No More Learning

It was Appius glven t0 Claudius who in his epoch-making censorship (442) threw 312. aside the antiquated rustic system of parsimonious hoarding,
and taught his fellow-citizens to make a worthy use of the
public resources. He began that noble system of public
works of general utility, which justifies, if anything can
justify, the military successes of Rome even from the point
of view of the welfare of the nations, and which even now
in its ruins furnishes some idea of the greatness of Rome to thousands on thousands who have never read a page of her
history. To him the Roman state was indebted for its
great military road, and the city of Rome for its first aqueduct Following in the steps of Claudius, the Roman
senate wove around Italy that network of roads and
fortresses, the formation of which has already been described 39), and without which, as the history of all military states from the Achaemenidae down to the creator
of the road over the Simplon shows, no military hegemony
can subsist. Following in the steps of Claudius, Manius Curius built from the proceeds of the Pyrrhic spoil second aqueduct for the capital (482) and some years previously 272. (464) with the gains of the Sabine war he opened up for 200. the Velino, at the point above Terni where falls into the Nera, that broader channel which the stream still flows,
with view to drain the beautiful valley of Rieti and thereby to gain space for large burgess settlement along
played.
a
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86 LAW—RELIGION— MILITARY SYSTEM book 11
with a modest farm for himself. Such works, in the eyes of persons of intelligence, threw into the shade the aimless magnificence of the Hellenic temples.
The style of living also among the citizens now was altered. About the time of Pyrrhus silver plate began to make its appearance on Roman tables, and the chroniclers date the disappearance of shingle roofs
884. in Rome from 470. 1 The new capital of Italy gradually laid aside its village-like aspect, and now began to embellish itself. It was not yet indeed customary to strip the temples
in conquered towns of their ornaments for the decoration of Rome; but the beaks of the galleys of Antium were
displayed at the orator's platform in the Forum
and on public festival days the gold-mounted shields brought home from the battle-fields of Samnium were exhibited along the stalls of the market 480). The proceeds of fines were specially applied to the paving of the highways in and near the city, or to the erection and embellishment of public buildings. The wooden booths of the butchers, which stretched along the Forum on both sides, gave way, first on the Palatine side, then on that also which faced the Carinae, to the stone stalls of the
so that this place became the Exchange of Rome. Statues of the famous men of the past, of the kings, priests, and heroes of the legendary period,
and of the Grecian hospes who was said to have interpreted to the decemvirs the laws of Solon honorary columns and monuments dedicated to the great burgo masters who had conquered the Veientes, the Latins, the Samnites, to state envoys who had perished while executing
We have already mentioned the censorial stigma attached to Publius MO. 177. Cornelius Rufinns (consul 464, 477) for his silver plate (p. 64). The strange statement of Fabius (in Strabo, v. p. 338) that the Romans first became given to luxury [alvSfcSat -ou tXoi/tou) after the conquest of the Sabines, evidently only a historical version of the same matter for the
conquest of the Sabines falls in the first consulate of Rulinus.
money-changers;
462)
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chap, viii ECONOMIC CONDITION— NATIONALITY
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their instructions, to rich women who had bequeathed their property to public objects, nay even to celebrated Greek philosophers and heroes such as Pythagoras and Alcibiades, were erected on the Capitol or in the Forum. Thus, now that the Roman community had become a great power, Rome itself became a great city.
