taste of the Greeks, at least after the period of colonization. After a wild or laborious youth, after a manhood actively spent in the service of the state, when age come on, the Hellene yearned. for perfect leisure and rest. The Greek w: as a pessimist in his general view of human affairs: and more than one has recorded it as his opinion that life was not worth living; that the best thing would be not to come into the world at all, and next to that, to depart from it as quickly as possible. ‘I am weary of it all,” is a sigh which often broke from the Greek heart. Sick of political wrangling, wearied with the toils and hardships of war by land and sea, worn out with the storms and journeyings of life, the Greek in his inmost soul felt the longing for rest and peace. Often hast thou granted, Zeus, what I besought thee, Safe from harm hast brought me o’er the watery tra Grant me now to prosper this once more, the last time, Speed me safely thither, and bring me safely back. Life is peace and rest: I do not call it living When cares and dangers keep one forever on the rack. To this life of leisure also belongs the life and activity of the gymnasia, the places of physical exercise. Free men usually passed here the greater part of the day: when, as noon gymnasia were drew near, the markets and courts began to empty, the streets leading to the alive with men; the young coming for the exercise which was to develop the body, and the old to preserve their strength and activity; here came the artists to study the nude form; many to see the practice, and especially the matches and contests, of which they were passion- ately fond. Here also came the sages and philosophers, who gathered their disciples about them for instructive discourse: here men found their friends or met them by appointment, and passed the heat of the day pleasantly in friendly chat in the cool porticoes or under the shade of the trees. But this gymnastic life was not merely a life of enjoyment and leisure; it was a serious thing, and men applied themselves to it seriously: it was a preparation for war, for combat and renown, an essential and most important part of Hellenic life. No Greek without gym- nastics, without the complete development of the body. The aim was at once beauty and efficiency—strength and activity combined, to qualify the man to defend his country, or to contend successfully for the prize in the games. The prize was a simple wreath, but with it were twined fame and honour throughout all Greece, not only for the victor himself, but for his native city. The gymnasia therefore were everywhere state-affairs. At first the exercises were held anywhere where there was a convenient open space. But as they acquired importance, and were developed into a system, the state provided the places and erected the necessary 124 OLYMPIC GAMES. LIFE OF LEISURE—GYMNASTICS AND GAMES. buildings, which, after a while, grew to be among the stateliest in the land. As their purposes required much room, the gymnasia covered an unusual area. Athens had three: the Kynos- arges, the Lykeion, and the Akademia, of which the last, situated in a dell and surrounded by a shady grove, was a fav arms-bearing population of the city could muster and exercise in them. race. Partsof the long-r buildings were also used as dressing-rooms; for anointing the body with oil and sanding it, as also for the cleans- ing with the «ystra or curved scraper; for cold and warm baths, fires, and lodgings of the officials and at- tendants, To these were added porticoes for games and conver- sation, colonnades and halls, places for the spectators, walks, gard- ens, and COpses of ECEess As the gymnasium was always dedicated to a god, altars, ornaments and statu were never wanting. The regular ex- ercises were very sim- ple as compared with our complex modern devices, and our formid- able and ingenious en- gines were unknown to them. Running, leap- wound with a thong which gave it a rotary motion as it left the well as accuracy wer ourite resort for promenaders. They were all of such a size that the Pa is i APOXYOMENOS, Athlete scraping off the oil and dust. In the Vatican. e striven for. Casting the diskos was practised in the heroic ag They contained areas for wrestling, for casting the diskos, and hurling the javelin, and courses for the dromos or ing, throwing the jave- lin, casting the diskos y and wrestling, which combined made up the pentathlon, or five-fold contest of the great games, were the prin- cipal. The race was the first and the fa- vourite of all, and the Greeks carried it to an astonishing perfec- tion. The course was very deep sand, where the foot took no firm hold; and the runners were naked. Some- times they were armed ; at first in complete ar- mour, then with shield and helm alone. Leap- ing, both the high and the distant leap, was practised by the spring of the muscles alone, though sometimes weights (halteres) we 1eld in the hands and swung to give an im- yetus to the leap. The javelin was light and hand; and distance as It was a circular plate of bronze or iron, about eight inches in diameter, which was grasped by the whole hand, swung, and cast with all possible force, he who cast the furthest being the victor. Before the throw it was carried in the left hand in order not to fatigue the right. Both positions are shown in the two famous statues of developed to a genuine art. The victory did not depend upon strength alone; there wer diskobolor, Wrestling also was rules, sleights, advantages of various kinds in which the novice was instructed; so that skill and dexterity not seldom bore off the prize from mere brute force, 125 GREECE, These five exercises combined, as has been stated, formed the pentathlon, Equal expertness in all five was aimed at, for only thus did gymnastics equally develop the whole body, and produce the desired combination of beauty with efficiency. The exclusive devo- tion to a single exerci se led to easier victories, but it also produced athleticism, which the intelligent Greeks contemned. Of the thousand badnesses in Greece, says Euripides, the worst is the athlete. This athleticism had its hero in Herakles, the colossal form shown in the DISKOBOLOS CASTING. In the Palazzo Massimi, Rome, In the Vatican, Farnese Hercules; while gymnastics chose for a model the slender and active Hermes. Athleticism made gymnastics a calling, a trade; it gave the body an abnormal, ponderous, and ungracious massiveness, dulled and brutalized the mind, and rendered the athlete unfit for We r, as his heavy, overloaded body could not endure hardships, long toil, hunger and thirst. The athletes, therefore, avoided the more refined gymnastics, and preferred the coarse boxing-matches, which the Spartans did not tolerate. They wound hard thongs around their arms and hands to make the blows more severe; and joined wrestling with the boxing, the two combined being called the pancratzon. In this way they might gain victories, and enjoy the applause of the spectators, but as a class they were despised, especially in old age, when 126 LIFE OF LEISURE—GYMNASTICS AND GAMES. they went about, deformed relics of humanity, with crushed ears, and not seldom with crippled limbs. If gymnastics were universal in Greece, so also was the interest in the gymnastic con- tests. These were really national affairs, at which every man of Hellenic race had a right to be present, All who had acquired a mastery were ambitious to display their powers and gain FARNESE HERCULES HERMES, In the Naples Museum, In the Vatican, recognition and renown. Occasions were abundant, for every city had its public games, all connected with some holy place, under the patronage and in the honour of some deity, which gave them religious consecration and significance. But numerous as these games were, four alone rose to the importance of great national festivals. These were the Nemean, at Nemea, in Arkadia; the Isthmian, established by Corinth upon the Isthmus; the Pythian, at Delphi; 127 GRE. and the Olympic. The kind and order of the contests were essentially the same in all ; but the Pythian, being consecrated to Apollo, the god of the Muses, had the peculiar feature of introducing contests of poetry and music. Of these four, by far the most important and the most renowned were the Olympic, which were celebrated every fourth year at Olympia in Eli les their fame and import- val, and from them Their origin runs back to rs of this festi- sndary times; but order ance dates from the pe- were chosen the off- riod when the Spartans cers and judges, the obtained the hege- Hellanodikai. As the mony in the Pelopon- time drew near, they nesos. After the year proclaimed a genera 776 B.C., the names of sacred peace; war anc the victors were pub- strife must pause ; and licly recorded; and all roads leading to from this year begins Olympia became holy the Greek reckoning and inviolable. Al of time by Olympiads ; the states sent em- an evidence of the im- bassies, who appeared portance universally in the utmost possi- attached to these ble splendour. The games. he victor at multitude of specta- g I Olympia received as tors could not be ac- his reward only a commodated in Olym- wreath rom the pia nor the surround- boughs of the sacred ing villages; so build- ed, huts were erec olive ; but his fame ex- tended through all built, tents pitched, traders of all kinds Hellas to her farthest gathered, and thus colonies; and his en- try into his native city Sigs OH DROOL, suddenly arose a city had the glory of a tri- From Olympia. full of busy life, which umph. The Eleans vanished as soon as were the guardians and the games were over, for no man might dwell on the consecrated ground, except the priests, the servants, and the watchmen. Where the Alpheios, the chief river of Arkadia, issues forth from the mountains, to wind its course through the plain of Elis to the sea, stood the temple of the chief of the gods, at some distance from the right bank of the stream ; and from it stretched down to the sea, and along the shore, the walled and sacred grove of the Altis, the place of festivals and shrines, of statues and dedicated gifts, of treasuries and countless monuments and figures commemo- rating the victors. The temple of Zeus, in whose honour the games were celebrated, rose high above all. This was the work of the Elean architect Libon, and was completed about the time of the Peloponnesian war, and then adorned by Pheidias, his pupils, and many other eminent artists, with marble statuary and figures. The great master himself wrought in the inner shrine that wondrous work of Greek sculpture, the colossal figure of the Olympian 128 Arkadian mountains with Olympo, Vale of the Kladeios, Theatre Hill} Exedra of = 5 Heraion. Gymnasium. Philippeion. (Circular temple of Philip of Makedon. and Erymanthos. f Kronos. Inclosed grove of the Albis. Herodes Attikos. The thirteen small treasuries. Metron, (Temple of the mother of the Gods.) Temple of Zeus, leet, ored by Fr. Thiersch. Valley of the Alpheios, Stadion. Stoa Poikile, Gate of processions. LIFE OF IEISURE—GYMNASTICS AND GAMES. Zeus, which he adorned with gold and ivory. At the feet of this statue the victors received their crowns. Beneath the Altis lay the stadion, or race-course, six hundred feet long, in which the foot-races took place, with rows of seats arranged like an amphitheatre for the spectators ; and HERMES OF PRAXITELES, From Olympia. below this the hippodrome or long course for the chariot-races, and races for horseback. The contests lasted five days, for in the course of time great variety had been introduced in them, and they comprised all the exercises of the gymnasia. To the original racing had been added the pantathlon and pankration, separate contests of boys in both running and wrestling, and then, most distinguished of all, and the favourite with the rich nobles, the chariot-race, in which, however, the owner of the horses was not obliged to be himself the charioteer. Every evening, at the close of the contests, the victors were crowned; and joyful feasting and carousing kept up all night. Poets praised the conqueror in 129 INTERIOR OF THE In the background the col sure of immortality. inspired hymns, and he who had the fortune to be sung by Pindar w He who had won three victories might place his statue in the Altis; and in this way thou- sands of statues peopled the sacred grove. The Olympic games long survived Greek liberty. Even under the Romans they continued undisturbed, until Christianity—the Christianity of the Emperors—put an end to them, chiefly on account of its hatred for heathen nakedness. In the year 394 A. D., the Olympic games were forever abolished, but even before this, groves, temples, and treasuries had been despoiled of many of their works of art, and the colossal statue of Pheidias had been carried to Constantinople. But the temple of Zeus still stood until burned by bar- barians, after which an earthquake threw down and shattered what was left. Then the Alpheios burst through its neglected dykes and buried the ruins and relics beneath its mud and sand. And so for more than a thousand years they lay entombed, until—thanks to the exertions of Ernst Curtius—German enterprise and unselfish zeal for knowledge n if what has disinterred them from the earth that had covered them so long. And been recovered does not come up to the glowing anticipations that had been formed, still much has been gained for knowledge, and a recent discovery in the Sanctuary of Hera—the statue of Hermes, with the infant Bacchos on his arm, which, from Pausanias’ account, seems to be the work of Praxiteles, and certainly exhibits a style and grace worthy of that master—gives hope that art also will not fail to be a gainer by this undertaking, 130 RE LIGLOUS- LEP Es ELESTIALS are prone to all the sins of mortals, if we trust the stories of the Greek poets. We are shown the amorous Zeus, in various unworthy disguises, pursuing the fair daughters of men; we see his haughty spouse, the jealous Hera, publicly chiding and rebuking him for his infidelities; her lame and ungainly son, Hephaistos, mocked and laughed at by all; Aphrodite, fair and false ; Hermes, the crafty and deceitful ; the revengeful Poseidon ; the drunken Dionysos ; the heavy and voracious Herakles—a fair company indeed to dwell on the heights of Olympos! What wonder that when a sinful mortal cries out : ce What wickedness is mine !” GREECE. another is ready to answer : “On Zeus cast all the fault : He too has known the pains of love, and owned the might of beauty.” And when we see in w adventures, in rather a and how at a later day Aristophanes brings his gods on the stage in the most grotesque forms and in the most ludi- crous burlesque scenes, for the laughter of the Athenian public, we naturally fancy that this whole people was satu- rated with frivolity, and an unbelieving genera- tion altogether. Yet the very con- trary, is. the truth, These myths, which arose at a very early and rude age, are mere legends, fantastic tales, about which, in histori- cal times, there is no question of belief or unbelief. Behind these legends stand the gods full oured and worshipped in divinity, hon- by the state as well as the individual. The gods to whom the Greek prayed were pro- tectors of the good, penetrated with piety. erected to the gods ished, or put to death of the country, so the tomb, every event of h ceremony, so a contrac the Greek rememberec act or tread a consecrat water, individual honoured the gods in all his actions. is hat fashion even old Homer speaks of the Olympians, and relates their tone of irony or good-humoured banter than as if hg believed them ; avengers of evil, and guardians of the moral law. They rewarded virtue and punished crime, even though the punishment might tarry long, and ‘the Eumeni- des delay their retribu- tion. These gods de- manded a pure heart and holiness of mind in every one who ap- proached them with thanks or prayers. This was the faith of the people, and none the less was it the faith of sages like Sok- rates and Plato, who, while they sought to fathom the mysteries of the universe, did not renounce the wor- ship of the gods, nor which bound the ties mankind to divinity. Sokrates himself -con- sulted the oracle, and prayed to the gods Wau PRES. for a beautiful soul. Bronze statue in the Berlin museum, Greek life is : As Greek art selected in preference religious subjects, the fairest and stateliest buildings, as the state persecuted, ban- every one whose teachings or life seemed dangerous to the religion g From the cradle to the life t of marriage, had religious consecration. Naming a child was a religious a wedding, and the funeral rites. g, On every occasion his gods with prayers and offerings; and never did he begin a religious ed place without symbolical purification of the soul by ablution with RELIGIOUS LIFE, The G duty he could perform in person, and was himself a priest at his domestic altar. needed a ious priest neither for offering nor for prayer; for every reli He prayed standing ; to the gods above, with hands lifted and expanded; to those of the sea he held them stretched out before him; and lowered them when he invoked the powers of the under- world. At an offering every celebrant had his head crowned, as a mark of reverence. Offerings were both bloody and bloodless; the latter consisting of the fruits of the earth, such as parched barley, which was cast into the altar-fire, fruit, wine, milk, oil, honey and cakes. For bloody offerings, certain animals were especially offered to certain gods, the finest and those most free from blemish being selected; they were sacrificed either singly or in large numbers, as, for instance, the hecatomb, or sacrifice of a hundred victims at once. The whole animal was not burned, only certain portions, the rest furnishing a feast for the celebrants, who thus to a The ritual of certain degree were guests at the table of the god. sacrifice, upon the exact observance of which the Greeks laid great stress, had become fixed as early as Homer's time. Nestor caused the horns of the bullock he was about to offer, to be gilt; but usually a wreath was sufficient decoration. He purifies with consecrated water himself and those participating ; then prays to Athene, for whom the sacrifice is intended, and cuts from the forehead of the victim a tuft of hair, which he casts into the fire. When the neck of the animal has been * sprinkled with consecrated barley, it is slain and flayed; the thighs are cut out, enveloped in fat, and burned with certain other portions, wine being sprinkled over the whole. After this, the flesh is cut up, roasted on spits, and eaten by those assembled. Every free man could perform all these rites, and thus communicate immediately with the gods, Yet, for certain parts of the religious system, priests were indispensable. Every 5 god had his holy piaces, his temple and inclosure, and his established cultus. For the regular care and service of these temples, officials were appointed, instructed in all the ceremonies and traditions, and these were the priests of the god. This knowledge and these services were hereditary in certain families; but the priestly office did not exclude them from public life; they could participate in all the business of the state, and enjoy any honours or offices, and they made ful use of these rights. Thus, no priestly caste, no hierarchy arose ; but the priest was a citizen, | These priests enjoyed, ike any other. however, personally a certain respect and distinction ; and the more venerated the god whom they served, the greater was their influence as his servants. g hese priestly families had come with the gods and dwelt with them, and, as their house-mates, united with them in diffusing culture and morality. They knew and customs, and applied them chiefly in a conservative direction sustainers of the national idea; for many of the holy places had ance and were places of resort and consequence for the whole Greek world. this the case with the oracles of Apollo, and, above all, that at el The prophetic art was originally not a peculiar property of also at first the priest stood on the footing of any other man. T voice of the divinity might breathe forewarnings of the future; t guide his actions accordingly. As the divinities filled the whole c the ancient unwritten laws . They were, in part, the ar more than local import- Especially was hi. the priesthood: and here o the heart of any one the nese he might receive, and ircuit of nature, they might give intimations of their will, or of coming events, through signs, w stood by all. The Greek had a strong, almost a superstitious but he had never wrought them and their interpretation, the victims, and all the rest, into a regular system, as did the whose knowledge was confined to a privileged few. 133 aith, in these si Romans ; hose significance was under- ns and tokens ; flight of birds, the entrails of nor made it a science GREE Otherwise was it with the oracles, which were attached to particular gods and particular places of worship; their answers were given only through the lips of the priests, who also pro- pounded the inquiries. This was the case at the most ancient oracle of all, that of the Pelas Zeus at Dodona in Epeiros, where the answer, delivered in the rustling of the sacred oaks, or in the murmur of the fountain, was unintelligible to the profane; and so also at Delphi, at the sanctuary of Apollo, the deity of prophecy; an oracle which in historical times was far more renowned than that of Dodona, and attained even national importance. THE RAVINE OF DELPHI. A wild, savage spot it was that the god had chosen for his abode ; a ravine at the foot of the great Parnassos, a chasm with vertical walls, solitary, terrible, but enlivened by the murmur of a gurgling brook. Yet from this gloomy spot the god radiated light, made Parnassos the abode of the Muses, and the fountain Kastalia the source of inspiration for poets. In this spot it was that Apollo had slain Python, the dragon, in other words, that the god of light had over- come the night of barbarism. Here, from a cleft in the ground, ascended a vapour which in- toxicated the senses and confused the mind. This was the source of the oracle, for by means of its influence the god spoke. Over this cleft a temple was built, a class of priests settled about it, and from this settlement grew a city, the sacred Delphi. Its fame spread over Hellas, and far beyond the confines of Greece ; from all lands came visitors and inquirers ; cities, states, and kings sent thither splendid and often numerous embassies. Whoever approached the god came laden with gifts; and in this way Delphi was filled with treasures, not only of gold and silver. but of all rare and precious things, and among the rest the choicest works of sculpture and pal nting. RELIGIOUS LIFE. > god spoke through the lips of a woman. He knew, and availed himself of female susceptibility and enthusiasm; and in choosing a wonia as his priestess and the mouthoiece of his revelations, he honoured in her the whole sex. As the inspired prophetess Kassandra had served at his Thymbrian shrine in the Troad, so at Delphi it was the Pythia, always chosen from the women of that city, who had to deliver the answer of the god. Once a month the Pythia, crowned with laurel, having purified herself by long fasting, having bathed, drunk from the g, sacred spring, and chewed laurel leaves, took her seat upoa the tripod which stood over the fissure whence the vapour arose. Predisposed thus to nervous excitement, the intoxicating fumes soon clouded her senses, disturbed her reason, and threw her into convulsions, and in this state she uttered meaningless sounds and words from which the attendant priests interpreted or fabricated RUINS OF DELPHI, the answer of the god. The form, and doubtless often the sense also, was their work. For a long time the answers were given in hexameters, but later, in prose. A pious fraud, if you choose—though it is by no means impossible that the credulous priests really thought they detected words and meaning in the sounds uttered by the Pythia— but if it was a fraud it was a shrewd one, and was founded on an accurate knowledge of men | and thing k world, knew better than So These priests, in their close relations to the whole Gre any other the affairs of the cities and states ; they knew the leading men, the parties and their aims, and kept a watchful eye on all. When parties or individuals-came to consult the oracle, the priests knew beforehand what was to be said ; or, if not, they had time enough before the Pythia ascended the tripod, to draw from the visitors in conversation all the hints they needed. Applications of this sort, for counsel, or decision, or for the favour of the god, were the most common. But few were inquiries into the future ; and in the latter case the priests frequently took refuge in ambiguity, like the answer given to Kroisos, that if he crossed the Halys he would destroy a great kingdom; or that to the Athenians inthe Persian war, that they should 135 GREECE. shelter themselves behind wooden walls. But as skepticism increased, this dark enigmatical wisdom, clothed in obsolete words and singular phrase, often provoked derision ; and to burlesque the oracular style is a favourite trick of the comic poets. Of this Aristophanes gives a grotesque Sg example in his Azéghds, in the squabble between the tanner and leather-seller Kleon, and the Sausage-maker : Moreover, when the eagle in his pride, With crooked talons and a leathern hide, Shall seize the black and blood-devouring snake, Then shall the woeful tan-pits quail and quake ; And mighty Zeus shall give command and place To mortals of the sausage-selling race ; Unless they choose, continuing as before, To sell their sausages for evermore. But despite this mockery and the growth of skepticism, the priests of Delphi were adroit enough to keep the credit of the oracle unimpaired for centuries, and to retain in their own hands great influence in the internal wars and dealings of the Greeks. The plunder of all the treasures by the Phokians did not lessen the prestige of the god, who afterwards defended his sanctuary against the Gauls by means of afurious storm. But before the victorious and dominant might of Christianity Apollo abandoned his temple ; and when the Pythia no longer ascended the tripod, Delphi fell into decay, and the region became once more a wilderne Asin divinations and oracles, so the Greeks sought in the secret cults, in the mysteries, that consolation and support which their regular worship failed to afford. Here no purer religion, no deeper wisdom, was inculcated ; no solution given to the mystery of life beyond the grave ; though it is true that in this respect a better and surer hope was held out to the initiated. It was offered to those whose hearts were pure, and who were conscious of an innocent life, and only such were admitted to participation in the mysteries. In this way the mysteries, without concealing any peculiar lore, exercised an influence that was morally beneficent, and even sanctify- ing. He who presented himself for admission must prove his freedom from guilt, and must thenceforth lead a life unstained. Every person of Greek race had the right of appearing as a candidate for initiation; neither age nor sex was a disqualification, and both women and chil- dren were admitted ; indeed the women had certain secret rites, the Thesmophoria, which were neculiarly their own. There were three degrees which the candidates—called mystaz—usually passed, after they had been introduced by the mzys¢agogos, an initiate of the highest degree, and each had to sSive, 9 prepared for by purifications and atonements. The ceremonial was splendid and impr istants. the rites being conducted by the Azerophant, the chief priest and celebrant, with his ass n the highest degree, the initiated, then turned efoféaz, or “beholders,” were shown certain religious myths exhibited in dramatic form, in which were symbolically veiled certain doctrines relating to the life beyond the grave. In other respects these myths differed little, if at all, rom those of popular belief: Mysteries were celebrated at various places in Greece: but the most renowned were those of Samothrake, and those of Eleusis in Attika. At the former, a small island in the Aegaean Sea, there had dwelt from the earliest period of Greek history the cult of the Aadezroz, mighty powers of nature, whose names and character are wrapped in obscurity : and the same is to be said of their se ice, which was always shrouded in the utmost secrecy. Better known are the Eleusinian mysteries, in which so large a portion of the inhabitants of Athens and 136 Hit ih i Wi Wh Mi OPYLAIA IN ELEUSIS RELIGIOUS LIFE. Attika participated, that they almost seem to be an integral part of the Athenian public polity. Ancient and primitive as the others, these survived them all and lasted down to Christian times. Here too the powers of nature were worshipped; Demeter, the mother-earth, the goddess of agriculture, and the closely allied Dionysos, god of wine. It was in Eleusis, four hours’ journey eastward of Athens, that Demeter, after a long and vain search over sea and land, learned that her lost daughter Persephone had become the spouse of Hades and queen of the underworld ; ; and here was she given back to life and joy. This is the myth which was represented in the Eleusinia: the abduction to the underworld, the recovery and the return for half an year, symbolise the perishing of the life of nature in autumn and winter, and the planting of the seed-corn and its resurrection and ripening to golden fruit in spring anc summer; and this resurrection was used to give hope of a life after death. The feast of the great Eleusinia,—for there were also the lesser Eleusinia, a kind of preliminary celebration,—lasted twelve days, and occurred in August or September, when the harvests had been garnered. It was a popular festival to which strangers flocked from al ght the hospitality of the Athenians. When it was proclaimed, there was a 5 quarters, and sou general religious peace. The candidates and initiates prepared themselves by fasting, atone- ment, offerings, and purification with sea-water, on the strand. The first days were occupiec with sacrifices to Demeter, Dionysos, and other gods, then with sacrificial banquets anc processions, all having a character of solemn preparation. On the sixth day was the great ion, in which the ancient statue of Dionysos, wreathed with garlands and a torch in its hand, proces was brought from Athens to Eleusis. A countless multitude of people, initiated and uninitiated, all wearing garlands, took part in this procession, and mummeries of all sorts, jesting and antics, laughter and from the Eleusinion in Athens, the march proceeded for four hours along the ‘Sacred Road and reached Eleusis after dark. Here the throng entered the court of a large building, erected in the time of Perikles for the lebration of the mysteries proper, and consisting of a columned hall surrounded with a wall, and roomy enough to contain a large assembly. | of the torches, increased the feeling of awe which the whole mysterious aspect, following after ane able ht The representations then be yom of the night, the flickering and uncertain li the excitement of the march, was well fitted to produce. These representations were continued for several nights. The recovered Persephone had been welcomed with joy; so joy, hilarity and banquets now succeeded to the fasts, the offerings, and the solemn nocturnal rites ; and thus ended the Eleusinia. Dionysos here plays a secondary part to that of Demeter; but in many places in Greece, and especially in Attika, he had his peculiar feasts, which, though less solemn, it is true, claimed a still more general participation, and were celebrated with more intoxicating who bears the name of its inventor, encouraged with his elegies his countrymen, the Ephesians, in their contest with Mz enesia ; Tyrtaios, who was invited from Athens, inspired with his elegiac songs the Spartans, who, in the second Messenian war, began to lose heart and to sions. quail under the bold attacks of Aristomenes, seconded by their own internal disset Somewhat later, Solon, with an elegiac poem, moved the Athenians to reconquer the island Salamis. Theognis o ira also, a banished aristocrat, composed political elegies, from which a later age culled a number of sage aphorisms, and formed them into a collection as a sort of manual of wisdom and virtue. Simonides of Keos sang the praises of those who fell at Marathon; but Mimnermos, who belonged to the time when Ionia was sinking into effeminacy, g g ) praises in his elegies the enjoyment of life, which, in the transitoriness of existence, is all that has charm or valt (Ss Almost contemporary with the elegy arose the iambics, also a creation of the turbulent and fermenting time when the princely rule was drawing to a close. But in the earliest poets of this style, the iambic poem is less political than personal. This is the subjectivity before alluded to, breaking out in the direction of personal animosity. At the festival of Demeter it was the custom for those present to assail each other with mocking jests, as if under the pro- tection of religion; and it may have been from this custom that (in the beginning of the seventh century B. C.) Archilochos, who composed songs for the service of Demeter, took the hint for his iambics. A bold innovator otherwise in poetry, he introduced new measures, the quick iambuses and trochees, and ‘“ sent them like sharp arrows” dipped in wit, sarcasm and scorn, against his enemies, thus driving them, the story goes, to suicide. Simonides of Amorgos, his successor, directed his satirical verses against whole classes of society, and among the rest was especially caustic in his attacks on the female sex. But the most malicious and bitterest of all was Hipponax, who lived about 540 8. c. He too is said by his scathing verses to have caused the death of his enemies, two sculptors whose offence was that they had caricatured the little ug 7 poet. Elegy and iambus had their rise in Ionian soil, but the third kind of lyric, the mze/os or song proper, is Aiolian or Dorian. Of all the Greek races the Aiolian seems to have pos- sessed the tenderest and most feeling soul; and to this above all was it given to clothe per- sonal feelings and the heart's emotions, joy, sorrow, longing, in words and poetic form. The Aiolian song was the song of the singer himself, his own feelings and experiences, sung by himself and accompanied by the lyre. The island Lesbos and its fair capital Mitylene were the home of this song, which everywhere in Greece was highly admired but only sparingly imitated. Here there was a regular school, or rather schools, above which tower three honoured heads. One of these is Alkaios, an aristocrat of Mitylene, a man of action and of party-strife, a rest- less ardent soul, who gave passionate expression to his hate and his love in new forms of 169 GREECE. song. Contemporary with him, though somewhat younger, was the poetess Sappho, the object of his unrequited love, and the first of all poetesses, as the Greeks at all times acknowledged. The later Attic comedy soiled her fair name with fictitious love-adventures to which she was entirely a stranger. listory knows nothing of Phaon and the leap from the Leukadian rock. History knows Sappho as a wedded wife and the mother of a beloved child; as the head of a school of maidens whom she instructed in song and the choral dance. Her songs overflowed with tender and glowing love, with passionate feeling ; they are the true speech of the heart, cast into the most graceful form. Unfortunately but one of these poems has been preserved entire, and beyond this we have only a few disjointed fragments. Among her successors Anakreon of Teos bears a celebrated name. But this Ionian, who sang at the courts of the tyrants and celebrated their minions, poss sed none of the Aiolian fire and pas- sion ; these had long been extinguished. This white-haired old voluptuary knew nothing of love but its transient enjoyment, and he sings only of love, wine, and the dance ; but the light and graceful form into which he cast his songs made them models for imitation for centuries, and of these copies, unfortunately, more have come down to us than of the originals, The Doric race also has its lyric poetry, but as in this race the individual was always postponed to the state, so these Doric songs are not the outpourings of personal feeling, but chants and odes composed for particular occasions, mostly of a public character, to be ren- dered by a chorus of men and maidens, always with the accompaniment of music and the dance. This lyric poetry was, to a certain extent, an affair of state, in Sparta at least, where o0etry flourished after the Mes senian wars, and many poets and musicians arose. Terpander and Thaletas reorganized their musical system, after whom Alkman, a Lydian by birth, and or atime a slave in Sparta, brought to music (about 620 B. c.) a poetry richer in forms, and taught the choirs many admired paeans and hymns. At the same time, or a little later, Jourished another poet, Stesichoros of Himera in Sicily, who cast the strophe-song into a more artistic form, and thus was the forerunner of Pindar. He was also considered the inventor of the bucolic poem. Then came Arion, a Lesbian, and either originated or per- ected the dithyrambos, or Bacchic chant of rejoicing, which he taught to choruses at Corinth, while Ibykos of Rhegion, a wandering bard, breathed his own love-passion into choral songs. His fame, however, paled before that of Simonides of Keos, who in the time of the Pers an wars had the first name among lyric poets. A man of high station and consideration, and even a personage of political importance, he was rather a poet of wide and varied culture, refined form and noble thoughts, than a bard of genius, fire and passion. His poems were very numerous and varied. He sang the heroic deeds of the Persian wars, the praise of heroes and great men, and composed songs for the festivals, hymns, dance-songs, triumphal odes, and many others. But Simonides had a rival who, more fortunate in the preservation of his works, has thrown the fame of his predecessor into the shade, at least in later times, and this rival was Pindar. A Boiotian by birth, but trained in the Attic school, Pindar stands as the brilliant star in the evening-sky of Greek lyric song. Born 522 8. c., he was a contemporary of Aischylos, the first great poet of the new epoch—the dramatic. Almost as many-sided as Simonides, he sang in manly tones and with a wealth of noble thoughts all matters of public or private life that asked celebration in song. As with Simonides, his compositions were engaged and paid for. He surpassed the earlier poet in true poetic power, in higher flights of imagination, and in the bolder and richer construction of his odes, which indeed, from this very cause, contain not a few intricacies of thought and expression by no means easy to understand. Of MEDEA, DEPARTURE OF POETRY. his many compositions only those remain in which he celebrated the victors in the public games. These “epinikian odes,” as they are called, were sung in chorus at the nocturnal celebration ; or perhaps at the festival with which the victor on his return was honoured by his city. The custom continued, but no second poet like Pindar arose. The tragedy, now coming to perfection in Athens, enlisted all that was greatest of poetic genius. The drama, which, as a new, and the highest branch of poetic art, had now thrust lyric poetry completely into the background, did not, it is true, originate in Athens, but it was there that it first attained complete development, and there alone it found its great poets. Growing with the growth of Athens, accompanying its political supremacy, and declining with its decline, the drama, tragedy and comedy, is the special poetry of Attika. One branch of poesy grows out of another, and the drama grew from the lyric. Where Dionysos the god of wine was honoured, his festivals were celebrated with choral songs, or dithyrambs, in which the wondrous adventures of the god, his woes and his joys, were sung rs_ his in appropriate verse. The leader of the chorus represented the god, and the sing companions, the satyrs and the rest of the Bacchic crew. Thus it had long been in Sikyon in Attika, and wherever else the dithyramb was known. In this form there was already a kind of dialogue, but in song only: it was necessary that proper speech—conversation—should be added, and that the whole be freed from the myth of Dionysos, and the poet be allowed free choice of a subject, before the dithyramb could become the drama. The last had already been done in Sikyon, but the introduction of speech was due to Thespis of Attika, whom we may call the first tragic poet. He brought forward the first actor, who took the part of the hero, and entered into discourse with the chorus and its leader. But not until Aischylos added the second actor, did tr: gedy so far cut loose from the lyric as to be a complete drama. To these two actors Sophokles added a third; and thus the complete drama was an Athenian production. But for all this, tr remained, and gave moments of rest and pause to the action, filling up, so to speak, the sdy still retained much of its origin. The chorus with its song entr'actes; but this chorus was not merely a company of spectators, but took a part, sympathetically or practically, in the action. The drama remained in connexion with Dionysos to the extent that the representations were only given at his festivals; but the god himself and all his crew were banished from it, and the subject was taken from the events of myth, tradition, or even of history. As a sort of indemnification, however, the satyric drama was introduced, a kind of tragi-comedy, or indeed half-farce, in which satyrs were the actors, which was always given after the tragedies, and served to bring the spectators back from the tragic mood to Bacchic hilarity. The ar ungement of the theatre also, which, now that the drama was fully formed, be- came a permanent building, had many reminiscences of its origin. In the year 500 8. c, the temporary wooden structure which had served for the purpose fell down, and was replaced, after the Persian war, with a building of stone. Many states followed this example and erected permanent stages. The theatre at Athens, the stage of Aischylos, Sophokles, and Euripides, with its vast auditorium accommodating the whole body of -male citizens, or more than twenty thousand spectators, took its general shape soon after the fall of the wooden theatre ; but it did not receive its perfect form until it was completed by the orator Lykurgos, about the time of Alexander the Great. Excavations made at the site have brought to light remains of build- ings added in the time of the Roman emperors, The theatre was open to the sky. The rows of seats, like those of an amphitheatre, Ij GREECE, were arranged in a semicircle, and traversed by radiating gangways. In the lower rows sat the dignitaries of the state, and the judges who decided on the merits of the pieces. Before them lay, as in the lyric performances, the semicircular, or semi-elliptic orchestra, with the thymele as an altar or monument in the middle. The orchestra was the place of the chorus, which there executed its movements, or took its place at the thymele. Immediately behind this, but more elevated, was the proscenium, a long rectangle of slight depth, open toward the spectators, but closed on the other three sides, the back being the stage, which rose as high as the topmost range of seats in the auditorium. The walls surrounding the stage served for scenes, and indicated the nature of the ocality, whether it was a landscape, a desert, or, as was more usual, a palace. In the latter case it was never the interior of the building that was represented, but only the vestibule or portico. Any action taking place in the interior—and everything tending to excite a feeling of horror, which the Greeks liked not to see, was represented as occurring within—might be seen, in its effects only, through the open doors. In the wings stood scenes in the form of trilateral prisms, by giving which a partial turn on a vertical ay a change of scene was indicated ; a simple and almost symbolic pro- ceeding. And yet it was the stage and its needs that developed to a certain extent both the perspective and the decorative elements of painting ; nor were there lacking machinery and contrivances by means of which thunder and lightning were imitated, apparitions arose from the earth, or the intervening deity, the deus ex machina, came down from the skies and again ascended. We can not suppose that there was any very deceptive reality about these dramatic performances ; nor indeed did the Attic tragedy aim at representing the truth of nature. It was in itself something extraordinary, a part of the Bacchic festival, which in its very nature was outside the ordinary routine of life, and was meant to excite and inspire men’s minds. So the players were neither in garb nor speech, persons of real life. The cothurnz, or buskins worn, raised them above the ordinary stature of humanity, and their hips and shoulders were made correspondingly wider; long robes of bright colours and richly embroidered, the consid- erable expense of which was borne by wealthy individuals, fell in gorgeous masses to their feet ; masks covered their faces, masks with a tragic expression, and wide openings for the mouth and eyes, which of course prevented all play of features, but this could not have been distinguished in its delicacy at so great a distance. Through the opening of the mask the speech is supposed to have had a deep hollow sound, audible throughout the immense auditorium. The character of the Greek tragedy in its older form, as in the work of / ischylos, the first great dramatic poet, is lofty, pathetic, intentionally lifted high above the level of ordinary life ; it has a religious character corresponding to the festival, and corresponding also to the time to which the poet belonged. Aischylos, born at Eleusis 525 38. c., was one of the patr: otic soldiers of Marathon, as the proud inscription on his tomb recorded. He represents the old Athens of the Persian wars, a defender of ancient custom and order, and an antagonist of the growing democracy. Pious and believing, as the old Athenians were, he sees in all the course of events the guidance of the gods, the mighty hand of Zeus, who justly and wisely directs the dark ways of destiny. At the time of Aischylos it was the custom that the poet contending for the prize of tragedy—a wreath—brought upon the stage three pieces forming a series, to which a satyric play was added as a fourth. In the work of Ai: ylos the three pieces which formed a “trilogy” had one and the same fundamental thought, and the same subject, or subjects 172 AT ATHENS. THEATRE OF DIONYSOS Restored from re he thymele, then the proscenium, and beyon In the foreground, th To the left, above the spectators? seats, part of the inclosing colonnade. POETRY, nearly related, so that they constituted, as it were, the acts of one great tragedy. Thus he treated the great and ancient strife between Europe and Asia, Hellenes and Barbarians, in a trilogy, of which the central piece, the defeat of Xerxes, or rather the lamentations over this defeat at the court of Susa, has been preserved in his Persaz. Thus he set forth that most SOPHOKLES. In the Lateran Museum, tragic of themes, the murder of Agamemnon and its fata consequences down to the pacification of the Eumenides, in three pieces forming the trilogy known as the Ores¢eza, the only one of his trilogies that has been preserved entire. It was his last work in Athens. Sophokles, his younger rival and successor (495-406 8. c.), loosed the bond of the trilogy, treating each piece independently. In this way he was able—and this was a further step in the development of the drama—to give a more ignificant and lively action to each separate piece, in which he introduced a third actor. Thus the proper dramatic element was increased, while the lyric—the chorus—was lessened, and the characters gained in individuality. He soon departed from the pathetic tone and tragic loftiness of Aischylos; and as the dialogue increased in importance, he brought the speech nearer to that of ordinary men, without, how- 173 GREECE. ever, introducing incidents or persons of every-day life. Not a believer such as Aischylos was, he threw more into the background the controlling hand of the divinity, and placed the conflict in the human soul, in the strife of passions or of laws, so that each side seemed to have its justification, which, firmly maintained, could not but lead to a tragic conclusion. Thus in the Anéigone, the earliest of his preserved dramas, and perhaps the best of them and of all, the demands of the state and the duties of the family are placed in irreconcilable antagonism. Sophokles depicted men as they should be ; Euripides, men as they are. This is the last step down from the sublime heights of Aischylos, from the lofty cothurnus to the level ground of reality. Sophokles, in his wise and moderate attitude, resting in firm morality, stands still Vil i ran i NL SCENE FROM A COMEDY, above the life of his time; but Euripides, his younger contemporary (who did not survive him, 482-407 B. c.), stands in the very midst of it. He had been a disciple of the rhetoricians and sophists, and was saturated with their teachings; he spoke the tongue of the market and the court ; and in his hands the old myths were material to be handled at pleasure. Thus he divested heroes and heroines of their divinity or their majesty, gave them human weaknesses, and placed them in narrow and humiliating situations. He filled his dramas with surprising actions and incidents, and where the inner conflict would bring a tragic catastrophe, he scroll suddenly call in the aid of the deus ex machina, who descended aon the stage and cut the Sok le was 2 lewounlis device of his. Yet, notwithstanding, is Euripides a poet of the aan gilts, who in his better dramas exhibits such grandeur in the delineation of passion fami) ean ure os =) ries poets. So we oe ne in the JZedea, in eee ging slig ove, or the frantic Bacchantes tearing to pieces the enemy of go 5 174 TRIS. TAL IN IPHIGENEIA LO ETI. None of the later poets reached this power; and indeed they hardly deserved it, for the later tragedy, corresponding to the growing passion for litigation among the Athe- nians, rather resembled a contest in a court of justice, than an affecting picture of human passion and divine commands. There was no lack of poets; Aristophanes compares them to a flock of swallows twittering in the grove of the Muses. Indeed it became a sort of fashion for men of culture, whatever their vocation, to compose tragedies, and bring at least one or e. But, following the example of Euripides, the strife of words grew to be two upon the sta, the leading feature, while action and the development of character were less considered. ame a kind of match of wits, and was conducted in the quibbling This verbal conflict be style of the lawyers. Thus the tragedy lost more and more its proper interest; it became more and more a closet-drama, to be read, not acted. True, in this way the poets still found themselves rivalled by the three great masters, whose works continued to be read, sr brought upon the stage; and to this cause it is due that of them when they were no lo alone do we possess complete works. A similar fate befel the Attic comedy, which, though not of later origin than the tragedy, yet in its development is usually one generation behind it. Comedy also is of Bacchic origin, the offspring of that wild mirth which the god of wine inspires. In Attika, in autumn, were celebrated the lesser Dionysia, the proper vintage-feast. It was celebratec with various mummeries, and with wild pranks and jokes, whose boldness and license were excused by the god. A great feast also was held—the Aomos—accompanied with chora singing (whence comes the name omozd7a, komos-song) in which jokes were made upon al present. Out of this choral song grew the comedy, as did the tragedy from the dithyramb. 