William Smith

“ In the reign of Hadrian the arts seem to begin a new aera. He himself was undoubtedly a real lover of art, and encouraged it not only at Rome, but in Greece and Asia Minor. The great Villa of Hadrian below Tivoli, the ruins of which cover an extent of ten Roman miles in circumference, was richer in works of art than any other place in Italy. Here more works of art have been dug out of the ground than anywhere else within the same compass. Some statues executed at this time are worthy of the highest admiration. ”

“ Under the republic, the coining of money was not a privilege which belonged exclusively to the state. The coins struck in the time of the republic mostly bear the names of private individuals; and it would seem that every Roman citizen had the right of having his own gold and silver coined in the public mint, and under the superintendence of its officers. Still no one till the time of the empire had the right of putting his own image upon a coin; Julius Caesar was the first to whom this privilege was granted. ”

“ It was commonly most odious to the wealthy and noble, whom the tyrant looked upon with jealousy as a check upon his power, and whom he often sought to get rid of by sending them into exile or putting them to death. The tyrant usually kept a body-guard of foreign mercenaries, by aid of whom he controlled the people at home; but he seldom ventured to make war, for fear of giving an opportunity to his subjects to revolt. The causes which led to the decline of tyranny among the Greeks were partly the degeneracy of the tyrants themselves, corrupted by power, indolence, flattery, and bad education ”

“ There seems no reason to doubt that felting is a more ancient invention than weaving [Tela] , nor that both of these arts came into Europe from Asia. From the Greeks, who were acquainted with this article as early as the age of Homer, the use of felt passed together with its name to the Romans. Its principal use was to make coverings of the head for the male sex, and the most common one was a simple skull-cap.—Among the Romans the cap of felt was the emblem of liberty. When a slave obtained his freedom he had his head shaven, and wore instead of his hair an undyed pileus. ”

“ Properly speaking, the people alone (the populus) was the real sovereign by whom the power was delegated to the magistrates and the senate. The sovereign people or populus, however, was not the same at all times. In the earliest times of Rome the populus consisted of the patricians (or patres) only, the plebs and the clients forming no part of the populus, but being without the pale of the state. The original populus was divided into thirty curiae, and the assembly of these curiae (the comitia curiata) was the only assembly in which the populus was represented. ”

“ A gymnasium was not a Roman institution. The regular training of boys in the Greek gymnastics was foreign to Roman manners, and even held in contempt. Towards the end of the republic, many wealthy Romans who had acquired a taste for Greek manners, used to attach to their villas small places for bodily exercise, sometimes called gymnasia, sometimes palaestrae, and to adorn them with beautiful works of art. The emperor Nero was the first who built a public gymnasium at Rome. ”

“ Indeed, the Thessalians and Boeotians were the only Greek people who distinguished themselves much for their cavalry; scarcely any other states had territories adapted for the evolutions of cavalry. The whole life of a Spartan was little else than either the preparation for or the practice of war. The result was, that in the strictness of their discipline, the precision and facility with which they performed their military evolutions, and the skill and power with which they used their weapons, the Spartans were unrivalled among the Greeks. ”

“ Colonies were seldom or never founded without having obtained the advice and the directions of the Delphic god. The Delphic oracle had at all times a leaning in favour of the Greeks of the Doric race, but the time when it began to lose its influence must be dated from the period when Athens and Sparta entered upon their struggle for the supremacy in Greece; for at this time the partiality for Sparta became so manifest that the Athenians and their party began to lose all reverence and esteem for it, and the oracle became a mere instrument in the hands of a political party. ”

“ A state in the heroic ages was the government of a prince; the citizens were his subjects, and derived all their privileges, civil as well as religious, from their nobles and princes. The shadows of a council and assembly were already in existence, but their business was to obey. Upon the whole the [91] notion of citizenship in the heroic ages only existed so far as the condition of aliens or of domestic slaves was its negative. The rise of a dominant class gradually overthrew the monarchies of ancient Greece. ”

“ It must not be forgotten, that the games of the amphitheatre required an immense number of slaves trained for the purpose. [Gladiatores.] Like the slaves in Sicily, the gladiators in Italy rose in B.C. 73 against their oppressors, and under the able generalship of Spartacus, defeated a Roman consular army, and were not subdued till B.C. 71, when 60,000 of them are said to have fallen in battle.—A slave could not contract a marriage. His cohabitation with a woman was contubernium; and no legal relation between him and his children was recognized. A slave could have no property. ”

“ The first part of the fourth period saw the extension of the Greek architecture over the countries conquered by Alexander, and, in the West, the commencement of the new style, which arose from the imitation, with some alterations, of the Greek forms by Roman architects, to which the conquest of Greece gave, of course, a new impulse. By the time of Augustus, Rome was adorned with every kind of public and private edifice, surrounded by villas, and furnished with roads and aqueducts; and these various erections were adorned by the forms of Grecian art ”

“ The asylum, which Romulus is said to have opened at Rome to increase the population of the city, was a place of refuge for the inhabitants of other states, rather than a sanctuary for those who had violated the laws of the city. In the republican and early imperial times, a right of asylum, such as existed in the Greek states, does not appear to have been recognised by the Roman law; but it existed under the empire, and a slave could fly to the temples of the gods, or the statues of the emperors, to avoid the ill-usage of his master. ”