Lastly Rome, as head of the Romano- Italian con- Silver federacy, not only entered into the Hellenistic state-system, J^Sot but also conformed to the Hellenic system of moneys and
coins. Up to this time the different communities of northern
and central Italy, with few exceptions, had struck onlya copper currency ; the south Italian towns again universally had a currency of silver ; and there were as many legal standards
and systems of coinage as there were sovereign communities
in Italy. In 485 all these local mints were restricted to 269. the issuing of small coin; a general standard of currency applicable to all Italy was introduced, and the coining of the currency was centralized in Rome ; Capua alone continued
to retain its own silver coinage struck in the name of
Rome, but after a different standard. The new monetary
system was based on the legal ratio subsisting between
the two metals, as it had long been fixed 78). The common monetary unit was the piece of ten asses (which were no longer of pound, but reduced to the third of pound) — the denarius, which weighed in copper and in silver -fa, of Roman pound, trifle more than the Attic drachma. At first copper money still predominated the coinage and probable that the earliest silver denarius was coined chiefly for Lower Italy and for intercourse with other lands. As the victory of the Romans over Pyrrhus and Tarentum and the Roman embassy to Alexandria could not but engage the thoughts of the contemporary Greek statesman, so the sagacious Greek merchant might well ponder as he looked on these new Roman drachmae. Their flat, unartistic, and monotonous stamping appeared
;
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88 LAW— RELIGION— MILITARY SYSTEM book ii
poor and insignificant by the side of the marvellously beautiful contemporary coins of Pyrrhus and the Siceliots ; nevertheless they were by no means, like the barbarian coins of antiquity, slavishly imitated and unequal in weight and alloy, but, on the contrary, worthy from the first by their independent and conscientious execution to be placed on a level with any Greek coin.
Thus, when the eye turns from the development of constitutions and from the national struggles for dominion and for freedom which agitated Italy, and Rome in
from the banishment of the Tarquinian house to the subjugation of the Samnites and the Italian Greeks, and rests on those calmer spheres of human existence which history nevertheless rules and pervades, it everywhere encounters the reflex influence of the great events, by which the Roman burgesses burst the bonds of patrician sway, and the rich variety of the national cultures of Italy gradually perished to enrich a single people. While the historian may not attempt to follow out the great course of events into the infinite multiplicity of individual detail, he does not overstep his province when, laying hold of detached fragments of scattered tradition, he indicates the most important changes which during this epoch took place in the national life of Italy. That in such an inquiry the life of Rome becomes still more prominent than in the earlier epoch, is not merely the result of the accidental blanks of our tradition ; it was an essential consequence of the change in the political position of Rome, that the Latin nationality should more and more cast the other nationalities of Italy into the shade. We have already pointed to the fact, that at this epoch the neighbouring lands—southern Etruria, Sabina, the land of the Volscians, —began to become Romanized, as is attested by the almost total absence of monuments of the old native
dialects, and by the occurrence of very ancient Roman
particular,
chap, viii ECONOMIC CONDITION—NATIONALITY
89
inscriptions in those regions ; the admission of the Sabines
to full burgess-rights at the end of this period
betokens that the Latinizing of Central Italy was already at that time the conscious aim of Roman policy. The numerous individual assignations and colonial establish ments scattered throughout Italy were, not only in military but also in linguistic and national point of view, the advanced posts of the Latin stock. The Latinizing of the Italians was scarcely at this time generally aimed at on the contrary, the Roman senate seems to have intention ally upheld the distinction between the Latin and the other nationalities, and they did not yet, for example, allow the introduction of Latin into official use among the half- burgess communities of Campania. The force of circum stances, however, stronger than even the strongest
the language and customs of the Latin people immediately shared its predominance in Italy, and already began to undermine the other Italian
nationalities.