5S From this festival it took its wild mirth, and under the protection of the god it venturec on the extravagant license and audacity of personal attack that still astonish us in Aristophanes. But comedy long remained an obscure child of the village. In the time of the Peisis- tratidai, whose ¢yvannzs would not have tolerated its audacious attacks, it did not venture into -dy was complete, about the time of the Persian wars, the state took the city. Only when tre comedy under its protection, gave it the stage and needful means for representation. If the chorus and the actors of tragedy appeared in rare and splendid costumes, so those of comedy i s, in caricature-masks, with enormous paunches, or whatever presented the most grotesque figure other burlesque attributes the comic fancy might suggest as appropriate to the personage. In such inventions comedy knew no limit; it might bring its chorus on the stage as clouds, birds, wasps; or if not in absolute representation, at least in a costume that indicated the character ; it sent Trygaios flying up to heaven on the back of an enormous dung-beetle to bring down the goddess of Peace; despatched Dionysos with Herakles to the underworld; and set the Birds to building an ideal city in the clouds. g of the fifth century 3B. c., it did not Though comedy entered Athens in the beginnir . ‘lopment of its untrammelled freedom, flourish until its end. It would seem as if for the dey the complete democracy was needed ; but it also needed the demagogues, as the butts against which it aimed its keenest shafts of wit and indignation; and these were the objects which called out the full causticity of its satire. At the first glance, this comedy seems to know noth- ing holy, nothing venerable ; nothing is great enough or mighty enough to have any terrors for it. With its ridicule it smites and annihilates the gods of Olympos and the great ones of earth ; everything lofty or conspicuous awakens its mockery and scorn; it knows no morality and in action, no decency in language, which indeed oversteps all bounds in its frankn 175 ee ——— eT! GREECE. POSEIDIPPOS, Statue in the Vatican. coarseness, And yet this is only an appearance. It is true that the so-called Old Comedy avails itself to the utmost of the license of the Bacchic festival; but despite all this, it rests upon the firm foundation of morality, and has a solid place in the political life of the state. It sets itself firmly in opposition to all that is false and perverted, to innovators and seducers of the people, and combats for ancient right and morality. This is emphatically true of Aristophanes, the only comic poet of this period of whom any complete works have been preserved. Bornat Athens 452 2. c, he began his career as poet in the year 427, and in 388 brought his last comedy on the stage. His rich humour sur- passes all limits, his invention is inexhaustible, grotesque fancies follow one another in his comedies as if in some intoxicated vision; his wit knows no fear, and his language no re- straint. He contended for the old Athens against the demagogues and sophists ; he is enthusiastic for the warriors of Marathon and their time; he admires Aischylos, and hates Euripides. In his Azzgf¢ts he brings Kleon, then in the height of his popularity and power, on the stage, and mauls him as no demagogue was ever mauled before or since. In his Clouds he scourges the sophists who with their disintegrating doctrines were corrupting the young; though it is true that he here attacks Sokrates as their supposed head. (seh The Acharnians and Peace are directed against the war party; the Bzrds was levelled at the hare-brained folly of the Athenians, who just then (414) had set on foot the Sicilian expedition ; the Was, against the lawyers and litigation; while the Thesmophordazusaz and the Frogs, are pieces of literary criticism, aimed chiefly at Euripides. This last direction, the literary, was that which, after the death of Aristophanes, 176 chiefly gave its the disasters of the Old declined. Comed down to a In addit B.C world. within the bounc of the New Com c The comedy, therefore, taking tl Olav haracter to the so-called Middle Comedy. It would seem as if Athens, after the Peloponnesian war, could no longer bear the sharpness and boldness of -ased in Athens as the political and, moreover, literary interests increé ion, occupied itself in the fourth century ris dire yout the time of Alexander, chiefly with matters of interest in the literary 1 general foibles and follies of life, and in both kept But this position also it forsook in its third epoch, that ion to this, it chas s of a safe criticism. edy, whose chief is considered Menander, and next to him Poseidippos. This New Comedy ta men, of intrigues which usually end in marriage. hetaire, the enamoured youth entang parasite, the hec ses private life as its subject ; it treats of love and the love-adventures of young It has its standing characters ; the rapacious led in her snares, the slave as accomplice and intriguer, the toring soldier—all types of personages in the time of Alexander the Great. This comedy cast off the chorus, and indeed everything else which preserved the memory of its Bacchic orig action, and finall This is the new Attic comedy, and it is the modern comedy. transferred to Rome. Roman comedy was, transp s the intrigue at work, entangles the in. It ties the knots of the plot, y conducts the whole to a conclusion. In this form it was Plautus and Terence, from whose extant works we know what the lanted it from Greece with all its Attic character, with the entire Athenian outfit of personages and action, and with this form the Romans were satisfied. MENANDER. Statue in the Vatican. = PROSE aah PARNASSOS. IIMB CNRS = TSHISNOIRN, CONV NITOURNG SUNOS ONE UNDREDS of years passed while poetry was the sole literature of Greece. It had already developed all its forms when the Greek became conscious that the speech of daily life also might become a means for giving written permanence to thought. This was done simultaneously in two distinct forms—history and philosophy. The spirit, awaking to serious thought from the fugitive life of the hour, and the visionary life of poetry, began ever more and more to inquire into the conditions of its existence, the past which lay behind it, and the phenomena of nature around and above it. A and versatile population of the coast of Asia Minor, which ain the impulse came from the lonians, that alert awakened all Greek culture and left its development to the mother-land. The priests, doubtless, in various places, had 178 PROSE LITERATURE: HISTORY, ORATORY, PHILOSOPHY. kept records of events, but these were not intended for publicity. Kadmos of Miletos was the first, who about 540 8. c. wrote a historical work, a narrative of the founding of his native city. He was followed bya series of writers, the /ogographoz, as they were called: Hekataios, Hellanikos, Pherekydes, Chares, some giving the ethnographical and geographical results of their travels, and others reciting in prose the myths of the poets. But their recitals were jejune and inartistic, void of all grace, and with no design of pleasing, or producing an eff ct like that of poetry. Then came Herodotos, called the Father of History, a Dorian from Halikarnassos, but an Ionian by education, who was the first to perceive that history also should be a work of art, and as such appeal to the emotions as well as the intellect. Born 484 3. c, he had in his youth taken a conspicuous part in political affairs, when, seized with the spirit of investigation, he travelled through all the lands known to the Greeks, and thus obtained a knowledge of for the various peoples whom he had visited. With a mind thus stored, he began at a somewhat gn policy and of the world, and at the same time collected a mass of details concerning advanced age, living for a while in Athens, and finally in Thurioi, to record all that he had seen, learned, and experienced. Starting with the great antagonism between Asia and Europe, the 5 3arbarians and the Hellenes, he connects by this thread all the events that had occurred in those distant lands to the east of the Mediterranean. Thus he was, above all, the historian of the Persian wars, a_hist« an penetrated with the love of truth, unpartisan, even critical, though still with a childish fondness for whatever is strange and marvellous. Like a gar- rulous man of many experiences, he takes pleasure in telling his story, which is smooth and naive, but full of life and colour, gliding from sentence to sentence without artifice and without regular design. Very different was it with his great successor the Athenian Thukydides, who became the historian of the Peloponnesian war. He wrote after the close of that struggle, when the sophists had established their schools of rhetoric in Athens and were teaching the artistic use of language. The development of prose which thus began was not without influence upon Thukydides; but it only taught him to take pains with his language and his style, without his attaining in either. He carefully selects his words, and is often happy in his phrase; he builds up his periods not inartistically, and yet, despite his care, his style is often cumbrous and his language obscure. Not in these lies his greatness, but in the conduct and contents of his work, in which for the first time we see history an artistic production, a work of unity and completeness. For this reason he selects from the history of his time the Pelopon- var alone, which he looks upon as the greatest and most momentous event of all time, and only this will he narrate. Himself a statesman of the age and of the school of Perikles, he passes the events in review with the comprehensive glance of his hero, and calmly for the first time lets facts tell their own story. But they do not tell their own story only; het we find pragmatic history, As a statesman he recognises the connexion of all events, the efficient causes and their results; as a judge of men he detects the leading motives in individuals, studies their characters and notes their passions, while the orator in him, as is shown in the speeches scattered through the history, disentangles with penetrating acuteness and perfect lucidity the confusion of threads with persons as well as things. No period of history has ever found so complete an exposition, These great qualities did not exist in his countryman Xenophon; who, in his /Ze//enic History, attempted a continuation of the work of Thukydides. Xenophon was no statesman. and did not stand with calm unbiassed judgment above the parties and events of his time. 179 7 GREECE. He was a man of party and of active life, which had in singular ways drifted him, the Athenian, to be a friend of the Spartans. As a companion of the younger Cyrus and friend of Agesilaos he had made campaigns in Asia rather like the adventurous leader of a band of free lances than a general. The recital of his experiences has rather the character of memoirs than of history ; and this is applicable to his best works, the Retreat of the Ten Thousand from Asia, and his Remintscences of Sokrates. In his historical writing he does not take the elevated position of Thukydides, but what especially distinguishes it is the perfect Attic tongue, the simple, clear, easy and smoothly flowing stream of speech. In this respect Xenophon was regarded as a model by the Athenians themselves. So far as mere language is concerned, in him we have the perfection of historical presentation. This could now only sink or widen; higher it could not go. At first it widened, under the influence of oratory, which at that time had developed an artistic style. Theopompos, a pupil of the orator Isokrates, and himself an accomplished orator, lifted history from the memoir style of Xenophon, and gave it wider scope than it had hitherto possessed. In his Philippics he attempted a sort of universal history, and history of civilization at the same time, as he brought art, science, and social relations into his narrative. But his language was no 7, natural Attic speech : the historian could not forget the orator. At times more the simple, ez we find him pedantically polishing his style, at others, striving for strength and dignity he be- comes pathetic and even lofty; but he evidently depends too much upon an art almost too refined, Theopompos had companions and imitators, but not long. During the Alexandrian period, when Alexandreia was the headquarters of literature and science, prose writing de- clined, and ceased to be an art. There was no longer an ambition to write and speak well and beautifully ; men grew indifferent to form, and aimed at nothing higher than a clever expression of the thought. Erudition and criticism, instead of artistic presentation, were now the fashion. There were not even statesmen to be found who, with the wisdom of experience and from the evation of their position, could give an impressive recital of the events of their time. Only o when Hellas itself had fallen, do we find in the Achaian Polybios a historian who rises to the evel of the ancients; but this historian, who had lived long in Rome, in association with ustrious Romans, took a new point of view, and what he wrote was Roman history. We have already spoken of the influence of oratory ; and when the growth of Attic prose literature is in question, the orators must take a foremost place. This merit belongs chiefly to the rhetoricians ; but the sophists also have a share in it that we must not ignore. The more the democracy grew and perfected itself in Athens, the more did oratory become an cation. The Athenians needed it in the important, almost a necessary part of a liberal edu courts, in the council, in the popular assembly; and in law and politics every one took part. With this importance, oratory rapidly advanced from a necessity to an art and a branch of literature. At first the oration was simple and plain. Even Perikles, though called “the Olym- pian,” who shook Greece with his eloquence, belonged to those calm speakers who used no gestures nor motions, and scarcely exhibited any play of countenance. He aimed not at speaking beautifully, but at convincing his hearers; and he did this by the wealth of pure and lofty thought expressed with logical force, precision, and lucidity, by his high and noble aims, but above all, by-the power of his grand and pre-eminent personality. He never flattered, never allowed himself to be carried away by passion, but remained always great, true, and dignified. He had the might of eloquence, but his oratory was not an art. 180 PROSE LITERATURE: HISTORY, ORATORY, PHILOSOPHY. This power of Perikles was coveted and eagerly sought by many less favoured by nature. I gerly g ) J J To satisfy this demand a school arose in which the first teachers were the sophists, who, sceptics in regard to religion and philosophy, as teachers of eloquence may claim positive merits for the development of the language and of oratory. The first who opened with success a school of oratory in Athens, was Gorgias the Leontine. He had come to Athens in the year 427 B.C, as an ambassador from Sicily, where the oratorical art had already acquired a certain professional development in advance of the mother-country. His style was admired, and became the fashion in Athens, and a crowd of pupils gathered around him. He taught them, after the sophists’ fashion, to attack or to defend either side of a cause; he taught them to manage their language, to attend to rhythm, intonation and euphony, and to construct periods ias had its we in a certain symmetry according to certain rules. But the teaching of Gor nesses and perversions. As the speech was to have the sonorous charm of poetry or of music, he selected or manufactured poetical and resonant words, which too often became mere empty phrases or hollow pathos, a style that was nicknamed “ Gorgiasizing, n this way an affected mannerism became attached to the earliest technique of the art. His successors, the proper rhetoricians, renounced this empty pathos, but they carried out further the formal development of the oration. These rhetoricians, who made oratory their special business, not only opened schools which were attended by the youth of all Greek lands, but also wrote orations for others to deliver in pleading their own causes. Thus there arose a class of speech-writers, through whom the oration, hitherto only a necessity of legal proceedings or of political life, now became an object of itself, and an important branch of literature. Many Attic orations of this kind have been preserved for us, Among these rhetoricians who composed orations and trained orators, though they seldom, if ever, themselves spoke, Lysias was the one who in comparison used the simplest and least ornate language, though by no means neglecting the artistic use of words. Isokrates, on the other hand, the most admired and renowned of these teachers, went furthest in the direction of the sophists. With him the oration, carefully and symmetrically built up of organic parts, and full of harmony in the sound, became a genuine work of art. The whole was like an architectural construction, and so again was each period in itself, with all the parts vedantically arranged to have similar intonations, and measured symmetry. Thus oratory had been brought to a technical perfection which could not be exceeded ; and this perfection had no slight influence on the Attic speech of daily life and of literature. But as those who had brought it to this completeness stood personally more or less aloof from public life, so in this oratory the inner life was wanting; its merits were all external and its 25 art artificialit Those had to come who should pour the glowing metal into this graceful but y: hollow mould, fill it with fervid life, and in so doing burst the artificial trammels which the yedantry of the schools had forged. And they came—the orators of the time of Philip, the statesmen and chiefs of party, who dealt with interests more momentous than the wrangling of the courts—such men as Lykurgos, Hyperides, Aischines, and above all, Demosthenes. Aischines, it is true, the partisan of King Philip and antagonist of Demosthenes, had obtained his training outside of the school. Nature had endowed him with such eminent oratori- cal gifts that he could dispense with artificial training; though it is probable that his earlier calling of an actor was of advantage to him. Otherwise was it with Demosthenes, whom nature seems to have denied all the other gifts of the orator, except the fiery soul and the iron will. But he had resolved to be an orator, and he surpassed all the rest. His head, a head of 181 GREECE. strongly-marked character, and hardly of the antique type, though stamped with the antique spirit, shows in the massy brow the deep thought, and in the lines about the firmly-closed mouth the energetic will and invincible perseverance. From his youth the ideal of the orator had stood before him. timidity for courage that nothing could daunt ; he ennobled his awkward carriag To attain it he overcame all difficulties; he exchanged his natural ind ungraceful gestures; he conquered the difficulty of his speech, gave power to his lungs, and made his weak and imperfect organ, strong, enduring and sonorous. His labours to attain this result are recorded in many anec- dotes. Demosthenes united in himself all the eminent qualities of his predecessors. Formed by the teachings of Isaios, he was familiar with all the technical part of oratory, and had acquired an exact. knowledge of Attic law; so that in formal training he was inferior to none. But that he surpassed them all he owed to the intense sin- cerity of his convictions, his earnestness of pur- pose, the passion of his character, and his ardent patriotism. Among the mediocre personages who had hitherto guided Athens, g 5 to whom oratory had old; and in Philip of Makedon an antagonist hac were too weak to cope. DEMOSTHE Bust in the V: been an elegant dilet- tantism, there now steppec suddenly a glowing soul, a man of intense earnestness and of impressive power. It was as if one of those ruided mighty ones who ¢ Athens in her golden days had arisen from the tomb. The Athe- nians, hostile at first, could not long resist ct he potent influence ; and Demosthenes led their hearts, almost de- spite themselves, into bold and patriotic paths As strong and pure a spirit as Perikles, he was not in like measure favoured by fortune. The Athenians, and in- deed the Greeks gener- ally of this time, were no longer the Greeks of arisen with whom their power and will At Chaironeia, Athens and Demosthenes were defeated at once. Once more, after the death of Alexander, he attempted to excite a revolt of Athens and of Greece, but in vain; and his death on the island Kalauria (321 3B. c.), paid the penalty of the attem pt. The times which followed, down to the fin nature to produce great orators, ¢ years vi time. The orators had perished, and only the schoo The eloquence o uided the policy of Athens, was much praisec al loss of Greek freedom, were not of a Demetrios of Phalereus, who for some reat but it was the last after-glow of a g s remained, to which, at a later period, the young Romans came to learn eloquence; and this branch also of Greek culture was transplanted to Rome. The absorption into the Roman world and Roman culture was also the fate of that branch which, if not the most delicate flower of the Hellenic spirit, must be looked upon as its freest 182 PROSE LITERATURE: HISTORY, ORATORY, PHILOSOPHY. and latest intellectual creation—philosophy. The brief consideration we can give to this can, of course, only serve to note its position in the history of civilization, as indeed our previous sketches of art and literature have this purpose alone. Greek philosophy is, in one aspect, an act of liberation—the liberation of the Hellenic mind from the national religious traditions that had become no longer tenable ; and this is the point of its origin. But once free, this philosophy seeks beyond itself for the truth respecting God and the world, to take the place of the discredited creed. But it became more than this— more than a mere substitute for religious faith; it transcended the limits of pure thought, and entered into practical life. Its aims were to make men better, to give systems for the govern- ment of states, and their guidance according to its own principles and spirit. If it failed in this attempt, it still went far beyond the bounds of an esoteric knowledge, and became a common property of intelligence and a necessity for all who occupied themselves with public affairs. As before intimated, the Ionians were the first who made a complete rupture with tradi- tion. Unfettered by theological doctrines, they sought to explain the world of phenomena in natural ways; not experimentally, it is true, for this mode of investigation was never at home in Greece. They sought for a primordial cause and a primordial matter out of which the universe might have arisen. Thales supposed this matter to have been water ; Anaximenes, the air; while Anaximander held that there was an indefinite and infinite primeval substance, from which the universe had sprung. These, however, were speculations rather than explanations ; and to some they appeared too material, and these demanded a higher and spiritual cause. This cause the Pythagoreans found in Number, correctly perceiving that harmonious relations, which may be reduced to numerical expression, underlie all things. But the Pythagoreans failed to explain how from Number the world of phenomena arose. To this world of transitoriness the Eleatics opposed an endless Being; but both—the world and Being—remained distinct. Herakleitos denied Being, and admitted only an endless Becoming and Perishing, a perpetual flux ; while Empedokles maintained the co-existence of Being and Becoming. Anaxagoras, finally, abandoning the physical path, placed, outside of the world of phenomena, a spirit, an orderer of the universe; but this orderer he could never fit into the order; he remained a deus ex machina, called in to solve a difficulty, and then dismissed < Thus far all the attempts of the first philosophers at clearing up the mystery of the universe had failed. They had only led to the knowledge that what was sought had not been found. But they had also another result. Doubt had become alive; men’s minds grew restless and began to shake off the doctrines they had accepted. Already there were those who desired to construct everything in conformity with reason, the architecture of houses and the plans of cities, the dress of men and the constitutions of states. These were enthusiasts and theorists ; but some philosophers really took an active part in public life, such as Parmenides, who became the lawgiver of the state of Elea. Nay, the Pythagoreans ruled for a considerable time a number of Greek states of southern Italy, and ruled them wisely and nobly, in the path of moral improvement and elevation, until the opposite party overthrew this, in the best sense, aristocratic rule, and persecuted and banished the Pythagoreans. This was the end of philosophical experiments in practical government; experiments which remained experiments merely, and were only of local importance. But another fruit of the newly awakened philosophical studies had deeper influence upon both public and private life. This was the sophists, teachers of wisdom, as they called themselves, a class of philosophers, but a class that sprang out of negations and the failure of all attempts to solve the great mysteries. As no positive results had been attained, they 5 183 GREECE, drew the conclusion that all these studies were futile. Man alone, said Protagoras, is the measure of all things; that is, all their value and importance depend upon his estimation; and for him they are only what he holds or wishes them to be. This principle, brought to bear upon actual life, tended to bring religion, government, morality, everything, in question ; and this was the actual result. The sophists made their appearance in Athens about the time of Perikles, all coming as itinerant teachers from abroad. They came, it is true, not with the declared intent to overthrow received opinions and the established order of things, but as teachers of wisdom and eloquence. They whose duty it was to may also claim the sustain and guide the merit of having state. aroused much activi- It is true, the ty in scientific studies ereat mass, Ol, the in Athens. But the Athenians who still disintegrating action believed in the gods of their philosophical and held to ancient doctrines soon be- traditions and usages came apparent. As received the sophists it was especially the with great aversion ; young men of distine- but they had no tion and wealth that means with which to gathered about them combat them. From —their teachings be- the midst of them- ing expensive—their selves, or at least radical spirit soon from the realm of entered into public as philosophy, the cham- well as private life, pion had to come like a dissolving poi- who exposed their fu- son, The severance tility, and slew them of all links binding with their own weap- the present to the ons. This antagonist past ; unbelief, frivol- SOKRATE Bust in the Vatican. of the sophists was ity, and scorn became Sokrates. ct he fashion of those Uncomely of appearance, with a Silenusface, poor and of humble station, despis wealth and show, ng this man went about among the Athenians, yet was a man apart. He was a sculptor by profession, but worked little or not at all in his art; his only business was to learn and teach; though all his public duties, in peace and war, he discharged faultlessly. On the field he was the bravest and coolest soldier, and no one surpassed him in the endurance of toil, hunger, heat or cold. He contemned luxury, used only the simplest fare, but when he sat at a festive banquet played his part well, and was the last to leave the carouse, with head cool and gait as steady as ever. No one could boast of ever having overcome Sokrates, in battle, in drinking, or in discourse. Discourse was his forte, but not as the sophists and rhetoricians understood it. His discourse was talk, the art of conversation and dialectic. Starting with questions springing out of the simplest and most ordinary matters of life, he knew how to lead men imperceptibly 184 DEATH OF SOKRATES. PROSE LITERATURE: HISTORY, ORATORY, PHILOSOPHY. ong his path, and thus either with light irony convince them of their ignorance, or elicit thoughts of wisdom which had unconsciously slumbered within them. This was the Sokratic method, his ‘obstetric art” as he called it. The ideas which he thus evoked formed no special shilosophic system: he had none such and desired none. His aims were ethical rather than w yeculative ; and his object was to make men better and lead them to higher thir alia) ttain this end he first destroyed their empty conceits of wisdom, which he replaced with a faith n noble principles, in virtue, piety, morality, fidelity and immortality. He himself believed in me he gods, consulted the oracle, which declared him the wisest of the Greeks, and offered sacri- fices. What he taught, that he practised : doctrine and life in him were one. No just charge could be brought against him. But in his long life he had made many enemies. When he convinced any one, as often happened, of the hollowness of his pre- tended knowledge, and of his real ignorance, the man too often never forgave him. The mass of the people, firmly attached to old use and wont, regarded him as one of the sophistical innovators ; and as such Aristophanes brought him upon the stage in his Clouds. The demo- crats laid it to his charge that out of his school had come profligates like Alkibiades, and oligarchic tyrants like Kritias. When, after the expulsion of the thirty tyrants from Athens, calumny and persecution had full swing, Sokrates also was brought to trial before the Dikas- tery, by his enemies, who accused him of apostasy from the ancestral religion, of the intro- duction of new gods, and the corruption of youth. Conscious of his innocence and of his real desert, he despised the usual style of defence, which might have saved him, and was con- demned by a small majority. But when he declared that instead of the punishment of death, he rather deserved the highest civic reward, he only embittered his judges, and rendered his fate certain. He was willing to accept death as the seal of his life and his teachin and thus, seventy old (399 8. ¢.), he drained the cup of hemlock, calm and cheerful, in the midst of his disciples and friends, to whom he had just ¢ emonstrated the immortality of the soul. The disciples whom Sokrates had gathered about him from various parts of Greece were a numerous company. While he lived they formed a kind of sect, but at his death it fell to pieces. There was no one at the moment of sufficient influence and ability to hold them to- gether ; and as Sokrates had founded no system which could bind them ina spiritual union, each n life. Some adhered to his form went his own way according to his own character or osition 1 of instruction, and developed further the dialectic method, as did Eukleides the Megarian. Others held rather to the eudaimonistic side of his doctrine, and placed the happiness of the individual as the goal of philosophy ; but this goal they sought in diverse ways. Aristippos of Kyrene, the founder of the Kyrenaic school, was a man of the world, and looked upon nilosophy as the art of life. It should, he taught, provide for its disciples the highest possible p enjoyment; but he did not understand this enjoyment in the common material sense, but assumed the highest culture of mind as an essential part of it. Antisthenes, a rough and some- what morose man, followed the same object, but he sought happiness in the precisely opposite direction, in the complete renunciation of all worldliness, in voluntary poverty, in absolute ges, he founded the freedom from every necessity. Teaching in the gymnasium Kynosa school of the so-called Cynics, who thence took their name; though they partly merited the epithet of “cynic,” or “ dog-like,” from their habits of life. At least Antisthenes’ famous disciple, Diogenes of Sinope, called “the dog” (Kyon), carried renunciation so far that he lived in a great tub of clay, despising the vanities and deriding the folly of the world. All these carried out, each in his own way, but one side of the master’s teachings, and 185 GREECE. : scarcely any in a way that Sokrates would himself have approved. Of all the disciples the only one who comprehended the master entirely and accurately, and bore out his doctrines to completion, was the Athenian Plato, But he did not only bring all the Sokratic doctrines into one; he completed to a certain extent all precedent philosophy, taking from it its fruitful thoughts, and working all into his own. He was twenty years old when, as a young poet, he made the acquaintance of Sokrates, and thenceforth he never left him for nine years, until the master’s death. After this event, his thirst for knowledge drove him to travel; he had a long- ing for universal completeness—to inquire into everything and to know everything. Thus he went to Egypt, to Kyrene, where an eminent mathematician was working, to lower Italy, where he made friends with the Pythagoreans, and then to Sicily. After an absence of twelve years he returned, opened a philosophical school in the grove of the Academy, and conducted it for forty years, until his death. The philosophy of Plato had also the ethical purpose of elevating men, making them better and more perfect. He held that in every man dwelt an inspiration for a higher life, since the immortal soul, before it had been fettered to the body, had beheld the primordial types of all existence, and the memory of these, more or less distinct, never ceased to affect the soul, giving it its love of beauty, its longing for perfection, and striving toward the divine. Of all things of this material world Plato assumed that there were such primordial types, “ideas sting without it, perfect and eternal, such as the idea of Beauty, Goodness, Justice, Virtue; the highest idea being God, who as the individual soul had descended into ne world of materiality, ruling and ordering it. To become like these ideas, and so to attain a higher life, was the true vocation, as it was the inward impulse of man. But to attain this end the soul must be curbed and guided, and this was the task of philosophy, of dialectic, which purified men, led them from the low to the lofty, from the material and sensual to eS he spiritual, to virtue and to knowledge. Philosophy therefore was a necessity, and most of all for those who were to be teachers of men and leaders of the state. The state itself should be permeated with philosophy. Thus Plato drew up and committed to writing a complete theory of politics, and built up his Republic on rational principles. Indeed, in conjunction cuse, he made the attempt to realize his ideal of with the younger Dionysios, tyrant of Syr: a philosophical state; but life and philosophy were too widely divergent, and the human heart not pure enough nor free enough from passions to allow the success of this ideal scheme. 8 g I Plato preserved from his master not merely the tendency of his doctrines, but the I ) ) dialectic method, or instruction in the form of conversation. Like Sokrates, he followed the progression from the simple to the higher, letting one thought give birth to another; but he developed the dialogue to a literary form, a form of art, which thenceforth became permanent in literature and science. In another respect also he held fast to the ways of his master. Like him, pious, reverencing the mysteries and offering sacrifices, he sought to harmonize the results of his thought with the popular faith. Thus he not seldom uses religious phrases, especially when speaking of supersensual things; but in these cases the old poetic fire blazes up again, and thoughts and language take so high and bold a flight that it is hard to say how 5 far his meaning is literal and how far symbolic. Plato's reat disciple, Aristotle, cut loose entirely from both, the dialectic method as well as the language and the substance of popular belief. Here we find for the first time a philosophy completely clear of preconceived opinions, a freedom from every national tradition, and thus, in a historic point of view, the last achievement of Greek philosophy in the direction of liberation; but at the same time, a complete abandonment of Hellenism, and the 186 Sokrates, z, oO Bey 6 & ee & 6 ET OF AG BANQU Tioaie PROSE LITERATURE; HISTORY, ORATORY, PHILOSOPHY. beginning of a world-philosophy. Aristotle is the turning-point between Hellenism and cosmopolitanism. Aristotle was born 384 8. c, and was the son of a physician. When seventeen years old he came to Athens to attend the teachings of Plato, and remained with him twenty years, after which he became the tutor of Alexander the Great. When this monarch set out on his campaign against Persia, Aristotle returned to Athens and founded a new philosophical school, called the Peripatetic, because he was in the habit of walking about in the shady alleys (fere- patot) of the Lyceum with his disciples, while he instructed them. After the death of 322 n, c.) he died. Alexander a prosecution drove him from Athens, and shortly after ( Though long a pupil of Plato, Aristotle’s doctrine and method stood in striking oppo- sition to those of his master. He could never accept Plato’s doctrine of ideas, because it offered no connexion between these ideas and the reality, and because the facts of the real worl: found in them no explanation. He did not possess the poetic imagination of Plato, anc renounced entirely the poetic style of philosophising. Aristotle had a clear practical intellect, and was an acute observer and calm, cautious thinker, who moved step by step. So he fol- lowed a path the opposite of Plato's. He started with the special, individual, concrete anc tigation, arrived at general laws. He was firm instance, and following the road of calm inves g thus the forerunner and leader in that path of induction, the method by which at the present day scientific investigations lead to their results. Proceeding in this manner, he investigated and classified all branches of philosophy, anc in part, as for instance formal logic, placed them on the ground which they still hold. Clear- »s, he first made philosophy a genuine science, But he ing away all accidentals and disguis went far beyond the domain of pure philosophy. In the same manner he investigated rhetoric, poetry, politics, finance, and determined the nature and scope of each, But this, both in sub- stance and method, the unphilosophical side of his activity, was only half of the work of this antic intellect ; the other he employed—even more admirably, since here he lacked all predecessors—in the investigation of nature. He collected all the fruits of previous obser- vations: but he himself enriched to an immeasurable extent this treasure of knowledge by ed before him, and by the help of his means of a faculty of observation which none had posse pupil, Alexander the Great, who placed unlimited sums at his disposal, and employed thou- sands of men to collect and to work for him. Thus in a comparatively short time he was able to produce a great work of natural history, which thenceforth was the foundation of all studies in that department, though he himself never properly rose from the position of a thoughtful observer to that of an explorer, Nevertheless, he discovered so much that was new, and ounded so many new sciences, that he may be looked upon as a world-conqueror like his great supil, but the world he conquered was the world of knowledge. After Aristotle Greek philosophy produced no new s reached, and the creative genius had departed. Only a few branches, already entered upon, were tem; the summit had been carried further and altered to some extent. Thus, soon after Aristotle, two new schools were ounded at Athens, of which one, that of the Stoics, leaned rather toward the doctrines of the Cynics, while the other, that of the Epicureans, toward Aristippos and the Kyrenians. The ormer was founded by Zeno, who taught in the portico painted by Polygnotos and called the Stoa Poikile (whence the name of Stoic) and the latter by Epikouros, like Zeno a man of blame- ess life, whose name, however, later became unjustly associated with luxury and sensuality. 30th had the same aim in view; philosophy was for them a means of attaining a happy life, only, like Antisthenes and Aristippos, they had entirely different conceptions of happiness. 187 GREECE. For Zeno, happiness consisted in virtue, and virtue in a life in accordance with reasonable nature, in which mere pleasure was to be despised, and external goods were matters of indiffer- ence, Epikouros, however, considered pleasure as the principal element of a happy life, but this pleasure was not the slight momentary enjoyment, but a permanent condition of the soul. Thus the nature of all enjoyments and pleasures was to be well considered, as they might bring in their effects more annoyance than satisfaction. Epikouros indulged in the more refined pleasures, which the Stoics contemned; but he sought real happiness in that calmness of soul which should be the portion of the true sage, a calm which nothing can disturb, and which is unmoved by pain or death. The same aim was sought by a third school, the Skeptics or Doubters, as they called themselves. According to their opinion, truth was impossible of attainment. Man could know nothing with certainty ; nay, he could not be even certain that he knew nothing. But precisely in this impossibility of knowledge they saw the way to a happy life; for whosoever has attained this conviction is tormented no more by cares or ambitions ; in perfect equanimity he lives a life of calm and indifference. This extension into the domain of practical life is the characteristic of all philosophy after Aristotle, and thus it ceased to be an esoteric science. Plato had said that in his time the philosopher stood like an unarmed man, with neither friend nor helper, in the midst of wild beasts, Now, on the contrary, philosophy penetrated all circles of society ; the statesman, the general, the orator, the man of culture, all studied, practised, and cared about it. Philos- ophy became the fashion ; and while the great creative philosophers ceased, the schools of their successors flourished extensively. But something more than this happened. With Aristotle, as we have said, philosophy lost its national character and became cosmopolitan. In this character it pressed eastward into those Hellenic kingdoms founded by the successors of Alexander, and perhaps beyond their boundaries. Soon it travels westward also, and becomes a necessary element of culture at Rome, as it had been at Athens, Antioch, and Pergamon. With and through the Romans it then performed its part—and it is no small one—in the task of Greek culture to renew and to rule the classic world, and to strengthen it for centuries in its contest with Christianity. Bust in the Villa Albani at Rome. AL DAAC Yi) | LMU i, Ud jj Ld ARCH OF CONSTANTINE, ie @ Vines HAT is it in Rome that has always fascinated us with a power almost equal to that of Greece? It would seem as if Roman history should not compare in charm with the history of Hellas. We miss those genial and ami- able Hellenes, with whom our hearts, despite all their faults, still beat in sympathy. Rome, too, lacks those creative intellects that marked out the path of civiliza- tion, and wrought models for eternity; she lacks the original poetry, the naive freshness, the sunny cheerful- ness, even the inspiration which still, after a thousand years, kindles the hearts of men, 189 ROME. It must be confessed that a certain jejuneness characterises Roman history: it seems dominated by cold, pitiless common-sense, joined with a tough endurance ; but the common- sense rises to wisdom, and the endurance soars to grandeur and to heroism, Thence come the consistency and logical character of the history of Rome, This history was not made by Alexanders, who conquered the world at a blow: the empire of Rome advanced slowly, unceasingly, as if self-moved, with the irresistible force of a law of nature; and in like manner it declined. We are spectators at a drama which grows from a slight beginning to gigantic proportions, and closes with the most impressive and tragic catastrophe. This is the fascination of Roman history. But if not the individual men, the Romans as a people are not less interesting than the Greeks. They are ideals of manliness, and have virtues and vices that are all their own—virtues and vices that raised them to universal empire. And this empire produced circumstances and phenomena such as never elsewhere appeared in human history. r from Greek to Roman history we have g We must also not forget that in passi to cross that bridge which history itself has crossed. Roman civilization is only a continu- ation of that of Greece. What the small land of Hellas created, and Alexander carried to the east, the Romans bore to the west and north, Without the Hellenes there had been no Roman culture; without the Romans, no Romanic and no Teutonic civilization. MONUMENT OF THE HORATII AND CURIATII. BOOK I. HISTORY OF THE STATE, ie TIME OF THE REPUBLIC. O dominating is the position of the Italian peninsula, and so great its natural advantages, that we may say that if Providence destined the Mediterranean with its bordering lands to become a universal empire, an empire which should gather into one focus all the rays of antique civilization, Italy alone could be the place of its origin, and to Italy alone could the supremacy belong. Placed at almost. an equal distance between the Straits of 191 ROME. east, the long peninsula running from Hercules on the west and the coast of Syria on the the sea almost in the middle. While to the north it is north to south seems to divide lations to whom the his- separated by the lofty chain of the Alps from those barbarian popu with its southern Sicilian extremity it almost reaches the tory of a later day was to belons Thus on the right and hes the southern limit of ancient culture. Solid and firmly braced by coast of Africa, and approac on the left it seems to claim as its own the mastery of the seas. the chain of the Apennines, not split up by short mountain ranges and lacerated with bays like Greece, it possesses the conditions of unity, a single, compact state. It has been gifted variety of productions, mountains of moderate height, smiling vales, broad, fertile Thus lavishly favoured, it has also received the dower of exquisite beauty of landscape ; not the stern sublimity which we see in the effects of nature’s 1 mountain-forms, in barren uninhabited deserts, in vith manifold v ylains, and a mild and genial climate. violences, in wild and granc peaks of ice and snow, and in yawning chasms; but that beauty of quiet charm, of soft and varied that beauty which lies in abundance and saturation sutlines, and forms in graceful motion ; “nt tint, in the Ith of hue from the richest depth to the most evanes yf colour, in the wea f the air, and in the magic of the light which floods and transfig sa, but as a seat of the transparency 0 ures the whole. Thus Italy appears destined not only to the mastery of the should choose it as an abode. And this was 1 long before left the 3€ highest culture, whenever a race nature lly gifted s yeoples nearly allied to the Greeks, who, it may be said, hac Asia, to take possession of the pe sninsula of the Apennines. They southern extremity done by these same home in eastern found inhabitants there before them ; but these were forced down into the by the new-comers, and little by little consumed, we may say, so that nothing was left but the name: we know not of what race they sprang nor whence they came. these kinsmen of the Greeks, whom we may call by the general name compact mass, but in two distinct stocks, the Latini and les, the Umbrians, The new-come of Italics, arrived at Italy not in one the Sabelli, of which the latter subdivided itself again into a number of peop Iscians, etc., the Latins being probably the first to arrive. Pressed on Sabines, Samnites, Vo that extensive tract on the left bank of the various sides, they kept a firm position in Latium, Tiber to southward of its mouth. The Sabellian peoples, the + Samnites at their head, fixed s in the mountains, and hence sent out their young population—the UG cravetetel their residence’ to make conquests and settlements in the surrounding plains. did not remain the sole inhabitants of the fair and inviting From the north and north- springs ” But the Italic races peninsula. From two quarters came competitors and sharers. arian unknown race of many names, Etruscans, Tuscans, Tyrrheni, Rhaeti, or east came a bar out, has ever remained, as to its Rasena, which, much as it has been spoken of and inquired a sressed back the Italics, and fixed Adriatic to the origin, affinities, and speech, an unsolved riddle. This race the northern Apennines, reaching from sea to sea, from the itself astride In contact with the from the mouth of the Po to the mouth of the Arno. Tyrrhene gulf, scans themselves became a seafaring people, Greeks, a commercial and colonizing race, the Etru equally devoted to traffic and to piracy, and established a civilization which still presents many But they were unable to re tain the habitations they had acquired. sles of Keltic race burst through enigmas. At a time when in Greece we find clear and substantial history, certain peo among the Italic peoples. In times of great “The ver sacrum [sacred spring] was a religious custom But when it seemed a cruel danger they vowed to sac rifice all living creatures born during the next spring. ind girls, they reared these to¢ idult age, and then, veiling their faces, sent them rhing to slay innocent bo 4eyond their frontie s.’ Festus, De Verb. Signif. TR. 192 ROMULUS AND REMUS, TIME OF THE REPUBLIC. ne Alps, occupied the broad plain on both sides of the Po, and thrust back the Etruscans entirely from the Adriatic, so that there was only left them the land now called Tuscany, from the mouth of the Arno to that of the Tiber. This was what happened in the north. On re south the Greek colonies, which perpetually grew in numbers, and ever pressed northward, sut off the Italic peoples from the sea, and at length, as the Tuscans had done, extended from sea to sea, so that the land from them came to be called Magna Graecia—Great Greece. But if they forced the Italics back, and even in part brought them under their rule, they gave them in exchange, the art of writing, weights and measures, and many other furtherances of inter- course and arts of civilization. Such, broadly outlined, is the manner in which the populations of Italy had established themselves when Rome eme d from the darkness of its legendary prehistoric period, to enter upon its career of destiny. The town of the Latins, at first an open village, spreading itself e in time between hills of which the smallest and steepest served for the citadel or place of refus of danger, in the midst of a broad but not a level plain, by no means distinguished for y especially favoured by nature. But as Italy healthiness of climate—seemed very far from bein, occupied the centre of the future empire, so Rome lay in the centre of Italy, exactly in the position to extend its circles of conquests, one beyond the other, ever wider and wider. Placed on the left bank of the Tiber but afew leagues’ distance from its mouth, its ships could take part in commerce, while at the same time it was safe from sudden descents of pirates or hostile fleets. A border-city to Etruria, yet protected from it by the Tiber, it was at once open to friendly intercourse and secured from hostile attack. Thus the agricultural population, which formed the aristocratic nucleus, at an early date engaged in commerce and in war, both by sea and land. Of the report; but it has much to tell of the wars and feuds which accompany the history of Rome Alba at t of this first period, that of the kings, is, that Rome obtains the friendly relations with the neighbouring peoples tradition has but little to i from beginning to end. First we find Rome at war with the kindred Latin citie their head. The resul hegemony in a league of the Latin cities, and from a simple city has become the head of Latium. Then, in a period that begins with the foundation of the R spublic and lasts for several centuries, comes the second ring of expansion—the contest with the Italic peoples and the Etruscans that bordered Latium on the north. The process was a slow one. There was no great military genius to conquer their antagonists at a blow, and no statesman competent so to deal with the vanquished that they should not perpetually renew the struggle or victory, freedom, and independence. Twice, in the earlier part of this period, Rome tottered on the brink of ruin; once when she succumbed to the Etruscan Porsena, and again , Rome. With these exceptions, Rome, in this period of her history, never concluded a peace after a defeat. when she was taken by the Gauls; but storms could only bend, but never bree Towever great the powers of the enemies or rivals about her, however stubborn and undaunted the ever-renewed resistance, however threatening the combinations of her foes, still more stubborn, more enduring, more indomitable, showed itself the steel-like, never-wavering character of the g; Romans. At no time were they greater and their virtues more splendidly conspicuous than cians and Aequians first submitted, next Fidenae and Veii sank at this period. The Vol nbrians, Samnites, into the dust ; then, in a wider circle, and after long contests, the Sabines, U1 and all Etruria were forced to acknowledge Rome's supremacy; and when, after these, the Greek cities fell, the whole of Italy, except the Gallic north, was under Roman rule. This was in 266 B. c., or 488 years from the foundation of the city. Five centuries had carried Rome thus far on the path of her destiny. . ROME. Thus far—for in this continuous, if slow advance, it had been impossible for Rome to pause. Every war brought:new enemies and gave rise to ne had brought a new antagonist upon Italian soil. In Pyrrt w complications. The latest wars hos the Romans had encountered the Graeco-Macedonian strategy; and it was only by what they learned from this bold adven- turer, that they were able to overcome him. Then there arose beyond Italy, in Carthage, a mightier adversary, fully their match, who summoned them into Africa and Spain. Carthage at this time had undisputec of the Mediterranean : to cope with her, Rome herself had tol fleets after fleets, as storms or the enemy destroyed them ; the first apple of discord that brought on the war, to Sardin ong and terrible wars, such as Rome had never before waged, were needed to humble her mighty foe, inex- naustible in resources, but torn by party strife and swayed by egot- ism; a third to annihi- ate her and sweep her from the earth. The irst war was carried on hesitatingly, and with less than Rome’s wonted energy, until exhaustion led to a moderately advantage- ous peace, in reality nothing more than a truce. Carthage found new resources and new EN armies in Spain, and, in the family of the country, he maintained the war in Italy for fifteen yee victory after victory until the enemy’s force was annihilat to suffer defeats like that of Cannae, such as they hac than once it was only the insufficiency of his own force that Rome. Nothing but the imminent peril of his native city ca was defeated at Zama, it was Carthage that yielded to Ron upon the sea, and beyond the sea, 1 supremacy over the western half yecome a maritime power; to build to transport her armies to Sicily, ia, to Spain and to Africa. Two Barcidae, great gen- erals to lead their armies to unheard-of triumphs. In Han- nibal, the son of Ham- ilear, the Romans found an antagonist of the first military gen- jus, such as her whole history can hardly match—scarcely one fit to rank by his side, At “once eat and magnanimous, wise and inventive, bold and prudent, he made the war support the war, finding his re- sources in the great- ness of his intellect and the strength of his character. Almost abandoned by his own himself unconquered, he won ed; the Romans were compelled never before known, and more kept Hannibal from the gates of ed him back to Africa. When he ne, not Hannibal to Scipio.. The invincible endurance of the Romans, never greater than when in adversity, was w hat won the victory. With Hannibal's overthrow, Carthage was lost. | ss and desperate struggle, and his end was terrib a hopele glorious (146 B, c.). But down to this time the time when Carthage yiel« earth—the Romans had on other sides also passed far beyond f he took up arms again, it was but e and tragic, but honourable and ed to Scipio and vanished from the the bounds of Italy. Between the first and second Punic wars falls the subjugation of the Ke 194 ts in Northern Italy, and with this TIME OF THE REPUBLIC. the subjection of the plain of the Po, which, as Ci ilpine Gaul, was not yet reckoned as a part of Italy. Soon thereafter the Illyrian wars led Roman fleets and armies across the Adriatic, and brought Rome into immediate contact with Greece and the jealous and vigilant Philip of Makedon. Spain fell as the prize of the second Punic war; but its maintenance cost wars ever renewed and ever more cruel and more sanguinary, until the independence of the Iberians was destroyed and the Spanish provinces pacified. In the end it was Roman civilization more than the Roman sword that made the Pyrenaean peninsula a real and permanent member of the Roman empire. The possession of Spain showed the necessity of a direct connexion by land with Italy, and thus southern Gaul became a Roman province. If we further reckon the Numidian kings as obedient allies, the circle of Roman rule in the western half of the Mediter- ranean was closed with the fall of Carthage. Almost at the same time a like result happened in the east. Between the second and third Punic wars, Makedonia, the native land of Alexander the Great, was conquered in two wars. Even before Alexander’s death, Roman armies had crossed the Hellespont, and in the Syrian war had conquered and rendered powerless for harm another king of Greek race, Antiochos of Sy A part of Asia Minor became a Roman province ; while in another part cities and provinces were obedient and submissive to the will of Rome. Out of a reverence for Hellenic intellect and culture, the senate and the Roman generals remained for a while patient observers of the internal dissensions of Greece, until at last they put an end to the confusion, and in the same year in which Carthage was destroyed, Greek liberty came to a tragic end with the destruction of Corinth. Thus with the humiliation of Syria and the impotence of Egypt, which placed itself under the protection of Rome, we may consider the empire of the Mediterranean, if yet far from complete, still as a closed ring. What remained of independence in this circuit remained so only by grace of the Romans. Piece by piece it fell to the empire, so soon as the time had come; and resistance, if any were offered, was merely an expiring convulsion. Thus fell Crete, a, Pontus, and Armenia. If the Numidia, the kingdom of the murdered Jug irtha, thus Sy Pontic kingdom offered in repeated wars a long and apparently dangerous resistance, the cause lay less in the greatness and might of Mithradates—who both for good and for evil was the ideal of an Asiatic despot of an unusually potent and interesting type—than in the circum- stances of Rome herself, who with her growing greatness saw the fall of her pristine virtues approaching, and was torn by civil war. For in the meanwhile great changes had come to pass with Rome and the Romans. Rome had long before expanded beyond her ancient pomoerium, and the city of the seven hills had become a cosmopolitan city, with all the attractions of its rich and manifold life, but also with its vices and its perils. Out of the Quirite who in peace tilled the soil, and in war buckled on the sword, had wn a erand seigneur with an unpaid crowd clamouring for bread around him. Political parties had changed their ground and followed new aims ; and new classes and new distinctions had arisen. As early as the time of the kir , two orders of society are seen side by side, the order of the fully-qualified citizens, the families, or patricians, the hereditary owners of the Roman land, and the order of plebeians, the clients of these families, to whom the right to inhabit vernment was and possess land was conceded, and protection given, but all share in the denied. For this plebeian order Rome was a city of easy access, and reception into it was readily allowed. Thus the great populace or Alebs grew, especially when, after successful wars, the populations of conquered cities were transplanted, totally or partially, to Rome. As the 195 ROME. plebs thus grew, soon outnumbering the patricians, it became to the old families a dan- gerous rival, perpetually striving for the acquisition of full civic rights, for equality and fusion with their order, This is the great struggle which for centuries fills the domestic history of Rome with unceasing contention. External wars, the occasional peril or distress of the state, might check r terminate it ; and it went on until the object it for a time, or throw it into abeyance, but ne was attained. Servius Tullius by his classification had made the plebs at least an integral part of the state, in return for which it was held to military service. The abolition of monarchy brought it but little good, for the two consuls, elected yearly, who took the place of the king, were chosen from the patricians, and the plebeians had no voice in the election. A few of the lower order might find places in the senate, but remained there without power or considera- tion. But only fifteen years after the expulsion of the kings the plebeians obtained in the ) | * tribunes, officers elected from their own body, a power which continually increased, furnished ] them with leaders and champions, and extorted for them one right after another. With this assistance, the universality of the Greek law was attained, and purely arbitrary rule was at an | end; the legality of marriages between patricians and plebeians was established, and finally the complete legal equality of both orders in the administration of the state was expressly declared by law, in the year 336 B. ©, 388 years after the foundation of the city. In this year was | elected the first plebeian consul, in 399 the first plebeian dictator ; and in 404, the first plebeian | censor, The internal conflict had thus lasted full four hundred years. 