“ SCRIPTŪRA, that part of the revenue of the Roman Republic which was derived from letting out, as pasture land, those portions of the ager publicus which were not taken into cultivation. The names for such parts of the ager publicus were, pascua publica, saltus, or silvae. They were let by the censors to the publicani, like all other vectigalia; and the persons who sent their cattle to graze on such public pastures had to pay a certain tax or duty to the publicani, which of course varied according to the number and quality of the cattle which they kept upon them. ”

“ But all foreign socii, whether they had an equal or unequal alliance, were obliged to send subsidies in troops when Rome demanded them; these troops, however, did not, like those of the Italian socii, serve in the line, but were employed as light-armed soldiers, and were called milites auxiliares, auxiliarii, auxilia, or sometimes auxilia externa. Towards the end of the republic all the Roman allies, whether they were nations or kings, sank down to the condition of mere subjects or vassals of Rome, whose freedom and independence consisted in nothing but a name. ”

“ Sheep were purified every year at the festival of the Palilia. All Roman armies before they took the field were lustrated; and as the solemnity was probably always connected with a review of the troops, the word lustratio is also used in the sense of the modern review. The establishment of a new colony was always preceded by a lustratio with solemn sacrifices. The city of Rome itself, as well as other towns within its dominion, always underwent a lustratio after they had been visited by some great calamity, such as civil bloodshed, awful prodigies, and the like. ”

“ Private hospitality thus gave to the hospes the claims upon his host which the client had on his patron, but without any degree of the dependence implied in the clientele. Private hospitality was established between individuals by mutual presents, or by the mediation of a third person, and hallowed by religion; for Jupiter hospitalis was thought to watch over the jus hospitii, as Zeus xenios did with the Greeks, and the violation of it was as great a crime and impiety at Rome as in Greece. ”

“ ARCUS (also fornix) , an arch. A true arch is formed of a series of wedge-like stones, or of bricks, supporting each other, and all bound firmly together by their mutual pressure. It would seem that the arch, as thus defined, and as used by the Romans, was not known to the Greeks in the early periods of their history. ”

“ SĀTURNĀLĬA, the festival of Saturnus, to whom the inhabitants of Latium attributed the introduction of agriculture and the arts of civilized life. Falling towards the end of December, at the season when the agricultural labours of the year were fully completed, it was celebrated in ancient times by the rustic population as a sort of joyous harvest-home, and in every age was viewed by all classes of the community as a period of absolute relaxation and unrestrained merriment. ”

“ All civil and religious offices were in their possession, and they continued as before to be the populus, the nation now consisting of the populus and the plebes. In their relation to the plebeians or the commonalty, the patricians were a real aristocracy of birth. A person born of a patrician family was and remained a patrician, whether he was rich or poor, whether he was a member of the senate, or an eques, or held any of the great offices of the state, or not: there was no power that could make a patrician a plebeian. ”

“ Henceforth the name populus is sometimes applied to the plebeians alone, and sometimes to the whole body of Roman citizens, as assembled in the comitia centuriata or tributa. The term plebs or plebecula, on the other hand, was applied, in a loose manner of speaking, to the multitude or populace, in opposition to the nobiles or the senatorial party.—A person who was born a plebeian could only be raised to the rank of a patrician by a lex curiata, as was sometimes done during the kingly period, and in the early times of the republic. ”

“ About the close of this period, and for more than a century afterwards, the Romans, in the conquest of the countries where the arts had flourished, made it a regular practice to carry away the works of art. The triumphs over Philip, Antiochus, the Aetolians, the Gauls in Asia, Perseus, Pseudo-Philip, and above all the taking of Corinth, and subsequently the victories over Mithridates and Cleopatra, filled the Roman temples and porticoes with the greatest variety of works of art. ”

“ CRĬTES (κριτής) , a judge, was the name applied by the Greeks to any person who did not judge of a thing like a δικαστής, according to positive laws, but according to his own sense of justice and equity. But at Athens a number of κριταί was chosen by ballot from a number of selected candidates at every celebration of the Dionysia: they were called οἱ κριταί, κατ’ ἐξοχήν. Their office was to judge of the merit of the different choruses and dramatic poems, and to award the prizes to the victors. Their number was five for comedy and the same number for tragedy, one being taken from every tribe. ”

“ But, whenever introduced at Rome, it is certain that they were at first always of iron; that they were destined for the same purpose as in Greece, namely, to be used as seals; and that every free Roman had a right to use such a ring. This iron ring was worn down to the last period of the republic by such men as loved the simplicity of the good old times. In the course of time, however, it became customary for all the senators, chief magistrates, and at last for the equites also, to wear a golden seal-ring. ”

“ In Greece, the oracles supplanted the birds, and the future was learnt from Apollo and other gods, rarely from Zeus, who possessed very few oracles in Greece. The contrary was the case at Rome: it was from Jupiter that the future was learnt, and the birds were regarded as his messengers. It must be remarked in general, that the Roman auspices were essentially of a practical nature; they gave no information respecting the course of future events, they did not inform men what was to happen, but simply taught them what they were to do, or not to do ”