These nationalities were at the same time assailed from progress ol
government
another quarter and by an ascendency resting on another basis —by Hellenism. This was the period when Hellenism began to become conscious of its intellectual superiority to the other nations, and to diffuse itself on every side. Italy did not remain unaffected by it The most remark able phenomenon of this sort presented by Apulia, which after the fifth century of Rome gradually laid aside its barbarian dialect and silently became Hellenized. This change was brought about, as in Macedonia and Epirus, not by colonization, but by civilization, which seems to have gone hand in hand with the land commerce of Tarentum; at least that hypothesis favoured by the facts, that the districts of the Poediculi and Daunii who were on friendly terms with the Tarentines carried out their Hellenization more completely than the Sallentines
Hellenism
48)
is
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LAW—RELIGION— MILITARY SYSTEM book ii
who lived nearer to Tarentum but were constantly at feud with and that the towns that were soonest Graecized, such as Arpi, were not situated on the coast The stronger influence exerted by Hellenism over Apulia than over any other Italian region explained partly by its position, partly the slight development of any national culture of its own, and partly also perhaps its national ity presenting character less alien to the Greek stock than that of the rest of Italy 12). We have already called attention 456) to the fact that the southern Sabellian stocks, although at the outset in concert with the tyrants of Syracuse they crushed and destroyed the Hellenism of Magna Graecia, were at the same time affected by contact and mingling with the Greeks, so that some of them, such as the Bruttians and Nolans, adopted the Greek language by the side of their native tongue, and others, such as the Lucanians and part of the Campanians, adopted at least Greek writing and Greek manners. Etruria likewise showed tendencies towards kindred development in the remarkable vases which have been
discovered 80) belonging to this period,
those of Campania and Lucania and though Latium and Samnium remained more strangers to Hellenism, there were not wanting there also traces of an incipient and ever-growing influence of Greek culture. In all branches of the development of Rome during this epoch, in legis lation and coinage, in religion, in the formation of national legend, we encounter traces of the Greeks and from the commencement of the fifth century in particular, in other words, after the conquest of Campania, the Greek influence on Roman life appears rapidly and constantly on the increase. In the fourth century occurred the erection of the " Graecostasis "—remarkable in the very form of the word— platform in the Roman Forum for eminent Greek strangers and primarily for the Massiliots
rivalling
46).
(p.
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In the following century the annals began to exhibit Romans of quality with Greek surnames, such as Philipus
or in Roman form Pilipus, Philo, Sophus, Hypsaeus. Greek customs gained ground : such as the non-Italian practice of placing inscriptions in honour of the dead on
the tomb—of which the epitaph of Lucius Scipio (consul
in 456) is the oldest example known to us ; the fashion, 2*8. also foreign to the Italians, of erecting without any decree
of the state honorary monuments to ancestors in public places—a system begun by the great innovator Appius Claudius, when he caused bronze shields with images and
eulogies of his ancestors to be suspended in the new
temple of Bellona (442); the distribution of branches of 812. palms to the competitors, introduced at the Roman
national festival in 461 ; above all, the Greek manners and 293. habits at table. The custom not of sitting as formerly on Adoption benches, but of reclining on sofas, at table ; the postpone- habits at ment of the chief meal from noon to between two and three table,
o'clock in the afternoon according to our mode of reckon ing ; the institution of masters of the revels at banquets,
who were appointed from among the guests
generally by throwing the dice, and who then prescribed to the company what, how, and when they should drink ; the table-chants sung in succession by the guests, which, however, in Rome were not scolia, but lays in praise of ancestors — all these were not primitive customs in Rome, but were borrowed from the Greeks at a very early period,
for in Cato's time these usages were already common and had in fact partly fallen into disuse again. We must there fore place their introduction in this period at the latest. A characteristic feature also was the erection of statues to " the wisest and the bravest Greek " in the Roman Forum, which took place by command of the Pythian Apollo during the Samnite wars. The selection fell — evidently under Sicilian or Campanian influence —on Pythagoras and
present,
Rome
this epoch,
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LAW— RELIGION— MILITARY SYSTEM book 11
Alcibiades, the saviour and the Hannibal of the western Hellenes. The extent to which an acquaintance with
Greek was already diffused in the fifth century Romans of quality is shown by the embassies of the Romans to Tarentum — when their mouthpiece spoke, if not in the purest Greek, at any rate without an interpreter —and of Cineas to Rome. It scarcely admits of a doubt that from the fifth century the young Romans who devoted themselves to state affairs universally acquired a knowledge
of what was then the general language of the world and of diplomacy.
Thus in the intellectual sphere Hellenism made ad vances quite as incessant as the efforts of the Romans to subject the earth to their sway ; and the secondary nation alities, such as the Samnite, Celt, and Etruscan, hard pressed on both sides, were ever losing their inward
vigour as well as narrowing their outward bounds.