1 } The plebeians had obtained political equality in the state, and the organization was 4 completed. But immediately a new contest took the place of the old, or rather the old mat continued in new form and with achange of parties. In place of the patricians and plebeians, | | we have the rich and the poor, the well-born and the proletarians, the aristocrats and the fall | populace. A firaited number of patrician families, joined by others of plebeian origin, but government as their heritage, and only let those share grown wealthy, had seized upon the in it who belonged to their faction, whether deserving or not, while their combined power was employed to repress every xovas homo, or parvenu from the ranks of the people. All that their many victories and conquests brought, the rich booties, the conquered lands which were | sequestered to the state, the profitable administration of dependent provinces, all fell to the | ased in numbers, but at shares of the oféemates or governing families. The populace inc Bi 1 | the same time grew poorer and poorer, to general destitution. This evil dates back as far as the early days of this internal contest. The heavy load of debt which oppressed the plebeians was an important factor in it. They saw themselves compelled, in ever increasing numbers, to surrender their lands to their creditors, and either to fall into the position of dependents, or join the proletariat. The small landholders, the solid middle-class, the real strength of the people, disappeared, and the population was divided into rich and poor, the great landholders and capitalists on one hand, and on the other the hungry populace, which became the plaything and tool of the demagogues, and grew ripe for monarchy. The political question had become a social question as well. | This evil was early recognized, as was also the remedy, but the application of the remedy did not follow the diagnosis. The cure could only be found in the creation of a new middle class of landholders; and to create this was the aim of the first agrarian law of Spurius Cassius Viscellinus. The means were all at hand. He proposed (468 8. c.) the division of the public lands, which hitherto the patricians had enjoyed without possessing, among the needy cit ns, The patricians opposed this with all their power; Cassius was defeated and put to death asa | 196 TIME OF THE REPUBLIC. traitor; but the evil continued and increased, while henceforth the agrarian law, as a possible remedy, ever stood threatening in the background. a In the meantime Italy had been conquered, and the Roman municipal rule extended from the Po to the southern extremity of the peninsula. But the social evil had likewise spread over all Italy. In the numerous wars, always bloody, and sometimes to extermination, the number of freemen had been everywhere reduced, the middle class was impoverished and de- e estates stroyed, the peasant vanished before the great landholder. who cultivated his extensi by means of thousands of slaves, who again offered a new danger. It is true there were some outlets for the discontent, as in the occasional custom of sending discharged soldiers as colonists to the conquered countries; but this only postponed, but did not prevent, the crisis. In the time of highest glory of the Roman arms, when Spain had been sub- dued, Carthage de- stroyed, Greece, Make- donia and Asia Minor reduced to provinces, the danger appeared so very threatening, that Scipio Aemilianus yrayed to the gods, not in the usual style of sublic prayers, for the enlargement of terri- tory, but only for the »reservation of Rome. Yet no one came for- ward as a_ deliverer, for deliverance — in- volved a battle with Ten years later, ced younger brother, Caius ( ms supported by the senate, bold spirit did not shrin acute intellect showed hi two years of his tribunat himself as the master o the state and devoted themselves to its rescue. ivision of the public lands throughout Italy among the poorer citizens. 1e law, and to a great e he thorough carrying-ou ne solution of the socia the ruling power in the state. At length two young men_ ventured the ‘struggle, “two brothers from the ranks of the optimates, and belonging to one of the noblest fam- Tiberius and Caius Sempronius Gracchus. Through Xx their mother, Cornelia, they were grandsons of Scipio Africanus ; and their birth, family connexions, personal talents and early dis- tinction placed them THE ELDER SCIPIO, on the road to the highest honours; but they saw the peril of Tiberius, the elder brother, tribune of the seople in the year 134 B. G, first took up again the idea of an agrarian law, and proposed the His proposal became xtent was carried out; but in the violent resistance of the optimates he was slain, and fell the victim of his patriotism. lis avenger and the completer of his work arose in the person of his rsracchus. Caius, more of a statesman than his brother, perceived that tof the agrarian law was not to be attained ; and the cure of the evil, problem, was impossible, so long as the strength of the opposition, was unbroken—so long as Rome was ruled by an aristocracy. His k froma complete transformation of the constitution of the state; his m the means and the methods, and his energy and activity during the e seemed to have reached the goal. Caius for a time might look upon Rome, and perhaps visions of permanent power floated before his 107; ROME. spirit, which combined youthful audacity with manly wisdom. But the day of autocracy had not yet come. He also found his death in a riot, which his opponents had excited as their last means of resistance. What caused the fall of Caius Gracchus was also the solution of another question, which now became more and more serious: the question of granting citizenship to the Italian allies. Rome had extended her sway over the whole peninsula, and all its inhabitants were compelled to bear arms in her wars; but though they served in the same armies, it was not with equal rights nor with equal share in the conquered territories. Rome the city ruled alone ; and the Italian peoples, instead of working their way to equal rights, sank ever lower in oppres- sion and dependence. Ever louder and more urgent were their clamours for civic rights ; and Caius Gracchus was inclined to grant them these, trusting thus to strengthen his party. 3ut just here it was that he encountered opposition, for his party wished to keep all power and profit to themselves. Thus he fell, abandoned by the people at the critical moment, and it cost a year of war, streams of blood, and the almost entire desolation of Italy, before the right of citizenship was granted, and the assembly of citizens became the assembly of the state. Through the Gracchi the populace had become a compact popular party, ranked in opposition to the aristocrats with whom they had more than once measured themselves in arms, for already there had been two bloody riots and fighting in the streets. The ground of law had been abandoned, the path of revolution entered upon, and a peaceful solution was no longer possible. If the aristocracy conquered, the republic must fall to pieces; if the democracy, the oppressed proletariat, the end must be the rule of a single man. Of this Caius Gracchus himself had given a foreshadowing. The result was individual rule, and thus Rome and the empire of the world were saved. A wretched period followed the fall of the Gracchi. The popular party ked leaders, and the senate recovered its power, without itself having any powerful heads. The proletariat increasing; Italy’s prosperity declining; the administration in the hands of bad and venal men; servile revolts imminent ; the Mediterranean scoured by pirates, who cut off the access to in the Italy and Rome; a war in Numidia, disgracefully dragged out by corrupt genera north the threatening spectre of Germanic peoples, the Cimbri and Teutones, who defeated the Romans again and again, as they had never been defeated since Cannae; the Italian allies on the brink of revolt; a new enemy arising in the East in Mithradates—such was the condition of the Roman state in the ten years after the Gracchi. True, Jugurtha and Numidia were conquered at last, and the Germans, in two great battles, annihilated by Marius; but in Rome itself the internal dissension between the people and the optimates came again to a violent outbreak, and amid terrible slaughter the civil war dragged itself into the war with the allies, and to that with Pontus. With Marius, a great and victorious general, but half-mad with ambition and ferocity, the popular party thought the day was its own; but Sulla, who in cold calculation shed as much blood as Marius and his party in wild fury, snatched away its victory. Such days Rome had never yet seen; while all virtue and order were being drowned in blood, the city was fast ripening fora master. This master had been found in Sulla ; but Sulla was not the man to transform state and people and lead them into new paths. An aristocrat in his faults and his prejudices, he could never dissociate himself from his party. Possessed of autocratic power, and commissioned to order the state anew and restore peace, he did nothing more than to restore the rule of the optimates and the influence of the senate. This done, he voluntarily resigned his power, in the very midst of his undisputed supremacy 198 TIME OF THE REPUBLIC. -an enigma of history, of which the only solution can be psy chological—soon after to lay his wearied head to rest, and to be escorted to his tomb (78 8. c.), by all Italy, in triumphal proces- sion, as if he had been the most fortunate and best beloved of rulers, a very father of his country. With his death his work perished. The struggle of parties continued, with the balance of power swaying now to this side, now to that. The decision between the popular party and the optimates rested with a third power, which had before given the victory to Sulla—the army. As yet there was no standing army, and the legions were levied from the citizens and allies, and discharged at the close of the war. But now the wars never ceased; and soldiers were needed everywhere, in the interior as well as on the fronti¢ The legion too was changing its character. Formerly those only were taken as soldiers who had some property of their own, Rome became the price that at the close of a of the greatest and campaign they might most fortunate military eader, After Sulla’s death, Pompeius for a return to their posses- sions ; but Marius had taken every one who offered and was fit for ong time was Rome’s service. Thus the pro- chief general. From letariat made its way his youth fortune had into the arniy, and in- smiled upon him, and stead of a citizen-militia when as yet scarcely they had a professional twenty years of age, he had received the title of “the Great.” soldiery. But the sol- dier by profession, with his present and future A valiant and daring all depending upon his soldier, a cautious and general, necessarily prudent leader, he had supported him in polit- fought, and always suc- ical contests. Thus, cessfully, both under . . POMPEIUS THE GREAT. ~ while everything tended Sulla and alone. In to autocracy, it fol- Africa he had destroy- lowed naturally that ed the partisans of Marius, in Spain had carried on a long war with Sertorius and his successors; invested with unusual powers, he had in a few weeks swept the Mediterranean clear of the pirates who so long had been the torment of Rome: in Asia he had brought to a close the Pontic and Armenian wars; had added wide provinces to the republic, made kings and princes subject to the Roman sway, and introduced orderly government into those lands, in place of anarchy and confusion. He was now the first man in the whole republic. Those next to him were Cato, a narrow and rigid spirit, who clung to the wreck of the old republic ; Cicero, who, vain and timid, wavered from one party to another; Crassus, who as speculator and banker had amassed vast wealth, and with wealth power—men who beside Pompeius could only take the parts of assistants and agents. More than once Pompeius saw the crown at his feet, but he lacked the decision to take it up, and the fortunate moment passed. But while he hesitated, a rival arose who snatched the prize from his grasp. Caius Julius Caesar, sprung from one of the oldest and noblest families of Rome, whose lineage tradition traced back to Aeneas, had almost as a boy attracted the notice of Sulla, who saw 199 in him “more than one Marius.” ROME, An aristocrat by race and education, enriched with the finest culture Greece could bestow; learned in his own tongue and a consummate master in its use ; enjoying to the height the life of a young Roman noble ; he had with keen eye discerned that the future belonged to the popular party. Partly by ; raming, and partly by lavishness, he had incurred colossal debts; but he had also won the favour of the people and was their acknowledged leader. But the fame of Pompeius had long kept him in the shade ; and in the triumvirate which the latter had formed in conjunction with Caesar and Crassus, Ca only filled the second place. renown and the support of the legions. His proconsulate in Gaul brought him both the fame and the army. An unbroken series of victories over Helvetians, Germans, Gauls, Belgae, and Brit- ons, showed the popular leader, who had_ hitherto been judged rather un- iG warlike, to be the fir general of Rome and of the world; and his vet- eran and_ victorious le- gions who worshipped him, and were ready to follow wherever he should lead, made him the most dangerous foe of the Re- public. Even while ab- sent his fame and_ in- JULIUS CAESAR. though not without risk, the Pompeian legions in of Greece, at Dyrrhachion, Pompeius the Great, but it abandoned tune before the battle was lost, only to perish in Egypt, nds of an assassin. While Caesar in Egypt was suppressing a back on his army and his for forsaken and alone, by the ha bloody revolt, and perhaps dal Kleopatra, whose charms had twined serpentlike around the he: while, hastening to Asia Minor, by a glance during this time t a new force. But at Thapsos t was annihilation. Cato, character, gave the republic as wel Caesar now stood alone; no rival was to be seen. reign of the Caesars had begun. One absolute will alone could save the crumbling Roman the his old good fortune Spain seemed were r had To attain his aim needed, in addition to popular favour, military fluence increased at Rome, while the power and reputation of Pom- peius declined. Instinct- ively, as if terrified by the apparition of their great antagonist, Pompeius and the optimates, that is, the defenders of the republic, formed a coalition. The last contest, that had so long been postponed, had to be decided now. _ Italy, shamefully abandoned by the republicans on Cae- sar's rapid advance, fell easily into his hands; but it cost him much hard fig mies, who had to be fol- hting before his ene- lowed up into the proy- inces, had all been Promptly, On the soil crushed. subdued. once more to smile upon art O as himself the death-blow with his own hand (46 B. c him at Pharsalos—or rather he himself turned his ying away his time with that Greek-Oriental Circe, the queen yf the susceptible Roman ; he “came and saw” Pharnakes, and vanquished him as it were he republican leaders had escaped to Africa, and there assembled hey again fell before their great opponent, and this time the fall ast real representative of the old, austere, inflexible Roman The Republic was at an end, and the state, bring the confused world again to order, and guide it onward. 200 It was a Herculean task TIME OF THE REPUBLIG. to arrange, to reform, to re-cast the whole, morally and politically ; for all things had to be guided into new paths. And but few months were granted to Caesar to do all this, reckoning from the battle of Thapsos to his death. But in his mind all that was to be done seemed already long matured, and ready to be put into execution. In an incredibly short time measures were adopted which brought the vast confused state to order and converted it into an empire, or at least made all ready for the transformation. In reality Caesar grasped absolute ower, but not under the hated title of king, but under that of zperator, he who had the wmpertum, or right of command. The form of the republic he left standi ng, but the powers of office he concentred in uimself. The senate, once the cause of Rome’s great- ness, and then of her fall, was reduced to a power- ess corporation; and the »eople retained, only for appearance’ sake, an assent- ing voice in public meas- ures. The government of the provinces, now depend- proved and adorned; li braries founded ; the erro- neous computation of time rectified, and a new cal- endar introduced. To each and all the care of the great statesman extended A no disorder, no abuse, no necessity escaped his clear and penetrating _ intelli- > gence, and for all he found ent upon Caesar’s nod, was the needful help. organized anew; officia But he found it not abuses were reformed, or- for himself. With a mild- der brought into the chaos ness unexampled—in Rome of finance ; colonies planted at least—he had spared _ his with veteran soldiers; the BHENSOLIS) RUIN, opponents, and even striv- city made quiet and safe, en to make friends of foes. and at the same time im- But the partisans of the old republic were not at once to be got rid of, either by severity or kindness. The small Catos, the Brutuses and Cassiuses, still lived; but dark conspiracy took the place of open war, and the trusting Caesar fell, pierced by the daggers of assassins, at the foot of the statue of Pompeius (44 8. c.). The murderers’ steel slew a mild tyrant only to make room for many cruel ones. The result was not a restored republic, but a new civil war to decide upon the new master, who was to arise out of bloody battles and a cold-blooded butchery surpassing the worst atrocities of Marius and Sulla. At Phili opi fell the Epigonoi of the republic ; and then the two conquerors contended for the mastery ; Octavianus, Caesar's nephew and heir, who advanced his hereditary pretensions, and Antonius, Caesar's richly-gifted, but dissolute pupil and comrade in arms, and his successor in the affections of Kleopatra, but more deeply entangled in her snares than ever Caesar had been. Under these two the eastern and western halves of the empire faced each other in battle. The sea-fight off Actium (34 8. c.) < rain decided the victory for the west, and Octavianus, who called himself “the August,” was undisputed lord of the world. 201 AUGUSTUS AND LIVIA. 2) Fale ee VINDEERAORRES. IVE hundred years Providence allotted to Roman imperial rule ; a long time to die, if we regard this period only as the decline and dissolution of the great empire and of Greek civilization. True, it almost seems as if we were justified in so regarding it, for born in slaughter and civil war, it appears only able to maintain itself by war and slaughter, until, effete and enervated, it expired in misery and blood. And what kind of Romans, what kind of men, were they who not merely tolerated the madness of bloodthirsty tyrants like Caligula and Nero, Domitian and Commodus, 202 THE EMPERORS. but crouched in abject servility at their feet, and honoured as gods these monsters of the human race? Rome was a splendid capital, but peopled by a million of wretches, for the most part slaves, freedmen, or beggars, with afew masters gorged with wealth, now basking in the sun- shine of imperial favour, anon trembling at the scowl of the tyrant, or frightened into suicide by his frown, li \ eel AUGUSTUS. But Rome now was no longer the empire. From Rome, it is true, the world received its orders, but not its strength norits impulses. On the contrary, it was now the provinces from which Rome drew new life and her mysterious power of endurance. While the capital sank into servility and enervation, the provinces flourished in municipal freedom. Their fresh and vigorous population imbibed the Graeco-Roman civilization, and the more thoroughly the Spaniards, Gauls, Africans, Germans, Pannonians, Dacians became Latins, Romans or Greeks, the less disposed were they to revolt. When they were thus Latinized, they were no longer subjects, but partners in the empire, partakers of the glory, the honour, and the dominion. Soon it was the provinces that supplied the active spirits, the men of art and of letters; they fur- nished not only the legions but the commaiders, and from those commanders, emperors mighty to rule, ROME. Looked at in this light. we cannot regard the whole imperial time as a time of dissolution, especially when we remember that even under the abandoned emperors of the Julian line, the provinces were well administered, brilliant victories were won, and the extent of the empire satly enlarged. To this period of tyrants succeeded an era of excellent rulers, when virtue and wisdom filled the throne, and the welfare of the people was the only consideration ; an era which various philosophical historians are disposed to regard as the happiest in the history, not only of the empire, but of the human race. But immediately after these we must begin to date the real decline, when pretenders to the throne embroiled the whole empire in their contests, and, what we still more fatal, external foes gathered round, and piece by piece dismembered it, until at last it received the death-blow in its heart. Yet even in this period, the outworn anc dying empire showed the toughness of its fibre, and fought for its life for three long centuri From the storms of the civil wars, the butchery of the proscriptions, the downfall of the republic, Rome had found in Augustus a deliverer and a restorer. Octavianus, when he became Caesar and absolute master of the state, was no longer the triumvir who calmly and in col blood ordered or acquiesced in the slaughter of friends as well as foes. When he no longer hac a competitor, he was mild and forgiving, a just and provident ruler, occupied only with the wel- fare of the state. Following the ideas and the path of the great Caesar, he took the power o monarchy, but declined the name. The offices and names of the republic, with which the splendour and glory of Rome, the fame of countless victories, the greatness of the empire, were associated, he left undisturbed. Helived asa simple citizen, at the most only the first among his peers. But he held the reins of government with a firm hand ; and with coadjutors, such as the wise statesman Maecenas, and the experienced general Agrippa, he brought order into all the confusion, healed the wounds of civil war, and diffused new life. A standing army and a fleet were created or re-organized ; and the administration of the provinces so solidly estab- lished that even the misrule of his successors could not disorganize it. Commerce, industry, art, and literature were carefully fostered, and flourished as if in a golden age. Even peace, the rarest guest in all Rome’s history, seemed once more to smile upon the fortunate state. But it was but an appearance, for again gathered the threatening storm which was to burst from the German forests. The defeat of Lollius, and that far heavier blow, the fall of Varus with Rome's best legions in the Teutoberg forest (9 8. c.), the fruitless campaigns of Drusus, Tiberius and Germanicus, showed where Rome’s might found its limit, and pointed ominously to the quarter whence her overthrow was to come. The frontiers of the empire were pushed to the Danube, and even beyond the Rhine; but here they found their stay—thus far and no farther ! Despite all this, Augustus, in his declining years, considering what he had meant to do and what he had accomplished, might look with satisfaction on the condition of the empire. 3ut happiness was denied him, Just where he placed his affections and looked for lappiness, in the bosom of his own family, here it was that the avenging Nemesis of his earlier misdeeds ound him. Those to whom his heart clung, whom he meant to succeed him in the empire, he A saw perish by the crime of his own wife, the ambitious Livia, who wished to place upon the throne her own son by a former marriage, sprung of the stern Claudian line. His house was eft desolate ; and before he laid to rest a head crowned with so many laurels, and laden with so many crimes, he was compelled, bitterly against his will, to appoint that very step-son his successor, Thus (14 4. p.) Tiberius ascended the throne by a hereditary title for the first time undisputed, A hereditary monarchy seemed to have been founded; an evil one for Rome. 204 oe S AT CAPREAE. TIBERIL THE EMPERORS. Tiberius was past maturity when he came to empire ; he was then fifty-six years old. He hac studied in Rhodes the learning of the Greeks, he had experience and a liberal education, he had commanded the legions on the Rhine and the Danube with ability and success, and ordered and administered the provinces in a statesmanlike manner. The empire was justified in expecting in him an excellent ruler; and so he began his rule, modest in word and preten- sion ; wise and just in decision, firm and prudent in his administration of the provinces anc the protection of the frontiers. He might cajole the senate, and the senate might flatter him ; but the affa of the empire went on prosperously. But the Erinnyes did not sleep, and the dragon's teeth, once sown, were never to fail o their harvest in the Julian line. Tiberius had ascended the throne through crime, and through crime alone did he think that he could remain ure; and thus the family had to TIBERIUS, NERO. furnish fresh victims to his mistrust. With his growing suspicion, the hard, unrelenting, cruel nature of the Claudian race came more and more to the surface, and with it all the darker side of his character, which had repelled Augustus. Under the influence of his evil genius, Sejanus, murders and executions began once more to be the order of the day in Rome. The more these went on, the more the soul of the tyrant darkened ; solitary, brooding and gloomy he sought in vain in orgies to escape his evil thoughts and the tortures of a guilty conscience. He fled rom Rome and the world, and sequestered himself upon the rocky island Capreae, where he », with the blue waves around, in the midst of all rad built a palace. Here, under a smiling s splendours that earth could give, and ina landscape of matchless beauty which he could survey at a glance from his rocky height, here, apart from men and in the still lonelier solitude 5 of the heart, dwelt the Lord of the World: old and broken, impotent of enjoyment, he found iis only delight in the groans and anguish of his victims, until in his seventy-eighth year death reed him from himself and the world from him. Rome and the world were delivered from the tyrant, but the path of blood had been trodden ag iin, and a spell seemed to hold the steps of his successors in it. At first the new ruler seems inclined to virtue and justice, as if he were resolved to redress all his predecessor's aults ; but blood is like poison: a poison drunk in youth, which in time masters the whole man, reason takes flight, and the furies drag their victim into his predestined path. Thus it 4S 205 was for three successive r ROME. The people grow callous to blood, when they see it poured out like water. In the arena, in the contests of gladiators and wild beasts, a pleasure of which the Romans were never sa- tiated, the eye grew inur- ed to blood and death, and the ear to shrieks and dying groans: cru- elty and horror _ be- came their pastime and their delight. What was it then if the emperor took the lives of those who aroused his suspic- ion, or provoked his wrath, or even caught his eye? Whomsoever he fears, is doomed; whoever in word or in thought insults the maj- Se CLAUDIUS. esty of the emperor, is doomed; whoever by his wealth excites the cupid- ity of the prince or of his friends, is marked for death, imprisonment, or ile. The greed of the emperor multiplies the swarm of spies and_ in- formers; to avoid an ac- cusation innocent -men slew themselves as read- ily and freely as if it were a pleasure to be rid of life. For, indeed, life has no value when it is never certain for an hour. In the pleasures of the moment, in sensual excesses and orgies, men hastened to snatch what enjoyment they could, for they knew not but the next hour, the next moment, the me: of death might knock at the door, Such was the state of things in Rome under the last three Czsars of the Julian, or rather the Claudian line. Differ- ent as were the rul- ers, the circumstances were the same, Cali- gula, the only surviv- ing son of the brave and honored German- icus, ascended the throne when but a youth, but a youth fa- miliar with blood and horrors, for he had been the companion of Tiberius at Ca- tyrant, little less than a madman. sination put an end to his crimes, His uncle Claudius succeeded (41 A. p.) the THE YOUNGER AGRIPPINA, senger preae, Yet at first he showed a good dispo- sition, rescinded the atrocious law of trea- son, released the pris- oners, began the con- struction of usefu buildings, gave — lar- gesses to the people and the soldiery, anc regaled the populace with festivals, ban- quets, shows of gladi- ators, and combats o wild beasts. 3ut in all this festivity he himself became intox- icated; the lust of blood awoke, and soon the youthful monarch became a_ ferocious For a few years Rome endured this monster, until assas- brother of Germanicus, a learned man of narrow mind, weak in character, whose age—he was over fifty—should have taught him mod- 206 NERO’S (After the burning of Rome, Nero caused the priests, whom he accused of the crime, to be envelope _ TORCHES. ¢d in wrappers, and burned like torches. In the centre of the plate is Nero in his litter as a spectator.) THE EMPERORS. eration. Indeed, he began his rule, if weakly, still with good purposes, and introduced various useful measures. But soon he became a pliant tool in the hands of his freedmen, and especially in those of his young wife, Messalina, who a match for any of the Caesars in ferocity and sensuality, and in both most open anc shameless, until she fel a victim to the jealousy of her own husband. The Roman women o this period, and those of the court above all, were fully as depravec as the men. True there were still noble women, such as the elder Agrip- pina, the wife of Ger- manicus; but those whose vices and crimes figure in history are more numerous than those who have won a name for virtue. To these bad women also belonged the younger Agrippina, the mother of Nero, who in her ambition was resolved to place her son upon the throne. She became the wife o Claudius, and the rea ruler of Rome, anc when she had rid her- self of her husband by I to govern in the name oison, still continuec of her young son (54 Ace A)Y Aegr dipipuinn a VESPASIAN, TITUS. thought that she had provided well for Nero when she placed the wise Seneca at his side as tutor and adviser, and the brave and ex- perienced Burrhus at the head of military affairs. And in fact everything in the pro- vinces went on excel- lently. But soon her ambition and jealousy brought her into con- flict with these men; and, what was worse, Nero outgrew his moth- er’s authority. Mar- ried to Poppaea Sabina, previously the worth- less wife of the worth- less Otho, he plung- ed into debauchery, and soon murder and slaugh- ter began anew. Bur- rhus was put to death; Seneca was forced to kill himself, and Agrip- pina fell at last a vic- tim to repeated at- ina- tempts at assass tion, directed by her son, and arranged with a kind of cold-blooded refinement. But blood- shed was not enough to stifle the remorse of the matricide. He travelled about as an actor, a harp-player and singer, and as a charioteer, everywhere exhibiting his talents in public, and intoxicated with the servile or ironical applause of the crowd. Rome was devastated by fire, and the rumour ran that it was done by Nero’s command; but he laid the charge upon the Christians, whom he persecuted ; while he set himself to rebuild the city more splendidly than ever. For 207 ROME. himself he built a palace, ‘the Golden House,” of colossal dimensions, and the most extrava- gant and insane magnificence. Rome endured him for fourteen years, and then he too per- ished by the dagger in his own desperate hand. The rule of imperial maniacs had lasted more than fifty years. The world was sick for a just and wise ruler, and it was not yet unworthy of one. After the empire had gone through a short civil war under Otho, Galba, and Vitellius, three more or less unworthy or incapable pretenders, the legions in Syria raised to the imperial throne their general Vespasian, who was at that time (69 A. p.) on the point of crushing a revolt of the Jews. With Vespasian begins a new epoch, a period of vigour and conquest abroad, and _ of good and wise which usually government at produces security home; and _ this and stability, here, period lasted, not with a single ex- without interrup- ception, only tion, it is true, till placed upon the 180 A. D., Or more throne abnormal than a_ century. beings, moral Only at the be- monsters, even ginning and the more strangely end do we find unnatural than hereditary succes- those of the Julian sors to the em- line. pire ; in all other To the em- cases the emperor pire Vespasian adopts as his son was a second Au- and successor gustus, but with whomsoever he the refined and deems the worthi- aristocratic nature est. Under this of Octavianus system the em- lowered to a pop- pire prospered, GALBA, ular, not to say a while the _ princi- vulgar, type. The ple of legitimacy, time had under- gone a like change. But Vespasian healed the wounds of the empire, opened the prisons, re- called the exiles, checked corruption, improved the public morals, restored order to the finances, and reformed the slack discipline of the army. Frugal even to sordidness, he lived simply as a private citizen, in a villa open to all comers, instead of a palace. But he held the reins o government in a firm hand; to the senate he restored its freedom, and rendered harmless those virtuous but unpractical enthusiasts for the republic, the disciples of Cato, of whom a few still remained. But the philosophers were not to his taste, and he packed them all out o Rome. His reign lacked grace and dignity, but it was healthful for Rome, for Italy, and for the whole empire. After ten years of rule, he died a natural death, standing, as he thought it became an emperor to die, and with a jest—he loved a joke—upon his lips. “I think am turning to a god,” he said, alluding to the apotheosis of the Neros. He was succeeded by his son, Titus Flavius Vespasianus (79 A. p.), famed under the name of Titus as one of the best rulers whom the world has seen. From his rather wilc 208 THE EMPERORS. youth Rome had looked for a new Tiberius or Nero upon the throne; but he happily dis- appointed the expectation, and in the short period of two years, which was all that fate granted him, he won the title of “ Darling of the human race.” When taken away—as the suspicion ran, poisoned by his brother Domitian—he made room indeed for a second Tiberius, at once less intelligent and more repulsive than the first. Yet even Domitian began with an attempt, or the pretence of an attempt, to govern with virtue and justice; but the path of blood, once trodden, drew him ir sistibly on. By nature malicious, low, suspicious and ) ) I cruel, he retired into inaccessible solitude, from which he despatched his orders of death. But when he was about to strike those who stood nearest to him, they were beforehand with him. The sen- A Spaniard by ate then (96 a. birth—Rome and p.) raised to the Italy no longer vacant throne a produced such brave but old sons he had man, Cocceius made his own Nerva, whose way; and when he best and worthi- succeeded to the est action was throne he was in the adoption of command of the eve, 1 egions on the (@SSi7 2. Rhine. What 9 / was such an em- Vespasian had peror as the em- 9egun, he contin- pire needed; o ued. He sought mature years, en- to give Italy new dowed with al ife by infusing virtues and al resh strength gifts; handsome drawn from the and manly, just yrOvinces, His and mild, wise humanity and TRAJAN, a . ‘: and brave, wel affection extend- tried both in coun- ed even to the ciland on the field. children, for whom he founded asylums. Literature and art, which had declined under the tyrants, began to flourish anew ; and the empire again produced great, if not classical, writers, both Latin and Greek. With astrong hand he defended the frontiers of the empire, and even enlarged them, reducing, by a series of hard-fought campaigns, Dacia, the land beyond the Danube, to a pro- cities, and constructi vince, and afterward making it Roman by establishing colonies, founding roads and bridges. A more dangerous enemy was threatening Rome in the Parthians, who jan tore from them Armenia, conquered their chief cities, and penetrated deeper into the ancient Persian empire than any Roman general before him. But were pressing westward, Tr: in this war he fell, His successor by adoption, Aelius Hadrianus, was not a man supremely endowed like Trajan, but he was experienced in war, a man of learning and a friend of art, an excellent ruler for a more peaceful time. Under him art and letters flourished. Reversing the custom of the Caesars of the Julian line, he seemed at first inclined to severity, but reason and clemency pre- 209 ROME. vailed, and soon the empire recognized the hand of a just ruler, In order to know and determine all personally, he travelled through the provinces like a pilgrim, on horseback or on foot, and among the rest visited Egypt, where he lost his favourite, the young and beautiful Antinous, who drowned himself in the Nile. No worse ruler succeeded, nor was there any interruption to good government. Under Antoninus Pius (138-161 A. p.), Hadrian’s adopted son, Rome and the empire saw peaceful and happy times, such as they had hardly yet known. Antoninus reigned with justice and benefi- cence, with wisdom and economy. He was truly a sage upon the throne, and not only a sage but a benefactor, who wished to make the world happier and better, as far as that might be pos- sible under such a state of affairs asthe Roman empire presented. To a certain extent it was possible, with the help of a new impulse, which under these emperors first comes forward as an important factor in civilization. Under their just and tolerant rule Christianity began to emerge from its humble obscurity, to extend itself and find friends and adherents in the highest circl even at the court and in the family of the emperor. Preaching a virtuous life, self-denial, the equality of all men before God, whether high or low, rich or poor, free or slave; preaching a doctrine of love, it could not fail to become a moral, before it became a political, power, and a ruling church. This influence, calming men’s minds, tempering passions, and diffusing love, is not difficult to recognize in the age of the Antonines. It was perhaps the happiest time of Chris ianity, and beyond question the happiest of the empire; but it was of but short duration. Antoninus Pius, the sage, had adopted as his successor another sage in Marcus Aurelius (161-180 a. p.), who, like himself, was a disciple of the Stoics and o Epiktetos. Vespasian had driven the philosophers from Rome, but in Marcus Aurelius a true philosopher sat upon the throne. He was without experience in war and statesmanship, but he regarded virtue alone as happiness, and vice as misery, and all that men accounted good fortune or things to be desired were to him matters of small account. Thus he thought, and thus he lived, and this would have been sufficient, even for an emperor, had his lot been cast in peace- ful times. But suddenly the dangers that had for awhile been sleeping, on the frontiers of the empire, awoke, more formidable than ever. In the east the Parthians were pressing hard upon Syria; from the north the Germans crossed the Danube, passed the Alps, and stood before Aquileia. A new impulse, a spirit of unrest, of wandering, of adventure and conquest, had entered the Germanic rz and the Marcomanni, Quadi, and other tribes had united, and were SP threatening as in the days of Marius. But the philosopher showed himself able to cope with dangers ; he dropped the pen which he could use so well, and drew the sword, and the great ) war with the Marcomanni, which he conducted to a victorious close, proved him a general and a hero. Unhappily Marcus Aurelius had a son, who succeeded him upon the throne. With Commodus (180-192 A. D.), whose chief pleasure lay in fighting as a gladiator in the circus, or rring arrows wild beasts or birds on the wing, amid the shouts of the of the empire, and themselves grown strong and expert in war, in campaigns either against Rome transfixing with his une populace, the golden age came to an end. Enemies without, detecting the weakness or under her eagles, now gave the empire no repose; one incompetency succeeded another upon the throne ; sometimes the praetorians made the emperor, sometimes the senate, and some- times the legions ; and he who was strongest for the moment, or offered the highest price, took the prize. As a rule, the best emperors were those chosen by the legions, for they were their own generals, and experienced in war ; those who succeeded by virtue of their birthright were the 210 THE EMPERORS. MARCUS AURELIUS, Equestrian statue in the Capitol. worst. To the former class belonged Septimius Severus, who only seated himself firmly on the throne after hard fighting with several strong competitors. But he had the misfortune to have two sons. The murder of his brother raised Caracalla to the imperial purple, a worthy peer of Caligula and Nero. It was hereditary succession also that not long after placed Ele when a boy into all the licentiousness of the East ; and this he brought with him to Rome, where gabalus on the throne, an effeminate debauchee, whose Syrian priesthood had initiated him 211 ROME. he let women rule, and was himself ruled by women. His successor, Alexander Severus, who had been well brought up by his wise mother Mammaea, was a good emperor; too good indeed for his soldiers, who murdered him in the amp. Among the various pretenders who followed (235 A. p.), one, Maximinus, was a Thracian athlete ; and not long after a son of the desert, a former Bedouin chief, Philip the Arabian, became lord of the Roman world. Emperor followed emperor, hurrying by, fighting, conquering, murdering each other. Under Valerian the empire seemed to have obtained a short breathing-time, but still worse days suc- ceeded. Inthe East, in the place of the Parthians, had arisen a new Persian empire which aimed at restoring the old sovereignty of Cyrus and Darius. Valerian was taken prisoner by the ?ersian king, and the lord of the world had to hold the stirrup of the barbarian monarch, and yend his neck to be trodden on when his captor mounted his horse. In the empire pretenders to the throne arose on all sides. Rome was virtually without a ruler, German hosts under sold chiefs harried and plundered the provinces, and in the East, upon Roman soil, arose a new independent kingdom at Palmyra. But the strength of the empire was not yet exhausted, and the need of the times still »roduced leaders able to front the dangers and capable of ruling—such as Aurelianus, who drove the Alemanni again out of Italy, fortified Rome with strong walls, avenged Valerian on the ?ersians, and destroyed the kingdom of Palmyra, taking its queen Zenobia captive. Another was Aurelius Probus, who even succeeded in bringing back a share of prosperity to the de- vastated provinces on the frontier. But the man for the time arose in Diocletian. Born in Dalmatia, the son of a freed- man, the builder of his own fortunes, he defended the empire with great energy and skill. Nor 5 did he defend it merely, he re anized it. He did away with all the ancient relics of the republic, and even blotted out their very memories; consuls, tribunes, censors ceased to be, even in name. The emperor, inaccessible, or approached only with Asiatic servility, apparelled in silk and gold, secured by his splendour and his majesty from every familiarity, reigned alone with his ministers. The Roman senate, that had ruled the world, crowned and uncrowned kings, and made emperors, was degraded to the municipal council of the city. Rome ceased to be the imperial residence, and only the glory that lingered around her made her still seem the queen of the world. Diocletian recognized the fact that Rome stood too far from the frontiers, now alwe ’s threatened ; but he also perceived that no single man could now make head against all the troubles and dangers, the incessant storms, to which the empire was exposed. In Maxi- mianus he took a partner in rule, whom, like himself, he styled Augustus, and each Augustus had an associate called Caesar, Thus the government was divided into four parts, with the respective capitals at Milan, Treves, Sirmium in Pannonia, and Nikomedeia. All were tried and skilful soldiers, and so long as the superior authority of Diocletian preserved concord among them, the empire was well administered ; but the moment it ceased, discord and _ intes- tine war broke out. In the year 305 A. p., Diocletian, then at Nikomedeia, fell sick, and retired, weary of the throne, to private life. He fixed his residence at Salona in Dalmatia, where he had built a stately palace by the sea, and here the man who with steady hand had guided a distracted world, let the storms sweep by, and passed peaceful days in raising his vegetables and tending his flowers. And the storms raged in all their fury, from one side of the empire to the other. Augustus after Augustus, and Caesar after Caesar fell, until again but a single one was left, a cold, hard soul, to whose hands clung the blood of his kindred and his fellow-emperors, Con- stantine, called “the Great.” In the year 312 a. p. the battle at the Milvian bridge, under the 212 THE EMPERORS. walls of Rome, made him lord of the West ; twelve years later he overthrew his last rival in Asia Minor, and the empire again had but a single master. Constantine is in two ways an important figure in history. The centre of gravity of the empire, which still stretched from the Atlantic to the Euphrates, he transferred to the East, at the junction of Europe and Asia. As his capital he selected Byzantium, that city supremely happy in its site, at the meeting of two seas and two continents, and gave it the name of Con- stantinopolis, thus founding the Byzantine empire. He also gave to Christianity, which Diocletian had persecuted, civic rights proportioned to its extent. He had himself long been favourably inclined to this faith; and on his death-bed (337 A. b.) he became a Christian. Like Augus- osopher in his ways tus, Constantine had of thinking, but a much — unhappiness philosopher of the in his family, and not school of the Stoics, without his own despising the splen- veavy fault. The dours of the world and even the com- forts of life. While yet young and study- trouble continued in the contention of his sons, whom he had eft to rule the em- ing philosophy in yire jointly, until at Athens, he was called ast his nephew Ju- toashare in the gov- ian (361 a. D.) be- ernment, and had at came solitary ruler. once to take com- A remarkable man mand in the war 1inst the Aleman- was this Julian, whom history, that calls ni, who with combin- Constantine ‘‘ Great,” ed forces had invaded has stigmatized with Gaul more formid- the title of “ Apos- ably than ever. But, tates, | ine setatth® al like Marcus Aurelius heathen, a devout before, the young believer in the old philosopher showed gods, he was a phil- himself equal to the emergency, and suddenly displayed not only great energy but real military genius. With a tempest-like rush that reminds one of Alexander the Great, he swept all resistance before him and won the most complete and brilliant victory. When he had also triumphed over his asso- ciate in the empire, he ruled alone, wisely, justly, and temperately. His first act was to clear the court of its vast rabble of cooks, hair-dressers, valets, and other varieties of the lackey species. Instead of the imperial