Roma people

“ This book, like the volume on "Society and Politics in Ancient Rome," deals with the life of the common people, with their language and literature, their occupations and amusements, and with their social, political, and economic conditions. We are interested in the common people of Rome because they made the Roman Empire what it was. They carried the Roman standards to the Euphrates and the Atlantic; they lived abroad as traders, farmers, and soldiers to hold and Romanize the provinces, or they stayed at home, working as carpenters, masons, or bakers, to supply the daily needs of the capital. ”

“ Ancient Roma and the remains of her past greatness [148] will ever be impressed upon our memories. An empire once so mighty, the Mistress of the World; then for so long desolate and entombed, a city of ruins; and now, phœnix-like, rising rapidly from her ashes, and preparing as "Young Italy" to take her place as a power among the other nations of Europe, many of whom have already welcomed her as a sister.
On the morning of the 26th of January we left Rome for Naples, some 163 miles by railway. ”

“ While the rest of Italy, especially in Florence, in Venice, and in Milan, was fast and far advancing beyond the other states of Europe in civilisation and in art, the Romans appeared rather to recede than to improve;—unblest by laws, unvisited by art, strangers at once to the chivalry of a warlike, and the graces of a peaceful, people. ”

“ Romulus, the son of Rhea Silvia and Mars, founded Rome on the Palatine Hill, above the Tiber, 753 B.C., on the site of the Arcadian city of Evander, near the Lupercal, where the wolf had given him suckle. The city was built after the Etruscan rites, and surrounded by a massive wall, in a quadrangular form, whence it was called Roma Quadrata. ”

“ All these gifts were for the city of Rome, and for the people of the city, not for the Empire, nor for Italy. This is characteristic of ancient generosity or philanthropy, that its recipients are commonly the people of a single town, usually the donor's native town. It is one of many indications of the fact that the Roman thought of his city as the state, and even under the Empire he rarely extended the scope of his benefactions beyond the walls of a particular town. The small cities and villages throughout the West reproduced the capital in miniature. Each was a little world in itself. ”

“ The history of municipal freedom in Italy lay in this struggle. But the infiltration of Teutonic and feudal elements broke up the ancient aristocracy of Rome, gave it a special character and left it at the mercy of the people. Then the popes, by the bestowal of lucrative offices, rich benefices and vast estates, and, above all, by raising many nobles to the purple, introduced new blood into the Roman aristocracy, and endued it with increasing strength and vitality. ”

“ But, since history ever repeats itself, the maxims that guided the policy of Rome in her advance to sovereignty are not without application here. Her mistakes may be monitions to us.
A great, a homogeneous, and yet an active people, having strength and security in its political institutions, may look forward to a career of glory. It may, without offense, seek to render its life memorable in the annals of the human race. ”

“ It is certain that for the last fifty years, wealth, education, and talent have shared the rights formerly belonging to birth alone. Rome has seen foreigners arriving in travelling carriages who were not born great,—distinguished artists, eminent writers, diplomatists sprung from the people, tradesmen elevated to the rank of capitalists, men of the world who are in their place everywhere, because everywhere they know how to live. ”

“ The selection of the capital is determined by great moral reasons. It is the will of the people that decides a question touching them so closely.
In Rome, gentlemen, are united all the circumstances, whether historic, intellectual, or moral, that should determine the site of the capital. Rome is the only city with traditions not purely local. The entire history of Rome from the time of Cæsar to the present day is the history of a city whose importance reaches far beyond her confines ”

“ Not only were its great public buildings and lavish homes Roman—its Procurator’s Palace, its immense hippodrome for athletic sports and gladiatorial combats, its theater, its gleaming marble temples to pagan gods—but Roman, too, were many of its people. Its population actually was of varied nationalities—Roman, 84 Greek, Syrian, Idumaean, Ethiopian, and many others; there were countless slaves from conquered provinces—Germania, Gaul, Dalmatia, even here and there one from Britannia—a motley multitude from every region on the rim of the Great Sea and even from lands farther away. ”

“ Such had been long the unhappy lot of Rome, until it began to strike on the minds of a few influential men, that no nation can be really great while the mass of its people are in a state of abject littleness. The majority of the patricians fortunately took an equally sensible view of their case, and arrived at the wise conclusion, that moderate privileges fairly held, and freely conceded, are preferable to any amount of exclusive advantage, improperly assumed on the one hand, and impatiently submitted to on the other. ”

“ Although it is very probable that the historic population of Rome was the result of a fusion of several racial elements—Latin, Sabine, Etruscan, and even pre-Italian, nevertheless the Romans were essentially a Latin people. ”

“ More than two thousand years ago, at a time when the people in the British Isles and in most parts of Western Europe were living the lives of savages, occupied in fighting, hunting, and fishing, dwelling in rude huts, clad in skins, ignorant of everything that we call civilization, Rome was the centre of a world in many ways as civilized as ours is now, over which the Roman people ruled. ”

“ The Spread of Latin. For some centuries after Rome was founded, the Romans were a feeble and insignificant people, their territory was limited to Latium, and their existence constantly threatened by warlike neighbors. But after the third century before Christ, Rome's power grew rapidly. She conquered all Italy, then reached out for the lands across the sea and beyond the Alps, and finally ruled over the whole ancient world. ”

“ Roman society under the Principate exhibits in general the same characteristics as during the last century of the Republic. Rome itself was a thoroughly cosmopolitan city, where the concentration of wealth and political power attracted the ambitious, the adventurous and the curious from all lands. Whole quarters were occupied by various nationalities, most prominent among whom were the Greeks, the Syrians, and the Jews, speaking their own languages and plying their native trades. With the freeborn foreign population mingled the thousands of slaves and freedmen of every race and tongue. ”