When the two great nations, both arrived at the height
friendly contact, their antagonism of character was at the same time prominently and fully brought out — the total want of individuality in the Italian and especially in the
Roman character, as contrasted with the boundless variety, lineal, local, and personal, of Hellenism. There was no epoch of mightier vigour in the history of Rome than the epoch from the institution of the republic to the
of Italy. That epoch laid the foundations of the commonwealth both within and without ; it created a united Italy ; it gave birth to the traditional groundwork of the national law and of the national history ; it originated the pilum and the maniple, the construction of roads and of aqueducts, the farming of estates and the monetary system ; it moulded the she-wolf of the Capitol and designed the Ficoroni casket But the individuals, who contributed the several stones to this gigantic structure and
Romans of of tneir development, began to mingle in hostile or in
subjugation
among
chap, vni ECONOMIC CONDITION—NATIONALITY
93
cemented them together, have disappeared without leaving a trace, and the nations of Italy did not merge into that of Rome more completely than the single Roman burgess merged
in the Roman community. As the grave closes alike over
all whether important or insignificant, so in the roll of the Roman burgomasters the empty scion of nobility stands undistinguishable by the side of the great statesman. Of
the few records that have reached us from this period none
is more venerable, and none at the same time more characteristic, than the epitaph of Lucius Cornelius Scipio,
who was consul in 456, and three years afterwards took 298. pan in the decisive battle of Sentinum 489). On the beautiful sarcophagus, in noble Doric style, which eighty years ago still enclosed the dust of the conqueror of the Samnites, the following sentence inscribed —
Cornlliiis Lucius —Sdpii Barb&tus,
Gnaivid patrl prognitus, —-f6rtis vir sapitnsqut,
Quoitls ffirma virtu—tH partsuma fiiit, Consdl censir aidilis—quel full aptid vos, Taurisid Cisaiina —SamniS cipit,
Subigit omni Loucinam —Spsidhqut abdotUit.
w
Innumerable others who had been at the head of the Roman commonwealth, as well as this Roman statesman and warrior, might be commemorated as having been of noble birth and of manly beauty, valiant and wise but there was no more to record regarding them. doubtless not the mere fault of tradition that no one of these Cornelii, Fabii, Papirii, or whatever they were called, confronts us in distinct individual figure. The senator was supposed to be no worse and no better than other senators, nor at all to differ from them. It was not necessary and not desirable that any burgess should surpass the rest, whether by showy silver plate and Hellenic culture, or by uncommon wisdom and excel lence. Excesses of the former kind were punished by the censor, and for the latter the constitution gave no scope.
a
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The Rome of this period belonged to no individual ; it was necessary for all the burgesses to be alike, that each of them might be like a king.
No doubt, even now Hellenic individual development asserted its claims by the side of that levelling system ; and the genius and force which it exhibited bear, no less than the tendency to which it opposed itself, the full stamp of that great age. We can name but a single man in connection with it ; but he was, as it were, the incarnation
807.
812. of the idea of progress. Appius Claudius (censor 442 ; 296. consul 447, 458), the great-great-grandson of the decemvir,
was a man of the old nobility and proud of the long line of his ancestors; but yet it was he who set aside the restriction which confined the full franchise of the state to the freeholders 396), and who broke up the old system of finance (p. 85). From Appius Claudius date not only the Roman aqueducts and highways, but also Roman jurisprudence, eloquence, poetry, and grammar. The
of table of the legts aciiones, speeches committed to writing and Pythagorean sentences, and even innovations orthography, are attributed to him. We may not on this account call him absolutely democrat or include him in that opposition party which found its champion in Manius Curius 395); in him on the contrary the spirit of the ancient and modern patrician kings predominated —the spirit of the Tarquins and the Caesars, between whom he forms connecting link in that
five hundred years' interregnum of extraordinary deeds and ordinary men. So long as Appius Claudius took an active part in public life, in his official conduct as well as his general carriage he disregarded laws and customs on all hands with the hardihood and sauciness of an Athenian till, after having long retired from the political stage, the blind old man, returning as were from the tomb at the decisive
Moment, overcame king Pyrrhus in the senate, and first
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publication
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formally and solemnly proclaimed the complete sovereignty of Rome over Italy 22). But the gifted man came too early or too late the gods made him blind on account of his untimely wisdom. was not individual genius that ruled in Rome and through Rome Italy was the one immoveable idea of policy —propagated from generation to generation in the senate —with the leading maxims of which the sons of the senators became already imbued, when in the company of their fathers they went to the council and there at the door of the hall listened to the wisdom of the men whose seats they were destined at some future time to fill. Immense successes were thus obtained at an immense price; for Nike too followed by her Nemesis. In the Roman commonwealth there was no special dependence on any one man, either on soldier or on general, and under the rigid discipline of its moral police all the idiosyncrasies of human character were extinguished. Rome reached greatness such as no other state of antiquity attained but she dearly purchased her greatness at the sacrifice of the graceful variety, of the easy abandon, and of the inward freedom of Hellenic life.