purple, he wore the philosophic cloak; and those who fleered at him he mocked in sarcastic pamphlets with gibes as keen as their own. He restored the worship of the ancient gods, and of Apollo especially, the Sun-god, the object of his peculiar adoration ; and if he id not persecute the Christians, he strove to check the growth of Christianity and bring it into disrepute. But even had he not beenon the point of invading the Persians with the same tempestuous ene¢ gy as the Alemanni, and had not an early death in battle carried him off, Christianity would still have gained the victory. His successor, the last great emperor, who also reigned alone, Theodosius, not only 13 ROME. reinstated Christianity in its rights, but established it as the religion of the state, and the day of the ancient gods was done. The oracles grew dumb, the temples were closed, destroyed, or transformed to Christian churches; the sacrifices ceased and the altar-fires died out ; even the sacred flame on the hearth of Vesta was extinguished. Not many years more, and the Roman state fell as the Roman gods had fallen. Hith- erto the Germans had attacked the empire only on its borders; or single warlike chiefs had traversed the provinces in rapid and bold forays, taking cities by sudden assault, laying them in ashes, and returning, laden with spoil, to their native lands. In this way the Germans had harried Asia Minor, Greece and its islands, Spain, and even Africa. But now it was whole »opulations that, forced from their homes by some violent shock, fell upon the empire, not present day, when we their pride, and displayed their grandeur and magnificence? To the pres y i i rki » site adrian’s villa at Tivoli, we are struck walk among the vast piles of ruins marking the site of Hadrian’s villa at ; with amazement. of soul, yearned Hadrian, tired of empire, tired of endless travel, sick in body, w at last for a life of peace. As Tiberius had found his Capreae, so Hadrian found the peluge he sought at Tibur. But an emperor of Rome, the lord of the world, could not condemn him- self to inactivity ; he must create life and activity in the silence of the forests and the hills ; 2 ¢ me Tere tap fhe Ra ey tea and he set about it in that grandiose style which characterized the race. He had preserves with whole herds of deer; excavated a pond, or rather a lake, in which mimic sea-fights were exhibited. But Hadrian was also an enthusiastic lover of art, had seen w hatever of noblest and fairest the world had to show, and their memories lived ever in his soul, especially the memories of his beloved Athens, which he had himself adorned with noble bui dings. These memories he wished to see and enjoy in their realities, when he lay sick in his palace- portico, or was borne about in his litter, So he had the master-pieces of Greek sculpture copied in marble and bronze and placed them in his palace and gardens. To what extent this was done, all our great museums bear witness, which count among their choicest possessions the treasures disinterred from Hadrian’s villa. But he copied not only the works of the sculptors, he erected again in the gardens of his villa the buildings that he lovec , the Prytane- ion, the Stoa Poikile, the Lyceum and the Academy of Athens, in which he mig y ) S$ ht continue to philosophize with his friends. He was even initiated into the mysteries of the Egyptian priest- 238 HADRIAN’S VILLA: AT TIVOLL THE HOUSE AND ITS FURNITURE; THE’ VILLA AND THE GARDEN. hood: of Egypt, where he had lost his beloved and beautiful Antinoos, who had given his life for him, he ever preserved a sweet, sad memory. So he built an Egyptian temple and adorned rardens he placed copies - 5 it with hundreds of statues in the Egyptian style. Indeed, in the of every style, and reminiscences of all that he had seen. FROM HADRIAN'S VIL! TIBUR. A mighty task, and a strange solace for a great, lordly, world-weary spirit, sick in body, and around whom the shadows of the tomb were fast closing in. Neither the Greek nor the Egyptian gods, whom he reverenced here, nor his own godhead, to which he erected altars, could accord him a long possession of this imperial resting-place. penn tat AND PERSONAL ORNAMENT. INSHIP between the Romans and the Greeks is shown not only by their speech but by their costume. The same character is in both : even the articles of apparel are the same, varied only by the taste and history of the two peoples. The garb of the Roman also is laid on, not drawn on; and an amplitude of rich folds is its distinguishing beauty. In its artistic character, therefore, it is a plastic costume like the Greek; not pictorial, as that of the later middle ages and the Renaissance, As with the Grecks, the dress consisted of two principal garments ; the one, the doga of the men and gad/a of the women, corresponds to the Greek himation, as the Zunica does to the chiton. The most ancient costume of the Romans resembled that of the Greeks more nearly than did that worn in the best days of the Republic; while, in imperial times, when Greek and Roman culture was united, the dress of the two peoples is almost or quite identical. When the Byzantine empire was founded, dividing the empire between the east and west, the dress also separated into the Byzantine and the Latin styles, which thenceforth went their several ways. a ee a ~ ——ee cecnemenimainensi en ree perre —rm a ee is — The toga, the Roman national dress, was first a mantle of moderate size, like the hima- Lo V4 ee 240 DRESS AND PERSONAL ORNAMENT. tion. But as with all their victories and conquests the Roman pride grew, when the czuzs Romanus saw the world at his feet, then the toga, the distinctive garb of the Roman citizen, took wider dimensions and a statelier form. It was made ampler in mass, richer in fold, more artistic in its adjustment, and more imposing in its whole appearance. But when Roman citizenship was given to the whole world, and the importance of both the empire and the citizen began to decline, the toga became a festive array instead of a national costume, and, while its use was lessened, its dimensions were curtailed. The style of wearing the toga remained essentially the same through the thousand years of Roman history. It consisted originally of a long oblong piece of cloth, the end of ROMANS DR SED IN THE: TOGA. which was cast over the left shoulder, falling as low as the feet, while the other was drawn over the back, either above or below the right arm, and thrown back again over the left shoulder. Thus the whole person was enveloped, while the right arm was either covered or left free, at pleasure. This simple fashion, however, was too plain for the ostentation of later times. A piece of stuff, about sixteen feet long, and nearly semicircular, was then folded longitudinally, leaving one half longer than the other. This having been pressed into artistic folds by a servant overnight, by the aid of small pieces of wood, was put on as above described, and then the lower part, which fell from the left shoulder, was drawn somewhat out, and the szvas or pouch thus made was laid over that part (a#é0) which passed from right to left across the t. bree This sinus answered the purposes of a pocket. The whole arrangement presented an exceedingly rich mass of sweeping folds, especially over the breast ; and gave to the whole 241 POD es oe RPI nS al ROME. figure a dignified appearance far more imposing than that of the Greek in his simple hima- tion, as may easily be seen by comparison of the statues. The toga in this form was a robe of state, in significance as well as in appearance. Heavy, artistic, massive, carefully arranged, it necessitated deliberation and dignity in every movement. It was therefore no dress for the house, and was only worn pu blicly when the Roman wished to appear as a Roman and a citizen. When he returned home from the senate or the forum, he laid the toga aside. In the imperial time it was a part of the respect paid to the sovereign, that whoever approached him, whether to an audience, or as an invited guest, came wearing the toga. In the theatre and the circus, when the emperor took his place, there was a “dress circle ;” and all men of rank, who had, or wished to be thought to have, the entrée of the court, appeared here in the toga. In like manner the man of rank was honoured by his clients, who waited on him in the morning, each clad in the toga, were it only a cast-off garment of his own, which his bounty had bestowed. On all occasions where a modern gentleman ROMAN SHOES AND SANDALS, thinks it incumbent on him to appear in full-dress, the Roman of the imperial time wore the toga. In the course of time various lighter garments of different names were introduced, which took the place of the toga on other occasions than those mentioned above. Among these was the Aaenwla, a mantle with a hole to thrust the head through, which served as a pro- tection against dust and rain ; the /acerna, which was fastened with a brooch upon the shoulder, and the sagum, a short military cloak resembling the Greek chlamys, but shorter. The process of time brought many forms and many names into use, which appeared and disappeared, while the true Roman garb remained essentially the same throughout. The second Roman garment was the éwnzca, the house-dress, as we may call it, in contra- distinction to the toga. In the earliest historic times we find this tunic in the form of a shirt, which was drawn over the head and bound with a girdle. Originally this was open on the right side, like the chiton, and without sleeves ; later, sleeves were added, reaching to the elbow, and then to the wrist. In cold weather two or more tunics were worn ; and this in all weather was an ordinary precaution of the aged or infirm; Augustus in his old age wore three or four. The tunica also was adorned with the badge of rank; a broad purple stripe down the front marking the senatorial order, and two narrow stripes the equestrian. At home the tunic alone was worn; but when invited abroad the guest often put ona dress of ceremony lighter than the toga, called the syutheszs, a garment of elegant form, the exact shape of which has not come down to us. On such occasions handsome sandals were worn, fastened with straps over the foot, which were removed on going to table, and resumed 242 DRESS AND PERSONAL ORNAME. after the meal. Sandals of a more substantial sort were used on journeys; and soldiers on a march wore them studded with stout hobnails. But beside these the Romans had also real shoes (calceus), which were the proper wear with the toga; and these were of various colours, white, green, yellow, red, or black. There were also boots reaching to the knee, but these were not considered a Roman dress. In the times of the Republic the legs were sometimes covered hes were the garb of northern barbarians ; of the Gauls, or, with bands or swathings. Bre at least, a portion of them, and of the Dacians. Roman generals and officers that had been long in their country followed their example; but it was not allowed to wear these éraccae in Rome. Only in the last days of the empire, when Rome itself had grown un-Roman, did this barbaric costume become common. In the earliest times the Romans wore their hair and beard moderately long ; but during the whole time of Rome’s greatness, down to the reign of Hadrian, they shaved the beard, and g g ) cut the hair close. Romans of rank had a barber and hair-dresser among their slaves ; and those who were not so provided went to one of the numerous barber-shops. Of these there were plenty in all quarters of the city, and, as everywhere, they were the centres of all the gossip of the town, the marts and exchanges of news, and therefore frequented by many persons to chat and hear the news of the day. After Hadrian’s time beards came into fashion, as we may see from the busts of the emperors; but young dandies had, long before this, and even in Cicero’s day, worn a neat little beard, and curled their hair with curling-tongs so artistically that “they would rather have seen the state in revolution than their elegant coiffure disturbed.” They also wore wigs when their hair was scanty, dyed their locks when their natural hue was uncomely, and removed superfluous hairs with depilatories or plucked them out with tweezers. ed in all the arts of the toilette, were fragrant In later luxurious times, fops were well vers with perfumes, and studied graceful movements of all the limbs, like so many dancers. There rings too burdensome, and exchanged were some who in the hot season found their usual sea them for light summer-rings. ~The Roman ladies, of course, were at home in all the arts of personal adornment, and the luxuries of an over-refined life. The Roman matron wore, like the men, the tunic and mantle; but the form, and in part, the names of these garments, were different. The female costume comprised two tunics, one worn above the other, the under one shorter and reaching just below the knee, while the upper tunic, usually called s¢ola, fell in long, ample folds to the feet, and might be drawn up under the girdle, and fall in a pouch above it. Like the Greek chiton, and put on in a side, and fastened swith a brooch at the similar manner, the stola was open on the ri shoulder, At least, this seems to have been the normal style, though fashion and the course of time introduced many variations. Thus, we see the stola with half or whole sleeves; again, at the lower hem we find a border of a different colour, and sometimes embroidered, which was called zzs¢zfa, and a similar border, but narrower, also embroidered or decorated with gold, at the neck. When a Roman lady went abroad, she threw over the tunic or stola a garment corresponding to the men’s toga, and which was sometimes so called, though the usual term is palla, This palla was in form and in the mode of wearing similar to the toga ; that is, one end fell in front from the left shoulder, while the other, passing behind the back and over the right arm, was thrown back again over the left shoulder. Many variations occur, however ; the palla is brought over the head like a veil, or trails upon the ground, or is girt with a belt, like the stola, according to the taste and fancy of the wearer, or the prevailing mode. The most usual material of Roman dress, like that of the Greeks, was wool, the fabric 243 anne ri ROME. being coarser or finer, lighter or heavier, according to the wealth and rank of the wearer and the time of the year. Italy furnished a good part of the finest wool, though some was brought from or by way of Miletos. Linen was worn mostly for home-dress ; cotton was known through intercourse with the East, but seems never to have come into general use. Silk, on the other hand, in imperial times, was much admired and worn by the ladies, though it always remained an article of luxury or ostentation. There were silk-factories in Rome, in which the silk was carded from the cocoons and worked up, and silk-mercers, to whose stores the ladies resorted to select and purchase stuffs. At first goods were used only half of silk, the warp being of linen or wool, and men wore this kind alone until the reign of Elagabalus— who for the first time wore a robe entirely of silk. Women, however, had long been adorning themselves with this high- ly-prized fabric, especially with silken stolae. As silk was very costly, a pound of it being worth a pound of gold, the textures were woven ex- tremely thin, and even so gauzy as to be trans- parent, as Seneca tells us. “We see, hel says, “silken garments, if in- deed they can be called arments which afford neither protection to the Gacaaimianaiae ! i . ARS il body nor concealment to ee ROMAN MATRON, ri r ROMAN “MATRON. modesty.” Of this na- ture were those fabrics from the island Kos, so highly celebrated for their fineness and transparency, though it is by no means certain that these were of silk. From the earliest times the whole female dress was white, like the masculine toga. In its purity, in its ability to give full expression to beauty of form, and to fall into rich and noble folds, it well suited the Roman matron, with her calm and proud carriage, and air of nobility and dignity. But as luxury increased, and manners grew more loose, the female dress began to show colour and to receive figured designs, and in imperial times this was the prevailing fashion. It could not be otherwise after silk had come into use. The extraordinary aptitude of that material to take rich and splendid dyes must have produced a love of colour even if it had been wanting before. To the garments of plain colour, yellow, sky-blue, violet-blue, green, etc., such as we see on the frescoes of Pompeii, were added borders of gold or coloured embroidery g, or the whole stuff was embroidered in gold thread. or regular patterns produced by stamping, 244 DRESS AND PERSONAL ORNAMENT. Costliest of all were those dyed with the precious Tyrian purple, for there were various purples, as different in their prices as in their hues, from a pale violet-blue to the deepest amethyst. By law, none but magistrates could wear the Tyrian purple, and the emperor alone the purple toga; but where the means and the desire are both present, sumptuary laws have never been found effective. Though the purple toga remained the distinction of the emperor, whoever chose and could afford it decked himself in purple. Thus, so far as the materials were concerned, the Roman lady had everything requisite for a perfect and most elegant dress; but her toilette was never thought complete without a careful and ornamental coiffure. A fine suit of hair artistically dressed was considered a chief ornament of female beauty, and it was esteemed so highly that Apuleius tells us that a lady, COIFFURES OF ROMAN LADIES, no matter how splendidly attired in gold, jewels, or costly apparel, was not considered hand- some or well-dressed unless equal care had been bestowed upon her coiffure. In early times the hair was worn ina simple and natural fashion. Parted from the middle of the forehead, the masses of hair were carried back from the temples over the ears, and wound in a knot at the neck or on the crown, in the Greek style. This fashion, though with many artistic variations, long remained in vogue. Another, nearly allied to this, consisted in braiding the two divided masses, when the braids were used to form the knot, and, if long enough, were wound again round the head like a diadem. To these arrangements the Roman matron of early republican times added a veil, not to cover the face, but as a feminine orna- ment; it was attached to the knot of hair, and fell back over the neck and shoulders. Ata later day, when the arrangement of the hair was more artistic, and the wearer wished to display instead of concealing it, the veil went out of use and was only worn by pri te and brides, except at certain festivals, when it had a traditional or symbolic significance. But simple coiffures like these were too plain for the Roman ladies of the later days of the Republic, and far more for those of the Empire. | One change consisted in lengthening the 24, ROM. braids, and’so winding them about the head as to resemble a crown; frequently with a mass above the brow so artistically arranged as to have the form of a diadem, and with this a diadem of gold—the Greek sphendone—was often worn, as is seen on the head of the Juno Ludovisi, Others again discarded these old styles altogether, threw the hair into waves by the use of crimping-irons, and let it fall in rippling masses from the parting on either side ; or curled it into ringlets which clustered about the temples and neck; or ruffled it inten- tionally into a tangled mass all over the head, and then confined it with golden bands or anadems. All these styles, of which some are repres nted in the illustration, are seen in pictures, statues, and busts, especially of placement by another to suit the empresses. Hair-dressing the fashion. Some of these had become an art; and the busts have come down to our slave-girls entrusted with this times. important duty were instructed Fora long time auburn in it by professional teachers or golden hair was most es- The lady varied the fashion teemed; and this taste dates of her hair according to her back to the times when taste, on the ‘style of her the wars with Germanic na- beauty, knowing well that a tions brought many captive high coiffure was not suited to Germans of both sexes to a long, oval face, nor a low Rome. Hair of a natural one to a round face, beside blonde was rare among the other mysteries such as Ovid, Roman ladies; but they used an expert in all such matters, a kind of caustic pomade or has revealed in’ his Art of soap, in which ashes were an Love. But the general style ingredient, to give their dark was to a great extent gov- tresses the admired hue. The erned by the prevailing mode, application was not agreeable, which was usually set by the but they submitted to it with empress, and changed with her exemplary patience. The changing fancy. Thence came hair was first washed in lye, then rubbed with this dressing: the custom that the portrait busts of ladies were made so and exposed to the rays of JUNO LUDOVISI. as to allow the removal of the the sun, precisely as did the whole chevelure, and its re- Venetian dames in the six- teenth century. Even this was not always effectual, and then recourse was had to a peruke, the blonde hair for which was either obtained from female captives or imported ; a lively traffic being driven in this commodity on the shores of the Rhine and at Rome. Merchants, ay : : te ae both Romans and Jews—the latter of whom were numerous in the cities on the Rhine— travelled through the Teutonic tribes, buying up blonde and red hair. The peruke, however, was the Roman lady’s last. resource, w hen the defects of nature could be remedied in no other way. But she had other arts at command when the effects of a too luxurious life began to tell upon her beauty, or advancing age stole charm after charm away. She resisted to the last: concealed her wrinkles, helped her figure with judicious padding, and replaced lost teeth by artificial ones of ivory, fastened with gold. Her dress- 5 ing-case, which was often of considerable dimensions, contained pomades and perfumes of 246 DRESS AND PERSONAL ORNAMENT. various kinds, and a whole armament of boxes, phials, knives, tweezers, brushes, bodkins and scrapers, aturally, the toilette of a Roman lady was a long and troublesome affair, frequently tedious and painful to both mistress and maids; and especially when she had reached the years—and they came early—when all these arts were requisite. Well was it that no lover was present at these mysteries ; and indeed the sage Ovid warns the sex to let none of their cosmetic arts and devices be seen : TOILETTE OF A ROMAN LADY OF RANK. Alwa s beware that from your lover's eyes You keep concealed these toilette mysteries ; Though art assists, yet must that art be hid, Lest where it would invite it should forbid; For many things, when done, afford delight, Which yet, while doing, may offend the sight. The Roman lady needed for her toilette a whole bevy of maids, of whom each was a specialist, and had her peculiar skill and duty. In the evening, when she betook herself to 5 over her face, to render the repose, a cake of fine dough, kneaded with asses’ milk, was spread 1 skin elastic and soft, and preserve its delicate tint. Asses’ milk had a high reputation for its cosmetic powers, The empress Poppaea, Nero’s consort, was the first to bring it into vogue ; and when she travelled, she was accompanied by a drove of she-asses, that she might always 247 ROME. have a supply of fresh milk. In the morning this plaster of dough was dry ; and it was then slowly and carefully washed off with fresh milk. Then began the work of the #osmetaz, as these dressing-maids were called; for in Rome it was the fashion to give Greek names to evetything of this kind, as we moderns use French. The eyebrows were drawn with the pencil in fine arches, the lashes darkened, white and red laid upon the cheeks, the nails trimmed and polished, the hair oiled, perfumed, and the coiffure built up; then shoes of soft bright leather, or sandals with straps studded with pearls, were put on the feet, and finally the perfumed garments folded about the person. While all this was going on, a mirror was held before the lady's face that she might criticise the work as it proceeded. These mirrors, plates of polished metal, usually silver, richly ornamented in engraving or relief, and sometimes set with jewels, were the most elegant of all the apparatus of the toilette. Sometimes an admirer, FEMALE ORNAMENTS. who, unmindful of Ovid's warning, had obtained permission to be present at these mysteries, was allowed the privilege of holding the mirror. Last of all came the ornaments, those excepted which were attached during the arrange- ment of the hair, such as frontlets, diadems, pins, or strings of pearls. The Roman lady was fond of jewelry and trinkets ; perhaps an inheritance from the Etruscans, whose women went beyond all others in the way in which, from head to foot, and from shoulder to finger-tips, they were loaded, bestuck, and bedangled with golden pins, chains, rings, brooches and ear- rings. So also the Roman ladies decked their hair with ornaments, such as. circlets, pearls and long pins, to hold it in place ; nets of gold thread to confine it, and ribbons to tie itup. Like the Etruscan, she wore long pendant ear-rings, of pearls or wrought gold, which suited well with the erect and haughty poise of the head on its slender neck. She wore also necklaces, some fitting closely to the neck, and others hanging down upon the breast, perhaps ornamented with a dda or an amulet. On her arms and wrists she wore armlets and bracelets, hoops of gold closing with an ornamental clasp, or wrought in the likeness of serpents. Her 24s DRESS AND PERSONAL ORNAMENT. fingers were loaded with rings of gold; while the men, as a rule—the fops being of course an exception—only wore a seal-ring on the fourth finger of the left hand. This love of ornament the Greek artists gratified with works of exquisite skill and taste, such as have never since been surpassed, and which the Romans knew well how to appreciate. The Greeks knew how to adapt the design of an ornament to its use, so that it really adorned the wearer, enhancing her charms instead of detracting from them. They had the art of cover- ing the surface of the gold with minute granules, so as to give it a velvety effect ; and of work- ing it in delicate threads of filigree, of a fineness which no modern jeweller can match ; they adorned it with coloured enamels, or with tiny figures of exquisite workmanship; and, in a word, were inexhaustible in graceful inventions and desi In the later days of the Republic, nheritance from her grand- 5 and under the first centuries i of the Empire, they were ather, who in his proconsu- famous for their delicate ate in Asia had not neg- work, ected his opportunities. It and artistic lapida in both cameo and intaglio. consisted of emeralds and These engraved gems were earls, which at that time mostly set in rings, which yore the highest price. The the Romans greatly and diamond was less esteemed ; fe 5 justly admired. the art of cutting it so as to The Roman lady yring out its matchless bril- prized not only the artistic iancy being then unknown beauty, but also the ma- earls were brought in large terial value of her jew- quantities to Rome after the elry, and did not shrink conquest of the East; the from displaying a parure products of the Indian ocean that cost millions. The coming to Rome by way of empress Lollia Paulina, Alexandreia. The borders of consort of Caligula, ap- dresses were trimmed with peared at her betrothal yearls; and strings of pearls ceremony decked in jew- were wound around the elry valued at 40,000,000 neck and in the hair. Large sesterces, or $1,548,000 ; an and fine pearls were highly prized, and were used singly, or in clusters of two or three, as pendants to the ear-rings. Caesar paid for a single pearl, which he presented to a lady, the sum of 6,000,000 sesterces, or about $232,000. At these prices a Roman dame might wear the value of a considerable landed estate in her ears, and twine a handsome fortune around her neck, and if the whim took her, as it sometimes did, might crush the whole at a blow, or imitate Cleopatra, who dissolved a priceless pearl and drank it off. So now, the beauty, having been dressed, coz//ee, perfumed, and decked with jewels, might cast a final glance of approval at her mirror; the great work of art was accomplished, and she might allow herself to be seen, and receive the of an admiring world. Per- haps she is about to visit some female friend of high rank, to excite her envy by the superior elegance of her dress and magnificence of her jewelry, or perhaps to knit the threads of some political intrigue or dark conspiracy, for which the ladies of imperial Rome seem to have had a consuming passion. Or it may be she is going to visit the temple of Serapis, a deity par- ticularly fashionable with Roman ladies of rank ; or to celebrate at some aristocratic house the 249 mysteries of the Bona Dea, about the possibly because the male sex wa: take the air in one of the delightiu with beautiful gardens and _ parks, Fe of Rome, and to receive the homas delicate feet must never press the stood ready ; eig ht stalwart Capp vice, v waiting to bear their m ROME. roings-on at which the satirists are so extremely caustic ; s rigidly excluded. Perhaps, again, she is simply going to shady porticoes, whose long colonnades were surrounded bringing something of the charm and refreshment of the Ila into the very heart of the city; and where she is certain to meet the beauty and fashion e of friends and admirers. Whatever her destination, her hard basalt pavement of the streets. The curtained litter adocians, the race of slaves usually selected for this ser- istr s wherever she might order. Taking a fan of feathers in her hand, she moved to her conveyance with the calm and noble gait of a matron, and the stately carriage of a great lady, anc of perfume in the air as she passed reclining on soft cushions was borne away, leaving a waft along. THE ALDOBRANDINI WEDDING. 4, THE ROMAN WOMEN. ONOGAMY is the great social law which the Greeks and Romans gave to Christianity and Christianity has given to the modern world. Unlike the East, Greece as well as Rome snew but one lawful wife; and the Roman municipal law made monogamy imperative. During the thousand years of Rome’s history, the women passed through all stages, from he strictest purity of morals to license, and to the most ct abandoned dissoluteness; husbands and wives changed their vartners as they changed their garments, but from first to last the law restricting the single wife to the single husband remained unchanged. The Roman maiden was considered of nubile years at he age of twelve; and if seventeen found her still unmarried, cs ne was thought to have delayed too long. Asa rule it was n he parents of both parties who arranged the match; and ct when this was once settled, the girl might dedicate her toys and dolls to the goddesses that had watched over her rildhood. ° As the wedding drew near, great preparations went on in the bride’s house, and ample supplies of clothing, jewelry, and furniture were provided. On the wedding-day itself the houses of both bride and groom were gaily adorned ; bright hangings were suspended in the atrium, the walls decked with green boughs, the columns wreathed with garlands, and the cases 251 ROME. containing the effigies of ancestors opened, that they also might share in the general festivity. The bride’s mother dressed and adorned her, or at least personally superintended her toilette ; her hair was arranged according to the ancient custom, the white toga folded about her, anda scarlet veil fastened to her hair. When the kinsfolk and friends had assembled, bride and groom were led before the domestic altar by the fronuba, who joined their hands. They then offered a sacrifice, and after this followed the wedding banquet, which was usually given in the bride’s house. This over, the bride was conducted to the house of the bridegroom. In early times this took place in the evening; whence the custom continued of escorting the bridal procession with lighted torches, as it moved to the music of flutes and the singing of gay and jocose and accompanied by a crowd of spectators. On reaching her future home, the bride song: anointed the door-posts of the entrance with perfumed oil, wound woollen fillets about them, and was then lifted up and borne and only those of equal rank over the threshold, lest she had the proper connabcum—was : should stumble upon it, which conducted with a religious cere- would have been a bad omen. monial, at which ten witnesses On the next day a sacrifice were present to attest the re- offered by the newly wedded cital by the pair of certain pre- pair at the domestic altar closed scribed words, and to subscribe the ceremonies; and this was the contract ; but in the course the first act which the young of time these strict formulas wife performed in her character were relaxed. At last marriage of mistress of the house. became merely a matter of This was the most usual custom; and the fact that the form of wedding, but it was not woman had lived for a year the only one, nor indeed was with the man as his wife, was any such ceremony necessary. sufficient to legalize it. But | Many couples, who wished to marriages so lightly made were | avoid all these formalities, were as lightly severed. While it was 5 A 5 aT ee married quietly in the country. ne the boast of old Rome that for of her his- In ancient times the wedding ROMAN MBIDEN. five hundred year of a pair of patrician rank— tory no wedded pair had sepa- | | rated, in the latter years of the republic divorce became a matter of interest, of politics, or of eI caprice. Cicero divorced his wife Terentia, because he wanted a new marriage-portion ; Cato the younger, in other respects a man of even austere morals, repudiated his wife to | oblige a friend, and took her back again on the friend’s death. In the earlier years of the empire, wives and indeed husbands as well—were wedded and divorced just as fancy or interest dictated. A lady is mentioned who in five years had eight husbands. Another in her rst ' life had as many as twenty-three ; and her twenty-third husband had in her his twenty- wife. The marriage of priests alone, which was solemnized with all the antique ceremonial, remained at all times indissoluble; an evidence that even in days of low morality a feeling of the sanctity of the marriage tie still survived, The ancient strict marriage-rite, such as the patricians observed, placed the wife’s person } and property absolutely in the power of her husband. According to the old law, the head of ia) the family had unlimited power over all pertaining to it, even the power of life and death ; and } this also included the wife. But this authority was relaxed in the course of time, and the wife I} received rights of her own; and first her property, and then her person, were emancipated 252 PUPPET-PLAYER IN POMPEII, rT " ACN THE ROMAN WOMEN. from his control. She received the right to inherit, and to manage her own property; the husband had only a claim upon her marriage-portion, and that not unconditionally. It is true that a law was passed to check this increasing independence, and to bring, as Cato said, the women once more under masculine rule, as they had been in former times; but it was with- out effect; female independence and influence had gone too far, Indeed, before this, all the sumptuary laws to restrict female luxury in apparel and jewelry had proved ineffective. And those who in the first centuries of the republic recognized the right of their husbands even over their lives, in the last century were styled “mistresses of the masters of the world. The property of the first they had enjoyed women was usually man- consideration, respect and aged by agents, often influence. The fact that young lawyers, who car- legally the woman was de- ried on the lawsuits they pendent upon the man were pretty sure to have. had in no wise interfered It was not an uncommon with the respect in which case that the husband, en- she was held. Even in gaged in political or other the most ancient times ambitious schemes, found the matrona, the honoured himself — straitened for mother (as the Aatronus money, and borrowed was one who was hon- from his wife, who charged oured as a father) the him high interest, and domina, as she was ad- otherwise drove him with dressed, was respected rather a tight rein; nor and honoured as the lady could he interfere even of the house, the mistress though the handsome of the slaves and retain- agent—a well-known per- ers, the directress of all sonage as early as Ci- household affairs. Her cero’s time—became not position was very different only the friend, but the from that of the Athenian intimate of his wife. woman of historic times; In this way the she was free to come and MATRON, women gradually attained go at pleasure, might take emancipation ; but from part in her husband's life, and appear openly when and where she would, upon the street, in the circus and theatre, at entertainments and festivals, The only restrictions upon her freedom were those mposed by modesty, good-breeding, and care for her reputation. In the old times the Roman women had a high reputation for virtue and modesty, and the traditions go to prove that it was not undeserved. The perfect conception of purity, the seen in the tr tenderest feeling for female honour, i ic stories of Lucretia and Virginia, the one perishing by her own hand, the other slain by her own father, to avoid a life of dishonour. The vestal virgin, the highest priestess, is placed on high as a symbol, as a warden of unspotted virginal purity ; and a violation of this brought death without reprieve. Wherever the women *“Res uxoris agit.” Res aullas crispulus iste: Res non uxoris, res agit iste tuas Magtiat, V, 61. [TR.] 253 ROME. of the ancient time appear in history, it is for the good of the state, for the deliverance of their native land; as the Sabine women who make peace between their fathers and husbands, or the wife and mother of Coriolanus, who save Rome, though at fatal cost to their husband and son. Such were the Roman women of the ancient time; they had the virtues of mothers, of wives, of mistresses of the family ; they kept the household well ruled and in order, and con- trolled and directed hundreds of slaves; but the state and its welfare was more to them than the house and the family. Even in the time when old customs and virtues began to decline, when, after the fall of Carthage, the Romans saw nowhere their match in all the world, and the storm of civil war was gathering, even then, Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, the daughter of the great Scipio Africanus, was a bright example of the antique Roman virtue. With the noblest motives, for the welfare of the lower class, and, as he believed, for the advantage of the whole state, her. elder son had entered on that career which ended with the revolt in which he fell. To avenge his brother's death, the younger followed a similar course, more boldly and with wider views, and at the same time more dangerously. Cornelia was proud of her sons, as well she might be ; but neither her maternal pride nor the refined Greek education she had received in her father’s house prevented her from thinking and feeling asa Roman matron. “Is there to be no end of the madness in our house ?” she wrote to her son. ‘* What is the limit to be? Have we not cause enough for shame that we have plunged the state into seems nobler confusion? To me too nothing ind fairer than to take vengeance on an enemy when this can be done without bringing ruin on our own country. But when this cannot be, then far better that our enemies triumph, than that our country suffer.” And later times also, even the first century of the empire, when morality and honour had sunk to the lowest ebb, and men of the highest rank and of the noblest names, names illustrious for centuries, lay in abject servitude and with the most disgusting adulation at the feet of imperial madmen—even these times knew noble, brave, and virtuous women, worthy of the ancient Roman name. A Julia, Caesar's sister and Pompey’s wife, remained, while she lived, a bond of reconciliation and peace between the two great rivals for the lordship of the world. So Octavia, the fair and noble sister of Augustus, to whose lot it had fallen to be the serve peace and friendship between her brother and her husband. wife of Antony, strove to pr Cast off by Antony, she lived thenceforth only for her children, even after Augustus had attained supreme power ; and especially for the young Marcellus, the son of her first marriage, whom Augustus designed for his successor. And when he was cut off prematurely—a victim, we may well believe, of that evil spirit that desolated the house of Augustus, the empress _ivia—she refused all consolation; plunged in grief, she abandoned the court and passed her days in darkness and solitude, as if the very sight and hearing of men were hateful to her, until, after twelve years of a sorrow to which time had brought no alleviation, death came to her relief, Otherwise was it with the elder Agrippina, the grand-daughter of Augustus and wife of Germanicus. She too owed all her misfortunes to Livia and Tiberius, the death of ner husband and of the best of her children. But nothing could break the proud spirit of this true Roman woman. Haughty, and standing far above the vices of her race and time, with unflinching courage she rebuked Tiberius to his face, He banished her, cast her into prison, and at last starved her to death, and the senate extolled the mildness and humanity that had not caused her to be strangled, and her body exposed like that of the lowest criminal. There were other women again who could not forget the Republic, that free Rome whose memories had soon died out among the more servile men. It lived in the memory of 4 THE ROMAN WOMEN. Junia, sister of Marcus Brutus, the slayer of Caesar. When she died, aged and wealthy, sixty-three years after the battle of Philippi, she remembered in her will all Romans of eminence, the emperor alone she passed over in silence. History preserves the memory of the two Arri s, the elder and the younger, wives of Caecina Paetus and Thrasea Paetus, and of Fannia, the wife of Helvidius Priscus, who aroused the republican spirit of their husbands They were constant to them in exile and in death; to resist the tyrants Claudius and indeed, the elder Arria set an example of courage to her hesitating husband, plunging the “Paetus, it is not dagger first into her own breast, and handing it to him with the word painful.” But at the same time the great majority of the women were drifting with the general current, Selfishness had taken the place of patriotism, and shameful passion, ambition, AGRIPPINA, GERMANICUS. pleasure, even bloodthirstiness ruled the spirits of those women whose names appear in the later history. Love, pleasure, power, were the ruling passions of the Roman women in the last ) I § century of the Republic and the first of the empire; and ladies of the highest rank played the parts of hetairai or courtesans of the emancipated class. The republic had known the crime of poisoning a husband to make room for a son; but now secret murders in families were matters of common occurrence. The triumvirs had outraged nature in giving up their friends and kindred to slaughter in the proscriptions, and the unnatural. blood- guiltiness avenged itself on them or on their children. In all those political struggles and civil contests which preceded the empire, a host of women took active part, but their influence and activity were mostly kept in the background and behind the scenes, The reckless and dissolute Antony was the first to bring the sex publicly upon the stage of history. While he was yet Caesar’s lieutenant, when despatched to Rome to carry the news of the battle of Pharsalia, he carried with him on his triumphant journey through Italy the beautiful Cytheris, a woman of the worst reputation and of extraordinary artfulness. He aspired to the name of a second Bacchus, and like his patron- 255 ROME. m god he rode, wearing a crown, and accompanied by his mistress, in a chariot drawn by lions, and surrounded by a mad crowd of his boon-companions, through the cities an d towns that received him with rejoicings and festivities. Thus he moved from Brundisium to Rome, and in this guise at the head of his crew of revellers he entered the astonished capital. This escapade was but an expression of his scorn for the superannuatec Rome ; but a few years later, when tangled in the snares of Kleopatra, he stakec decencies of the lordship of the world against his love. In Kleopatra the east and the west were united. The last queen of pure Greek lineage, the sovereign of that land of strange lore, the ancient Egypt, she had grown up a Greek in education and refinement, but endowed with all t fascination of the glowing Orient. Beautiful of form and feature, splendid and in voluptuous arts and devices, gracious and intelligent in conversation, she had he serpentine inexhaustible nut to speak and the rulers of the world decisive battle of Actium ; lay at her feet. A fatal destiny seemed to drive grapple with t them all to Egypt and to a woman her. Pompey, hastening to her, fell by the assassin’s and Antony dagger; Caesar, caught in her net in Alexandreia, was der tied by fast nearing the same fate ; Eolbamdcweaiad Antony was drawn with irre- sistible might to this Circe away ;’ death and to his ruin; only Oc- that stood at tavianus, the fourth among mand, these lords of the world, a type of the cold, calculating like Kleopatr nature of the west, was in history ; bu proof against her fascina- tions. Antony and Kleo- MESSALINA. patra marshalled the East against the West in the succe! ished and cold, escaped her snares, but another woman was not less fateful to house, and to Rome. He took from Claudius Nero his wife Livia, and married had divorced his own consort, Scribonia ; and during his long reign she was a cr one world met in the death- he other, and ecided the contest. Kleopatra fled, + followed: “ His heart was to her rud- geen the strings. whole king- doms had they kissed was now all their com- No second woman ra appeared it in the in- fluence she exercised over the destinies of the world she had more than one r. Augustus, pol- him, to his her, after he afty traitress to him, and his match in cool calculation and subtle dissimulation. Full of ambition, she ruled the empire through the emperor, and the older he grew the more absolute was her influence over him. Solely bent on securing the succession for her own son by her first marriage, she removed from her path all the near kindred of Augustus, by poison, as the rumour ran, both then and afterwards, in the employment of which she was said She drove the emperor to banish his daughter Julia, the wife of Tiberius, wh to be expert. 0, it is true, led a life little becoming an imperial princess. At the close the aged emperor stood alone and bowed with grief in his desolate house ; all whom he loved had perished or were in misery, and he was forced to accept and acknowledge as his son and successor the man he hated, the dark and gloomy Tiberius, who loved no one and whom no one could love. The curse of the proscriptions had come home, and went on from emperor to emperor. Guilt brought forth guilt and ruin followed crime. 256 THE ROMAN WOMEN. We shall not undertake to enumerate all the empresses, their crimes and their fates, but will only mention those who stood pre-eminent in wickedness. The most licentious of all was Messalina, the wife of Clau- lows her is lost. Beautiful dius, and the type of that and horrible, with life and passion which mingles love death in her hands, who dared and crime as if the two were to resist her? But whoever inseparable. Ruling her yielded to her allurements, stupid husband as if he were or entered her embrace, his a child, she followed uncon- doom was sealed. trolled the bent of her incli- With Messalina it was nations, openly and in the fierce sensual love that drove streets, by night or by day, her from crime to crime, and with ladies of the high- and caught her at last in her own net; but with her suc- A pina, the unworthy daughter est rank and the noblest fa- milies as her companions. cessor, the younger rip- Men of all ranks were her overs ; high and low, sailors of a noble mother, it was actors, gladiators, and freed- the love of rule alone that men. She seems like one of with equal force urged her THE YOUNG NFRO, those fair witch-women of on the road of crime and ruin. egendary lore : whoever fol- She sought the empire for herself and her son Nero. “Let him kill me,” she s d, ‘“ provided he but reigns.” And he did both. She wrought as Livia had done for Tiberius, only more openly and more vassionately. First arranged, fell to pieces, she ruled Claudius, and 3ut neither did the fall Rome through him, of the heavy masts and then through her crush her, as had been young son, until, insti- hoped, nor the waves gated by Poppaea Sa- drown her ; she reached bina, he rid himself of the shore in safety, and his mother and her in- took refuge in a farm- convenient authority. house. Her son, hear- He had a ship built for ing of the failure of the purpose, and adorn- his ingenious device, ed with due magnifi- sent men who mur- cence, in which Agrip- dered her in bed ; nor pina was to take a did he even grant her pleasure-trip on the decent — burial. 3ut Gulf of Baiae. The sea was calm and when, only a few years later, his own career smooth, but midway in came to a bloody and the. voyage, the ship, miserable end, no pity- as had been pre- ing soul was found to pay the last rites to the matricide, save only his aged nurse. N lius. Posterity has reckoned up a heavy list of charges against her; she was guilty in her ext in evil repute to Messalina was the younger Faustina, the wife of Marcus Aure- 257 relations ROME. with Verus, and guilty of his death; guilty of complicity with Avidius Cassius, who plotted against her husband; and it has much to tell of her scandalous intrigues with mimes, fencers, sailors, and others of the very dregs of the populace. in her only the mother o So far posterity, which sees Commodus ; but her contemporaries bear a very different testimony. She was the companion of her husband in all his campaigns, and lived with him in the camp and in the field. a remarkable phenomeno bestowed emperor 1 privileges He loved her tenderly as a faithful wife, the mother of ten children—in itself 1 in marriage-hating and sterile imperial Rome, where the law and honours on the parents of even three children. When she died the was plunged in grief, and the senate sympathized with his loss. Divine honours were decreed anda temple erected to her; the city where she died received the name of Faustino- polis ; in coins were bearing with the attributes of a godde was set customar the thea was made the law that couples should place offerings before an- other statue of her in the Venus. tions of may hav their usual servile flattery, and res emperor explicab and reso. One of t of the hv prophesi surround not inco young i many places we are willing to be- her e ss ; a statue reported. up at her These ry place in autre, and it women, ruled betrothed temple of These ac- the senate e been only ruled, like the c put the love pect of the own persons. é ULIA DOMNA, are an in- _ e enigma, if sionate, full o of the East, in t tiful, ambitious, C Severus a race lieve that Faustina was such a woman as later writers have em- presses, as Roman only by virtue of their influence over their imperial husbands ; but with Septimius of Asiatic women came to the throne, who, as wives or mothers oi the: emperors, ueens heir Beau- Das- craft ution, they personally presided in the senate and controlled the destinies of the world. hem even created a female senate, over which also she presided, thus ruling both halves iman race at once. Severus had married Julia Domna, a Syrian, because it had been ed of her that she should ascend a throne. When she had reached this position, she ed herself with a court of scholars, philosophers, and artists. She was succeeded by her sister Julia Maesa, and the two daughters of the latter, Julia Soémis and Julia Mam- maea.