“ We have no means of estimating accurately the population of Rome. Its walls embraced a circuit of twenty-one miles, and it is probable that nearly a million of people were contained within the walls and the suburbs.
Such was the condition of Rome when it was about to fall before the arms of the barbarians. August 24th, A.D. 410, Alaric approached the city, and the gates being opened to him by some Gothic slaves, his troops began at night a fearful scene of pillage and destruction. ”

“ The popes have abandoned Rome for ever; there is no counterpoise to your ambition,—there need be none to your power. You see before you the examples of Visconti and Taddeo di Pepoli. You may found in Rome, the first city of Italy, a supreme and uncontrolled principality, subjugate utterly your weaker rivals,—the Savelli, the Malatesta, the Orsini,—and leave to your sons’ sons an hereditary kingdom that may aspire once more, perhaps, to the empire of the world. ”

“ The course of events at Rome during the previous century and a half had done much to destroy the stamina of the mass of the Roman people; and a life of economic independence, as the result of hard labor in the country, held less attractions for the majority of this class than an easily secured, though meager, living in the city. Anything which rendered life in Rome easier and more pleasant made it so much the harder to induce Roman citizens to settle on the farms. ”

“ Rome, thrown back upon herself in the dark times, when she was shorn of her possessions, was a true picture of what Italy was before Rome's iron hand had bound the Italian peoples together by force, of what she became again as soon as that force was relaxed, of what she has grown to be once more, now that the delight of revolution has disappeared in the dismal swamp of financial disappointment, of what she will be to all time, because, from all time, she has been populated by races of different descent, who hated each other as only neighbours can. ”

“ Rome was a brown city in those days, when there was no marble and little stucco: a brown city teeming with men and women clothed mostly in grey and brown and black woollen cloaks, like those the hill shepherds wear today, caught up under one arm and thrown far over the shoulder in dark folds. ”

“ The air of Rome inspires lassitude, and renders the inhabitants inert. The Romans who live in the healthy parts of the city are all inclined to grow fat; their language, unidiomatic, and, so to speak, long-winded in its expressions, is pronounced with a grace of accent, a slow and melodious emphasis, that renders it more agreeable than any other Italian to the ears of strangers, and is strangely in harmony with the dreamy contentment of their minds. ”

“ The contemplation of the city, however, produces the effect of a vast and solid reading of history. Each of the great representations of the city, always and differently mistress of the world, seems to have chosen its respective quarter—the Rome of the kings and emperors is spread out on the Palatine, Esquiline, and Quirinal; republican Rome occupies the Capitol and Aventine; whilst Christian Rome, isolated and solitary, reigns on the Cœlian and Vatican eminences. ”

“ But Rome cannot be taken as a criterion of the Roman States. It is a cosmopolite city, resorted to by strangers from all parts of the world, animated and enriched by their presence. Take away the artists' studios, the shops of the dealers in mosaic and cameos, statuettes and sarcophagi,—and those who purchase them,—and grass would be growing in the streets of Rome, as it did six months ago in the half-depopulated cities of the Legations. ”

“ The new scale of living. In the course of their campaigns in Sicily, Africa, Greece, and Asia Minor, the Romans came into close contact with a civilization older and higher than their own, where the art of living was practised with a refinement and elegance unknown in Latium. In this respect the conquerors showed themselves only too ready to learn from the conquered, and all the luxurious externals of culture were transplanted to Rome. ”

“ V. ROME—THE THERMAE OF TITUS There were even birds, to fill the air with music. All the known world, and the far-away mysterious lands of which Alexander's followers had started legends multiplying centuries ago, had contributed to Rome's adornment; plunder and trade goods drifted through in spite of distances. The city had become the vortex of the energy, virility and vice of east and west—a glory of marble and gilded cornices, of domes and spires, of costumes, habits, faces, languages—of gorgeousness and squalor—license, privilege and rigid formalism—extravagance—and of innumerable gods. ”

“ This idle and corrupt population seemed to have less than on other occasions to employ their hands, and so gave their time and their conversation to one another, laying no restraint upon the quantity of either. It is an indisputable fact that Rome exists to this day, for any one who will come into Italy may see it for himself, and he cannot reject the testimony of his eyes and ears. ”

“ Being located in the centre of Italy and on a navigable river, and being far enough from the mouth of the river to be safe from pirates, Rome grew rapidly, and the coming of a large number of immigrants to the city had a profound effect on its political history. ”

“ So Rome is called a republic, and it is true that, during the first half of her long history, freedom gradually broadened down from the patrician class to the plebeian multitude. When Rome reached out, however, to the mastery of the most impressive empire the world has seen, she never dreamed of extending that freedom to the conquered populations. If she did grant Roman citizenship to an occasional community, to enjoy the rights and exercise the privileges of that citizenship, it was necessary to journey to Rome. It was the city and the world: the city ruling the world as subject. ”

“ ROME AND THE NEW NATIONS. We have seen Rome rise, step by step, to the headship of Latium, the headship of the West, the headship of the Mediterranean world. At most stages of her course her progress has been slow; at one stage only does she rise to a new position as in a moment. That is when, having been checked on her Eastern course by the Hannibalian war, the city that had overthrown the Eastern masters of the West sprang at once to the headship of the Eastern as well as of the Western world. ”

“ Establishing the city of Rome as a stable, defensible center of merchandising and commerce, transport, finance, population, wealth and power with a hinterland of associates and dependencies. As it turns out, the city of Rome has outlived both the Roman Empire and Roman Civilization. ”