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ART AND SCIENCE BOOK II
CHAPTER IX ART AND SCIENCE
The The growth of art, and of poetic art especially, in antiquity
was intimately associated with the development of national festival. festivals. The thanksgiving-festival of the Roman com
munity, which had been already organized in the previous period essentially under Greek influence and in the first instance as an extraordinary festival, — the ludi maximi or Romani 293), —acquired during the present epoch a longer duration and greater variety in the amusements. Originally limited to one day, the festival was prolonged by an additional day after the happy termination of each of
509. 494. the three great revolutions of 245, 260, and 387, and thus at the close of this period had already duration of four days. 1
The account given by Dionysius (vi. 95 comp. Niebuhr, ii. 40) and by Plutarch (Camill. 42), deriving his statement from another passage in Dionysius regarding the Latin festival, must be understood to apply rather to the Roman games, as, apart from other grounds, strikingly evident from comparing the latter passage with Liv. vi. 43 (Ritschl, Parerg. p. 313). Dionysius has—and, according to his wont when in error, persistently — misunderstood the expression ludi maximi.
There was, moreover, a tradition which referred the origin of the national festival not, as in the common version, to the conquest of the Latins by the first Tarquinius, but to the victory over the Latins at the lake Regillus (Cicero, de Div. 26, 55 Dionys. vii. 71). That the important statements preserved in the latter passage from Fabius really relate to the ordinary thanksgiving-festival, and not to any special votive solemnity, evident from the express allusion to the annual recurrence of the celebration, and from the exact agreement of the sum of the expenses with the statement in the Pseudo-Asconius (p. 14a Or. ).
national
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A still more important circumstance was, that, probably
on the institution of the curule aedileship (387) which was 367. from the first entrusted with the preparation and oversight
of the festival 383), lost its extraordinary character
and its reference to special vow made by the general,
and took its place in the series of the ordinary annually recurring festivals as the first of all. Nevertheless the government adhered to the practice of allowing the spectacle proper—namely the chariot-race, which was the principal performance —to take place not more than once
at the close of the festival. On the other days the multitude were probably left mainly to furnish amusement
for themselves, although musicians, dancers, rope-walkers, jugglers, jesters and such like would not fail to make their appearance on the occasion, whether hired or not But about the year 390 an important change occurred, which 364. must have stood in connection with the fixing and prolonga
tion of the festival, that took place perhaps about the same time. A scaffolding of boards was erected at the expense of The
the state in the Circus for the first three days, and suitable Roman T(j
representations were provided on for the entertainment of the multitude. That matters might not be carried too far however in this way, fixed sum of 200,000 asses (^2055) was once for all appropriated from the exchequer for the expenses of the festival; and the sum was not increased up to the period of the Punic wars. The aediles, who had to expend this sum, were obliged to defray any additional amount out of their own pockets and not probable that they at this time contributed often or considerably from their own resources. That the new
stage was generally under Greek influence, proved by its very name (scaena, 07071^). was no doubt at first designed merely for musicians and buffoons of all sorts, amongst whom the dancers to the flute, particularly those then so celebrated from Etruria, were probably the most
VOX* u 39
It
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Ballad- Saturu.
distinguished ; but a public stage had at any rate now arisen in Rome and it soon became open also to the Roman poets.