° Soémis, the evil genius among them, at once priestess and courtesan, two. callings mpatible in Syria, was the mother of the monster Elagabalus, whom she initiated nto the Syrian priesthood. When Caracalla was murdered, she produced the young Elagabalus as his son, brought him from the temple, laid the purple upon his shoulders, presented him to the army, and in this way placed upon the imperial throne a half- grown corrupt priest, who was neither a soldier, nor an emperor's son, nor even a man. Under her sway Asiatic customs and morals, with Syrian priests, eunuchs, and courtesans, took possession of Rome; the emperor married a vestal, and everything that had been held as 258 “AULVAHL AHL AO AON THE ROMAN WOMEN. Roman and venerable was trampled under foot. Otherwise was it with Julia Mammaea. While not less ambitious than her sisters, she had learned the doctrines of Christianity from Origen, and amid all the corruptions of the court she pr ed her son untainted; and when Soémis perished under the indignation of the world, under Alexander Severus and Julia Mammaea happy days once more arose for the Roman empire. It was but a brief gleam o the sun through masses of gathering storm-cloud. But leaving the great ladies who played their parts, better or worse, on the stage o history, let us take a look at those Roman women whose actions were confined within the more restricted sphere of private life. Here also we find love, passion, ambition, or at east vanity, the ruling motives of their conduct. From the time when the republic negan to decline, were —_ contractec oets and_histori- and dissolved, the ans lost faith in fruitless efforts o emale virtue. legislation to coun- ‘very woman may teract the increas- xe won, Ovid tells ing celibacy and us, if only rightly childlessness, are attempted. Yet indisputable proo we know that then, of the rowing li- and under the first centiousness. emperors, there Love-affairs and in- were many excep- trigue were the tions, many true, chief occupation of noble, and con- the Roman women stant wives; but of that time ; and it still the instances sounds like irony we have cited of when we hear CARACALLA, the lightness with the declaration of which marriages Augustus, that he made the ladies of the imperial house spin and weave, and wear no garments but what their own hands had wrought. «It was but another hypocrisy of that accomplished hypocrite. For love-intrigues there were opportunities in plenty. The Roman women led a free ife ; they took part in all festivals and banquets; they appeared openly on the streets and »romenades, the ladies of fashion in their litters; they were to be met in the porticoes, but above all in the circus and the theatre. Here they flocked in crowds, so passionate was their ove for all spectacles, for the excitement of the combat, and also the personal interest in a avourite actor, dancer, or gladiator, for whom fierce partisanships arose ; and if he was hand- some or eminent for his skill, his love was sought by the proudest ladies of Rome. These games were a mere school of licentiousness, while the .bloody combats of beasts or men hardened their hearts, and bred that cruelty with which they could not only command but wit- ness the infliction of inhuman punishments on their slaves. As thronging ants through their small portals pour, Busied in heaping up their winter store ; As bees that swarm the meads in summer’s prime, Lured by the flowering herbs and scented thyme— 259 ROME. —thus flocked the women to the theatre and the shows, those of the humbler class on foot, and those of rank or fashion in their litters, while the most distinguished of all rode in light vehicles. All appeared in their richest and most elegant toilettes, for they came to be seen as well as to see. In the circus they sat promiscuously among the men, but at the theatre in the upper rows of seats, where the critical eye might scan them at leisure, and rove through a galaxy of beauty ; Rome shows so many maidens, and so fair, All the world’s beauty seems collected there. So there was no lack either of choice or of opportunity, and it was only necessary to make an advance, Ovid particularly recommends the theatre to the gallant, where the is even too plentiful. of those who sit be- “Take thy seat,” he hind her ; arrange her says in his Art of cushion ; take up her Love, “ beside the fair mantle if it falls; one, as close to her as place the stool under fas hou canst, for which her delicate feet, and the stretched cord fan her if she be too [dividing the seats| warm”—little atten- gives thee an excuse ; tions which are not g then begin a familiar altogether obsolete at conversation, for the present day. which the play affords But not all Ro- an easy opening; ap- ian women were so plaud whenever she easy a conquest. The applauds ; take care more witty and intel- that she is not incom- ligent preferred to moded by the knees have a whole court of adorers, who thronged about them, accompanied them on promenades or at watering- places such as Baiae, entertained them, and from whom now and then one was allowed to be present at the mysteries of the toilette. These were statesmen, popular leaders, men of letters, poets, soldiers old and young, men who had attained distinction or were on the road to it, mingled with crabbed philosophers, and curled and perfumed fops, who thus crowded to pay their court. Of course, to hold fast this throng of admirers, the lady must possess not only beauty but wit and education. But learned women were not greatly admired—a prejudice in which Rome was not singular then or since—and society even looked a ittle askance upon those ladies who were nothing if not critical, and were ready to discuss and pass Judgment in all companies on the last poem or lecture, the newest actor or singer Many of these ladies aspired to be poetesses, not without success, though their poems ave not proved immortal, nor was there any Sappho among them, emulous though they were of her fame. But one of these ladies at least made a poet of Sapphic glow and passion, oerhaps the solitary poet that Rome produced. For while the love which Horace and Tibullus felt for their too-easy fair ones never rose above the commonplace level, so also their oetry and that of the rest was but an elegant accomplishment of men of wit, taste, and refinement. But it was otherwise with Lesbia and Catullus. Lesbia, whose real name was Clodia, was a lady of high rank, of the renowned Claudian house, wife of the consul Meteilus 260 ‘d4IT NVWOU WOU ANAOS THE ROMAN WOMEN. Celer, and sister of that demagogue Clodius who abandoned his order and became a plebeian. A brilliant woman of Juno-like beauty, and with the large luminous eyes ascribed to that dess, which gained her from both friends and foes the Homeric epithet Bodpis, she had at om one time seen Cicero at her feet, who, brought into her company by his political associations with her husband, was so enchanted by her wit and her charms that he would have married her, if his high-spirited Terentia would have consented to a divorce, as she did years after. But at this time she held a tight rein over her eloquent and unsteadfast spouse, and forced him to break off an intimacy which afterwards turned to rancorous enmity. After Cicero, Valerius Catullus became a visitor at the house, then frequented by the most brilliant and most dis- tinguished men of Rome, on account of the attractions of its mistress. At this time Catullus had written verses, like other men of taste and education, such as translations, paraphrases, or imitations of the Greek poets; but his passion for Lesbia awakened in him a true poetic genius ; he found tones of the heart which were all his own; he found a language of passion unknown to the Roman poets, deep, true, and original, such as never had been uttered before. Now he might say : Let us, Lesbia mine, live on and love on What though crabbed old gentlemen should grumble, All their talk isnot wortha single penny Suns may set, it is true, and rise again, love, As for us, if but once our brief life setteth, One long night evermore is left to sleep through. Give me kisses, a thousand, then a hundred, Yet a thousand, and then a second hundred, Keep on adding a thousand, then a hundred ; Then, when many a thousand we have made up, Out with all of the score lest we skould know it, Or some churl of a fellow should begrudge us, When he learns that there are such shoals of kisses. But a true poet, who has tasted the joys of love, cannot hope to escape its pains. Lesbia was untrue to him. After the death of her husband she was drawn deeper into the vortex of political life, and in alliance with her reprobate brother, bestowed her favours on a succession of candidates. Catullus aw her degradation with pain: O Caelius, think—our Lesbia, once thy pride, Lesbia, that Lesbia whom Catullus prized More than himself and all the world beside, Now lavi In the dark alley or the common lane, The charms he loved, the love he sought to gain. shes on profligates despised, The proud Roman woman had hardly sunk so low as these verses imply, which express rather the indignant shame of the poet than the real facts; but he bore within him torturing memories of past happiness, and a wound that nothing could heal. Thus Catullus became the poet of love’s sorrows, of the heart's anguish and despair; the first poet of the romantic tone and feeling, which thus for the first time appeared in the antique world. In this case Lesbia was the giver and Catullus the receiver; but usually these brilliant and fascinating women owed all their intellectual attractions to the intercourse with intelligent and distinguished men. The young girl at her marriage had but little education and an unformed mind. She could read and write; with her mother or with tutors she had read the poets, and had diligently practised dancing and music. The dance had given her the proud 261 ROME. eraceful movements, and the stately walk which distinguished and noble carriage, the calm and g the Roman woman; and she had become sufficiently proficient in music to sing melodies of her own composition and accompany them on the harp. But other studies she had continued after martriz especially Greek, which Romans of rank learned to write and speak like their own tongue; and she loved to use it, or to interlard her Latin speech with Greek words, much as fashionable ladies of our own time sprinkle their discourse with French. If it then happened that the wife had a learned or highly-cultivated husband, whom she loved and honoured, she took a part in his studies and pursuits, and grew up by his side. To possess a wife thus capable of looking up to him, was the proud boast of the younger Pliny. “Every day,” so he writes to her aunt, “she proves herself worthy of her father, worthy of her grandfather, and heart. You can worthy of you. not imagine her She has a clear anxiety when I intel lisence, make a speech, charming —man- nor her joy when ners, and a great I have ended; tenderne for and she always me, the sign of has some one a virtuous char- commissioned to acter. She loves hurry home and knowledge ; and tell her what it is her eager- applause I re- ness to please me ceived, and how the case was de- cided. If I de- liver a_ public which has pro- duced this taste in her. My works are continually lecture, she con- in her hands ; she trives to get reads them con- some place be- ROMAN MARRIED PAIR. * * stantly and even ae hind a curtain, learns them by where she can hear how the audience praise me. She sings my vers and, instructed by love alone, accompanies her voice with the lyre. It is not mere youth and beauty,” he adds, “ that she loves in me, which fade day by day, but fame, which never perishes.” Under the empire the ladies for a while took a fancy to philosophy, which became the fashion when the philosopher Marcus Aurelius occupied the throne. As may be su pposed, their philosophical studies were not very profound. The philosopher was one personage of the court which the lady of fashion loved to gather about her ; but she often took him formally into her service as house-philosopher, with a regular salary, and sometimes a place at table. The philosopher could not live upon abstract ideas, anc there were so many of the trade that competition was sharp ; so he was glad to get a permanent situation with a great lady, even at the risk of an occasional conflict with her principles. These household sages took care to keep ;; and in their ostentatiously humble array, with on good terms with the family cooks and bak threadbare cloak and long grey beard, the insignia of their profession, they made a singular In and striking contrast to the elegant, exquisitely-dressec lady and her splendid surroundings. this contrast the house-philosopher was a sort of moral conscience in that gorgeous Vanity 262 THE ROMAN WOMEN. Fair in which the Roman lady lived. While her toilette was in progress, he might give her lessons in philosophy, or a lecture on virtue and self-denial, which she probably interrupted to order him to read and answer for her a billet-doux, or an invitation to a rendezvous. At table, if he was allowed to come to it, he was assigned the lowest place, or was served with spoiled dishes and sour wine which the other guests refused. If the lady went abroad, it was his duty to be in attendance; if she travelled, he had a place among: the servants, and took charge of LU AO nal HOUSE-PHILOSOPHER, her lap-dog. But he lived in the atmosphere of a great lady, and a ray of sunlight thus brightened his barren existence. Some of these ladies, however, studied philosophy in another spirit. The educated class had long lost all faith in the national religion, and in emptiness of heart and disquiet of conscience, many turned to philosophy for something to fill the void, and bring them hope or consolation. When this failed, they sought to strange faiths, especially those of the East, which had not only established themselves at Rome, but spread throughout the empire. Temples of Isis arose everywhere, and the Egyptian priests made innumerable proselytes. After the first century of the empire there was a revival of religious feeling, and a craving for some faith, especially among the women, whose credulous and enthusiastic nature always makes them the warmest proselytes of aay new gospel, and the most devoted disciples of any new apostle. They were attracted toward the Asiatic religions by their asceticism, mysticism, 262 203, Sa SOS Speen ROME. and mystery, and, falling under the influence of corrupt priests and priestesses, were drawn into that abyss of depravity which lurked behind these cults. But this craving for religion was a symptom of something good in itself. Other symptoms also appeared, signs that the time and the manners were on the brink of a great change. In the works of later writers we find lofty and pure conceptions of the marriage-tie, as the closest harmony of soul between the wife and the husband. ‘To love a wife while she lives,” says one, “ is happiness; to love her after death is a holy duty.” Sensibility, tenderness, tender solicitude for family and friends, had never characterized the Roman. Cicero’s letters show no trace of such feeling. But the letters of the younger Pliny have a trace of it; and those of Marcus Aurelius and his friend Fronto are so penetrated with it that at times they seem scarcely Roman. New emotions, new feelings, new love, are coming into existence, and men’s souls are getting ready for Christianity. In Christianity these blind cravings found full satisfaction—that Christianity which knit between high and low, rich and poor, slave and free, a single bond of love. We know but little certain of the relations of the Roman ladies to Christianity in the first two centuries of the empire, but we know at least that from the first the Christian apostles found their most zealous, most faithful, most devoted followers among the women, There is ground for think- ing that Christianity numbered its friends among the imperial ladies of the Flavian house ; and there is no doubt that while its influence spread, slowly and secretly, from the lower to sion of the female heart, and at last turned the the higher classes, so gradually it took poss Roman into the Christian woman. THE IMPROVISATOR. CATO AND PORCIA. DOUWIBS ILIKE Title 1s, 4 PPIUS CLAUDIUS CAECUS, a blind old man, ruled his house : four stalwart sons, five daughters, a vast family, a numer- ous clientage, stood ready to obey his orders; his slaves feared him, his children honoured him, and he was beloved by all: the antique manners and patriarchal rule governed the household. Such was the Roman family in the days of old. The head, the father of the family, was a king in his house, with the right of life and death over all belonging to him. This paternal authority was unlimited and unassailable while he lived ; neither age, nor blindness, nor even insanity, could impair it; and his- tory can point to instances enough where it was exercised in full force. The sons grew up in reverence of their father; even marriage and the establishment of families of their own did not emancipate them from his authority. The daughters were 265 ROME. released from it by marriage, but they then came under the authority of the head of the husband’s family. In the course of time the rigour of this rule was relaxed, or its exercise grew less frequent, but it was not abolished until the second century of the empire. Thus the whole Roman house was controlled by a single will: wife, children, slaves, who together constituted the /amzla, were accustomed to unconditional obedience. But as the pater familias was often absent, the authority then devolved upon his wife, the matrona, who ordered every- usually a slave chosen thing, and especially the for good character and education of the chil- steadiness, who was dren, whom she often often his tutor also. instructed herself, like As the knowledge of Cornelia, the mother Greek was universal of the Gracchi. Other- among Romans of the wise the boy, when he upper classes, a Greek S. had outgrown the nur- was usually selected for sery, was placed in Se as ne this office, and was charge of an attendant, called, as in Greece, a pedagogue. At one time Greek became even more fashionable than the mother tongue, and even the girls had Greek donmes. After the pedagogue came the schoolmaster. The schools were commonly private good repute, as the calling was usually the establishments, whose masters stood in no g of the im- last resort of those prince who had failed in perial house. Per- every other. On the sons of the better other hand, teach- class did not care ers of a higher or- to send their chil- der, the literati dren to the public and __rhetoricians, schools, where the might attain great morals were far wealth and rise from good, the sit- to high honours, uation often un- 5 especially if they healthy, and the had had the for- building ill-ventil- tune to conduct SCHOOL SCENE. ated, though not the education of unfrequently the in- struction, such as it was, was given on the roof, or even in the public street. The masters, de- als, were morose and brutal, and all discipline was spised and poorly paid, freedmen or provinci enforced by the rod. Thus many parents preferred to have the teacher give his lessons at the house, while some, like Aemilius Paulus, the conqueror of Makedonia, kept a Greek tutor in the family. Augustus engaged for his grandchildren, at a fixed salary, the best teacher that Rome had, Verrius Flaccus; who only accepted the position under the condition that he should be allowed to retain all his pupils, with whom the imperial princes were taught in common, Indeed, the emperors generally were not negligent in this respect. Agrip- pina chose the celebrated Seneca as tutor for the young Nero; Domitian, Quintilian for his sister's grandchildren; and Antoninus Pius, the stoic Apollonius for the young Marcus Aurelius. This haughty scholar, however, refused to enter the imperial palace; the pupils 266 DOMESTIC LIFE. must come to him; and so Marcus Aurelius, the successor to the throne, went daily, like any other boy, to his master’s house. At a later day Fronto became Marcus’ teacher and friend. Under these masters the boy learned the proper use and pronunciation of his mother- tongue ; he learned Greek, read the classic authors of both languages, the poets especially, much of whose works he learned by heart ; and practised elocution, an art of prime necessity for any one who proposed to enter the public service. Greek and Roman oratory was the only branch of learning for which the state ever provided instructors; and this was done under the empire. The familia, in the Roman sense of the word, included the slaves; but they were far from being members of the family in the modern sense. Slaves were a necessity for the ancient state; and without them, it could not possibly have existed. The prisoner of war is a slave, and the slave is the property of his master and may be sold. These are axioms in the polity of all master is a mas- ancient states ; ter in the most and in none absolute sense were they car- of the word, ried out with with unlimited more rigorous nowers of life severity than and death. Ifa among the Ro- slave ran away, mans. The ne was regarded hardness, the in- as a wild beast; exorability of and when caught the Roman char- he was branded, acter nowhere crucified, or shows itself bound hand and oot and exposed more repulsively than in their re- to the birds of lations to their ROMAN GIRLS. ywrey. Such a slaves. The ate befell thou- sands of those wretches whom desperation had driven to the so-called servile war. If a slave was a witness,he was examined by torture: if a slave killed his master, all his fellow-slaves were put to death. Pollio, a favourite of Augustus, for a trifling fault, threw a slave into his fishpond to feed his lampreys. ‘So many slaves, so many foes,” was a common saying ; and they were dealt with in this light. But in time the severity of these relations was relaxed in many ways; many a slave grew up with the children in the house and lived with them in a certain friendship; others by their diligence and fidelity acquired the confidence of their masters, and were treated with | amelioration of their condition was first introduced by the emperor consideration; but a le Hadrian, who restricted the use of torture, made the punishments less severe, even punished a matron for cruelty to her female slaves, and called in question the master’s right to put his asts of the Christians, masters and slaves met on slave to death, At this time, at the love the footing of brethren ; and this may have had an influence in improving their condition. In ancient times the Roman had but few slaves; but the many wars, the increase of property, and the advancing taste for luxury rapidly augmented their numbers. Even in the latter years of the republic the nobles counted their slaves by thousands, who were divided into 267 ROME. decuries under the command of decurions. Conquests brought in multitudes of slaves ; the whole populations of conquered cities, such as Numantia and Carthage, were sold into slavery; and dealers brought long trains of slaves from the barbarian nations, who used to sell their prisoners to the Romans. Thus a slave-trade grew up throughout the whole empire, whose ntral point and exchange, as we may call it, was the island Delos. In Rome and in all considerable cities, especially those of the coast, arose slave-markets, in which the inferior slaves were publicly offered for inspection and sale, while those of a better class were only shown to wealthier purchasers. The greater part of all these slaves were employed in agriculture or the mines; and thus the slaves fell into two great classes—the rural and the urban. But even the city-house of ‘a wealthy Roman contained hundreds, a swarm kept in order by the scourge or other severities of discipline. In the house they had to attend to their duties in silence, for which purpose a special overseer, the seentéarzus, was appointed. Those, however, who had been born and bred in the house (verzae), were allowed somewhat more liberty, and their pertness and loquacity were proverbial. The work was divided among them, each being employed according to his n > of an ove! kill or ability, the whole being under the cha sr, either a slave ora freedman. For house-service there was the os¢éarzus, who in the character of porter was often chained to ct he door-post; the a¢rzenszs, who attended to the atrium; the cudicudaréz, who kept the chambers in order; the celartus, who had charge of the store-rrooms. The’ kitchen had its proper slaves ; cooks, bakers, confectioners, carvers, and table-setters. Others there were for e othing, personal attention, and the toilette, of both master and mistress, tailors, seams- tresses, bathers, hairdressers, ovnatrices, cosmetae, unctoress and a host of others for whom modern language has no specific names. There were also workmen of all crafts among them, for whatever the family needed was made in the family; but for the family alone: the Roman slave did not work for his master’s profit, as did the Greek. Others were messengers and errand-goers ; while others again attended their master on journeys. Among them was the nomenclator, the master’s walking memory, whose business it was to know all his friends and all persons of consequence in the whole city, and to whisper their names and rank in his ez when he met them. If the master had literary tastes, he had literary and learned slaves, who kept his library in order, copied books, wrote at his dictation, read to him, and made extracts or his learned labours. Those who practised medicine publicly, for the most part Greeks or Greek freedmen, were not in the best repute at Rome: there were far more charlatans, quacks, and impostors than honest men among them; so the Romans of the upper classes »referred to have an intelligent slave taught the healing art. Such relations, whether the slave was physician, secretary, or assistant in literary work, naturally presuppose much confidence on the master’s part; and such slaves sooner or ater received their freedom. But even. as freedmen they remained in a certain connexion with their former owner and his family. For the most part they passed into the rank of clients. The client did not belong to the family, yet to a certain extent he belonged to the house, and was a regular recipient of its bounty. In the oldest times the clients were dependants of the patrician, the fa¢vonus, bound to render him certain services in a legal relation from which they could not be freed without his consent. They showed him respect, did him various services, advanced him money, and in return enjoyed his protection. Later, when the clients became the plebeian class, this le relation was changed and relaxed; the client remained, but his relations to his patron became purely personal. The Roman noble loved to display his greatness in a large retinue, a court that attended him when he went abroad and 268 DOMESTIC LIFE, paid visits, that surrounded him in the court of justice or in the forum, and applauded when he delivered an oration, For such services as these Rome afforded an abundance of idle freemen who had nothing, would not work, and yet wanted to live; so they attached them- selves to some wealthy noble, or to several at once, which paid better, and received from him sufficient for their daily needs in the sfortuda or dole. The sportula consisted sometimes in money, at others in food, which the clients consumed in the patron’s house. Clothes also, the cast-off garments of the household, were often given, especially the toga, for only in this arb of respect could they wait upon their patron. o Ss The service of the clients seems light, yet their meagre dole was hardly earned. Every > morning they must present themselves at the patron’s house, and if they failed they lost their ¢ SWARM OF CLI right to the sportula, which was distributed after the day’s service was over. Neither rain, snow, storm, nor distance was accepted as an excuse for absence. Each tried to get the start of the others, be the first to salute the patron, and have time to wait upon another. Martial, the poet, who was himself a client, and held out for thirty years, gave it up at last and returned home for the sake of once again being able to get sufficient sleep. For any morning-sleep was g iS g ) out of the question fora client. In the earliest gray of morning, and even while it was still dark night, they might be seen flocking through the streets of Rome. Arrived at the patron’s house, those who could thronged in the open vestibule, w hile the rest stood in the street, until the slaves had put the house in order, and it pleased the porter to open the door and let them pass into the atrium. Here they w aited, exposed to the impertinence of the servants, until it suited their patron to appear, or until he sent them away. Usually, however, the patron appeared, received their salutations and homage, and addressed to one or the other a gracious ¢ word or two, the nomenclator keeping by his side to whisper in his ear the names, which he did not take the trouble to remember, If he were in a particularly gracious mood, he might 269 ROME. ask one of the better sort to sup with him, in which case his place was the lowest at table, if, indeed, he was not set at a separate board and served with coarser fare. When this noisy swarm had departed, then came the proper friends and real petitioners, or those who had political or business affairs to discuss. If the patron was a man of literary tastes, he retired to his study, stretched himself upon his couch, read, meditated, and dictated to his secretary. But the great noble rarely had leisure for this in Rome; and to pursue these studies he had to fly to one of his loved villas. He also had the duties of politeness and of his rank to perform, and had to salute a superior—the emperor alone being excepted from this ; and this was some consolation for the clients in their humiliating existence. So says Mar- tial, poet and client : Maximus, yes, I own it with shame, I am hunting a dinner ; But thou huntest elsewhere ; both of us here are alike. If [ come early to pay my respects, I find thou hast staited On a like errand elsewhere : here too we both are alike. If I attend thee, walking before my magnificent patron, Thou dost to others the same: here we again are alike. The court was in all respects the type of a Roman noble’s house. Indeed, under Augustus it was nothing more, and, like other houses, was thronged with friends and clients. The emperor received the salutations of senators, knights, or his chosen friends, and invited them to sup; the empress received the senators’ wives. The domestic services were performed by freedmen, as in other houses by slaves. But in time these duties became court offices, then imperial offic es, which were filled by men of rank; and the emperor's house became first a royal court, then an Asiatic court, with all the pomp and ceremony of majesty ; in which state, of course, it differed widely from a private house. When the morning greetings were over, the Roman had still many things to attend to. Friends hip and social duties demanded numerous small attentions, presence at family festivals, 270 gro CM BANQUET. DOMESTIC LIFE. or at courts of justice, attendance at lectures, and visits. A man of position and influence had Pp to be everywhere ; and the hours were soon spent in busy trifles. But few were so happy as Horace, content in his modest simplicity : Illustrious senator, more happy far I live than you and hosts of others are. I walk alone, by mine own fancy fed, Inquire the price of potherbs and of bread, The Circus cross to see its tricks and fun, The Forum too at times, near set of sun, With other fools there do I stand and gape Round fortune-tellers’ stalls, then home escape To a plain meal of pancakes, pulse, and peas : Three young boy-slaves attend on me with these. And in this way it was that he might, as he tells us, sleep as late in the morning as he pleased, haunted by no feeling that it was his duty to be up to pay his morning calls, But most found their only refreshing rest after the mid-day meal, which was preceded by bodily exercises and a bath. It was to a great extent due to these customs that the chief meal of the Romans took place in the evening, and was the last meal of the day. In early morning, before going out, it was the custom to break the fast on bread and salt, eaten with fruit, cheese, or olives ; about noon followed the luncheon, or prandium , and then, about midway between noon and sunset, though often much later, the coexa, which might be prolonged far into the night. The pran- dium was sometimes more substantial, and comprised fish, eggs, shell-fish, and wine; but the proper art of the kitchen was reserved for the coena. This consisted usually of a variety of entrées provocative of appetite, followed by two very substantial courses and a dessert. But the Romans were not at first thus luxurious. In the early time a kind of porridge of pulse formed their principal food, and this, with the addition of vegetables and leguminous fruits, especially beans, remained the diet of the lower classes at all times. Down to the year ularly followed their trades. 174 8. C., there were neither cooks nor bakers in the city who r The Asi furnished them with cooks, bakers, and confectioners in the persons of slaves who were sold at tic wars first made the Romans acquainted with the luxuries of the table, and high prices. henceforth gastronomy became a study, and the ordering and preparation of a dinner, a science and an art. The Republic had already had a Lucullus, whose name ever after was 2 sociated with sumptuous repasts; but the gastronomic art, for which he was so renowned, did not attain its perfection and glory until imperial times. Then, when Rome had 5 extended her sway over the whole world, the expansion of trade and intercourse brought the dainties of all lands to the capital ; the farthest East and the farthest West, the delicacies of India, the spices of Arabia, the fish and shell-fish of the Atlantic, the game of Gaul and Germany, and the dates of the oases, all met in the Roman kitchen. The emperor Vitellius, perhaps the most enormous eater that the empire ever knew, sent out his legions to hunt game where it was found in the highest perfection, and employed his fleets in furnishing his table with fresh fish. So many arms were set in motion by a single stomach! At this time it was that all the breeding and fattening establishments were erected. Remarkably large or fine fish were bought by wealthy gourmands at fabulous prices, as many anecdotes tell us; but probably more for the sake of notoriety than anything else. Fish, oysters, snails, mussels and other shell-fish, of which the Roman cuisine boasted a far greater variety than our own, were supplied from all parts of the empire; and the epicures g ) PE 271 ROME. knew well where the choicest were to be found, and the most delicate modes of preparing them. The mullet or sea-barbel, a fish highly esteemed, was often brought alive to the table, that the guests might have visible proof of its freshness. When the favourite Italian oysters began to pall on the appetite, recourse was had to the “natives” of Britain. The villa furnished fowls, which were fattened in the dark, and ducks and geese fed with figs and dates ; the volar- zum or aviary, fieldfares, snipe, quails, pheasants, and smaller birds. .Storks, cranes, flamingos, tc and especially peacocks, were also often served at Roman tabl Vitellius, and Apicius— that gourmand who devoured his whole large fortune, and when reduced to his last million killed himself because life was no longer worth having—prepared a dish of the tongues of flamingos, and them f0 cus- Elagabalus of tomers from small their brains. portable — stoves. Among quadru- The best sausa- peds the pig ges, as wellas the was in _ highest best hams, came favour, and more from Gaul. There than fifty ways was an abundant were known of supply of salads dressing its flesh. and vegetables ; Wild boars were asparagus was cul- often served at tivated toas S1Z whole; and epi- >; many kinds cures could tell of cabbage were by the flavour grown, with tur- from what region nips, artichokes, the animal came. pumpkins and Sausages of va- cucumbers, peas rious kinds were and beans, mush- a favourite dish, roomsand truffles, both hot and cold ; VITELLIUS, and many plants and hucksters on and herbs used the streets served for flavouring. Nor did the Roman table lack rare and choice wines, kept in jars or bottles of baked clay. They were prized in proportion to their age; and each jar bore a label showing in whose consulship the wine had been’ made. Campania furnished the best Italian wines, of which the Caecuban held the first rank, the Falernian the next, while the third place was claimed by several vintages; but whoever was forced to drink the Vatican was an object of general commiseration. Greek wines, too, had their place in the Roman cellars. As, with increasing luxury, the customs of the table were more and more fashioned after those of the Greeks, though incomparably more luxurious, so, like the Greek, the Roman rarely drank wine undiluted. He mingled it with water and cooled it with snow ; while for the winter he had a warm drink, the ca/da, made of wine, water, honey and spice, for preparing which there was a special vessel, the ca/daréum, with a small furnace for charcoal in the interior, on the principle of the Russian samovar. Still another beverage, called zz/sam, which was drunk at breakfast, was prepared of must, honey, and spic The Roman table was thus liberally provided, and though many dishes seem to us of DOM TG sini Jer questionable taste, still the achievements of Romans in the culinary art do them high credit. Even in Caesar’s time, at a pontifical banquet attended by six priests and as many priest- esses, the following was the menw:—First course (intended merely as a whet to appetite) : conger eels, oysters, two kinds of mussels, thrushes on asparagus, fat fowls, a ragout of oysters and other shell-fish, with black and white marrons. Second course: a variety of shell- fish and other marine animals, beccafic haunches of venison, a wild boar, a pasty of 5, beccaficos and other birds. Third, and principal course: the udders of swine, boar’s head, fricassec of fish, fricassee of sow’s udder, ducks of various kinds, hares, roast fowls with pastry. and Picentine bread. This by no means meagre bill of fare was far surpassed in later times, especially in the pastry and confectionery ; and this part of the repast was distinguished by the originality and artistic forms of its devices, in which the confectioner rivalled the statuary, At tabie the Roman took thought for the pleasure of the eye as well as for the gratifi- cation oi the palate. Oriental tapestries— Costly vessels of gold, és all bore witness to the silver, glass, or pre- wealth and taste of the cious stones stood host. The dining- upon the side-tables ; room was chosen on there were candelabra account of its situa- and lamps, of silver or tion, so as to be warm bronze, wrought in the or cool as the son most graceful desi required, It was richly tables and couches of adorned with mosaics rare woods, inlaid with and paintings, prefer- ivory or metal, and ence being given to spread with rich drap- such as related to the ery; soft cushions of pleasures of the table, GLASSWARE feathers, coverlids of such as still-life pieces silk or embroidery, representing fish, poul- try, game, and fruit. It was also the largest of all the rooms; and when it became the fashion for men of wealth and rank to give great entertainments, the dining-room became a large hall surrounded with columns. In its usual and simpler form the dining-room bore the name ¢yzcl’n‘um, a word which originally signified the dining-table with its benches or couches. At the time when these customs were fixed, the table had a quadrangular form, with couches for the guests on three sides, while the fourth side was left free for the slaves to serve the various dishes which were brought in on tr Each of these couches held three persons, the middle being the place of honour. Thus nine persons filled one triclinium, and if there were more guests, more triclinia were set. This arrangement was a good one, as with nine persons a general and lively conver- sation is possible ; while with a large company at table each guest talks only with his im- mediate neighbours. The guest reclined obliquely on the couch, with a cushion under his left arm, and the women, at least in imperial times, did the same. Though the Romans gradually adopted the | but, on the contrary, regarded their presence as adding life and charm to the entertainment. Greek customs at meals, they never imitated them in excluding the women from the table, At every banquet the guests wreathed their heads, and even their breasts, with garlands of 273 ROME. SILVER-WARE OF THE TIME OF AUGUSTUS, DISCOVERED AT TILDE ivy, roses, and violets; for which purpose roses were for sale in the market all the year round, Intelligent men entertained themselves at table with serious discourse, and rejectec the disagreeable addition of noisy music. But as not all had the gift of agreeable conversa- tion—although the dalusian girls dancec Roman, like the their voluptuous Greek, had a fluent dances; jugglers anc wit—it grew to be a rope-dancers displayec general custom to in- their dexterity, buf- g ) troduce various arts foons cracked jokes anc for the entertainment played pranks, actors of the guests. The meal was accompanied gave scenes O tragedy or comedy, and pan- with music ; declaimers tomimists often pro- and readers sought to duced their licentious STILL-LIFE. please both ear and Fresco from Herculaneum, pieces, especially if no mind ; lithe brown An- ladies were present. In all this entertainment there was something laboured and artificial, as if to make up for a natural deficiency of conversational power. This was most of all the case when the dishes were removed and the drinking began—the symposium, which was conducted in the Greek fashion, under the direction of a vex or leader of the carousal. The Romans of the empire, however, were always aiming at something unusual or ex traordinary, and at their entertainments they sometimes indulged in the most singular caprices. Nero, for example, had a dining-room constructed in his Golden House, which had a vaulted DOMES THC ELE, ROMANS AT TABLE. ceiling, turning day and night on its axis ; and at a banquet which Otho, Nero's favourite and boon companion, gave the emperor, tubes of gold and silver suddenly protruded from various parts of the hall, from which perfumed waters were sprinkled over the company. Nero prob- ably took a hint from this, when he had the ceiling of his vaulted hall opened to shower flowers upon his guests. It is probably one of Nero’s feasts which Petronius describes, in his account of the ban- quet of Trimalchio. This preposterous parvenu is represented as entertaining his guests with a success ion of extraordinary devices and surprises, such as, no doubt, were often greeted with ap- plause at the tables of the rich, When the company had taken their places, young Egyp- tian slaves washed their hands and feet with snow- water. Two others placed on the table a salver inlaid with tortoise-shell, in the middle of which stood an ass of bronze, bearing silver panniers, one filled with white and one with black olives, while on his back sat a Silenus pouring from a wine-skin the favourite sauce, the garwm. At ridiron, one side were sausages on a silver gri under which were plums and red pomegranate owing coals. Placed kernels, to represent ¢ around the tray were various vegetables, snails and oysters, and other appetizers suitable to the ROMAN FLOWER-GIRL, preliminary course. When the guests had ree helped themselves, another dish appeared, a hen of carved wood, sitting with expanded wings and brooding over a nest of peafowl’s eggs, which were handed among the guests, with silver egg-spoons, weighing half a pound each. To the surprise of some of the guests, the eggs, when broken, disclosed unhatched chicks ; but a closer investigation showed these to be beccaficos in egg-sauce. At a sign from the host, a company of singers entered, who removed the dishes while intoning a solemn cnant. A boy, having dropped a silver dish, was about to pick it up, when Trimalchio boxed his ears for his bad manners, and ordered the dish swept out with other fragments. 275 ROME. While this gastetorzum or preliminary course was being removed, wine a hundred years old was brought, which was handled with the greatest care; and then a second course came in, which was properly the first course of the regular meal, this consisted of the most ordinary dishes To the astonishment of the guests but these proved to be only covers, and when they were lifted, underneath were lying pigeons, fieldfares, capons and ducks, noble barbels and turbots ; while Suse al a Peg time to the sound of soft music. The second course consisted of a boar, who had two baskets of palm-twi dates hanging naturally in paste, and each of the guests was the wild boar came a tame one, which, to the astonishment of the company, been dis- The being sum- had not embowelled. cook, moned, pleaded for- getfulness, and while his master is sharply rating him, he rips open the his animal with knife, and out falls a mass of sausages anc puddin While the pig is being removed, anc they are wait- urchins. when the guests took h malicious tyrant was fi populace a great the noblest and wealthiest of Rome, to sup with him at a late hour. came, and they found t out cushions, all bearing his name, painted black, entered feet of the guests, rom his tusks. In the midd Domitian once gave an entertainment of another sort. east, slack. to take one By his side lay eight pigs, modelled of these MUSICAL ENTERTAINMENT. From a fresco, old of the apples and g 5 ling all around him with terror anc g 1e banqueting hall hung with. black and beside it a lamp such as was used at funerals. home with him. in the middle was a fat hare, converted, by the addition of a pair of wings, into he carver now made his appearance, and cut up the dishes skilfully, keeping filled with »y the confectioner very After ing for the dessert, the ceiling opens and a silver hoop sil- descends with ver and alabaster phials of essences, silver coronets, and other pretty things, for take home as keep- The sert also was much The pastry was in the of shell-fish fieldfares, the guests to sakes. des- applauded. forms and while quinces stuck full of represented almonds sea- e stood a figure of Vertumnus, with his bosom piled with fruit, but apes essence of saffron spirted out over them. This was at the time when the abhorrence. He had given the and on the following day he invited the leading senators and knights, It was night when they walls, ceiling, floor, couches with- ike spectres, danced hideous dances, and then seate At the place of each guest stood a memento mort, a small tombstone Young slaves, naked and d themselves at the to whom they offered, in black dishes, the viands ‘served at funeral-feasts. Silence as of death filled the ghastly hall ; only from time to time the sombre voice of Domitian was heard, speaking of death and executions. At last they were dismissed; but in the vestibule their slaves were not to be found; and unknown servants bore them in litters back to their homes. emperor was announced ; but this time it was only a polite attention on his part, They had hardly recovered from their fright, 276 when a message from the As a sou- TUT EU DOMESTIC VETRE, venir of this delightful entertainment, he sent to each the silver tomb stone bearing his name, a piece of the mourning-service, and one of the young demons that had waited on them, now washed, dressed up, and smiling. Only a fiendish nature like Domitian’s could find pleasure in so diabolical a jest. ROMA PUB N RACING CHARIOT, LANE IGE 1S) (STREETS BATHS, GAMES.) EEPING thes deepen than of thieves anc them from t Drunken nocturnal revell by a throng of insolent sl the unlucky wight who fel night was rather a fashion in house indulged in these fro treets lighted at night is a refinement of civilization which apparently never suggested itself to the Romans. The ways were narrow and crooked, and the torches and lanterns borne by guests returning from late entertainments seemed rather to to dispel the intense gloom. The sidewalk was kept in good order, the carriage-way was well paved, there were whole brigades of night-watchmen, but so soon as night fell, all the ways were full of danger. Rome was the asylum rogues, who found here abundant prey, and means of safety in numberless hiding-places such as they could not have in the open country ; and like night-owls the darkness brought heir lurking-places to prowl about the streets. young nobles returning from a debauch, attended aves, were the terror of wayfarers, and woe to into their hands! This scouring the street at imperial Rome. Even the ladies of the emperor's lics, disouised, and with both male and female com- 278 WONVYWOU WAAOA ‘wnamy uMpENT PUBLIC LIFE. panions; as did Julia, the frail daughter of Augustus, who banished her for her dissolute conduct, and the empress Messalina, the mest licentious of all, for whom no place of debauchery was too low or too vile. Even Nero found amusement in these night- prowlings, in which he not only beat others, but sometimes was beaten himself, for who could suspect the emperor in such disguise ? There were also many noises and disturbances at night to break the slumbers of the weary Quirites. Chief among these were the heavy wagons creaking along the street, for everything that was hauled in or out of the cit —building-stone, timber, merchandise and pro- visions,—had to be transported at night, to avoid the crowds which thronged the streets by day. Full or empty, all draught-wagons were compelled to leave the city at daybreak, as also the NT CONDITION OF THE FORUM travelling-carriages, which went to the city gates, and there awaited their owners, who were borne to them in a litter, To use a wheeled vehicle of any kind in the street by day was only al- lowed to a few, as to triumphing generals, the vestal virgins, and, at a later day, to ladies of ex- alted rank, to visit the theatre or the like ; but otherwise the litter was the universal conveyance. As soon as day began to dawn, the clients were seen hurrying through the streets to pay their morning visits. Next came the school-boys, who had to be at school at daybreak ; then the swarms of dealers crying their wares in the streets, or hurrying to their stalls in the ground-floor of the houses market or their customary stands. The booths and shops on the were opened, taverns and wine-shops, distinguished by painted signs or bottles hanging up, opened their doors to the hungry and thirsty workman ; the markets filled, craftsmen opened their shops; hammering and banging, noise and shouting, began everywhere, to the torment of late sleepers, who in desperation anathematized Rome and its bustle and din. Soon after the dealers and the workmen came the buyers and the idlers. Slaves hurried rapidly along the streets; while the Quirites pro ceeded on their way with measured stately 279 ROME. steps, having usually plenty of time on their hands, except when duty, party-interest, or curiosity took them to political meetings at the forum or to the courts of justice, where at times, absorbed in the political events of the day, they remained for hours, or even for whole days. But there was little of this interest in the time of the emperors. Then there at part of the were in Rome half a million of idlers, high and low, who spent a gre day in the public squares and on the streets, with nothing to do, and yet infinitely busy, coming and going, and increasing the crowd. They hurried from one end of the city to the other to pay visits, hardly knowing whither or to whom; they wanted the fashionable world to see them, and know that they belonged to it. Others were out shopping ; hurrying past the taverns and cast- them as too small ; ing a look of re- had costly rarities fined disgust into lardeenasidemmmton their smoke-be- them, and de- grimed dens, parted at last they paused be- after purchasing some insignificant trifle. fore the booths, inspecting the wares, or entered But Rome the shops where- was not merely in were piled the the city of the costly fabrics of Quirites ; it was the Orient, or a sample of the the beautiful pro- whole world. On ducts of Greek its streets one genius and_ skill. heard a hundred With the air of languages, and connoisseurs saw a _ hundred -d the sculptures, national cos- they criticis tumes. In the smelled at the enormous throng bronze to detect which crowded if it were right the streets in the Corinthian, meas- morning and ured the precious swarmed about citrus tables, to the forum then . STREET IN POMPEII, . see if they would promenaded in suit, and rejected the Campus Mar- tius, to see and to be seen, in this cosmopolitan concourse the gray-bearded Greek philosopher jostled the sons of the North, the Dacian, with his wide évaccae, the fair- haired German clad in skins; the black Nubian met the tattooed Briton, and the Gaul in short tartan cloak brushed by the Arab of the desert and the wild nomad of the Sarmatian steppe; the barbarians from south and north, east and west, made way for the polished courtier or noble lady, lolling in languid indifference on the soft cushions of their litters, the conscious representatives of the highest culture and eleg:nce. These noble per- sonages traversed the streets at an advantage, for brawny slaves and clients preceded and accompanied them, and with sturdy elbows clove a path through the throng. But the duties PUBLIC LIFE. of politeness were incumbent upon them—vodlesse obl7ge—and their exalted station brought with it the penalty of being kissed by everybody who could claim an acquaintance, wine- drinkers and garlic-eaters, high and low, so that not unfrequently they reached their destina- tion “moist with the kisses of all Rome.” At times the current in the street was blocked, and a dense crowd gathered. There fs, or monsters, some singular or rare production was something wonderful to see, giants, dw of nature, such as gathered to Rome from all the ends of the earth. Proconsuls and magistrates sent them to the emperor; and the emperor was so kind as to exhibit them publicly, while the idle Roman populace, always agog to see anything new, stared at them with infinite curiosity and delight. Or it may be some notice, or a writing on a wall, that attracted the passers-by; a notice of an approaching election to this or that office, in gigantic letters covering a whole house-front, as we now see in English cities; or an item of public news, or a private advertisement of something for sale or hire, or an announcement of a play or other spectacle. imens of this sort have been preserved on the house-walls of Pompeii, Innumerable spe which disclose the whole public—and we might almost say the whole private—life of a Roman provincial town. “I beg you, make Vettius aedile,” this is one appeal to the general public, but specially addressed to the bakers and cabinet-makers, barbers and perfumers, muleteers and the club of ball-play- announces on the wall ers—perhaps by one of 2 what apartments of his their colleagues. All (: CALVARY" house are to let; a land- candidates are honest AEILEDA-RPVESONIVS- PRAY S ROGAT lord makes known in this men, good citizens, and WALL-INSCRIPTION FROM POMPEII. way that he has just ; F Caium Gavium Rufum duumvirum (OF ora vos facite) ‘anne 4 3 endowed with every utilem reipublicae Vesonius Primus rogat, refurnished his tavern at other virtue. Another the sign of the Elephant, appending a figure of that animal in bright red by way of illustration. “On the 28th of August,” so we can read at this very day, ‘there will be a show of wild beasts, and Felix sures the public that awnings will fight with bears.” Another notice of a similar character will be spread to keep off the sun; while still another adds the prudent clause, ‘if the weather permits.” These written walls, as we said, give also glimpses into private life. Hate, spite, and love here find expression, and compliments and