“ One of the offences included in majestas was the effecting, aiding in, or planning the death of a magistratus populi Romani, or of one who had imperium or potestas. Though the phrase crimen majestatis was used, the complete expression was crimen laesae, imminutae, diminutae, or minutae majestatis. The word majestas, consistently with its relation to mag (nus) , signifies the magnitude or greatness of a thing. Accordingly, the phrases majestas populi Romani, imperii majestas, signify the whole of that which constituted the Roman state; in other words, the sovereign power of the Roman state. ”

“ Eminent statesmen, orators, generals, magistrates, and all persons of wealth and influence were regarded with jealousy by the people. The more causes came into court, the more fees accrued to the judges, and fines and confiscations enriched the public treasury. The prosecutor therefore in public causes, as well as the plaintiff in civil, was looked on with a more favourable eye than the defendant, and the chances of success made the employment a lucrative one. ”

“ Before any written codes appeared, law was promulgated by the poets or wise men, who sang the great deeds of their ancestors, and delivered their moral and political lessons in verse. As civilisation advanced, laws were reduced to writing, in the shape either of regular codes or distinct ordinances, and afterwards publicly exhibited, engraved on tablets, or hewn on columns. The first written laws we hear of are those of Zaleucus. The first at Athens were those of Draco, called θεσμοὶ, and by that name distinguished from the νόμοι of Solon. The laws of Lycurgus were not written. ”

“ In the first place, the king alone possessed the right of taking the auspices on behalf of the state; and as no public business of any kind could be performed without the approbation of the gods expressed by the auspices, the king stood as mediator between the gods and the people, and in an early stage of society must necessarily have been regarded with religious awe. [Augur.] Secondly, the people surrendered to the king the supreme military and judicial authority by conferring the imperium upon him. The king was not only the commander in war, but the supreme judge in peace. ”

“ PUBLĬCĀNI, farmers of the public revenues of the Roman state (vectigalia) . Their name is formed from publicum, which signifies all that belongs to the state, and is sometimes used by Roman writers as synonymous with vectigal. The revenues which Rome derived from conquered countries, consisting chiefly of tolls, tithes, harbour duties, the scriptura, or the tax which was paid for the use of the public pasture lands, and the duties paid for the use of mines and salt-works (salinae) , were let out, or, as the Romans expressed it, were sold by the censors in Rome itself to the highest bidder. ”

“ When private persons were no longer appointed judices, the necessity for a distinct class in the community, like the equestrian order, ceased entirely; and the gold ring came at length to be worn by all free citizens. Even slaves, after their manumission, were allowed to wear it by special permission from the emperor, which appears to have been usually granted provided the patronus consented.—Having thus traced the history of the equestrian order to its final extinction as a distinct class in the community, we must now return to the equites equo publico, who formed the 18 equestrian centuries. ”

“ Thus there was then really no difference between these municipia and the Roman coloniae, except in their historical origin: the members of both were Roman citizens, and the Roman law prevailed in both.—In the colonies, as at Rome, the popular assembly had originally the sovereign power; they chose the magistrates, and could even make laws. When the popular assemblies became a mere form in Rome, and the elections were transferred by Tiberius to the senate, the same thing happened in the colonies, whose senates then possessed whatever power had once belonged to the community. ”

“ The immense number of prisoners taken in the constant wars of the republic, and the increase of wealth and luxury, augmented the number of slaves to a prodigious extent. A freedman under Augustus, who had lost much property in the civil wars, left at his death as many as 4,116. Two hundred was no uncommon number for one person to keep. The mechanical arts, which were formerly in the hands of the clients, were now entirely exercised by slaves: a natural growth of things, for where slaves perform certain duties or practise certain arts, such duties or arts are thought degrading to a freeman. ”

“ During the latter part of the reign of Constantine many statues of the gods were destroyed, and not long after his time a systematic destruction began, which under Theodosius spread to all parts of the empire. The spirit of destruction, however, was not directed against works of art in general and as such, but only against the pagan idols. The opinion, therefore, which is entertained by some, that the losses we have sustained in works of ancient art, are mainly attributable to the introduction of Christianity, is too sweeping and general. ”

“ In the art of engraving upon gems the ancients far surpassed anything that modern times can boast of. The devices engraved upon rings were very various: they were portraits of ancestors or of friends, subjects connected with mythology; and in many cases a person had engraved upon his seal some symbolical allusion to the real or mythical history of his family. The bezel or part of the ring which contained the gem was called pala. With the increasing love of luxury and show, the Romans, as well as the Greeks, covered their fingers with rings. ”

“ In the most ancient times there are said to have been no slaves in Greece, but we find them in the Homeric poems, though by no means so generally as in later times. They are usually prisoners taken in war, who serve their conquerors: but we also read as well of the purchase and sale of slaves. They were, however, at that time mostly confined to the houses of the wealthy. There were two kinds of slavery among the Greeks. One species arose when the inhabitants of a country were subdued by an invading tribe, and reduced to the condition of serfs or bondsmen. ”