There was no want of such poets in Latium. Latin " strolling minstrels " or " ballad-singers " (grassatores, spa- tiatores) went from town to town and from house to house, and recited their chants (saturae, i. 35), gesticulating and dancing to the accompaniment of the flute. The measure was of course the only one that then existed, the so-called Saturnian 289). No distinct plot lay at the basis of the chants, and as little do they appear to have been in the form of dialogue. We must conceive of them as re sembling those monotonous — sometimes improvised, some times recited—ballads and tarantelle, such as one may still hear in the Roman hostelries. Songs of this sort accord ingly early came upon the public stage, and certainly formed the first nucleus of the Roman theatre. But not only were these beginnings of the drama in Rome, as everywhere, modest and humble; they were, in remark able manner, accounted from the very outset disreputable. The Twelve Tables denounced evil and worthless song- singing, imposing severe penalties not only upon incanta tions but even on lampoons composed against fellow- citizen or recited before his door, and forbidding the employment of wailing-women at funerals. But far more severely, than such legal restrictions, the incipient exercise of art was affected the moral anathema, which was denounced against these frivolous and paid trades by the narrowminded earnestness of the Roman character. " The trade of poet," says Cato, " in former times was not respected any one occupied himself with or was
hanger-on at banquets, he was called an idler. " But now any one who practised dancing, music, or ballad- singing for money was visited with double stigma, in consequence of the more and more confirmed disapproval
98
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of gaining a livelihood by services rendered for remunera tion. While accordingly the taking part in the masked farces with stereotyped characters, that formed the usual native amusement 291), was looked upon as an innocent youthful frolic, the appearing on public stage for money and without mask was considered as directly infamous, and the singer and poet were in this respect placed quite on level with the rope-dancer and the harlequin. Persons of this stamp were regularly pronounced by the censors (p. 63 /. ) incapable of serving in the burgess-army and of voting in the burgess-assembly. Moreover, not only was the direction of the stage regarded as pertaining to the province of the city police — fact significant enough even in itself—but the police was probably, even at this period, invested with arbitrary powers of an extraordinary character against professional stage-artists. Not only did the police magistrates sit in judgment on the performance after its conclusion —on which occasion wine flowed as copiously for those who had acquitted themselves well, as stripes fell to the lot of the bungler—but all the urban magistrates were legally entitled to inflict bodily chastisement and imprisonment on any actor at any time and at any place. The necessary effect of this was that dancing, music, and poetry, at least so far as they appeared on the public stage, fell into the hands of the lowest classes of the Roman burgesses, and especially into those of foreigners and while at this period poetry still played altogether too significant part to engage the attention of foreign artists, the statement on the other hand, that in Rome all the music, sacred and profane, was essentially Etruscan, and consequently the ancient Latin art of the flute, which was evidently at one time held high esteem 291), had been supplanted foreign music, may be regarded as already applicable to this period.
There no mention of any poetical literature. Neither
is
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Registers of magis trates.
100 ART AND SCIENCE BOOK II
the masked plays nor the recitations of the stage can have had in the proper sense fixed texts ; on the contrary, they were ordinarily improvised by the performers themselves as circumstances required. Of works composed at this period posterity could point to nothing but a sort of Roman "Works and Days" — counsels of a farmer to his son,1 and the already-mentioned Pythagorean poems of Appius Claudius (p. 94), the first commencement of Roman poetry after the Hellenic type. Nothing of the poems of this epoch has survived but one or two epitaphs in Saturnian measure (p. 93).
Along with the rudiments of the Roman drama, the rudiments of Roman historical composition belong to this period; both as regards the contemporary recording of remarkable events, and as regards the conventional settle ment of the early history of the Roman community.