flatteries stand beside insults and jeers. Sannius directs Cornelius, “Go and hang yourself!” A similar polite attention is directed to one Barcas ; almost superfluously, it would seem, as he is declared to be in a consumption. A r who was not invited by Lucius Itacidus to supper, announces the shameful fact to the spong world, and indignantly adds, ‘Who invites me not to his table, him I hold as a barbarian.” But love is even more outspoken than wrath. ‘“ Methe loves Chrestus,” “Auge loves Amoenius,” are not merely frank, but public confessions. One lover complains that Sera has forsaken him; another, signing himself Zozimus, begs Victoria to remember his youth and assist him with money. Poetry also, of a sort, finds place on these walls, for example : Amor dictates what I write; love my hand is guiding : More than death I'd hate to be even a god without thee. It is on the whole but the life of a small town which speaks in these painted and scratched inscriptions, often in bad Latin. If those of Rome had been preserved, they might 281 ROME. treat of matters more important, but still the one isa picture of the other, if a picture in miniature. After noonday, the busy life and bustle began to subside. The free citizen, if still young and vigorous, departed to his exercises, to the bath, and then to supper. Physical exercises had not in Rome the importance that was attached to them in Greece, nor were they so systemati- cally and artistically developed. The Roman practised them for the sake of health, for exer- cise or as a preparation for war. They were therefore of an easier character, and consisted almost entirely of games of ball, a sport in which the Romans delighted, and which they played in many ways; also in swinging a kind of dumb-bells, and in fencing with the sword at a post. There was therefore no need of the wide space and large buildings of the Greek gymnasia ; and most of these exercises might be practised at home. As they immediately preceded the bath, the places for these exercises came at last to form a part of the great bath- ing establishments, or ¢hermae. These thermae constituted one of the peculiar features of Roman life, and were among the finest works of Roman architecture. From the earliest times the Roman was fond of bathing, but his bath was a simple plunge into cold water, without any special appliances. Wealth, luxury, and increasing effeminacy gradually led to establishments of great complexity of arrangement, of vast extent, and fitted out in the most sumptuous manner ; and before long every city of Italy and the provinces had its baths, which had become a universal neces- sity of daily life. To the cold bath, the /rzgédarzum, were added the tepid and the warm bath, the ¢epzdarzum and the caldarium, and the bather took one after the other in regular succession. He sat first in a sweating-bath, then had cold water poured over him, and then entered the cold bath. A great marble basin was provided for swimmers, the sexes being separated. Conduits supplied an abundance of pure and limpid water ; hypocausts, or under- ground furnaces, raised it to any required temperature; and a well-arranged system of pipes conveyed it, hot, warm or cold, wherever it was needed. It was allowed to dash in small cascades down marble steps, and was gathered in basins which were arched over by domes and lighted from above. Attached to these thermae, as already mentioned, were spaces for ball-play and other exercis . There were also halls for conversation or public readings, where authors and poets brought out their new works, and singers and musicians displayed their art, and a library open to the public was often added. So they were attended not alone by those who came to bathe ; men went to the thermae to amuse themselves, or to meet their friends, chatted, promenaded, read, and heard all the latest news of the political, scientific, artistic or social world. Thus the thermae became favourite resorts of the Romans; but while the éadvea, or ordinary baths, abounded in all parts of the city, the great size and costliness of the thermae made them but few in number. So whoever wished to gain the favour of the people erected thermae. First it was Agrippa, who presented to the people those he had built near the Pantheon ; then Titus, Caracalla, Diocletian, whose thermae, even in their ruins, amaze us, and which may, in part at least, be reconstructed in imagination, as we have attempted to do in our illustra- tion. And grand as these structures were in their size and architecture, they were no less magnificent in their costly furniture and decorations, in which were employed the rarest marbles, painting, mosaic, and the finest works of sculpture. Natural warm springs, mineral springs, and sea-bathing, soon led to the establishment of other places of recreation. These the Roman took a special delight in; he hunted up, even in the most distant provinces, any peculiar natural attraction, and made a settlement 282 BATHS OF CARACALLA. PUBLIC VELPE: by beautiful and well-designed buildings made the natural resources of the place sible and convenient to all; and spots first resorted to to restore failing health soon be- came the thronged resorts of gay pleasure-seekers. Baden-Baden, Baden in Switzerland, Aachen, Aix, and very many other modern watering-places still preserve, either in name or in ruins, the memory of Roman times. It has not so fared with the most famous of all Roman watering-places. Where once the far-famed Baiae stood, now broods the pestilential malaria, which dooms the place to solitude. The once luxurious life has been gone for ages; palaces, gardens, vegetation, all have vanished ; only the deep-blue waves roll, now as then, up the bay, and caress the softly- curving lines of the strand. The life has all departed to the neighbouring bay of Naples, and desolate, solitary, abandoned, lies the once so lovely shore. Part of the fertile Campania, blest with a delicious climate, where the soft sea-breezes temper alike the heat of summer and the cold of winter, easily accessible from Rome both by land and water, its warm sulphurous springs and its sea-bathing attracted numerous visitors even in the time of the republic. In Cicero's day palaces adorned the strand, and villas, crowned with towers overlooking land and sea, crested the green hills surrounding the bay. The emperors followed the example of the great bathing- nobles, and made Baiae a favourite place of resort. Inns, lodging-hous establishments provided for the comfort and enjoyment of the guests. The place was alive with pleasure-seekers ; and music, dance, gaming, feasting and carousing afforded continua’ amusement, while the ever lovely sea invited to excursions upou its waters by night as well as by day. The Lucrine lake was filled with pleasure-boats of bright hue, adorned with gold, gay with purple sails and garlanded masts, bearing gallant companies, brilliant nobles, fair women, who sat at a luxurious banquet, accompanied by music and song, while the softly- gliding barque clove the smooth expanse. With such inducements, and with the presence of Rome’s fairest daughters, who flocked wherever pleasure or profit invited, Baiae became a great city of love-adventures. The Romans had long known the perils attending the league of baths, wine, and love. Balnea, vina, Venus, corrumpunt corpora nostra. But not baths, wine, and Venus alone, there was still a fourth form of dissipation into which the Roman recklessly, and often ruinously, plunged—and this was the games. This passion was probably as old as Rome itself. Panem et circenses—Bread and the circus—this ery rings through all Roman history. But the exaltation of this passion to mere insanity, its penetration into all classes of society, from the rulers down to that hungry mob of paupers living upon the state’s dole of corn, the colossal, almost inconceivable, scale on which this passion was gratified—all this came with the advance of empire, beginning about two hundred years ». c., and growing under the emperors, until it was hardly quenched with the fall of the empire itself. Men and women, city and country, alike shared the madness. When the games began, Rome was crowded with visitors until they were forced to bivouac in the streets. Emperors themselves, Nero, Commodus, Caracalla—not the best, it must be admitted— entered the arena or the circus as players and dancers, as gladiators, beast-fighters, or charioteers, Under Marcus Aurelius there were a hundred and thirty-five days in the y ear devoted to these games and shows, and the number rose until in the middle of the fourth cen- tury it reached a hundred and seventy-five, not counting the extraordinary games, such as Titus celebrated for a hundred successive days when he opened the Flavian amphitheatre, now called the Colosseum. Trajan, after his second Dacian war,. gave games lasting a hundred and 283 ROME. THEATRICAL MASKS. twenty-three days. It was the high officers, the ambitious grandees of Rome, and the emperors who bore the expenses of these shows, in the hope either to win the favour of the people, or to divert their thoughts from political affairs. With the increasing passion for the games the excitement of the forum was superseded by that afforded by spectacles of blood and death. The cry for freedom died away in the shouts that hailed the victors in the arena. The various contests, especially the races in the circus, and the combats of gladiators with each games which so delighted the Romans were the usual plays in the theatres, the other and with wild beasts. The first of these, the dramatic performances, were the least exciting, and therefore were less attended than the others. All the theatres of Rome combined would contain hardly half the spectators who found place on the benches of the amphitheatre, and these again were only about the fourth of those who filled the Circus Maximus. The Colosseum was built for 80,000 spectators ; the seats in the Circus held 150,000 under Caesar, and the number rose to 250,000 under Titus, and at last, in the fourth century of the empire, to 385,000. The theatres, on the other hand, contained but a few thousands. Yet the drama had perfectly adapted itself to the Roman taste. The tragedy, the noblest art and loftiest creation of Greek poetry, had with the Romans to a certain extent reverted to its origin ; that is, to the action of a single actor, who, as pantomimist, represent- ing either a male or a female character, produced striking ragic scenes, isolated from their dramatic connexion, dancing, gesticulating and declaiming, to the accompaniment of music. 3ut the pantomimus did not always speak : there was a variety of this performance in which a speaker declaimed the words, and the pantomimus, the proper actor, made the gestures. And in this strange caricature of the Greek tre y, the player might rise to fame, distinction, and wealth. But in popular favour this serious, if not noble art, stood far below the comedy. In the aéedlanae, the burlesque drama of Campanian origin, which was played with certain fixed characters, and in the mzmus, the licentious farce, the broad comedy, crude even to coarseness, reached an expression that could not be surpassed. The lowest speech of the lowest populace was here brought in all its crudity upon the stage. The obscenity, the audacity, were here more free and loose than in life itself; for which cause these plays were never witnessed by modest women. This had always been the Roman taste; the coarser and more biting the wit, the more free the subject, the better they were pleased. But though this exhibition found applause and spectators, yet it could not throw the whole population, the whole nation, we might say, into excitement, as did the contests of the circus and the arena. It was these that roused all the passions of the people. As far back as the time of the kings, the valley between the Palatine and Aventine hills had been used as a circus. First, a mere scaffolding of wood, burnt down more than once, rebuilt, enlarged, furnished with seats of stone running up the slope of the hills, then built in, the Circus became the Circus Maximus, and gradually grew to the stupendous dimensions 284 MAXIMUS, CIRCUS PUBLIC LIFE. already mentioned. The lowest tiers of seats were reserved for the emperor, the senatorial order, and their wives and families; then followed those of the equestrian order; and above these again, row rising above row, those of the people, men and women sitting together. In the upper arcades of these buildings swarmed by day and night a motley throng ; here were eating-shops and taverns, buyers and sellers, loose women of all nations, diviners, jugglers, and mountebanks, music and dance, gaming and carousing. It was a place of metropolitan diver- sion, but of the lowest sort. ious kinds descended into the arena to exhibit their skill under the Performers of va es of all Rome; but that which most of all riveted the eyes and excited the passions of the inated, so that wars, defeats, people was the chariot-racing. For centuries it held Rome fas and the threatening danger of the barbarians were forgotten. And yet the Romans were # RUINS OF 1 spectators only. With a few exceptions of insane emperors, and those who voluntarily or under compulsion followed their example, no Roman entered the arena. At the national festivals and games of the Greeks, every one who contended must be a free unattainted Hellene ; with the Romans the contestants were as a rule either hired performers, who made it their business, slaves, freedmen, or prisoners of war. The chariot-race required a long preparation. The horses had to be trained for it, and the drivers only acquired their skill by long practice ; stables, workshops, and a numerous ) | ) i , personnel were needed, So he who wished to offer the people this entertainment could not of ity companies had been formed, who kept in himself at once provide it. To meet this nece readiness all that was needed—stables, horses, drivers, and splendid caparisons. These prepara- tions were of a costly kind, and the prices were heavy. There was a rivalry between the different companies, which showed itself on the course. At first there were four of these, dis- tinguished by their liveries, the white, the red, the blue, and the green. Thus it was in Cali 285 a hae a IS Oe ne ee a ee ee ROME. gula’s and Nero's time, of whom the former was an enthusiastic connoisseur, and the latter an accomplished virtuoso in the art. Ata later date the white and the red disappeared, and the blue and the green remained the two factions which divided all Rome. Emperor followed emperor, century succeeded century, Rome fell into the hands of the Germans, the empire was split in two, and still it is the blues and the greens in whose rivalry the people are absorbed with not merely unflagging, but even increasing passion. From Rome the factions made their way to Constantinople, and here the heat of partisanship rose to bloody fighting in the streets, and to open insurrection. On the day of the races, the streets of Rome, long before daybreak, were alive with people. The whole population of the city thronged to the city to secure good places, for the sports began carly, and the spectators often did not return until evening, by torch-light. The games were openec with a religious so emnity, a procession of the statues of the gods, drawn in cars, or borne on thrones; at its head the giver of the entertainment, in purple robe, with clients, priests, and loud music, all splendidly adorned. From the Capitol the procession descended, took its way across the forum, and so to the circus, where it traversed the course amid the loud applause of the spectators. The races then began. The chariots usually ran by fours, with teams of two or four horses, the drivers dressed in the colours of their respective companies. The course had to be circled seven times, and seven times the difficult turn made at the post, before the victor could drive back over the chalk-line, accom- panied all the while by the gaze, the shouts, and cries of the excited multitude. Twenty-four of these races were usually given ina day. At noon there was a brief pause, during which the emperors not unfrequently caused refreshments to be given to the hundreds of thousands of spectators. It is hard to understand the passionate excitement which these races aroused, in which 286 I IOT-RACE IN T 2 R CHAT — Se = SSS SSS SS = SS ——— —— as Soe SS —— : el i SS _____e oprpon MAXIMUS. RCUS CII HE ay PUBLIC LIFE. every element, the horses, the parties, the drivers, were perfectly indifferent to the public ; but harder still is it for us to comprehend the pleasure of the Romans in the combats of men with each other and with wild beasts. Here it was blood, wounds, the madness of real fighting, butchery on a grand scale, that gave the hideous delight. This Roman custom was not derived from Greece. The beginnings were small, but with a people of the combative and sanguinary temper of the Romans, it soon attained gigantic proportions. The populace could never be satiated with the sight of men and beasts butchering and mangling each other. Nero, in his earlier days, while he was yet under the influence of Seneca, wished to do away with these bloody spectacles; while Titus, the mild and benevolent Titus, the friend of the human race, in his kindness to the people clamouring for blood, could not refuse to crowd the arena with victims. He gave an entertainment lasting a hundred days, when he opened the amphitheatre built by his father Vespasian; that enormous circuit of stone, which, even in its ruins to-day is the wonder of the world. In these shows five thousand wild beasts fought, and nine thousand, wild and tame together, were the victims of these hundred days. Even in Caesar's time wild or strange animals were sent in at numbers to Rome to ohants fight in the arena; be exhibited to the people. He let four hundred lions and forty e while Pompey only offered the people eighteen elephants, but between five and six hundred lions, Trajan reached the highest figures ; after his second Dacian campaign he exhibited, ina f all the frontier provinces were employed. The difficulti estival lasting four months, eleven thousand animals. To procure these, the inhabitants of of obtaining them constantly increased, for under such a gigantic and organized system of hunting, the animals either were exterminated or took refuge in the interior and Asia or Africa. What was then destroyed at a single spectacle would to-day enrich all the menageries of Europe. Tigers, hippopotami, rhinoceroses, crocodiles, not to mention lynxes, panthers, leopards, and wild boars, were brought in multitudes, and not the least difficulties in the way were those of transport and feeding. It would seem that the Romans had especial skill in the management of animals, or they could not have succeeded in taming and training them to such an astonishing degree. We have before mentioned how Mark Antony drove through Italy in a a chariot drawn by lions. Caesar was escorted home at night by elephants carrying torches. The Romans knew how to make tigers and lions docile and gentle as dogs ; stags and panthers were taught to draw chariots ; elephants danced, performed on the tight-rope, and wrote Latin. In the arena of the amphitheatre beasts fought with beasts, or with men. Animals of different species were provoked to encounter each other, as a rhinoceros with an elephant, or elephants with buffaloes. They were baited by hunters with dogs, on foot and on horse- back, singly and in herds. The emperors Claudius and Nero sent whole squadrons of the praetorians to encounter panthers and lions. Inthe arena also sentences of death were executed by means of wild beasts, the criminal being either allowed to defend himself, or else bound to a post to be rent to pieces, to the extreme diversion of the spectators. Under the arena was a series of vaulted spaces which served not only as cages for the wild beasts, but were also arranged, with great technical skill, to produce many scenic surprises and transformations. Thus at one time the arena represented a ship, which suddenly fell to pieces and poured out an enormous quantity of various animals, lions, panthers, bears, ostriches,which rushed wildly about. At another time the ground opened, and out of the chasm rose a magic forest, among whose trees strange animals were roving, while fountains, gushing with perfumed waters, shed fragrance all around. On one occasion an unlucky singer had to 287 ROME. represent Orpheus. His music seemed to enchant all nature; trees and rocks bowed ed over his head; the beasts before him; the birds, apparently ravished by his tones, hove from all sides came fawning about him; when suddenly a number of bears made their appear- ance and rent the luckless musician to pieces, not in theatrical show, but in very genuine reality. Whoever looked at scenes like these with pleasure, to him murder also might be a fine le: introduced from Campania and Etruria to Rome, were soon exhibited on the gigantic scale of art, and an entertaining spectac Thus the combats of gladiators, when they had once been the beast-fights. Caesar produced in the arena a hundred and twenty pairs; Augustus PRAETORIANS. FROM A k during his long reign raised the number to ten thousand, but Trajan exhibited as many in four months. These combats lasted for days and weeks: the gladiators fought sometimes in pairs, sometimes in companies, with similar or dissimilar weapons; they fought by night as ghts exhibited 1 as that on the Fucine lake, in which the stupid, crue! Claudius caused no less than nine well as by day, on the water as well as on land; there were even great sea-fi i thousand to butcher each other. Some of these gladiators were condemned criminals, others slaves, or prisoners of war. The Romans rather piqued themselves on this device for extracting amusement from a con- quered people. Many were volunteers; for although the class was despised, yet fame might be won in the arena; and it was something for an ambitious ruffian to display his courage and eted with tumul- skill under the eyes of the emperor and the whole Roman people, and be gre tuous applause when he came as victor from the deadly strife. 288 PUBLIC LIFE. The, gladiators were kept in barracks, either those of private individuals, or those of the state. Domitian built four of these barracks at the public expense ; they were wide courts, surrounded with small chambers like cells, Here the gladiators were well fed and cared for ; when sick or wounded they were attended by the most skilful physicians ; and here they were instructed in the various arts of fighting. Many fought after the modes of their own countries, as the Britons, in war-chariots: others with swords, in the strange armour represented in the Pompeian frescoes ; and others again as re¢/arzz, armed with a trident, a dagger, and a net, in which they entangled their antagonists, They appeared upon the arena in splendid armour or attire, and marched in procession around it with lowered weapons, greeting Caesar as they passed his seat with the shout, moreturt te salutant/ The blast of trumpets gave the signal, and amid the din of horns, pipes, and flutes, the combat began. Roused to the highest pitch by the deadly character of the struggle, by the infinite multitude of excited spectators, and by the passion to distinguish themselves, they fought with desperation. Without a cry or sound they sank to earth on receiving the fatal blow. This was the will of the people ; a gladiator’s business was to die, and not to ask for mercy. It stood in the pleasure of the people to grant them their lives; but usually they gave the sign of death by stretching out the hands with extended thumbs, Gradually the arena was strewed with corpses, like a field of battle; from time to time they were dragged away, and the ground swept or fresh sand thrown over the pools of blood. While the victors were waving their palms, the corpses were borne out through the “ gate of the goddess of death.” These games had firmly implanted themselves in the Roman people, and they only fell when the state itself fell, Christianity long protested against them in vain: and there were even adherents of that faith who delighted in these spectacles and counted them not the least among the pleasures which a bounteous Providence had bestowed. This view we may presume was somewhat modified when, as happened in times of persecution, they had to descend from the ranks of spectators and enter the arena in person. The East was first to abolish these spectacles, and when the Arabs and Germanic races ruled the world and its civilization, the knightly encounters, the tourneys, took their place. But reminiscences of them are still left ; and to this day the bull-fights of Spain trace their origin ina direct line from the GLADIATORS, From a painting on the parapet of the amphitheatre at Pompeii, Roman arena. 289 serene ec a ee tions, still in bot JRING Rome's history we may distinguish in the re HGUNTHER.2c, SUOVETAURILIA i. TRIS WME) GUS) ~ ALLIS, on of the people and the state, three well-defined epochs. The first is that of the ancient, undisputed, and undisturbed belief in the old Italic tradition of the Latins and Sabines; the second is the epoch of Hellenic influence, and at the same time that of doubt, atheism, philosophic unbelief among the more culti- vated; while the third is that of purified paganism, a revived belief, which at last fell before the advance of Christianity. ct But in all three both state and people are alike religious. Religiosity was an essential characteristic of the Roman; and religion was a necessity of the state as well as of the people. It is true that in religious matters also the Roman was nor with their not gifted with the imagination of the Greeks, artistic productive power. He could not invest his gods with the charms of mythos, nor did he conceive them in complete and individual human form, until Greek art came to his aid. The gods of that earlier epoch, if not altogether mere abstrac- h form and personality are beings of very imperfect development. But they were not on this account any the less a necessity of Roman life, and objects of sincere vener- ation. The Roman was pious in his private life, and the state, as such, was pious; and noth- 290 RELIGIOUS LIFE. ing of importance, whether of private or public nature, was undertaken without consulting the will, or imploring the aid of the gods. The indefiniteness of the ancient primitive divinities was doubtless a reason that the number of the gods rapidly increased, which it did in two ways. In the first place, the Roman had an immense tolerance for alien gods. He had his own national divinities, and perceived the reasonableness of other nations having theirs. When he conquered a foreign state, and destroyed a foreign city, he made no scruple of transporting the patron gods bodily to Rome ; so that in Rome, just as there were old and new citizens, so there were old settlers and new- comers among the gods, In the s econd place, the Roman mind readily saw divine operation and influence in everything, in nature as well as in human life ; and thus he resolved, so to speak, his ancient abstract gods into their component qualities, and made each attribute a special divinity. Carrying out this an- So we need not alytical system of the- be surprised to finc ogony, he brought that with the Romans things to such a pass the age of childhooc that he peopled the had appropriated to world with a multitude itself no less than of divinities, and at thirty guardian anc last came to the per- tutelary divinities. sonification of pure The state as such had abstract conceptions, its peculiar deities, so the apotheosis of alle- every association, gory. Thus he saw every fraternity, every no difficulty in adoring family, every house, a still living emperor even every individual, as a god, building had his especial genius in who watched over temples and altars his honour, and_ offer- him from birth to ing sacrifices to him. death. Air and sea, The forest had its city and country, field and stream, were peopled with Faunus, whom the influence of Greek ideas turned into a Satyr-like figure, and surrounded with a crew of similar shapes; the stream had its nymph, the house its Aenades; the souls of departed ancestors were worshipped in the house as ares (7. ¢., lords); while bad souls prowled about, spectre-like, in the /emzures and /avvae. And as all were peopled with divinities, so town and country grew full of holy places and of temples, which the Roman religion in its primitive form had not needed. Magnificent buildings in the Greek style, vast pillared halls, bore witness to the piety of the state: while smaller shrines and monuments, niches with altars, arose everywhere, in the streets and squares, at cross-roads, in gardens and groves, at all frequented or otherwise conspicuous pla Thus the religious character of the Romans came everywhere into view: but notwith- standing this, except in certain circles and times, punctually as they performed all their religious duties, they never submitted to a priestly hierarchy. The priest was an officer of the state: as such he had a certain set of fixed and limited duties to perform, and no authority was given him beyond these. There were priests and priesthoods of the several deities, and there was a general college of pontijices, who exercised a supervisory authority over 291 ROME. all matters pertaining to religion. Each of the principal gods had his chief priest, the flamen, z. ¢. the “kindler” or “blower,” so called from his original duties of kindling the altar fire and making the burnt-offering. The highest of these was the priest of Jupiter, the flamen dialis, a man who stood in high honour, and whose whole life was devoted to the service of the god. For this reason he and all his house were exempt from all public duties. Being a man wholly consecrated to divine things, he might touch nothing impure; he could not even approach a corpse or a place of interment; all common work was suspended when his eye fell upon it, and a criminal who entered his house was set free. He was not permitted to behold chains or fetters, to mount a horse, or to look at an armed force. His wife was sub- jected to the same restrictions ; and their marri was the holiest in Rome; nothing but death could part it. Equally strict was the law of the vestals, the six virgins consecrated to the service of Vesta, the goddess of the house, whose duty it was to maintain the sacred fire on her altar. Chosen from the noblest families of the state, free from every bodily defect, they served the goddess for thirty years of a pure and blameless life. A breach of chastity was punished by death; the offender being walled up living in her tomb. But during their ministry they were most highly honoured. When, in white robes, the brow bound with the priestly fillet, they walked the streets attended by a lictor, all, even to the consul, the chief of the republic, rever- ently maa» way for them. Whoever offered them insult was punished with death ; but if a vestal accidertally met a malefactor on his way to execution, he was pardoned. At all public festivals and entertainments, and at the pontifical banquets, they had the place of honour. The supervision of the vestals belonged to the fpontifex maximus the head of that college which had charge of the religious affairs of the state, which preserved the ceremonial tradition, took care that all sacrifices were properly made, and that to each god the proper victims were offered and in the proper manner—in a word, had the whole knowledge and con- trol of everything pertaining to religion. Nor was their province limited to these alone, for this college of pontifices, whose name came from the bridges over the Tiber, were originally also the engineers of the state ; they regulated the calendar, and fixed the annual festivals ; they preserved the public documents and kept a record of important events, and thus were the first archivists and historians of Rome. Thus their activity was extensive while their power was limited ; they gave counsel in many affairs, but only when they were called upon by public officers, or applied to by individuals; they decided under what circumstances, when and how, the gods were to be consulted ; but the inquiries themselves were made through another college, that of the augurs, or that whose duty it was to keep and consult the Sibylline books to know the will of the deiti The science of augury, or that of reading in the stars and other heavenly phenomena their intimations regarding human affairs, whether encouraging or deterring from any projected undertaking, was an old Italian superstition, common to all the races, The Romans had possessed it from the first; the people clung to it with implicit faith, and on all critical occa- sions the state never omitted to consult the auguries. Any one might observe a sign or token in the heavens; but it must occur in a certain definite manner, and phenomena of a certain kind must be interpreted according to certain rules. There was therefore an ancient tradition and an ancient science of divination, whose knowledge was preserved in the college of augurs and haruspices, that is, the observer. of birds and victims. The augur or the haruspex there- fore was necessary for a proper interpretation of any sign or token. The augur, whose duty it was to interpret the signs of the heavens, lightning, or the 292 RELIGIOUS LIFE, flight of birds, when he set about his duty, drew upon the ground a square, a holy enclosure, called the ¢emplum, which he divided by transverse lines into four quadrates, corresponding to a similar ideal division of the firmament, He then took his stand in the centre, with his face toward the south, and whatever appeared on his left was favourable, and that on his right, unfavourable. But the whole affair was not so simple as this. The manner in which the bird or the flash entered the celestial figure, the form of the flash, or the species of bird, or even its cry, all had an effect upon the significance of the sign. Still more complicated was the science of the haruspices or consulters of entrails, who had been introduced with the augurs from Etruria. These examined the lungs, liver, heart, and other viscera of the animal sacrificed, and from this information drew the data of their divinations. This art to a great extent super- ee seded the augury by the flight of birds, as the latter lost : its hold upon popular faith; and both had but little weight with the men of more intelligence. Cicero tells us that the elder Cato used to say that he wondered how one augur could look another in the face without laughing. The auguries therefore were in imperial times only con- sulted on public affairs, and on account of the belief of the populace, which was always credulous and superstitious to the last degree. It even had faith in the sacred chickens which, on account of their prophetical properties, generals going on a campaign carried with them in coops, and con- sulted before a_ battle, by the simple process of scat- tering grain before them. If they ate with avidity, it was a good sign, and one always easy to procure by a little preliminary starvation. The commander of a Roman fleet once, when they refused to eat, threw coop and all into the sea, remarking that they should drink, at all events. They drowned, and he was defeated. Like the auguries, the whole religious ceremonial of the Romans was derived from ancient tradition, the ce a i prayers, the sacrifices, and the festivals, with the chanting EU of ancient hymns whose obsolete language was no longer ROMAN MAKING AN OFFERING. intelligible, with dances, sports, and banquets, the best share of which fell to the priests. If any error was committed, or any interruption occurred, the whole ceremony and sacrifice had to be repeated, For this reason a sacrifice was always accompanied with music, the sound of which was to prevent disturbing noises from reaching the ears and distracting the attention of the celebrants. In the most ancient times the Romans offered the fruits of the earth, especially parched meal mingled with salt, the mola salsa,—together with honey, milk, wine, and cakes. When bloody sacrifices were introduced, the swine was considered the most acceptable offering to the gods, the Roman having himself a partiality for roast pork. When the state gave a solemn sacrifice, a pig, a sheep, and a bullock were offered in the swovetaurilia. Prayer was offered ed to the powers of the under- standing, the hands held up, except when the prayer was addr world; but the Roman did not raise hands and eyes like the Greeks, but covered his head with his toga during his prayer. The victim, adorned with garlands, was brought before the altar, 5) 293 ROME, and if a bullock, the horns were wound with fillets which streamed over the back ; the fore- nead was sprinkled with the »o/a sadsa, and a tuft of hair was cut off by a priest and cast into the altar-flame. A bullock was felled by a blow with an axe ; smaller victims were killed by piercing the throat. The entrails were then taken out and inspected by the haruspex. If they were in a satisfactory condition, they were sprinkled with wine, a libation of wine and incense was poured out, and the assemblage was dismissed. The sacrifice was over, and the yriests could now betake themselves to their repast. A banquet of priests and priestesses was the termination of all religious festivals, which were numerously distri- yvanied by the flute. At buted throughout the year, various points they had and for the most part cel- stations, houses where they ebrated with great sumptu- nalted and partook of co- ousness. The year opened ious refreshments to sus- with the feast of the two- tain them in their exertions. faced Janus, New-Year’s When spring was well ad- Day, Offerings of wine, vanced, the rural deities incense and cakes were had their feasts, as Pales the goddess of shepherds, o 5 whose festival on the 21st made to the god, and everybody exchanged con- atulations and gifts of of April, the Palilia, was dates, honey-cakes, also the anniversary of the branches of laurel or palm, founding of Rome. At and coins bearing the ethgy the Palilia the shepherds of Janus. In March, Mars built fires of straw through had his festival, or rather which they leaped amid his priests had theirs, the mirth and jests. In May ancient college of the came the feast of the Dea Salii, who preserved the Dia, a goddess of the fields, which was celebrated by of Fratres Arvales, or “ field-breth- sacred shields, and bearing the colle these performed warlike dances at their festival, and thus went in proces- ren,” for three days with sion through the city, danc- sacrifices and banquets. ing and chanting hymns of FLORA. When the corn bloomed, hoary antiquity, accom- there was the feast of Flora, which also was celebrated by women, and with especial extravagance. But the greatest license was shown at the close of the year, on the feast of Saturnus, the ancient deity under whose rule the earth had once known an age of peace and happiness. In memory of this, or at least with a thought of this, the Saturnalia were celebrated, at first only on the nineteenth of December, the day of the winter solstice, but afterwards continued to the twenty-fifth. This was the forerunner of our Christmas, a feast that made all alike, young and old, rich and poor, master and slave. All labour ceased, all schools gave holidays, all courts were closed. vhere were tables spread ; it was a merry Masters and servants ate at the same table, and every time for the poor, much-enduring clients. A special market—a sort of Christmas fair—offered for sale the various objects which were universally given as presents : pretty knick-knacks of ail sorts, ornaments for the person, toilette articles, dainties, sweet cakes, dolls for the children, 294 RELIGIOUS LIFE. and tapers of wax. The time was passed in feasting and merry-making; and men played at dice (forbidden at other times) for money, and the children for nuts. Festivals and games were also given to the dead. There was something genial in the views and observances of Rome connected with the departed. Though the spirits of the , the living still preserved the assecia- deceased returned no more from the land of darkness tion of memory with them. The departed had started on a long journey, or sunk into a deep sleep, and the god of death, the fair gentle youth, brother of sleep, turns and extinguishes his torch. The place where the body or its ashes rested was a place beloved ; a monu- ment, often a beautiful piece of architecture, was raised over it, trees and flowers made the spot a garden, and benches invited to linger there. The funeral ceremonies of the Romans were very elaborate, and in the case of nobles or the wealthy were attended by a large concourse. A last kiss took the expiring breath from the lips of the dying, and a loving hand closed his eyes; his name was called aloud, and a loud lamentation made. The body was then washed, anointed, dressed, adorned, and laid upon a rich couch covered with costly hangings and strewn with flowers, where it remained to be viewed by the friends for several days until the funeral took place. The whole arrange- ment of this lay in the hands of an undertakers’ company, the temple servants of Venus Libitina, who held everything in readiness, furnished the coffins or urns, the adornments and attendants, marshalled the procession and provided the pyre or the grave. As with the Greeks, both burial and incineration were in use, interment being more common in earlier times, then burning, and finally burial again; for which reason the many sarcophagi found, some richly adorned with sculpture, all belong to the latest times. 295 ROME. The procession moved through the most populous streets, to enlist the sympathy of the people, who indeed were often invited, e7 masse, to the funeral of a distinguished man. The ional mourning-women with their march was opened by flute-players, then followed the profes chants of woe, then a company of mimes or actors, who declaimed, and even jested with the people. One of them personated the deceased, others wore the waxen masks of ancestors, clad in their garb, and wearing their insignia. If the deceased had been a man of eminence, snting his illustrious actions, and the names of his victories or of the cities and pictures repres' lands he had conquered were carried in the procession. Then followed the corpse upon a bier richly decorated, borne by kinsmen, friends, or freedmen; then the mourners and company assembled, senators, knights, magistrates, the populace and the slaves—all who wished to do THE SO-CALLED PYRAMID OF CESTIUS, A ROMAN TOMB, sion halted, the honour to the dead or manifest their sympathy. At the forum the proce ancestral representatives took their seats in the curule chairs, and one of the nearest kinsmen or friends mounted the tribune and delivered the funeral oration, praising the ancestors in their order, and commemorating the deeds, honours, and distinctions of the departed. This done, the cortége moved on to the place of burial or incineration. If the body was to be burned, there stood the pyre ready, surrounded by cypresses. The body was laid upon it, and the pile kindled by the next of kin. As the flames arose, incense, perfumes, locks of severed hair, and other things were cast into them. When the wood had burned down, the embers were quenched, the ashes were sprinkled with wine and milk, mingled with perfumes, and these placed in the urn. If the vault was already prepared, the urn or casket containing the ashes was placed in it with phials of perfume, incense, jewelry or other articles which the deceased had prized. The last greeting was then given: “ Fare- well, thou pure soul!” “ Lightly rest the earth upon thee!” “May thy remains repose in 296 ‘auOjsa]IU PIly} ay} pUNOISoI0; oy} UT A[PPLUt OY} UI LI[aIOW vI[I99VD Jo yeyY UVAN VIddV VIA ‘s}uaWINUOU pu squIo} a1¥ sopIs YIOG UC, INA | th I RELIGIOUS LIFE. peace,” were heard from one and another. The participants finally purified themselves with consecrated water, and the assembly dispersed to celebrate nine days later the funeral feast, which might be repeated yearly thereafter at the /evadia, the general festival of the dead. At this festival the grave was illuminated with lamps, sprinkled with odours, decked with garlands, and a memorial meal was partaken of. The coffins of the poor were deposited in the earth, and a mound heaped over them. For those who had means, the grave was walled up, and adorned with a memorial stone, a small column, a cippus, an altar or a Hermes. An inscription recorded the name and family of the deceased, while military officers or statesmen had their titles, offices and insignia rehearsed. In the case of women, honourable mention was made of their virtues, or grief at their loss expressed, sometimes in touching words. “I await my husband,” one is made to say ; while in another case the mourning husband records, “ She never caused mea sorrow save by her death,” Noble and wealthy families had stately monuments erected, either in the form of IN THE STREET OF GRAVES AT POMPEII. pyramids, as that of Cestius at Rome, or of temples, or buildings of a freer style of architec- ture, such as the mausoleum of Hadrian, now the Castle of Sant’ Angelo. They liked to g ) place these monuments by the side of frequented streets or roads, as we may notice by their ruins along the Appian Way at Rome, or on a smaller scale, in the street of graves that has been opened at Pompeii. Visible from a distance, and often visited by the living, they en- closed the remains of many departed ones. Descending by a flight of stairs to the subterra- nean chambers, the visitor found himself in a wide rectangular or circular apartment, the walls of which contained in numerous niches the urns and caskets holding the ashes of the dead. These apartments were called colmmbaria, because they resembled pigeon-houses with their rows of nests; and many of them have been discovered in modern times. When the Christians had become numerous in Rome and included many persons of distinction, they buried their dead in the vaults of the catacombs, whence their bones have been brought in later times to be reverenced as relics, As the numerous inscriptions on graves scattered over the whole Roman dominion testify, the belief in the old gods subsisted to the end of the empire ; and indeed in tne second ; and men of letters century of imperial rule it seemed to revive to a new life. The higher classe had altogether abandoned the ancient faith. With the entrance of Hellenism, after the time of Pyrrhos, the old Roman gods themselves became Hellenized and identified with those of 2971 ROME. Greece, and took on their human forms and individual characteristics. But at the same time Greek philosophy also entered those circles which, like the Scipios, Laelius, and Aemilius Paulus, had become penetrated with Greek influence and with admiration for Greek literature and art. And with philosophy came also Greek scepticism, in some cases, as with the poet Lucretius, even going as far as hatred of the ancient gods. Above all it was the doctrines of Epikouros which emancipated their spirits from fear of the gods, from all pious traditions, all prejudices, all belief, good or bad. He taught that happiness lay in the calm of the spirit, whose equanimity no passion, no enthusiasm, no emotion of any kind could disturb, and such disturbance was caused by religion and fear of the gods, by patriotism, love of family, and all similar affections. looked upon as liars This Epicurean and impostor But philosophy was for they recognized in a long time the fash- all this a necessity ionable doctrine in for the state, some- Rome. thing needed by the Thus the higher classes be- simple masses __ of the people. There- came separated from fore the ceremonies, the people, and cul- offerings, and augur- ture dissociated from ies of the state were the national faith. kept up undisturbed, The men of cultiva- believed on the one tion, who were the hand, and_ scorned ruling men in the and laughed at on state, cast away with the other. This was their faith all pious the state of things customs, and of in the last two cen- course all sacrifices, turies of the republic prediction, and divin- - and at the beginning . — COLUMBARIUM. ation. he augurs of the empire. and haruspices they But the world can not do without positive faith: the human heart can not be satisfied with philos- ophy. Epikouros might destroy the existing belief, but he could not do away with the need for one. Jupiter and Mars, Minerva and Diana, had become to many mere nursery-tales, yet even these wanted gods, wished to believe in higher beings who ruled the destinies of the world and of men. And of such gods there was no lack in Rome, for when she became the capital of the world, with the invasion of strange nations that entered her walls, came also an irruption of alien deities. Kybele, the Phrygian mother of the gods, with her orgiastic worship, Astarte and Mithras, Isis and Serapis, had entered Rome and spread their cultus throughout the empire. They all found numerous adherents in those circles in which the faith in the Hellenic and Roman gods had been destroyed. Especially were women sy, the strang captivated by the new faiths, attracted by the and the mysticism. But mysticism is always a near neighbour to abuse ; and the nightly orgies of priests and priestesses, the apparitions and incantations, turned the belief that had sprung from unbelief into gross forms of superstition. There came a reaction from these abuses and superstitions, and in the second century of 298 RELIGIOUS LIFE. the empire the ancient gods of Greece and Rome rose again to life and veneration, not merely with the populace, but in those very regions where they had been most contemned, They seemed more human, more sympathetic, seemed to stand nearer to man. Temples arose once more, stately in architecture and rich in adornment, built by emperors, nobles, and municipalities, and the reviving art of Hadrian’s time peopled them with countless statues of gods, The antique world of beautiful gods showed a stronger vitality than had been expected. 5 Once more it gains the mastery, though the foe tnat is to overthrow it forever is secretly 5S growing and strengthening. True these are not quite the same gods as those of yore. They have made a philosophy might transit through phil- agree with faith; at osophy, and in this iy : SUE eat least the Stoic philos- ic) journey have brush- phy, which at this ed off all the rub- =e ime was the prevail- pish of myths and ng school. Stoicisin n egends which de- ought to reconcile ct aced their pure heology with the orms. Men wanted teachings of the a creator and ruler sages; and to do of the world, and this it freed the Jupiter presentec former from all himself in lofty and offensive and disfig- majestic form; his uring legends. The all-pervading might people might return and unceasing activ- to their gods in their ity needed servants purified state, might and ministers to ex- offer sacrifice and ecute his behests consult the oracle ; and make known his while the philoso- will to men ; and the pher might once old Olympos offered more pray to Ju- these, with names piter as Kleanthes and attributes ready prayed:—‘“I hail IN THE CATACOMBS. provided. thee, most glorious In this sense of the immortals, O Being revered under a thousand names, Jupiter, eternal and almighty One, Lord of nature, who guidest all things according to law! This immeasurable universe which > circles round the earth obeys thy behests without a murmur, for thou holdest in thine invisible hand the instrument of thy will, the lightning, that living and flaming weapon, at whose crashing blows all nature trembles. Thus thou guidest the activity of the uni- versal reason wh'ch penetrates all beings and is mingled with the great and the lesser lights of the world. Highest ruler of the universe, nought happens upon earth without thee, nought in the ethereal and divine heavens, nought in the sea ; nought except the sin which the wicked commit. Jupiter, God, whom dark clouds conceal, pluck mankind from their sad ignorance; disperse the darkness of their souls, O our Father, and grant them to compre- hend the thought that serves thee in ruling the world with righteousness. Then shall we, in 299 ROME, reverential adoration, give thee the reward of thy beneficence, unceasi: gly celebrating in fitting words the works of thy hands and the universal law of all beings.” This Jupiter, so conceived and so revered, might, it would seem, have long resisted the God of the Christians: and indeed he held his own for two centuries more. But his hour, and that of the classic world, had struck. Gods and arts, the state and the religion, had lived their day together, and together they fell. The barbarian flood swept over the places of classic culture ; the German took his seat upon the chair of Caesar, and the invisible God of the Christians upon the throne of Jupiter. nN @ RELIEF FROM THE COLUMN OF TRAJAN. BOOK III. ART AND LITERATURE. ART IN ROME AND IN THE EMPIRE. =>. OWHERE in art, certain forms of architecture alone excepted, does nature nor his gift. the Roman show himself creative and original: that was not his 3ut when he became lord of the nations and saw the world at his feet and the world’s wealth pouring into his treasuries, he grew a great patron of art, and set painters, sculptors, and architects to work until a revived artistic life sprang up in all the provinces of the empire, a life of the abundance and extent of which we can scarcely form a conception. himself personally to art. all its stages, and developed all its styles, as far as lay in his sphere ; But the Roman did not devote By this time the Greek had run through ROME. and all these he placed at the disposal of the eager Roman ; furnished him technical knowl- edge and dexterity, head and hand. So it was Greek artists that worked to Roman orders, Greek art that built their temples, palaces, and villas, and adorned their squares and streets, throughout the whole empire, from the Thames to the Euphrates, from the Rhine and the Danube to Mauritania. As a single form of culture, the Graeco-Roman, pervaded the pro- vinces of the empire, so it knew but a single style of art, the Greek—or we may callit, too, Graeco-Roman, for the latter people, with their taste for magnificence, power, and grandeur, gave it in many ways the stamp of their personality. Thus there is not much to be said of any regular and successive development of art in Rome, as there is of Greek art; none of those buds and germs that mature to flower and fruit. Whatever of these the most ancient times may have possessed, have come to our knowledge in very me e examples ; yet, meagre as they are, they have an air of being bor- rowed from others. Contemporary with the earliest Roman history we find the civilization of the Etrus- cans, a people which, either in war or peace, had constant relations with Rome and the sur- rounding Italian peoples, until it was absorbed in the expanding growth of Rome. These Etruscans, driven out to sea, arriving in Italy as barbarians, and busied in commerce and piracy, brought the impulses of their civi tion from far lands, from Cyprus, Phoinikia, Carthage, Ionia, and Greece. Thus at the outset various elements were mingled in Etruscan civilization and Etruscan art, and contended for the mastery; the Asiatic or Phoinikian ele- ment first preponderating, until the incomparable superiority of Greece surpassed and oblit- erated it. But Etruscan art never even approached the height and perfection of the Greek. All that the numerous graves have revealed to us of paintings, sculpture, ornaments and utensils, so far as they are Etruscan work, even the latest, stand far below the workmanship of Greece. The painting is crude and imperfect, and crude in the colouring ; the sculptures and portrait-figures of terra cotta are defective in form, staring and even frightful in expres- sion. It seems as if Etruscan art had intentionally adhered to the designs of an undeveloped stage, for even those works which Greece sent into Etruria, for instance the vessels of pottery, have an archaic character as if made to suit the Etruscan taste. Like the Etruscan was the art of the Italian peoples dwelling around Rome, such as the Sabellian races and the Latin cities; and the oldest works of art in Rome of which we have any mention doubtless had a similar character. At first, we are told, the Romans had no temples and no images of the gods, but received both from Etruria. It was Etruscan archi- tects that built them their first temples ; and the Roman temple long preserved the Etruscan plan, very different from the Greek. Etruscans constructed the Cloaca Maxima and the temple of Jupiter in the capitol; and Tarquinius Priscus employed a Veientine artist, named Volcanius, to make a gwadriga (chariot with four horses) of baked and painted clay to orna- ment its pediment, and a statue of Jupiter, also of clay, for the interior, But immed iately after this, first under Servius Tullius, and then in the early days of the republic, we find men- tion of Greek sculptors furnishing statues for the temples of Rome. Not long after, in the middle of the fifth century 8, c., it became a custom in Rome to erect statues in public places to honoured citizens ; a custom which almost grew to an abuse, after wars had brought Rome into near relations with the Greek cities of Lower Italy and Sicily. From this time the stream of Greek art was never checked ; but it poured in in fuller hoods when Roman armies had crossed the Adriatic, Roman generals had ruled Hellas, and Greece itself, the islands, Make- donia, and Asia Minor had become Roman provinces. These were all welcome finds to the 302 AAA i Wh Wa i i | mn LAOKOON. ART IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE. new Roman artistic passion; and statues, paintings, and other works of art were carried off by hundreds and thousands to Rome, adorning the triumphs with long trains of spoils that took whole days to enter the gate, and crowded temples, forums, and courts with a new popu- lation. But when Rome became the capital of the world, the artists them- selves followed, and Rome became also the centre of artistic activity and the chief city of the world for collections and for production. When this took place, in the second century B. c., Greek art had just reached its last stages; or it were better to say, if the height of the classic period could not be sur- passed, it had made the only yet untrodden regions of art its own. In sculpture there arose two young schools full of vitality, those of Rhodes and Pergamon, and the an- ciené school of Athens seemed to be renewing its youth. In Rhodes, the wealthy com- mercial city, which in Roman times was specially favoured and cher- ished, art as well as science made great progress. It was here that the Laokodn was produced, that masterpiece of pathetic representa- tion and technical skill; and that group in violent action which now bears the name of the Farnese Bull. There were said to be in Rhodes three thousand statues, and a hun- dred colossal figures, most fam- ous of which was the colossus of the Sun-god, standing at the entrance of the harbour, and visible far out to sea, a beacon to mariners. ?ergamon also had _ been AND HIMSELF, mon, made by the Attalids, a family GAUL KIDLING JS i chool 0 sprung from the Diadochoi, an abode of Greek art and science, rivalling Alexandreia in the latter and Athens in the former. Down to recent times not much was known of this school of art. What had been preserved were solitary figures, votive gifts or portions of those monuments which King Attalos erected at Athens and Pergamon to commemorate his victory over the Gauls, These figures repre- sent Gallic warriors, falling, dying, or slaying themselves, and exhibit admirably the extraordi- 393 nary realistic power of this school. ROME. and even the skin; not mere figures meant to stand for Gauls. They are real Gauls, in both fo m and feature, in the hair But we are now in a position to form a better judgment of the merits and character- istics of this school. Quite recently a new and important discovery has been added to those which in late years have aroused so much interest in Troy, Mykenai, and Olympia. As the name of Schliemann is associated with the two former, and that of Ernst Curtius with Olympia, so the sculptures of Pergamon will perpetuate sculptures, which are now being transported in relics of the time of the Attalids, representing a monsters of the deep and winged daemons of the air, in figures larger than life ; and they prove that the Pergamenian sculpt- ors were artists of the first rank, rich in in- vention, and endowed with an almost Asia tic ima gination, while in the technique of their art they were un- surpassed. Itisanew side of Greek plastic aide Ginette ee brought to our view. At the same time, as mentioned above, the school of Athens had renewed its youth, and _pro- duced in Roman times, down to the period of Aug istus, TORSO OF HERAKLES IN THE BELVEDERE. a multitude of fragments to Berlin, a the names of Humann and Conze. These all T combat of gods with giants and Titans, with works which were held as the master- pieces of sculpture, until those of Phei- dias on the Parthe- non were brought to London. In this period it was that the Athenian Apol- lonios produced the colossal figure of Herakles seated on a rock and resting from his labours. We have only the torso—the famous torso of the Belve- dere—but we see here the mighty shoulders, the ma . volume of muscles, that could relieve At- las of the weight of the heavens. were passionate builders; and the magistrates and private citizens followed the example. There still lived in the men of antiquity the insatiable ambition, the love of fame, the desire to distinguish themselves and to transmit their memory to posterity. In times when military renown fell only to the emperor or a few leading generals, private ambition was best gratified by erecting noble buildings. For this reason the cities chose wealthy 316 ce Tn INTERIOR OF THE PANTHEON. ft ] ART IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE. fellow-citizens, or rich Roman nobles as their patrons, and these it was chiefly who embellished the city with aqueducts, canals, theatres, forums, basilicas, and temples, on which they lavished millions, obtaining in return the perpetuation of their memory to posterity, and the honour o a statue. Our rare and pitiful bits of statuary or monuments give not the faintest conception o the scale on which monuments were erected to public or private persons, or of the hosts 0 statues which existed in the days of the Empire. Those of the gods, in temples, or in public buildings or places, were but a small fraction of the whole. When a new emperor ascended the throne, his portraits were scattered with incredible celerity throughout the Empire, and in ARCH OF TITUS. a few months columns or equestrian statues to his honour arose in all the cities ; often many in a single city. The auditorium of the theatre at Athens had no less than thirteen statues of the emperor Hadrian. When a bad emperor fell, all his statues fell also, to make room for those of his successor. And as it was with the emperors so was it with the governors of the provinces ; whether they were loved or feared, in either case it was enough to cause their statues of marble, bronze, or even of silver gilt, to spring up in the public places. So with strates of municipalities who had in any way deserved well of their townsmen, and even private persons, when the city wished to express gratitude for favours past or establish a claim for those to come. If a Roman of rank rendered a provincial city any service with the government, the honour of a monument was his reward. A city frequently voted this honour to some man of distinction, trusting that he would defray the cost ; and private persons often set up their own statues, and that not only in the dwelling or the villa, but in public places ; and in this latter case, of course, the merit might only exist in the opinion of the erector. Actors, charioteers, gladiators, bestiarii, were honoured with statues by their admirers; and even 317 ROME. schoolmasters, like Horace’s severe Orbilius. In a provincial city a statue was erected to a boy of thirteen, because he had passed a creditable examination in poetry at school. In Brixia, the praetor having lost a little boy of six, the authorities erected a gilt equestrian statue in his honour to comfort the bereaved father. So, as regards quantity of production at least, there was an artistic life in the Roman empire such as the world, except in a few localities, never knew before or since. Much of all this was ostentation, and the divine fire that had glowed in the soul of Pheidias was extin- guished ; but for all this, art was a universal need of the people, and not this or that branch alone, but all art, from the highest to the lowest, from the temple to the kitchen-lamp. Archi- tecture, sculpture, painting, were neither more nor less in demand than the craft of the gold-, smith, the arts of working in glass, clay, ivory, bronze, and wood. ‘Thus there were artists everywhere, and they travelied from land to land in troops, seeking and finding work ; while many had permanent abodes. There were ateliers beside the temples, for the religious demand; at the marble-quarries, for architectural ornaments, figures, or sarcophagi; every- where, studios and artists who worked to order, or kept finished or half-finished works on hand for sale. The quantity of works of art which the imperial time produced is beyond all computa- tion or conjecture. In the fourth century Rome, according to Ammianus Marcellinus, had a second population in marble and bronze ; a better population really than the first, which was not able to defendit. Then followed the migrations of peoples, the destruction of cities, the plundering of Rome, and the annihilation of culture. Ruins, fragments, rubbish and decay are all that is left to us from the dissolution of the classic world of antiquity ; but they have sufficed, after the lapse of a thousand years, to awaken genuine art to new life. SALLUST, THE LITERATURE OF THE REPUBLIC, VERY impulse and natural characteristic inclined the Roman to prac- tical activity. Acuteness of understanding quick grasp of details, wit and energy were lacked the ima , lucidity of intellect, given to him, but he ginative power, the glow of feeling, and the gift of creative invention which make the poet, and are not unnecessary to the prose writer. Thus we need not wonder t no more originality in literature than in art. gence in combination with high and varied cult Roman literature achieved; but a true and poesy springs from the depth of his soul, in o tible impulse, Rome never produced. Ther earliest period of Rome’s history, as in that were sung on religious occasions, at festiva hat the Roman showed All that art and intelli- ure could accomplish, genuine poet, whose bedience to an irresis- hee hf sre songs in the of Greece, songs that s and ceremonies, at banquets and at work ; but among the bards who composed these no Homer arose. The Italic races had all a taste and talent for dramatic representation, and the mimic art was early practised and 319 ROME. always a favourite at Rome; but they gave the world no Sophokles and no Aristophanes. All important Roman writers and poets became what they were by means of a foundation of Greek culture and in imitation of the Greeks. Hellas gave Rome first the art of writing, and then literature. In primitive times, before the beginning of clear and authentic history, the Romans received writing from the Greeks of lower Italy ; but centuries passed before literature arose, and this again was in consequence of a stimulus from Greece. Down to this time writing had been only used for official purposes; laws and announcements were painted up, or engraved on stone Greeks. Rome be- gan to grow great or bronze; and the priests recorded and powerful, and every year the her nobles had be- names of the chief come great and public officers, and mighty lords. probably also re- Wealth accumu- markable events, in lated within her dry annals, which walls, luxury arose, would, however, and with it the have been inestima- need of higher cul- ble data for history, tivation, of intel- had they not per- lectua’ pleasures ished in the burning and work. Then of Rome by the it was that the Ro- Gauls. mans became famil- But this lapi- iar with Greek life dary style was not and manners, and history. A litera- with the achieve- ture first arose when ments of the Greek the Greek cities of intellect in litera- southern Italy were ture and art, of all subjugated, and the which they had Romans thus nothing — not a brought into more poet, not an artist, SCIPIO AFRICANUS THE ELDER, frequent and closer not a writer, not contact with the even a language for literary expression ; theirs was too crude, rough, and undeveloped. And this was at the end of the first Punic war, when Rome reckoned from her foundation half a thousand years. The Romans eagerly seized their new acquisitions; it became the fashion in families of distinction to learn Greek, to speak and write it, and to study the Greek authors. The statesman needed the language for the duties of his office and station, and the private man studied it for intellectual pleasure and profit, and as a graceful accomplishment. To this study followed a desire to emulate the Greeks, and create a national literature of their own. It wasa patriotic impulse, but, as things were, could only be accomplished by imitating the Greeks and with the help of Greek literature; and thus the first works produced in the Roman tongue were either translations or imitations of the Greek ; and this they set about with eagerness, and in all directions, Homer, the tragic and comic poets, were made 320 THE LITERATURE OF THE REPUBLIC. accessible to the Roman people in their own language ; historical narratives (the first of these, indeed, was written in Greek) endeavoured to rise above the chronicle-style of the Fasti, the s, and to resemble Greek models. annals of the pries 3ut national, or at least patriotic, as this endeavour was, it did not fail to arouse the ssociated the new cul- opposition of the old conservative Roman spirit. Men of this stamp < , beside its ture, the new language and literature, and Hellenism altogether—which, doubtl grea. intellectual achievements, had its questionable features—with the growing corruption of morals. They preferred the old rude times, when there were no poets, no authors, no philoso- phers and no rhetoricians teaching how to defend an unjust as well as a just cause—they preferred this rude simplicity to the new intellectual life, in the idea that if the former could be retained, the ancient simplicity and purity of morals would be regained. At the head of these conservatives stood Cato, the austere censor, the personification of narrow rustic wisdom, who throughout a long life opposed himself like a dam to’the new Rome that was arising, A brave soldier, covered with the scars of battle, a fearless foe of all baseness or what he accounted such, a good speaker full of mother-wit and intelligence of matters within his immediate ken, he had no vision for the distant and the future. He combated the spirit of innovation by acts, speech, and writing; but his very writings show him to be a son of the new era, and he could not deny that he had learned from the Greeks. In this, the literary sphere, his resistance was altogether futile. The new Roman iterature grew and expanded irresistibly with the diffusion of Greek culture. It could not, it is true, go far away from its Greek models, nor did it aim to do so, but the works that it broduced were Latin works, and rendered inestimable service in forming the Latin tongue, and making it a clear, harmonious, and expressive vehicle for thought, whether in the form of prose or poetry. And those contributed the most to this who were most deeply imbued with Greek etters. It was the house of the Scipios, with their vast circle of friends, dependants, and kins- men, the young Gracchi and the ladies of the house not excepted, who formed the central point of this movement, and drew about them all who were cherishing and contributing to the new and cultivation, and high as iterature. Deeply as this circle was saturated with Greek letter was its admiration for the Greek writers, it was from it that the strongest impulse proceeded to develop and form the Latin tongue, to give it a firm scientific foundation, and to speak and write it in the highest purity. This influence operated through association and intercourse, through the writings of grammarians, poets, prose authors, and orators; and even at a later day the speeches of the younger Gracchus, whose style was formed in this school, were considered models of language. Thus it came to pass that the house of the Scipios, already illustrious by their deeds, gave completion to this first period of Roman literature. Of all the poets and writers of this formative period, comedy alone excepted, as good as nothing has been preserved—notices, dates, and a few fragments are all that remain—so that it is difficult, or rather impossible, to form a satisfactory idea of the character and style. It was a Greek who made the beginning—a Tarentine, Livius Andronicus, who had taken his Roman name from his patron Livius Salinator, who had learned Latin at Rome, and de- sired to make the Romans acquainted with the master-works of his own people. Immediately after the first Punic war, he began to adapt Greek comedies and tragedies, and to translate the Odyssey into Saturnian verse. This was the versification of the old songs and responsive chants, without regular metre, but measured only by the rise and fall of the tone, and called Saturnian because everything of hoary antiquity and obscure origin was associated with the 5 god Saturn, who was reported by tradition to have once ruled Italy. After Livius Andronicus, 321 ROME, who flourished in the years 240-215 B C., came Cneius Naevius, a Latin from Campania, and therefore apparently a Roman, or of blood nearly akin to the Romans. Like Andronicus, he attempted both the drama and the epic, but he did not content himself with Greek subjects, but in part at least selected Roman; founding one drama upon the bringir x-up of Romulus fer and Remus, another upon the battle at Clastidium ; while he took the first: Punic war, then not long over, as the subject of an epos. The epos was thus emancipated from its Greek model so far as the subject was con- cerned, but in form it returned to it, and never afterwards made an advance. Naevius, whose poetical works were composed in the years 219-202 8. c, wrote his Punze War in Saturnian SARCOPHAGUS OF CORNELIUS LUCIUS SCIPIO IN THE VATICAN, verses. Next came Quintus Ennius (240-169 B. c.) a contemporary of the second Punic war, a friend and associate of the Scipios, by origin, education, and association, fully imbued with Greek cultivation and letters, who wrote an epic poem on the history of Rome, in which the part containing the second Punic war was written in hexameters. To do this he had to compel the Latin language to adapt itself to firm rhythmical principles, instead of its former irregular- ity, and thus marked out the path for all his successors, and became “the father of the Roman epic.” Undoubtedly he rendered service to the language also, which he handled with genuine Roman mastery and energy, even if somewhat roughly and coar: : The way once traced, many followed his example; but none attained equal celebrity until Vergil arose. Ennius also tried his hand at tragedy, but more successful than he was his nephew Pacuvius (220-154 B. c.), who was originally a painter, but, probably influenced by Ennius, em- ployed his familiarity with the Greek language to make known to his countrymen the Greek tragic poets. In this he was more than a mere translator: he treated his originals with great freedom, and had the art of informing his adaptations with the genuine Roman spirit, expressed in vigorous language. Among many others who followed him in this direction 322 THE LITERATURE OF THE - REPUBLIC. was a younger friend of his, Lucius Attius (160-87 3. c), whose activity extends into the following period, but who in style of working still belongs to the elder poets. Both Pacuvius and Attius were highly esteemed, and their works continued long to be read, but they did not touch the hearts of the Romans, who had no genuine feeling for tragedy, or at least none for the lofty tragedy, with its presentation of noble characters, elevated thoughts, tender feelings or mighty passions, and irreconcilable antagonisms. While in Greece every heart beat in unison with these, in Rome it was only the nobles and others imbued with Greek culture that could feel themselves in sympathy with this tragedy or even understand it. Hence it flourished but fora brief time. In the period immediately following, the serious drama had become a mere literary work, written for the entertainment or practice of minds of talent and refinement, at which any one might try his hand without adding to his reputa- tion or gaining any applause from the people. Thus the tragedy disappeared from the stage and remained only in the school; for the tragedies attributed to the philosopher Seneca are nothing but school-dramas, exercises in rhetoric. With comedy it was otherwise. The Italic race had both the talent and the taste for comic representation ; with clearness of intelligence they possessed also the gifts of wit and ighted in farcical mimicry. Thus the Greek satire ; and the common people had always de comedy did not come as a novelty, for there was already a kind of comic drama in vogue among the people. From very ancient times they had had the jocular dialogue, which was afterwards practised in Rome as an entertainment at the table; and in the country, at rustic festivals, it was a custom for young persons of the villages or rural peasantry, to entertain the crowd with improvised scenes of popular life, given in a broadly farcical or satirical fashion. As the Atellanae, so-called from the Osco-Latin town Atella, these farces became a distinct form of comedy, with certain fixed personages, which, like Harlequin in gatherer, the doctor, modern pantomime, were never absent, such as the soothsayer, the tax. workmen of various crafts, but especially the fuller, who was the favourite butt for all gibes, It was the rustic life of the country, or the life of the lower classes in the little towns that formed the staple of these pieces, and was represented in a broad burlesque style. In this form the Atellanae came to Rome, where, without changing their character beyond the neces- sary adaptation to local circumstances and personages, they became a distinct species of litera- ture of alow kind, especially by the means of Pomponius and Novius, who composed their Atellanae in verse instead of improvising them. By the time this was done, however, the Greek comedy had long been domiciled in Rome. The earliest writers had made attempts in this direction, and Naevius, who, as it seems, ventured on Aristophanic audacity, had to consult his personal security by leaving Rome. The Romans could not endure the keen personal and political criticisms of an Aris- tophanes, not having the free and independent spirit of the Athenians; so it was the third form of Athenian comedy, the comedy of manners and intrigue, which became the model for Roman imitation, Some of the poets kept closely to their Greek models, and retained the locality, names, and costumes of their originals, while others took Rome as the scene of their pieces and made the manners and incidents Roman. Thus came the division into comoedza palliata and comoedia togata, so called from the respective national costumes of the actors ; but the difference was merely superficial. Greater was the difference between the poets themselves, at least between the two who were the leaders in this art, Titus Maccius Plautus and Publius Terentius Afer. A con- siderable number of complete works of both these writers have come down to our time, in 323 ROME. which respect they have been more fortunate than the other poets and writers of that period. There are twenty undoubted comedies of Plautus, which (with two others, since lost) Varro recognized as genuine, out of a hundred and thirty attributed to that poet; and of Terence, who died young, six pieces have been preserved. Plautus, the earlier of the two, born 183 8. c., in the same year with Hannibal and Philopoimen, was a man of the people and after the people’s own heart. Reduced to poverty ENTRANCE TO THE GRAV OF THE SCIPIOS, by unfortunate business speculations, he was compelled to earn his bread by working at a mill. While so employed he composed his comedies, which he sold to the aed iles, the mana- gers of the public entertainments, to be brought out at the popular festivals. Had he been of higher birth and greater refinement, he would probably have enjoyed the favour of the reat, as did Terence ; but his speech was crude, his versification careless, his persons and inci- o 5S dents taken from common life, his situations and dialogue full of equivoque, and often indecent enough. But he overflows with sparkling wit, ever ready and racy humour, and invention of comic intrigue—altogether a rich and puissant genius. He handled his Greek models with great freedom, and not only adapted them to Roman circumstances, but infused into them the Roman spirit. Terence, a Carthaginian by birth, came in youth to Rome as a slave, where he was carefully educated by the senator Terentius Lucanus, and then emancipated. His fine cultivation and distinguished talent soon won him the friendship of the younger Scipio and of Laelius, and introduced him to that distinguished circle in which the lovers of Greek learn- ing were cultivating purity of speech. He adapted, or re-wrought Greek comed , and espe- cially those of Menander, the purest and most decorous of the Greek comic poets. le held fast to his original, even to the Greek title which he retained, and strove to equal it in his exact and harmonious versification, his refined language, and his pure Latin. In so doing he not only obtained the favour and friendship of the distinguished men of his time, but earned 324 THE LITERATURE OF THE REPUBLIC. rom the great spirits of the succeeding age, such as Cicero and Caesar, and even later, the highest praise as the best and most perfect model of all the poets of the republic. But for this very reason he never had, as had Plautus, the loud applause of the multitude ; and this may have been one cause why he soon left Rome, only to perish by shipwreck. Among the soets who succeeded him there were many who earned renown, but only their names have come down to us. This first period of Roman literature belonged to poetry, but the second, the last century of the republic, to prose. The early poetry, the tragedy, the epos, retired into the yackground, as did porary wooden erec- also the comedy as tions, which were an art, such as Ter- torn down at the ence had written it. close of the perform- But the sta was ance. not deserted; the Though _ the popular poetry, the Roman possessed no Atellanae, and after great original genius them the mimes with in poetry, yet he speech, a _— similar ceased to find pleas- kind of burlesque ure in translations comedy, out of which and adaptations. By the pantomimes de- this time the great veloped in imperial Greek authors had times, still kept pos- become the common session of it. Yet property of all men despite the increas- of cultivation, and ing taste for the all educated Romans theatre, Pompeius read, wrote, anc was the first to give spoke Greek, while the people a perma- many compoOsec nent stage in a the- verses in that tongue. atre of stone. Down Rome began to be to his time popular the central point o TERENCE. entertainments were Greek culture. Ro- given in mere tem- man youths hac Greek teachers; in the public schools taught Greek philosophers and rhetoricians, who came in great numbers to Rome, attracted by wealth, power, and the favour of the great. The Roman nobles invited them to their tables, and contracted ties of intimate friendship with them. Thus above all the house of Lucius Lucullus, a famous general, and still more famous don vivant, was a gathering-place of Greek scholars, literati, and artists, and of books and works of art as well. These men of letters entertained them and their guests with bril- liant or instructive conversation, and doubtless did justice to the most luxurious table in Rome. But despite all this, or rather for this very reason, men were no longer satisfied with the Greek direction which Roman literature had hitherto taken. The Roman mind had now become free and conscious of its own powers, and it began to contemn imitative work and second-rate talent, and while it still enjoyed the master-works of Greece, it sought to SSeS) ROME, mark out paths of its own for its own productions. \ Thus it neglected artistic poetry, as not in its style, while with its strong practical sense it turned to artistic prose, which had already been brought by the Scipios, the Gracchi, and that circle, to a certain degree of per- fection, quite sufficient for literary purposes. In prose it took two directions, in both of which it attained classical perfection, and these were history and oratory. Yet, notwithstanding the general neglect of poetry at this period, there were two poets who rose above the ordinary level, and won high favour with the people. But neither of these poets, true Romans in soul and intellect, is a poet in our sense of the word, but, stands nearer to prose than poetry. One of these, Titus Lucretius Carus, who lived about 95-50 3. c, wrote in careful and often splendid hexameters, though not without stiffness and inharmoniousness at times, but the theme of his poem was the philosophy of Epikouros. His great poem On the Nature of Things is a philosophical didactic work, mathematics and physics wrought into verse—as unpoetical a subject as could well be found. Lucretius, however, brought enthusiasm to his task, and hoped of this world—un- through this poem fortunately too ab- stract a theme for to free the Romans from their supersti- any enthusiasm to sar of tion and the render poetical. death, and to fil Lucilius, the them with equanim- elder of these two ity and calmness of poets, was no more soul, that “they poetical than Lu- might live like the Snare: cretius, put — his blessed gods, indif- style was more erent to the things original and gen- uinely Roman. He was a Latin from the colony of Suessa (born 148, died 103 8. c), who lived at Rome, and was influenced by the circle of the Scipios and their’ succes- sors. He was, so to speak, a feuilletonist in verse, for all that was discussed or said in this brilliant and intellectual circle he threw into verse, with a ready facility, like that of a graceful talker—the occurrences of life, social matters, politics and literature, and even questions of criticism and grammar. Through all his light chat there ran a vein of satire, but it was not the proper ground of it, although this kind of poetry was called sa¢va, and 5 Lucilius a satiric poet. Sa¢éra or Satura denotes a kind of poetry that treats in a miscella- neous way of things in general; a dash of satire was first introduced, and soon became the chief feature of the composition. ‘ With Varro, the discontented adherent of the constitu- tional party, the miscellaneous trait is still the predominant one in his satires, which are mixed up of prose and verse. Horace was the first who fixed the character of the satire in such a way as to be a model for all succeeding times; but Horace belongs to the following period, that of the full bloom of Latin poetry. The period of which we are treating had, as before said, set itself the task of bringing prose literature to perfection. In speech this perfection had been attained at the close of the preceding period, but corresponding writers had been wanting. This period had produced but a single historical work of importance, and that only at its close; the Ovzgzwes of the elder Cato, a sketch of Roman history from its origin, and in a sense the summing-up of his life, for he wrote it in very advanced age, not long before his death, The work was later much 326 THE LITERATURE OF THE REPUBLIC. referred to as a source of information, but it has not been preserved. This is all the more to be regretted, as Cato, as we have said, opposed the Greek culture with antique Roman severity and narrowness, and this work would have shown how far he was, or was not, independent of it. This new period had an admirable model of historic writing in the Roman history of the Greek Polybius, a work which was not only Roman in its subject, but also in being a pro- duction of pure intelligence, and that a clear and penetrating intelligence which surveyed the world from a lofty point of view. Yet it does not seem to have been taken as a model, nor, apparently, did those who followed at all approach it. So far as we know—for all Roman his- tory before Caesar has perished—historical writing was chiefly in the form of memoirs, bio- graphies, and slighter pieces. The Romans of rank who at that time conducted war or com- merce—Marius of course excepted—were men of literary cultivation, with whom it was almost arule to commit to writing the leading events of their lives; and as a Sulla was among them, we may well deplore the loss of these memoirs. Unfortunately the larger and more comprehen- sive historical works of the class of this period, those of Sallust and of Cornelius Nepos, are not now extant ; what remain are but detached writings, covering relatively but small portions of history, but in themselves perfect classic productions, such as the Commentaries of Caesar and the extant writings of Sallust. Of the two works which are admitted to be the genuine productions of the greatest of the Romans, Caius Julius Caesar, his narratives of the Gallic war and the civil war with Pompe'us, the first is not even a history in the strict sense of the word, as it is written with the intent to produce a certain effect ; that is, if the opinion be a correct one that looks on it as a justification of the conquest of Gaul against those who condemned it in Rome. But even if this be so, this purpose is lost sight of in the extraordinary gift of the ancients to treat things objectively, which no writer ever pc sed in a higher degree than Caesar. The subject loses nothing of its vitality, of its intrinsic interest; the events pass before our eyes as visibly as in a drama, and yet the simple, terse narrative, expressed in a style of unsurpassable purity, never loses its repose. It is a work of the most lucid intellect, of the clearest head, a work of a great and richly-gifted genius which needed no embellishment. If this simplicity, this grand natural style, gives Caesar’s writings their peculiar charm, the two works of Sallust, Ca¢z/zne and the /ugurthine War, go a step further ; they are works of art, conscious and intentional art, and they do not attempt to conceal it. Caius Sallustius Crispus (born 86 8, c.) was not of high birth. Sprung of a family of the middle class ina itudes of the revolu- small Sabine town, he made his way by his own talent through the viciss tion and the civil wars, not without some stain attaching to his character, especially from his i praetorship in Numidia, where he amassed a fortune. Thenceforth he lived in dignified leis- ure in the famous gardens which he had laid out and embellished in Rome, devoted to litera- ture and engaged in historical works, of which, beyond the two above mentioned, only frag- ments have descended to us. Although written with conscious art, and a little affectation of antique phrase, they are still, as regards the power and the dignity of style, the terse vigour with which a wealth of serious thought is presented, and the lofty, and even sometimes sub- lime feeling that animates them, real masterpieces, on a small scale, of historic writing, Art in them is not concealed, but it is art in perfection. That which distinguishes Sallust’s historical writing from Caesar’s, its marked rhetorical character, is not a peculiarity of his own, but is more or less the character of this whole literary period, indeed, was a characteristic of the Romans themselves. The Roman had always 327 ROME. rhetorical predilections, and this taste permeates all branches of his literature, his life, and his history. It was therefore quite natural that oratory was precisely the form in which Roman »st excellence, and that such a man as Cicero, a man of words only, literature attained the higl could not only play so important a political part, but became the central point of all Roman literature, has been ever since regarded as its head, and unquestionably has had the most enduring influence of all. Marcus Tullius Cicero, born at Arpinum in the year 106 B. ¢., of equestrian rank, received his education in Rome from Greek masters, and completed it in the chief school of HORTENSIUS. oratory and philosophy at Rhodes. Gifted with a quick and receptive mind, he soon acquired all that study could then offer a young man of rank, especially the various philosophical systems, which in his judgment were as necessary for a public speaker—the career he intended to pursue—as practice in oratory itself. Thus well equipped he entered into public life and the arena of politics, ascended to the top the ladder of ambition, filling one high office after another, and when in his consulate he succeeded in crushing the conspiracy of Catiline, he was honoured with the title of “ Father of his Country.” And all this he achieved as a man of words, as orator and writer. Vacillating in his political course, vainglorious in success, pusillanimous in misfortune, rather pushed forward and urged on by others than a leader of men, as a statesman he presents but a weak figure. Even asa writer he lacked originality, power, vigour, and fulness of thought. His merit lay in his language, which he handled with a mastery such as no other Roman, before or since, ever attained. At the time when he entered public life, the purity and artistic use of the Latin tongue was in great danger. The pure Latin of the Scipios, the correct speech of men of rank and education, was giving way before a reaction in favour of the vulgar Latin, the speech of the people, which even ascended the orator’s tribune with the eloquent Hortensius. 328 THE LITERATURE OF THE REPUBLIC. It was Cicero who, with his Greek culture, with his more refined taste, due to his residence at Rhodes, and his polished art, brought back the nobler speech, and the art of using words, into literature and upon the tribune. Furnishing, as he did in his spoken and his written orations as well as in his numerous other writings, models for imitation, he not only preserved the speech of Rome from lapsing into barbarism, but was the acknowledged founder of classical Latin, Accomplished and cultivated as he was on many sides, theoretically and philosophically, his writings extended over almost all branches of literature, but we are far from possessing the whole of these. Everything of the kind that he undertook was easy to him; words were always ready at his disposal, even when he was obliged to make them; but his thoughts were rarely profound. gated him to in- Beside his num- voluntary leisure erous orations, of in the country, which many were composed a series recast afterwards, of philosophical and many never writings in which delivered at all, he shows little so that with these or no originality, he originated a and perhaps has new branch of only the merit o literature, the having created a written address philosophica beside these he Latin for the Ro- composed several mans and all later works on the philosophica theory and_his- writers in that tory of oratory, tongue. Once wrote histories, more he allowed made verses, and himself to be in his last years, drawn from «his when the turn rural retirement tae é CICERO. ( ss political affairs to deliver ~ his had taken rele- Philippic orations ainst Antony, and this cost him his life. Murderers, despatched by Antony, slew him, then al xty-four years old. His letters were collected and published after his death; full of informa- tion about many men and things, and at the same time chatty and amusing, for he was a delightful talker, they belong to the best of Cicero's writings. There were more learned men than Cicero, and especially his contemporary Terentius Varro, who composed satires, wrote historical works, and had a deep and extensive knowledge of Roman antiquities, on account of which qualities Caesar had pitched upon him for the chief sin’s steel librarian of that great library which he proposed to found in Rome before the as closed his career, Varro wrote learned works which were highly esteemed, but in form and language he was far inferior to Cicero ; indeed, in these respects the great orator had no peer. It was Cicero who, as the copestone of the literature of the republic, brought the Latin tongue to its perfection, but he gave it so fixed and canonical a form that any further development was hardly possible. 329 the school WSS, WINS RVANINOIRIS, (OD Aste poets of the earlier period, and the Greeks. understand ; they were elucidated and imitated. of the young student, and he preserved the faculty anc everybody made verses, and many believed themselves set the example, not princes alone, but the sovereigns themselves paigns, and even wrote Greek comedies. AT THE MUSES SARCOPHAGUS OF THE CAPITOL. 3. EMPIRE. RING the last century of the Republic, prose was in the ascendant ; during the first of the empire, the Augustan age, poetry. This isa noteworthy phenomenon in the history of literature : the highest perfection of prose precedes the highest perfection of poetry. Usually it is the other way : it is commonly the poets who first bring anguage to the condition in which it becomes capable of perfectly his chronological order is fixing thought. Yet with the Romans t quite natural. In this period Roman poetry remains what it was rom the first, a product of intelligence and artistic skill, a result of talent and cultivation, not a work of the creative power of genius. At this time the young Roman grew up in an atmosphere of poetry. In the poets were the first and chief means of instruction; the Latin These he was taught to read and Verse-making was an exercise the practice in later life : poets. The imperial house as well. Augustus wrote a poem in hexameters on Sicily, and composed epigrams while in his bath. Tiberius wrote poetry in Greek as well as Latin: Germanicus found time for poetical composition during his cam- Nero considered himself a great and genuine poet, 33° THE LITERATURE OF THE EMPIRE. not amere dilettante who wrote merely for his amusement; and he desired all the would so to consider him. Only Caligula and Claudius pursued solid studies; the former devoted himself to oratory, and the latter wrote learned histories. In this way the taste of the time co-operated with the teachings of the school; but there was still another circumstance that favoured poetry. With the fall of the republic, eloquence, it is true, had not ceased to be the surest path to success; the study of rhetoric remained as before the way to offices and dignities ; but under the autocratic rule of Augustus and the tyranny of his successors, free speech was not merely checked, it became in the , Which highest degree dangerous. Many men of talent therefore prudently turned to poes offered relative, if not absolute, security. In poetry, talent found a favourable field for exer- cise ; and with it one might, without too gross adulation, enjoy the favour of the great, win fame and honour, and in addition—at least in the time of Augustus—might earn a modest and independent living, if not riches. The great men of that time, with Augustus at their head, not only made verses like other mortals, but they held themselves, in a sense, in honour bound to protect and to reward poets, and even to associate with them on a footing of friendship. Augustus valued literature and writers on political as well as personal grounds. With his accession Rome entered on an era of peace and quiet, and he was well pleased that the people, deprived of their freedom, should turn their attention to literary matters. But he also took a personal pleasure in poetry and other intellectual work, and for this reason liked to associate with men of letters. He was ‘ond of conversation with men of intelligence, and his literary friends were always welcome guests at his table. In this he was imitated by the rest of his family and many of his courtiers. But Augustus did not confine his recognition of the poets to listening to their works, and attending at their public recitations ; his regard and appreciation took a more substartial form. By his favours Vergil became a wealthy man, and so might Horace have become, had he not preferred a modest competence which allowed him to preserve his entire independence, even toward an Augustus. The example of the emperor was followed by the great nobles of his court, such as Valerius Messala, and above all Maecenas, whose generous patronage of letters has. enriched anguage with a new word. His friendship to the poets has almost caused his great importance as a statesman, as friend and counsellor of Augustus, and his associate in founding the empire, to be overlooked. A friend of art and literature, a man of wit and intelligence, a man of the world, rich, noble, and large-minded, he lived, after the empire was fairly established, a life of noble and elegant leisure, in constant intimacy with his poetic friends Horace, Vergil, Varius, and the rest, and they were always welcome guests in his wonderful gardens, in his palace on the heights of Rome, from whose tower he might survey the whole city and the surrounding country, or at his country-house at Tibur, by the waterfalls of the Anio. He also was generous and secured his friends from all want. To him it was that Horace owed his charming Sabine farm surrounded by woods, whither he so often fled for repose from the busy life of the capital and the company of the great. For thirty years this close friendship lasted, until the death of Maecenas, followed in the same year by that of Horace, who was buried by his side Under such circumstances many gifted men devoted themselves to poetry, but among them all there was no genius; none whose poetry sprang from thedepths of the soul, none to whom it was a passionate outburst of the heart. All that intelligent men of distinguished talents and the finest culture could produce in an admirably perfected language by following 33! ROME. the noblest models, was achieved by the Roman poets of the Augustan age. Their works have all the external qualities of good poetry ; striking thoughts, perfected and various form, a sonorous language, rich imagery, taste, grace, and copiousness—but the soul of poesy is wanting. Thus the poetry of the Augustan age remained at its genuine Roman stage, that of rhetoric. The continued study and familiarity with the poets from childhood had the effect of embellishing even the speech of every-day life with some of the graces of poetry; while poesy itself could not cast off this rhetorical character which was a fundamental characteristic of the Roman mind. Speech was poetry in prose; poetry, rhetoric in verse. Unfortunately, too, it was not the great and original poets who were chosen as models. They held fast still to the Greeks, who were now understood and enjoyed if possible better than ever before; and them nearer to him than made no attempt to cre- in , a Homer ora Sophokles. ate an original Roman Whatever they had been poetry, content if they able to produce by tal- could only equal their ent, cultivation, intel- models ; and in truth, in ligence, and refined taste, some respects they not that the Roman could only equalled, but even produce also. surpassed them, For | So in quality, at the models then most | least, a limit was set to read in the schools and | the Roman poetry of followed by the poets | this period ; the highest were the Greeks of the i achievements were be- Alexandrian period, the | yond its reach; but so masters of a secondary far as the number of and derivative poetry poets and variety of that had revived under forms were concerned, the influence of intel- there was no limit ; song ligence and _ learning. and poetic composition And these qualities VERGIL. went on all over the made the Roman feel empire and in all styles. Vergil, Horace, Ovid, Catullus, Propertius,—to name only poets whose works have de- scended to us,—form at once a considerable list of names of the first rank. Every style of composition was tried, though not all with equal success, and le: st successfully in tragedy. But the epic, in both the grander heroic form, and in shorter pieces, flourished, as did the Roman satire, the didactic poem, instructive or playful ; the song proper or ode, after the pattern of the Greek melos-writers and their Alexandrian successors ; the elegy ; the occasional poem; and the rural poem, the idyll in the style of Theokritos, the most graceful and original poetic composition of the Alexandrian period. Of the above-named at poets, the earliest, Caius Valerius Catullus, in date does not strictly belong to the circle of the Augustan poets ; but in genius he is closely allied with them, and must be counted the first of the new poetic school. He would have been a contemporary of Horace and Vergil, if a premature death had not cut short his career in about the thirtieth year of his age. So in strict chronology the brief period of his writing falls in the last years of the republic, with whose leading men he came more or less into contact. Sprung of a collateral branch of the famous Valerian house, Catullus was born in the 332 THE LITERATURE OF THE EMPIRE, s sent early to Rome, where he year 87 B. c, on the Sirmian peninsula in Lake Garda. He w received his education, and where his birth and family connexions—his father was a friend of Caesar’s—admitted him to the most distinguished circles. His talent led him to imitate the light, pleasing, and graceful style of short occasional poems, in which the Alexandrian writers excelled, and even to introduce into Roman poetry the difficult strophe-construction of the Greek ode. A song, a playful poem, a festive ode, or an elegy, these were the produc- tions of the young poet, who, as it seems, in nowise soared above the average level, or at least not above his Atexandrian models. But he learned to know the power of the only one in this ove, and through love he became a true poet, we may almost say sense that Rome produced. The beautiful and intellectual Clodia, of the haughty Clau- ] Roman women, kindled the heart and inspired the soul of the youthful poet. In this hidden dian race, wife of the consul Quintus Metellus Celer, as was mentioned in the chapter on passion, which for awhile was returned by its object, Catullus found tones of the heart, words of passion, a speech of love, such as had never before been heard in Rome; but he also found in like manner the tones of burning indignation and withering scorn, when she became faith- ess to him, disdained him, and sank to degradation herself, if, indeed, the reports of those times are to be believed. In this sense Catullus stands alone; not that other poets of equal talent would not have followed the same course under similar circumstances; but his love to Lesbia, as he called Clodia, remained single of its kind among poets. It was a deep and fervid passion, a mysterious and dangerous connexion, and its rupture may well have brought about the poet’s early death. But the fair ones whom his successors sang by the names of Lalage, Neaera, Delia, Glycera, Lycoris, were of a lower class ; love with them was only a pastime, and the re sung only the sportive exercise of wit and fancy, not the effusions of sol in which they genuine passion. Thus it was with the love of Tibullus, who held the first place in Rome as an elegiac poet. The Roman elegy rejected the acrid political tone of the Greek, and confined itself to a single species, the erotic, which had been brought to especial perfection by the Alexandri- ans. This style the Roman poets handled with facility and grace, but not without a tinge of sadness, which was not foreign to their serious disposition, which it well became. This is especially the character of the elegies of Albius Tibullus, and Tibullus is the most genuine and the most Roman of all elegists. He also, like Catullus, was a young poet, and was cut off at an early age. The year 43 2. c. is generally accepted as that of his birth, and it is certain that he died in the year 19 8. c. The son of a Roman knight, he had lost the greater part of his patrimony in the civil wars; but a little farm near Pedum in the Sabine hills remained to him, and here he lived for the most part, dividing his time between rural occupations and literature. He loved the country like a genuine Roman, loved the charms of nature, the sweet peace, the soft repose of a rural life; and he could give to this feeling the tenderest and truest expression. So was it in his love; at times a tone of strong passion is heard: but he soon falls back into softness, tenderness, and melancholy. This tone was natural and true; and his truth and simplicity have placed him, despite his somewhat feminine ssic poets. character, among the admired and cla A more manly nature was that of Sextus Aurelius Propertius, his competitor in elegiac poetry, who was born between 58 and 46 zB. c., and died 15 3. c. He was a friend of Ovid, and of Cornelius Gallus, that elegist whose works are unhappily lost, and whose tragic fate has made him more celebrated than his writings. Propertius is vigorous in his language, manly and bold in thought, but le ROME. s original than his more tender contemporary Tibullus. He followed closely his Greek models, especially the Alexandrian Kallimachos, on which account he was called the Roman Kallimachos. These three poets, Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius, form a another group, made up of Ovid, Horace, and Ver- gil. Ovid forms the link between the two, being both an i and a_ narrative poet. But as an elegist he stands apart from the others, for with him the elegiac tone is only as- sumed, or mingled with wit and sportiveness, and in this style he is peculiar. His was an eminent talent, rising almost to genius, but the talent is superficial and never reaches the depths of feel- ing. Opulent in words, his verses flow with a free- dom, lightness, and grace such as hardly another Roman poet pos- sessed; and _ this gift he not only uses, but some- times abuses, be- way to have abused this intimacy, for his frail grand-daughter Julia, exiled Ovid to Tomi in Moesia, on NE UP IVEIBETESIENT i HORACE, Augustus, at the oup, beside which stands ing as little scrup- ulous in his choice of subjects, as in the expression of the thoughts which arise in his mind. Publius Ovidius Naso, born at Sulmo in Pelignum, 43 8B. c, was the son of a man of means, and had the ad- vantage of a care- ful education at Rome; but he early renounced public life, and devoted himself to the Muses. His talent and art introduced him to the court of Au- gustus, and his amiability, wit, and conversa- tional powers made him a fa- vourite member of the Augustan circle and an in- timate of the imperial family. But he seems in some __ indiscreet that he banished the shore of the Black Sea. There the unhappy poet remained, far from his beloved Rome, for eight long years, and poured forth his woes and despair in rather unmanly fashion in his Books of Sorrows (Libri Tristium) and in the letters (Epistolae ex Ponto) he wrote to his friends. But melodious appeals and friendly influence were all in vain : 334 Augustus could not be brought to relent, and his successor Tiberius was equally inexorable. THE LITERATURE OF A. D., in the sixtieth year of his age. THE EMPIRE, Ovid died at Tomi in the year 17 But it was not these lamentations from Pontus that made Ovid a celebrated poet. Wearying in their interminable querulousness, they are and have always been but little read. His amatory poems, whose too great freedom may have been the cause of his banishment ; _ his Amatory Ayr, which treats of the ways and means to succeed in love; and his Amours, relating his own adven- tures, his joys and sorrows in his love-affairs, have been held in much higher estimation. But his chief work, and_ that with which to the present day his name is associ- ated, is his A7/efa- morphoses, a nar- rative poem, which, sometimes graceful, | some- times lofty, usu- ally smooth and flowing, but al- ways bright and forcible, keeping to the thread o the various trans- formations effect- WAIL nis anians et habef sui ffice, crede mihi. mil ed by the anger pr compassion of the gods, runs through the whole circuit of mythol- ogy. That which Ovid lacked, the power of severe self-criticism, Horace possessed and exercised in the highest de- gree; with talent great as Ovid's, as he had a more disciplined intel- lect. He had studied _ philoso- phy diligently, and not only studied it, he had taken it deeply to heart ; and when the passions o youth had been tamed by ‘ad- vancing years, philosophy be- came the refuge of his life. His philosophy was that of Epikou- ros in its nobler comprehension, which raised him above worldly affairs, and gave him equanimity, repose of the soul, and happiness. Quintus Horatius Flaccus, the son of a freedman of moderate fortune, was born at Venusia in the year 65 8. ¢., and educated at Rome. His youth corresponded with the time of the civil wars, and when he grew up he entered military service and was present in the army of Brutus at the battle of Philippi. His adhesion to the republican cause cost him his paternal estate; but he received the benefit of the amnesty, and returned to Rome. Here he soon 325 ROME. gained a reputation as a poet, and became the friend of Vergil, who introduced him to Mae- cenas, and Maecenas to Augustus. The state of things had now changed ; the republic had fallen; so Horace, the former republican, adjusted himself to the new position of affairs and became the friend of the great. Augustus wished to make him his secretary ; but Horace, loving independence, declined the position and the honour. Maecenas wished to have him as his daily guest, as his constant companion and associate, but the poet still preferred to be the master of his own time and life, only accepting from his noble friend his Sabine farm, which replaced that which he had lost. Thus he might the more freely praise and honour his friends and patrons, both Augustus and Maecenas, without incurring the reproach of venal flattery, But he was happiest on his own Sabine land, where he forgot the tumult and cares of the world, and all the greatness and littleness of Rome. He died in the same year with his friend Maecenas, 8 B, c. Horace had a philosophical mind, but still more was he the philosopher of the heart. Certain of himself, contented with little, independent and free from care, he laughed at the follies and vices of the world. From this position he composed his earliest poems, or at least the earliest the foolish doings of which he made pub- men. This also is lic, his two books of the tone he takes in Satires, not the se- his Zf7stles, poems vere, caustic, political addressed to various satire of a Lucilius, persons, in which but the playful sa- he freely handles top- tire of a sage, who, ics Of various sorts, contented and cheer- HORACE, following the bent of ful himself, stands his humour, and apart wondering at shows the thoughts and experience of a man of matured mind, one who has seen the world and knows it ond book (LZ festola ad Pisones, or « 1s Poetica) deals in thoroughly. The third epistle of the this style with poets and poetic composition. Between these come his lyrical poems, the Odes, which undoubtedly were written at various periods of his life, even if the first three books were published at once. In these Odes, in which he sings of his loves or his friends, celebrates Maecenas and Augustus, or gives his reflections upon life and the world, Horace is less original, less Roman, than in his Sa¢ires and Epestles. He holds more closely to his Greek predecessor, whose words and thoughts he not seldom appropriates. But in reading the Odes one forgets altogether the model, so complete, so perfect and symmetrical, so harmonious are they, whether in light sportive vein, or whether they take a bolder flight. In either case they are among the most perfect productions of Roman literature. Equally masterly, but in another field, is Vergil. As Horace fixed the form of the artistic ode, the sportive satire, the easy epistle, so Vergil fixed the type of the Roman epos. This was felt at once when the Aenez’s was made known, after the poet’s death, to the Roman people. Publius Vergilius Maro was born at Andes near Mantua in the year 70 8. c., and died at Brundisium, after returning from a voyage to Greece, in 19 8. c. Brought up in the province, though carefully educated by the best masters, and coming to Rome in early man- hood, even in intimate association with Augustus and the court, he could never quite lay aside the provincial. But his personal imperfections were lost sight of in the brilliancy of his talent, and Vergil became the favourite and the most popular of all Roman poets. 336 THE LITERATURE OF THE EMPIRE. The first poetical works which he gave to the public gained for him at once a great reputation, but rather from the novelty of the style than the intrinsic worth. In his Zc/ogues, as they are usually called, he introduced to Rome compositions in the style of Theokritos, the idyll or pastoral poem. To be sure it is not quite the same. With Theokritos also the idyll is a production of reflective art, but the shepherds are shepherds, and the character and situa- tions have the local colour of rural life. With Vergil, the idyll has, so to speak, passed twice standing ; the Roman can not dispense with rhetoric, he brings in allegory through the unde and learned allusions, and so spoils the natural rural character ; the shepherds are no longer shepherds. But Vergil thoroughly knew the country and country-life, as is shown in the sec- ond of his preserved works, the four books of Georgies, which describe agriculture, the cultiva- tion of trees, stock-raising and bee-raising. But here too he is not original; he had Greek models to follow, and even at Rome, where didactic poetry had long been written, agriculture had found its poets. Vergil used the works of his predecessors ; but his knowledge of rural matters enabled him to give his poem a thoroughly Italian character as well as form, With these and other works, of which some small poems have been preseryed—which are attributed to pier subject could him, at least— : have been chosen: Vergil had already the prehistoric attained poetic story of Rome celebrity when he rom the flight of undertook to com- Aeneas from the ose a national lames of Troy, i ) epic for the Ro- to the founda- man people, and tiom Of the, city, i HORACE = ‘ the lcnezs was the The material was result. No hap- not only national, rich, and poetical, but it was also a tribute to the now consolidated empire and the im- perial family, for the Julian line traced its descent directly from Aeneas. Vergil, it is true, was no Homer; the natural, original, creative genius of the Greek is replaced in the Roman by conscious reflection : intelligence takes the place of imagination, and rhetoric that of the simple but always happy language. Nevertheless, the 4eneds is by far the best epos which Rome produced, and well deserves its fame. If the treatment is not entirely original, the expression and style are perfect; it is harmonious and strong, rich in beauties; and i it has rather the character of rhetoric than of original poetry, this suited the taste of the Romans, and in that sense is almost an additional merit. The Aene’s was therefore, with a certain propriety, the ideal of succeeding poets: it became at once a school-book, anc has so remained to this day. Ver: il himself became a hero of legend and fable ; and a glory surrounds his supposed grave at Posilippo near Naples, which was, at all events, his favourite resort, To place beside these poets, the Augustan age can show but a single prose writer o equal rank Titus Livius, the historian. Many of the great men who made the history o their time, wrote memoirs of their lives, as did Asinius Pollio, Agrippa, and Augustus himself ; but these works have all perished, and we can form no judgment of their merits. The works of Livius alone, of all these distinguished writers, have survived to our time, and those un- fortunately only in part. Titus Livius was born in Padua in the year 59 8. c., and died there in the year 17 a. 337 ROME. He enjoyed the friendship of Augustus, and led the life of a scholar at Rome, where he was occupied for years in the composition of his work, which recounted the history of Rome from its foundation to his own time, to the Germanic wars and the death of Drusus in the year 9 B. C.—a colossal and stupendous undertaking conscientiously performed, and finished with the highest art and care. Only thirty-five books have remained of the whole hundred and forty, and these are the first and most important source of our Roman history, and still enough to show us the author as a historian of the first rank. We say “first rank” advisedly, for he takes an equal place with Caesar and Sallust, and, in a certain sense, even excels them. Caesar is simple, natural, artless: his greatness as a historian lies in his g reatness as a man; Sallust is or 5 a deliberate and conscious artist, in whom we see the selection of words, the refully weighed expression, and the rhetorical and oratorical element. But in Livius this element dominates the whole narration. Asa pupil of the rhetors and philosophers, he does not sacrifice the truth, but his aim is to produce a beautiful narrative, a vivid delineation in eloquent language ; and in “his aspect he marks the culmination of Roman prose. With Livius, it is true, the rhetoric rules the narration, but he has a rich material to work upon, with which this style does not seem incongruous. Otherwis = was it in the period after Augustus. Then the form was all that was considered or cared for: men wished to write beautifully, elegantly ; the phrase becomes the thing of consequence, and the subject a secondary consideration. The speaker becomes a rhetorician, either in the school or in the practice of the courts. As he could not speak with perfect liberty, was not free to censure or The ic becomes a special and favourite style of oratory, for which subjects never failed until to praise in the following despotic time, he became a flatterer and panegyri: panegy the fall of the empire, for so long the panegyrists flourished and practised their ignoble craft after the pattern which the younger Pliny, one of the best of them; has left us in his panegyric of Trajan. But not the oration alone suffered by this tone, this unhealthy tendency. All branches of literature we = infected with declamation, and this statement is to be understood literally, not figuratively merely. Whoever had written anything in poetry or prose which he wished to bring to the notice of the public, effected his purpose most easily by a recitation. It is true that the book-trade was a well-established business even in the first years of the empire. The booksellers employed constantly numerous transcribers, by whose aid they were able to pro- duce thousands of copies of a work; and they kept shops frequented by all lovers of letters, and had connexions with the provinces, to which they sent old and new works to order or for sale. The Roman and the Greek literature combined had become the literature of the world : and the book-trade diffused it through all the provinces of the empire to its farthest limits. But the author desired immediate success; he was not disposed to wait until the echo of his fame came reverberating back from Gades or Pontus. Soa public reading of the latest work grew to be a universal custom, which was not, however, without expense and some inconve- nience to the reader. If no great man placed a house or hall at his disposal, he was compelled to hire a suitable room, hurry around among his friends and patrons, invite them, drag them in, must arrange a c/ague, with endless other similar troubles. A great man, who happened to be an author or poet, had naturally none of these cares; his friends and flatterers made it a point to be present ; his swarm of clients was on hand, and he was sure of a storm of applause, though boredom was stamped on every face. This custom of public reading led to continual aiming at effect, to mere hollow declama- tion, to which the time was already prone. There were poets enough, and more than enough, 338 THE LITERATURE OF THE EMPIRE. in the post-Augustan time, but the substance is prose and the form declamation. Thus the ten extant tragedies usually attributed to the philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca, the tutor of Nero, are nothing more than declamatory exercises in iambic trimcters, in stilted bombastic phrase, larded with philosophical reflections. The epic poets, whose ideal was Vergil, such as Marcus Annaeus Lucan (born at Corduba in Spain, 38 a. pv.) and Silius Italicus (25-100 A. p.), chose subjects for their epics that were prosaic enough. They selected simple history ; Lucan the war between Caesar and Pompeius, Silius the second Punic war. It is said of wucan that a leading object in writing his Pharsafia was to furnish a book of speeches of a superior quality for those who were studying elocution. As poetry declined, so also sank the position and consideration of the poets. Nero was jealous of the fame of other poets, other emperors were illiberal toward them, and the Mae- cenases either no longer appeared, or were less bountiful than in the time when Augustus set the example. Martial the epigrammatist (born 40 a. pb.) boasted, it is true, of the favour of Domitian, but did not even wards took revenge for receive from his imperial the miseries he had en- patron the means of a com- dured in Rome, in his nu- fortable subsistence; with merous published epigrams, the ordinary herd of clients in which he attacks the life he had to present himself and manners of the capital in the morning at the with more malice and houses of the great, and venom than genuine wit. live upon the wretched Other poets beside Mar- sportula. Thus he lived tial write with bitterness, for thirty-five years in but not of their personal Rome, until the younger grievances. Nobler natures Pliny furnished him the sickened at the corruption means to return to his na- MAECENAS. of the time, the vicious- tive Spain, where he after- ness and baseness of men, the fawning and flattering in Rome, and gave forcible expression to their disgust in bit- ter satires. Such a nature was the young Persius (born 34 A. D.), an earnest character, formed in the stoic school, who looked at the life of his time from the darkest side. Perhaps the fore-feeling of an early death—he died at twenty-eight—may have given a sad tinge to all his thought. In this respect happier was his fellow-satirist, Juvenal (born 42 a. D.), whom the experiences of life led at a somewhat advanced age to attack the follies and wicked- ness of the times. In his satire we see the results of the tyranny of Domitian, under whose successors morals had not greatly improved, and certainly gave room for the sharpest satire. Juvenal paints the life and manners of the capital in the blackest colours he can command; an indignation intense almost to fierceness dictates the verse. But there are better things to be said of this period of Roman literature. True, all the writers share the leading defect of the time, the rhetorical declamation, in greater or less degree ; but there are authors of merit among them, whether we judge by their modes of thought, their talent, or the contents of their works. Asa thinker and moralist we must note Lucius Annaeus Seneca, the philosopher, a Spaniard from Corduba, who by his numerous moral and philosophical writings aimed at teaching moderation, and giving fortitude and con- solation to men who had fallen upon evil times; though he was not successful with his pupil Nero, at whose command he expiated a life perhaps not altogether blameless, by a calm and 339 ROME, courageous death. To the same class belonged the elder Pliny, a man insatiable for knowledge, a collector of information on a grand scale, whose extensive work on natural history, though both in form and substance it has many faults, still has preserved for us a mass of information concerning antiquity, which otherwise we should not have known. His thirst for knowlege, as is well known, caused his death during that great eruption of Vesuvius which buried Herculaneum and Pompeii. Here too belongs his nephew, the younger Pliny, the friend of Trajan and his proconsul in Bithynia, who afterwards lived in Rome and on his estates, occu- pied with study, oratory, and partly with poetry ; a pleasing and admired speaker, an entertain- ing letter-writer, and quite conscious of his own excellence in both, And lastly we must add to this group the fourth and greatest of all, Tacitus. Caius Cornelius Tacitus, born at Interamma about 50 A. p., after pursuing the study of oratory, devoted himself to public life, became praetor in the year 88, consul in 97, and dis- appears from the public stage two years later, though his life was prolonged to about eighty. After his retirement he man history had once more wrote his works, the life found aman in whom the of his father-in-law Agricola, ancient Roman pride and the famous leader of the Roman honour were fully Roman armies in Britain; alive. In a better time he his Germania, his larger would have been a man of great deeds: in his own he 5 historical works, the Aznals and and the became a great writer, a the shorter work of the great historian of his people Orators. In all these writ- and his age. This age is ings we see a definite bias, corrupt, dissolute, ener- the constant protest of a vated; he becomes its se- true Roman of the old vere and inexorable judge, stamp against the changed and his sentence is con- and corrupt times in which demnation. In his Agrz- he lived. In Tacitus Ro- cola, a brief but masterly biography, he gives the portrait of a really great man and great general; in his Germanza, a wn ketch of Germany and the Germans, he draws the picture of an uncorrupted nation, which in nany traits was, and was intended to be, a strong contrast to the Romans of his time. In his 1nnals and Frstories, of which the latter was the earlier composition, he gave the picture of i he imperial time, partly from his own experience, and partly from other sources of informa- tion; in the Aznads, the period from the death of Augustus to that of Nero; in the //éstorzes ’ =a rom the accession of Galba to the death of Domitian. In all these works the style is terse, con- ensed, but rich in thought; the language strong, full of dignity, but not without artificiality n hown in the use of archaisms, in antitheses and peculiarities of construction, Tacitus here ands on the level of his age; and here too it is the rhetorical element which in him is oO ominated by his strong personality and takes a peculiar stamp. If a writer like Tacitus followed the taste of his age, what could we expect from weaker & alents and less independent characters? Whether their productions were in prose or poetry, 1e declamatory tone echoes through them all. Yet there arose at this time an opposition, a reaction against the prevailing taste. There were writers who, weary of artificial pathos, hetorical phrase, and inflated style, urged a return to the old simpler language, and set the example, Some, at the head of whom stood the grammarian and orator Quintilianus, a 340 THE LITERATURE OF THE EMPIRE. writer deservedly esteemed, advocated a return to the pure classicity of Cicero and his con- temporaries ; while others were not content with this, but aimed at more radical reforms. Just as at this time a predilection for archaistic styles arose in art, so was it also in literature ; and in both phases of this tendency Hadrian was influential. The archaistic taste recognized among the classic poets only Vergil, or at most Catullus ; with these exceptions it went back to Ennius and his contemporaries. At the head of these reactionaries stood Fronto, the teacher and friend of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who as philosopher, man, and author was himself an anomaly upon the throne. But neither the classic reaction nor the archaistic movement was so successful as a VILLA OF THE YOUNGER PLINY, similar reaction which took place simultaneously in Greek literature, and which produced writers like Plutarch and Lucian, and even a new philosophy, the Neo-Platonic.. The reaction in Roman literature was unfruitful ; it founded no school and produced no great writers ; its utmost success was to set an ephemeral fashion. Unchecked by this episode, the decline of Roman literature still went on. In Tacitus writer, the last of strong personality and originality. What it had produced its last great followed, with perhaps the exce ption of the jurists, is all mediocre, even in its very design. But there was no lack of writers, nor of interest in literature: new schools, new libraries were founded, salaried teachers were even provided at public expense, a thing hitherto unknown. But the time was not one in which even mediocrity could come to full development. Amid the interminable wars which now threatened Italy itself, men worked in disquiet, uncertainty and haste, It was in the camp and the field that talents found a career; the soldier, the eeneral, even if rude and uncultivated, was the man of the time, not the scholar and artist. c=) ¥ - 341 ROME. so the historians fell into one or the The emperors only favoured flatterers or dry chroniclers ; other of these classes; and when one of higher order arose, like Ammianus Marcellinus in the fourth century, we only regret that he had not lived in a better time. The language also declines ; ; foreign words and constructions are introduced ; provincialisms, vulgarities, even barbarisms, gain a footing in the literary speech. The classics are forgotten; no one now either speaks or writes in the language of Cicero. The decaying nation, the crumbling empire, are incapable of giving new life to the tongue, of reviving it with fresh material. The nation, the literature, speech and art are all together hastening irresistibly to their fall. Then the empire is split in two, and the Greek half draws the best talents to itself. The barbarians pour over Italy and plant themselves upon it as masters. Thus literature expires ; and in the place of the finished literary language comes in the speech of the populace, but without the power of creating a new literature. And yet the power of Roman literature, like that of antique art, had not perished utterly. All that already existed in it, all that had been gained by it, remained to produce again and again new blossoming-times of culture. The Christian writers, it is true, were not able to create such a period, although they poured new matter into the old speech, and in this respect did more than the adherents of the old gods. But even under Charles the Great, when as yet the peoples had hardly had a breathing-time, the formative power of the antique culture and art showed itself once more. It is true that what then arose was a still imperfect creation, and it diverged even farther and farther from the antique source ; but nevertheless this had been the fructifying clement. But when the spirit of the middle ages expired, the day of Greek and Roman culture dawned once more, to kindle again from its ashes into clear flame the failing fire of the spirit, and bring in the age of the Renaissance. And thus will they again display the might of their perennial youth, should the world again threaten to sink into materialism and barbarism. THE LITERATURE OF THE EMPIRE. Firm in this belief, the author bids farewell to his readers, and farewell to Greece and Rome. As he lays down his pen, and closes this familiar intercourse with those wonderful peo- ples, his feelings are not unlike those with which he took leave of Rome. Who that has a soul susceptible of grandeur and beauty, a soul that can vibrate to the memories of a mighty past, has not felt the Eternal City growing deeper and deeper into his heart with every day of his sojourn, and who has ever yet been able to leave it without a feeling of sadness ? May but one spark of this emotion kindle in the reader when he parts from Greece and Rome / INDEX. ILLUSTRATIONS ARE INDICATED BY HEAVY-FACED TYPE, Achaians, 7, 433 league, 44. Achilleus, 8. Acta diurna, 223. Actium, 201. Adrianople, 214. Adriatic, 5, 23. Aegaean Sea, 5, 7. Aequians, 193. Aesop, 47. Africa, 214, 220, Africans, 203. Agamemnon, 5, 9. Agathon, roz; feast, 87. Agesandros, 164. entum, 147. Agrippa, 204, 315, 337. Agrippina, 206, 254, 255, 257. Aigai, 42. Aigina, 119; marbles, 57, 158. Aiginetans, 19. Aigospotamos, 32. Aiolians, 9, 12, 75. Aischines, 35, 181. Aischylos, 170, 171, 172, 173. Aithiopians, 25. Aitolians, 44. Akademia, 139, Akarnania, 165. Akroteria, 149. Alae, 230. Alans, 214. Alaric, 214. Alba, 193. Aldobrandini wedding, 251. Alexander, 38, 38, 190; entrance into Babylon, 37; conquests, 38-41 ; their ultimate results, 2; bacchanalian feast, 41. Alexander Severus, 212. Alexandreia, 40, 42, 180, 216, 221, 225; scholars of, 5. Alkaios, 169. Alkamenes, 159. Alkestis, 73. Alkibiades, 89, 185. Alkinods, 74. Alkmaionids, 19. Alkman, 170, Altar, 291. Altis, 158. Alpheios, Alps, 210. Amazons, 60, Ammianus, 342; quoted, 318. Amphiktyon, 8, Amphiktyonia, 8, Amphiktyonic league, 17. Amphion, 164. Amphora, 155. Anakreon, 170; quoted, 78, 99. Anatolia, 165. Anaxagoras, 183. Ant Anaximenes, 183. Andromache, 73. Andronicus Andronitis, 86. Antalidas, peace of, 37. Antigone, 73. Antigonos, 42, 43. Antinods, 210, 305, 3II. Antiochia, 216, 221, Antiochus, 81, 195. Antipatros quoted, 93. Antisthenes, 185. Antium, 236. Antoninus Pius, 210, Antony, 255, 256, 287, 329. Apelles, 82, 153, 154, 156, 307. Apennines, 192. Aphrodite, 131; a Phoinikian deity worshipped in Corinth, 6 ; statues, 162, 304. Apicius, 272. Apollo, 7, 134, 136; statues, 162; (Belvedere) 57, 165, 304; (Sau- roktonos) 162. Apollodoros, 155. Apollonios, 164. Apollonius, 266. Apoxyomenos, 125, 163. Appian way, 222. Aqueducts, 219, 222. Aquileia, 210. Aquilius, 216. Arabia, 41. Arabs, 214. Aratos, 43. 17, 128, imander, 183. Ue & - Cn Arcadius, 214. Archilochos, 169. Archon, 19. Areiopagos, 21, 28, Arete, 74. Argebadas, 158. Argives, 17. Argolis, 6, 9, 119. Argonauts, 5. Argos, 14, 15. Ariadne, sleeping, 306. Arion, 170. Aristippos, 185. Aristeides, 26, 28, 30. Aristogeiton, 22. Aristoi, 114. Aristomenes, 169: Aristophanes, 176, 185; quoted, 47, 50, 58, 111, 118, 136. Aristotle, 186, 187, 188; philoso- phy, 39, 42. Arkadia, 17, 32. Arles, amphitheatre of, 222. Armenia, 195, 209. Arria, 255. Art [see Houses. —Byzantine, 310. —Etruscan, 302, 310, 311. —Greek, ideal head, 56, 57 ; of fe- male figure, 58; architecture, Cy clopean walls, metallic plates, of Mykenai, their origin, 146 ; tem- ples, 147, 8; Doric and Ionian capitals, chromatic decoration, 149; the Parthenon, 151; padnt- 5 vases, 153, 4; frescoes, painting, still life, ture, landscape, 156 ; scudp- ous, influence of Parthenon mar- Jewels, Vessels. ] ing, 13 car ture, 157; rel gymnasia, 1 bles, 159, 60; Greek art trans- ported to Rome, 164; under the Romans, its abundance, 165, 318. —Roman, acontinuation of Greek, 235, 301, 310; Etruscans their first architects, 302 ; be original, 305 ; painting, 306 ; decorative, 307; wall painting, 308; temples, 310, 314; the arch 165 ; ceases to Art (Continued )\— and the vault, 311 ; the cupola, sewers, 312 ; aqueducts, bridg« 313; gates, 314; the dome, public buildings, 315; public | statues, 317. | Artemis, 65, 118, 119. Asia Minor, 5, 6,9, 12, 27, 195, 214, | 220. Asklepios, 108. | Aspasia, 81, 81. | Assyrians, 25. | | | Astarte, 6, 298 Astragali, ror. Atellanae, 284, 323. Athanadoros, 1 Athene, see Pallas. Athens [see Greece], 221; from | road to Eleusis,1; in time of | TO7s; mmOodernyaates plain of, 120; road to Eleusis, 123; market, rog ; (for flowers), FS 105; tombs, 142; Akropolis, 151; Erechtheion, 152; Parthenon, 24; (interior), 153; Propylaia, 148; theatre of | Dionysos, 173. rly history, 19; reforms of ieulned Hadrian, street, ratos and alry democratic pro- Solon, 20 ;— Kleisthenes, with Sparta, sss, the areiopagos, 28 ; defeat Alki- surrender to Spar- rule of biades, gang tans, 32; conquered by Make- donians, 35; the theatre, 171; lawsuits, 111. Atreidai, 7, 10; origin, 5. Atreus’ house, 12. Atrium, 229. Attalids, 163, 303. Attalos, 38, 303. Attika, 7, 9, 26, 36; the mother- land of Ionia, 6. Attius, 323. Attila, 214. Augsburg, 222. Augury, 292, 293. Augustodunum, 221. | Augustus, 201, 203, 204, 220, 242, 337, and Livia, 202. Aula, 86. Aulis, 9. Aurelianus, 212. Aurelius Probus, 212. Autochthons, 5. Aventine, 216. Azov, sea of, 23. Babylon, 40, 41. Babylonians. Bacchantes, 137, 138. Bacchus, 68, 100, 162. Baiae, 236 ; bay of, 225. Barbero, 107. INDEX. Barcidae, 194. Basileus, 19. Bes: Boiotia, 7, 9, 4o. 33, 36, 138. 3 2; 3. Boiotians, 8, 22, 35 ; women, 59. Books, gr. Bosporus, 6 Boule, 113. Boxer, the, 304, 307. Brasidas, 30. Breccae, 243. Britain, 214. Britons, 200. Bronze, 146. Brutus, 201. Bull, Farnese, 164. Bulla, 248. Bull Burrhus, 207. ghts, 289. Byzantine empire, 214 | Caecus, 265. Caelian Hill, 215. Caesar, 199, 200, 201, 256; works, 327- Caesaria, 221. Calda, 272. Caldarium, Calceus, 243. Caligula, 202, 206. Cambyses, 39. na, 217, 219, 223. Campania, 283. Candelabra, gt. Cannae, 194. Capitals, 150, 152, 314. Capitoline Hill, ars. Capreae, 205. Caracalla, 211, 259. Carnuntum, 222. Carriage, 224. Carthage, 194, 214, 220. Carthaginians, 23. Cato, 199, 321, and Portia, 265. Catullus, 333; quoted, 261 Camps » 332. Cavaedium, 230. Cecilia Metella, tomb of, 223. Cella, 147, 149. Cesnola’s discoveries, 11, 153. Cestius’ pyramid, 296. Chabrias, 32. Chaironeia, 35, 182. Chalkis, 22. Chares, 163. Chariots, II7, 287. Charles the Great, 342. Charon, 140. Chios, ports of, 167. Chiton, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65. Chlamys, 63, 65. Christianity, 136, 264. Christians, 207. Christmas, 294. Chryselephantine art, 160. 278 ; race, v Cicero, 199, , 261, 328, 329. Cimbri, 198. Claudius, 206, Clients, 268. Clodia, 333. Clodius, 261. Cologne, 222. Colon Colosseum, 284, 285. Commodus, 202, 210. Constantine, 212, 213. Constantinople, 213, 2 Conze, discoveries of, 304. Corinth, 6, 18, 19, 36, 44, 81, 195, 221; gulf of, 18. Cornelia, 266. Cosmetics, 247. Cothurni, 172. Couches, 89. Crassus, 199, 216. Crete oes am Curtius’ excavations, 130. Cyclic poets, 167. Cc , Greek, 10, 23. 14, 286. 146. clopean walls, ynics, 185. Cyprus finds, 12; pottery, 13. Cytheris, 255. Dacia, 209. Daidalean art, 147. Danaos, 5, 7. Danube, 204, 214. Dardanians, 9. 24, 39, 40. Dea dia, 294. Death, Greek idea of, 140 Delphi, 34, 133, 134, 135, 168; view from, 135; influence of Chris- tianity, 136. Demades, peace of, 35. Demeter, 137; festival, 169. Demetrios Poliorketes, 42. Dareios, Demiourgoi, 19. Demosthenes, 30, 34, 35, 42, 181, 182. Diadochoi, 42, 303. Diadumenos, statue of, 159. Diocletian, 212. Diogenes, 185, 188. Dion r3o, 075s Dionysios, 186. Dionysos, 41, 131, 137, 1383 festi- val, 171. Diotima, 81, 103. Diploidion, 61, 64. Dirke, 164. Diskoboloi, 126, 158. Dithyrambics, 171. Dodona, site, 8. Domitian, 202, 209, 233; banquet, 276. Dorians, 5, 7, 12, 74; origin, 8; settlement, 6; colonies, 9 [see Sparta]. Doryphoros, statue of, 159. Drako's code, 19. Drusus, 204. Dyrrhachion, 200. Dress, Greek, 59, 66; its degeneracy, 72; men’s, 62, 65, 66; (hair), 66; (heads), 67; women's, 63-65 ; (hair), 68; (heads), 67, 70; Ro- | man, men’s (toga), 24T ; (shoes), 242; (hair), 243; women’s, 244; (hair), 245; (ladies’ toilette), 247 ; (toilette articles), 249. | Egypt, 5,7; 19) 39) 41, 195, 210, 256. Egyptians, 25. Ekbatana, 40. Elagabalus, 211, 258, Elea, 183. Eleusis, 137. Elis, 9, 17. Endymion, rat. Epaminondas, 32, 50. Epeirus, 8. Epheboi, 16. Ephesi Ephesus, 221. Ephoboi, 66, r15. Ephoroi, 16. Epigonoi, 201. Epikurianism, 298, Epikureans, 187. Epikuros, 188. Epinikian odes, 171. ipoptai, 136. Erechtheidai, 19. Erechtheion, 151, 152. Erinnyes, 7. Eryximachos, 102. Eros, statue of, 80, 162. Etruscans, 153, 192, 193. Euboia, 22. Eubolos, 33. Eukleides, 135. Eumenides, 132. Eupatridai, 19. Euphrates, 6, 40, 146. | Euripides,171, 174, 175; quoted, 77. Europa, 7. | Eurotas, 32; plain of the, 15. | Eurymedon, Eurystheus, 9. Exedra, 231. Exomis, 61, 62. 136, 137; Propylaia of, ans, 169. Fabius, 306. Fannia, 255. Fauces, 230. Faun of Praxiteles, 122. Faustina, 257. Festus quoted, 192. Ficoronian cista, 156; scene from, | 157- Fidenae, 193. Flaccus, 266. Flora, 294. Flowers, 70, 71, 2,232. INDEX. Fops, 65. Fratres Arvales, 294. Frigidarium, 282. Fronto, 267, 341. Funerals, 295. Greek ; 89 ; 4. Furniture, chairs, couches lamps, 9I, “ 22 Roman, 23 Gades, 220. Galba, 208. Games, public, 127. Ganges, 40, Gard aqueduct, 222. Garum, 275. Gaugamela, 4o. Gaul, dying, 163 ; killing wife, 303. Gaul, 23, 195, 214. Gauls, 200, 203. Gaza, 39. Gedrosia, 40. Geiserich, 214. Geomoroi, 19. nicus, 206, 255. Germans, 200, 214. Gerontes, 16. Gladiators, 288, 289. Glassware, 272. Glaukos, 157. Golden House, Gorgias, 181. Gracchi, 197. Graneikos, 38. Greece [see Athens, Sparta, etc.], 214; phys 35 unites all varieties of climate, fa- Gert 233. configuration, voured in sea-coast, 4; extensive territory of Greek tongue, cul- ture derived from Orient, legen- dary history, 5; Greek grants from Phrygia, successive 6; first walled atrocities, emi- immigrations, family heroic city, y age, 7; origin of names, tribal wanderings, Amphiktyonia, 8; state of culture indicated by Homeric poems, 13; the “de- mos,” 13, 17 ; age of tyrants, 17 ; Per. wars, nesian, supremacy, 37; last days of liberty, continued influence of an Pelopon- 9; social, 34; Persian the Greek mind, 44. —Soci character of Greek culture, 45 ; respect in which it was held by the Romans, 195 ; : the Greek mind, 110; children’s fes- tivals, 46 ; education, 47 ; peda- gogue, 48; school scene, 49; poetry, ; (in Sparta), 51; games, 48; poetry and music, 50; gymnas ideas of beauty | , 59; its degenera 50 see Art, Women], ; houses [see Furniture], 347 Greece (Continued )— lighting arrangements, 90; slaves, 93; /ospitality, 95; re- ceiving a friend, 95; ceremo- nies, 95; food and wine, 96; at table, 97; music, dancing- girls, 100; games, 101; fo/ice, 104 ; public life, the market, 106 ; trade, 108; general interest in personal politics, 111; attend- ance at courts, 112 ; political du- ties, 113 ; pleasures of youth, 115 ; nocturnal revellers, 116 ; horses, hunting, 118; study of conversation, 1 travelling, 124; diskoboloi, 126 ; national games, 127. soe nature, II —Religious life, 132 ; oracles, mysteries, 136 ; Bacchana Victims, 140 ; death, 140 ; tomb, 143. —Literature, poetry : poems of Ho- MeL, Loy. his successors, 168 ; the eleg iambics, “melos,” 169; lyric, 170; urama, 171; “scene from comedy,” 174; comedy, 175; frose originates in Tonia, 179; development of history, 180; oratory, 180; rhetoricians, 183 ; disciples of Sokrates, 185 ; philosophy becomes cosmopoli- tan, 188, Grylloi, 156. Gustatorium, 276. Gylippos, 30. Gymnastic exercises, 16, 52, 124. Gymnosophists, 40. 181; philosophy, Gynaikonitis, 86; morning in the, 69. Hades, 137. Hadrian, 316; villa, 239. Hair [see Dress], 66, 67, 69, 70, 243, 245 ; cutter, 67. Halikarnassos monument, 162. Hannibal, 194. Harmodius, 22. Haruspices, 293, 295. Helena, 5, 73, 74. Heliaia, 112. Hellanodikai, 128. Hellas, 4, 6. Hellen, 8 Hellen Hellespont, 5, 6, 38, 195. 209, 221 ; mausoleum, sm, 186, 297, 310. Helots, 16, 75. Helvetians, 200. Hephaistos, 60. Hera, Herakleidai, 7, 8, 9, 14, 32. 131. Herakles, 7, 126, kian deity typical of the race, 6 ; torso of, 304 ; statues, 165. 131; a Phoini- : Herculaneum, 153, 307. 127; pillars of, 6. | Hercules, Farne Hermai, 105. Hermes, 65, 108, 127, 129, 297. Herodotus, 124, 179; quoted, 124. Hesiod, 50, 168. Hestia, § Hetair al, 80. | Hierodulai, 81. | Hildesheim find, 274. | Hierophant, 136. Himation, 61, 62, 64. Hipparchos, 22. | Hippias, 22. Hippokrates, 107. | Hipponax, 169. | Hissarlik finds, rr. | Homer, 144, 166, 167 Homeridai, 167 Homeric poems, their historic value, 12; origin, 167 ; probable date, 12; political theory, 13; culture therein depicted, 13 ; of different date from that of My- kenai finds, r2; their preserva- tion, 167. Honorius, 214. | Horace, 334, 336, 337, 332, 335. | Horatii, tomb, 191. Horses, 117. Hortensius, 328. | House, Greek, entrance, 84; aula, 87; Roman, 228 ; interior, 229; Pompeian wall, 231; villa, 236, | 237; garden scene, 238; wall inscription, 281; decorations, | 232, 233, 274, 308. Humann, discoveries of, 304. Huns, 214. Hunting, 118. Hylleans, 8. Hypaithron, 149. Hyperides, 82, 181. Hyphasis, 40. Iambics, 169. Ibykos, 170. Iktinos, 151. Iliad, scene from, 166. llissos, 119. e Tlioneus statue, 162. llium, see Troy. Ilyria, 195. Illyrians, 34. Imperium, 201. Improvisator, 265. Indus, 25. Instita, 243. | Io, 7. Tolaos, 7. | Tonia, 60. Tonians, 5, 9, 12, 17, 167, 178, 183; a Phrygian race settled in / Minor, 6; successful rivalry INDE2z Tonians (Continued )— | with Phoinikians, 7; poets, | 168. | Iphigeneia, 73 ; in Tauris, 175. | Iphik Utes, 32. Iranians, Isagoras, 22. Isis, 298. Issos, battle, 39. Italics, 192. Italy, natural advantages, ror; prosperity under the empire, 220. Ithaka, 13. Janus, 294. Jason, 37. Jehovah, 4o. | Jewels: diadem, 10; ornaments, 145, 248, 249. | Jugurtha, 195, r Julia Domna, 254, 256, 258. Julian, 213. Junia, 255. Juno Ludovisi, 246. | Jupiter, 299. Juvenal, 339. Kabeiroi, 136. Kadmea, 7. Kadmeones, 7, Kadmos, 5, 7, 179. Kalaureia, 182; sanctuary, 43. Kallias, 79. Kallimachos, 152. Kallinos, 169. Kalyptra, 63. Kanephorai statue, 159. Karamania, 4o. Karyatids, 151, 152. Kaspian Sea, 25, 214. Kassandra, 135. Kastalia, 134 Katabothra, 7. Kekrops, Kelts, 192, 194. hissos, 119. Kerameikos, 106, amics, 153. Ke Ke Kerkyra, 30. Kimon, 26, 28, 30. Kleanthes 9. Kleisthenes, 18, 22. Kleomenes, 22, 43, 44, 304. Kleon, rrr. Kleopatra, 201, 256. Klytie, 68. Knife-whetter, 163. Knidos, 162 Kodros, 9, 19. Komoidia, 175, Komos, 175. Konon Kopai Korinna, Korymbos, 68. Kottabos, ror. Krateres, 98. Kritias, 185. Krobylos, 66. Kroisc Kunaxa, 32. Kybele, 298. Kyllenian mouniains, 119. Kylon, 19. Kypselos, 18. yrene, 23. Kyrenaic Kyzikos, 31. school, ré Labdakidai, 7. Lacerna, 2 Ladas statue, 158. Laelius, 298, Lais, 82. Lakonia [see Sparta], 9,14, 15, 17,32. LaokoGn, 164, 303. Lamiai, 46. Lampadion, 68. Lamps, go, 91, 23 Lapinaria, 237. Tares, 291. Larvae, 29r. Latifundia, 220, Latini, 192. Latium, 192. Lekythoi, 143, 144. Lemures, 29r. Leonida: Lesbia, 260. Lesbos, 169. Lesche, 155. Leuktra, 32. Libon, 128. Licteca, 237. Livius, 338. Lollius, 204. 1N, 339: n quoted, 56, Lucrine lake, 283. Lucullus, 216, 271, 325. Ludius, 309. Lybia, 23, 40. Lydia, 7, 19. Lydians Lykurg Lysandros, 32. Lysias, 181. 1B; M5 sel, erSr. Magna Graeci Maidonios, 26, Mainads, 137. Makedonia, ment, 6; against Per: 42, 195; settle- owth, 34; war a, 36. Mammaea, 212, 259. Mantineia, 33. Marathon, 25. Marcellus, 254. Marcomanni, 210. Marcus Aurelius, 210, 211, 267. Marius, 198, 201, 210, 327. Mars, 294. Martial, 339; quoted, 270. Masks, 172. Mas i Ma Mayence, 222. Medea, departure of, 171. Medes, 40. Mediterranean empire, 195. Megaris, 9. Melos, 169. Meletos, 17. Melpomene, 138. Memnon, 39. Memnermos, 169. Men, Greek, soldier, 25 ; convers- ing, I10; youth praying, 132; boy with swan, 230; knights from the procession of Pana- thenaia, 161; heads, 67. Menander, 177. Menelaos, 74. Mesaulos, 87. Messala, 331. Messalina, 256, 257. Me: Messenians, 19. Metal-plating, 157. Milan, 212. Milestone, 224. Miletos, 17. Mimnermos, 169. Miltiades, 25, 27. Mimus, 284. Mindaros, 31. Minos, 7. Minyai, 7, 8. Misenum, Cape, 235. Mithradates, 195, 198. Mithras, 298. Mitylene, 76, 169. Mnesikles, 151. Mola salsa, 293. Mongols, 214. Monogamy, 25r. Mormo, 46. Mosaics, 156, 233. Mulsum, 272. Mummius, 44. Munychia, 42. Muraena, 237. Muses, 139, 166. senia, 9, 14, 17, 32, 33- Music, 50, 170. My-kale, 26. Mykenai, 7, 13, 146; Gate of Lions, II; excavations, I2; Treasury of Atreus, 146; his INDEX. Mykenai (Continued )— | house, 12; golden vessels, 13; | antiquity and importance of ob- jects found, rr. Myron, 158, 16r. Mystai, 136. Mythology, Greek, 13, 132; Ro- man, 291; Hellenized, 297. Naevius, 322. Nausikaa, 73, and Odysseus, 167. Nearchos, 40, 41. Neleids, 19. Nero, 202, 205, 207, 257 ; torches, 207. Nestor’s descendants, 9. Nike, 128. Nikomedeia, 212, 221. Nimes, “maison carrée,” 226. Niobe, 7, 161. Nubians, 25. Numidia, 195, 198. Octavia, 254. Octavianus, see Augustus. Odoacer, 214. Odysseus, 65 ; palace, 85, 86. Odyssey, 73; landscape, 312. Oidipus, 7. Oinochoai, 98. Oita, Mount, 25. Olympia, I14, 129; temple, 130; excavations, 130. Olympic games, 17, 75, 117, 125, 128. Olympos, 6, 9, 166. Onatas, 158. Onomakritos, 167. Optimates, 196. Orchomenos, 7, 146. | Ostia, 236. | Ostiar Ostium, 229. | 1S, 230. Ostrogoths, 214. Otho, 207, 208. Ovid, 332,334,335; quoted, 259, 260. Oxylos, 9. Pacuvius, 323. Paeans, 166. Paenula, 242. Paestum, temple at, 147. Paionios, 159. Paktolos, 7. Palaestra, 52. Palatine Hill, 215. Palla, 240, 243. Pallas, 117, 139, 1513; statues of, 159, 160, 161; temple, 313. Palmyra, 212. Pan, 121. Panathenaia, rst 5 Athenian knights from procession of, 161; women at feast of, 139; victims, 140. 349 Pancration, 126. Pannonia, 212. Pannonians, 203. Pantomimus, 284. Pantheon, 315. Paris, 60, 137. Parmenides, 183. Parnassus, 134, 137, 178 ; oaks of, 4. Parnes, 119. Parrhassios, 155. Parthenon, 24, 1513 160. Parthians, 209, 210. Pastas, 87. Paulus, Aemilius, 298. Pausanias, 26 ; cited, rr. Pausias, 156. Peiraios, 31; view from rocks of, 14. Peisistratos, 18, 22. Pelasgians, 6, 8. Pelopidai, 7, 146. Pelopidas, 32, 33. Peloponnesian league, 22; war Peloponnesos, 4, 7. 9, 14, 17. Pelops, 7, 12; settles Argos, founds the Atreidai, 5. Penates, 230, 291. Peneios, 8. Penelope, 73. Pentathlon, 125. Pentelikos, 119. Peplos, 63, 139. Perfumes, 69. Pergamon, 303; marbles, 304; group from, 305; school, 163. Periandros, 18. Perikles, 28, 29, 150, 151, 181. Peripteros, 147, 310. Peristyle, 229, 230. Persephone, 137. Persepolis, 40. Persia, 19, 24, 37, 212. Persius, 339- frieze, 159; Pessimism, 124. Petronius quoted, 275. Phaidon, 149. Phaidros, 102. Phaon, 170. Pharnakes, 200. Pharsalos, 200. Pheidias, 128, 140, 151, 157, 158, 160, 161. Philip the Arabian, Philip of Makedon, 34, 36, 195. Philippi, 201. Philopoimen, 44. Philosophy, Greek, 183. Phoibidas, 32. Phoinikia, 5. Phoinikians, 25, 167; origin and enterprise, 6. Phokians, 34, 136. Phrygia, the land whence the Greeks emigrated, 6. Phrygians, 25. b Phryne, 82 ; before judges, 83. Rhoikos, 15 Sabelli, 192. Physicians, 107. Rome, character of its history, 190; | Sabines, 192. 2 Pieria, 166. situation, neighbours, 192; grad- | Sacrifices, 192. Pindar, 170. ually acquires supremacy, 193; | Sagum, 242. Pindos, 8. | Punic wa 194; foreign con- | Salamis, 26, 27, 119. Piscinae, 237. quest, 195; constitutional his- Salii, 294. Plataiai, 26, 27. tory, 196; revolutionary period, | Sallust, 326; gardens of, 319. Plato, 186; wor 102, 140, 186. 198; power of the army, 199; Salona, 212 Plautus, 323, 324. the empire, 202; the capital and | Samnites, 192. Plebs, 195. the provinces, 203; Flavian | Samos, 178. Pliny, 340; letters, 264 ; villa, 341. Caesars, 208; degradation of | Samothrake, 136. Plutarch quoted, 38. senate, division of empire, 212 ; Samovar, 2 Pnyx, 112. barbarian invasions, 214. Sandals, 64, 66. Pollio, 267, 337- —Society [see Dr Furniture, | Sappho, 75, 76, 170. Polybios, 180. House, Men, Women], bakery, | Saturnalia, 294. Polydoros, 164. 227 ; the family, 265 ; scene from 37- Polygnotos, 153, 155. life, 261 ; education, 267 ; school lUrUS, 216. Polykletos, 158, 159. scene, 267; slave: 7; clients, Schliemann, value of his discover- Polykrates, 18. 268, 269 ; study, 270; food, 271; ies, 10. Pomoerium, 195. wine, 272; dinner parties ; | Scipio, 197, 216, 298, 320; grave, Pompeii, 153, 307; street-scene, banquet, 271; at table, 275; feasts, 298. 233; ee 85, 86; frescoes, 275, carousal, 277; baths, 282 ; Scythians, 23. By asa 2 street of graves, watering places, 283; drama, 284; | S' ta, 55. 297. masks at entrance of the thea- Sejanus, 205. Pompeius, 199, 256. tre, 259; puppet players, 253; | Selinus, 147, 158. Pontifex Maximus, 292. circus, 285 ; (wild animals), 287; | Seneca, 207, 266, 339, 340. Pontifices, 291. praetorians, 288; gladiators, | Septimus Severus, 2rr. Pontus, 195. 289. Serapis, 298. Poppaea Sabina, 207. —Religious life: Suovetaurilia, | Sertorius, 199. Porsena, 193. 290; altar, 291; deities, 292; Servius Tullius, 196 Poseidippos, 176, 177. vestals, 292; augury, 292; ma | Shemitic rac Poseidon, 131, 151. ing an offering, 293; festiva Shoes, 66, 242. Pottery, 153; funeral cups, 144; | 294; haruspex, 295; funerals, | Sibylline books, 292. jugs and bowls, 98, 102 ; from 295; Pompeian graves, 297 ;— Y> 23, 30 Cyprus, 13; vases, 154. of Scipios, 324 ; columbarium, ‘Hlaintens, 6. Prandium, 271. 298; sarcophagus, 322; cata- Sikyon, 18, 156, 163, 171, Praetorians, 288. combs, 299; decline of faith, Silius, 339. PraxitelessaS2," slsi75 | LOX, e wO2s 298. Simonides, 169, 170. “Eros,” 80; ‘“ Hermes,” 129, | —TLiterature, influence of the | Sipylos, 7. 130; “Faun,” 122. | Greeks, 320, 325; Latin tongue, | Skopas, 161, 162. Pronuba, 252. 321; degeneracy, 328 ; the epos, Slavs, 214. Propertius, 332. comedy, 323; history, 327; | Sokrates, 31, 33, 81, roo, 103, 109, ' Propylaia, 151, 155. under empire, 331; poetry, 332; 140, 184, 185; conversations Prostas, 87. rhetoric, 338; readings, 338; | with his friends, 102; death, Protagoras, 184. poets no longer favoured, 339 ; | 185; quoted, r2 Protogenes, 156. continued power in its decline, | Solon, 20, 169. Prytaneiai, 113. 342 ; the Renaissance, 342. Soldier, 25. Ptolem Rome, the city, 189; in time of | Sophists, 184. Puteoli, Aurelian, 221; population, Via Sophokles, 171, 173, 173; quoted, ' Pylos, 9, 19, ¢ Appia, 297, 280; roads, 224; | 120, Pyrrhos, 194. street, 280; sewers, 312; bridges, Sorrentum, 236. Pythagoras, 32. 313; trade, 225; arch of Con- Spain, 195, 214, 220 Pythagoreans, 140, 183. stantine, 189 ;—of Titus, 317; | Spaniards, 203. Pythia, 135. aqueduct, 219; baths of Cara- Sparta, 15, 36; Dromos, 17; mar- calla, 283 ; Campagna, 219, 223 ; ket-place, 15; reforms of Ly- Quadi, 210. capitol, 215; cloaca maxima, kurgos, 15 ; cause of their per- Quintilian, 266. 315; colosseum, 285,286; forum, manency, 16; policy hostile to Quirinal, 215. 279, 308; column of Trajan, 308; tyrants, 19 ; zenith of power, de- Quirites, 195. fountain of Alexander Severus, .| cline, 32; excites revolt against 218; mausoleum of Hadrian, | Makedon, reforms of Kleo- Ravenna, 214. 316; pavement, 223 ; Pantheon, menes, 43; political death, 44. Renaissance, 342. interior, 317; temple of Pallas, | Spartans, 169. Rhine, 204, 222. 313; Aurelian wall, 217. Sphairia, island, 139. Rhodes, art at, 163, 303 ; Colossus, | Romulus and Remus, 193. Sphendone, 68, 246 163. | Rhyparographoi, 156. Sphyrelaton, 157. 35° Spira, 150. Springs, sacred, 192. Stage, Greek, 172; scene from comedy, 174 ; Roman masks, 284. Stesichoros, 170. Stilicho, 214. Stoa Poikile, 155. Stoics, 187. Stola, 243. Strasbur; Strymon, 30. Styx, 140; source of, 141. Sulla, 199. Susa, 37, 40. Synthesis, 242. Syracuse, 29 ; siege of, 30. Syria, 7, 195, 210, 220. Tabernae, 216, Tablinum, 229. Tabularium, 316. Tacitus, 340. Tanagra figures, 58, 59, 62, 64, 67, 70, 143- Tantalos, 5. Tauriskos, 164. Tegea, 17. Temenides, 34. Tempe, vale of, 8, 9. Temples, 146-9, 310. Tepidarium, 282. Terence, 324, 325. Terpander, 170. Teutoberg Forest, 204. Teutons, 198. Thaleia, 138. Thales, 183. Thapsos, 200. Thargelia, 81. Theagenes, 19. Thebes, 33; foundation of, 7; re- volt against Sparta, 32 ; decline, 33- Themistokles, 26, 27, 28. Theodoros, 158. Theodosius, 213, 214. Theognis, 169. Theokritos, 332, 337- Theon, 156. heopompos, 180. Thermae, 282. Thermopylai, 25, 26, 34. Thersites, 13, 166. Theseion, 155. Thesmophoria, 136. Thespis, 138, 171. Thessalia, 25, 34, 166 ; coast, 26. tz INDEX. Thessalians, their conquests, 8. Thrace, 214; coast, 23. Thrakians, 24. Thukydides, 179. Thymele, 172. Thyroreion, 86. Thyrsos, 138. Tiberius, 204, 205; at Capreae, 205. Tibullus, 260, 333. Tibur, 236, 23° at, 239. Tigris, 40, 146. Timanthes, 155. Timotheos, 32. Tiryns, 146. Titus, 207, 287. Tivoli, 309. Tmolos, 7. Toga, 240, 241. Tomb, contents, 141; bas-relief, Hadrian’s villa 143; street of tombs, 105; — | Roman, 297, 324. Toxotai, 103. Trajan, 209. Trapezitai, 108. Treves, 212; Porta Nigra, 222. Triclinium, 230. Trimalchio, 275. Troad, 9, 10. Trojan war, 5, 7; origin of leg- end, 10; evidence of Schlie- mann’s discoveries not decisive, Io, Troy, plain of, Io. Tunica, 240, 242. Tyrannis, 21. Tyre, 39. Tyrians, 6. Tyrtaios, 50, 169. Ulysses, 166. Umbo, 241. Umbrians, 192. Ural, 214, Valens, 214. Valerian, 212. Varro, 326, 329. Varus, 204 Vases, 153, 154. Veii, 193. Venus, Capitoline, 58, 59: Medi- cean, 304, 305; of Melos, 162, 304. Vergil, 332, 336. Verona, amphitheatre, 221, Vespasian, 207, 208. 35 Vessels [See Pottery], golden, 12; toilet, 71; drinking, 102; do- mestic, 234; glassware, 272; silver, 274. Vestals, 292. Virginia, 253. Virodunum, 222, Viscellinus, 196. Visigoths, 214. Vitellius, 208, 271, 272. Vitruvius quoted, 308, 309. Volcanius, 302. Volscians, 192, 193. Warriors, 21. Winckelmann quoted, 58. Women, Greek, 58 ; girls dancing, 45, 52, 77; mother and children, 46; flute-player, 50; girls with cithara, 51;—playing at dice, 53; Dorian, 74; sports of, 53; figures from Tanagra, 53, 60; types of beauty, 59; bride, 71 ; at home, 73; character, 73, 83; lady seated, 76; public opinion of, 77; testimony of works of art, 78; marriage, 79 ; “ demi- monde,” 80; at household oc- cupations, 92; not admitted to the table, 96; acrobats, IOI ; slave girls, 106; do not market, tog; at feast of Panathenaia, 139; religious life, 139; heads, 67. —Roman, 207, 253; marriage, 251; maiden, 252; matron, 253; im- morality, 259; poetess, 260 ; ed- ucation, 261 ; married pair, 262 ; philosophical studies, 262; house philosopher, 263; influence of Christianity, 264; girls, 267; flower-girl, 275. Writing, 167 ; implements, 266. Xantippe, 78. Xenophon, 179 ; quoted, 79, 100. Xerxes, 25, 27, 66. Xystra, 125. Zama, 194. Zeno, 187. Zenobia, 212. Zethos, 164. Zeus, 131, 172; sanctuary at Do- dona, 8; statues, 160; Ammon, 39: Zeuxis, 153, 155. May bal wr x SHINN. ea GETTY RESEARCH INSTITUTE UNNI EAT 3 3125 01499 2362 i el ates $i ae hI