The writing of contemporary history was associated with the register of the magistrates. The register reaching farthest back, which was accessible to the later Roman inquirers and is still indirectly accessible to us, seems to have been derived from the archives of the temple of the Capitoline Jupiter ; for it records the names of the annual presidents of the community onward from the consul Marcus Horatius, who consecrated that temple on the 13th Sept. in his year of office, and it also notices the
vow which was made on occasion of a severe pestilence
under the consuls Publius Servilius and Lucius Aebutius 468. (according to the reckoning now current, 291), that thence
forward a nail should be driven every hundredth year into the wall of the Capitoline temple. Subsequently it was
> A fragment has been preserved :—
Hiberoo pulrere, verno Into, grandia farra Camille metes —
We do not know by what right this was afterwards regarded as the oldest Roman poem (Macrob. Sat. v. 20 ; Festus, Ep. v. Jlaminius, p. 93, M. ; Serv. on Virg. Georg. i. 101 ; Flin. xvii. 2. 14).
chap, IX ART AND SCIENCE 101
the state officials who were learned in measuring and in writing, or in other words, the pontifices, that kept an official record of the names of the annual chief magistrates,
and thus combined an annual, with the earlier monthly, calendar. Both these calendars were afterwards compre hended under the name of Fasti —which strictly belonged only to the list of court-days. This arrangement was probably adopted not long after the abolition of the monarchy ; for in fact an official record of the annual magistrates was of urgent practical necessity for the purpose of authenticating the order of succession of official documents. But, if there was an official register of the consuls so old, it probably perished in the Gallic conflagra
tion (364) ; and the list of the pontifical college was sub- 390, sequently completed from the Capitoline register which
was not affected by that catastrophe, so far as this latter reached back. That the list of presidents which we now have — although in collateral matters, and especially in genealogical statements, it has been
supplemented at pleasure from the family pedigrees of the nobility — is in substance based from the beginning on contemporary and
credible records, admits of no doubt. But it reproduces
the calendar years only imperfectly and approximately: for the consuls did not enter on office with the new year, or even on a definite day fixed once for all ; on the con trary from various causes the day of entering on office was fluctuating, and the interregna that frequently occurred between two consulates were entirely omitted in the reckoning by official years.
Accordingly, if the calendar years were to be reckoned by this list of consuls, it was necessary to note the days of entering on and of demitting office in the case of each pair, along with such interregna as occurred ; and this too may have been early done. But besides this, the list of the annual magistrates was adjusted to the list of calendar years in such a way that a
Capitoline **"
No era was formed for ordinary use; but in ritual matters they reckoned from the year of the consecration of the temple of the Capitoline Jupiter, from which the list of magistrates also started.
The idea naturally suggested itself that, along with the names of the magistrates, the most important events occur ring under their magistracy might be noted ; and from such notices appended to the catalogue of magistrates the Roman annals arose, just as the chronicles of the middle ages arose out of the memoranda marginally appended to the table of Easter. But it was not until a late period that the pontifices formed the scheme of a formal chronicle (liber annalis), which should steadily year by year record the names of all the magistrates and the remarkable events. Before the
loa ART AND SCIENCE book ii
pair of magistrates were by accommodation assigned to each calendar year, and, where the list did not suffice, intercalary years were inserted, which are denoted in the later (Varronian) table by the figures 379-383, 421, 430,
445i 453- From 291 u. c. (463 B. C. ) the Roman list demonstrably coincides, not indeed in detail but yet on
the whole, with the Roman calendar, and is thus chrono logically certain, so far as the defectiveness of the calendar itself allows. The 47 years preceding that date cannot be checked, but must likewise be at least in the main
609- correct. 1 Whatever lies beyond 245 remains, chrono logically, in oblivion.
408. eclipse of the sun noticed under the 5 th of June 351, by 400. which is probably meant that of the 20th June 354, no solar eclipse was found recorded from observation in the
later chronicle of the city : its statements as to the numbers of the census only begin to sound credible after the begin ning of the fifth century 122, 55) the cases of fines brought before the people, and the prodigies expiated on
The first places in the list alone excite suspicion, and may have been subsequently added, with a view to round off the number of years between the flight of the king and the burning of the city to 120.
1
(i.
p. ;
chap, ix ART AND SCIENCE
103
behalf of the community, appear to have been regularly introduced into the annals only after the second half of the fifth century began. To all appearance the institution of an organized book of annals, and — what was certainly associated with it — the revision (which we have just explained) of the earlier list of magistrates so as to make it a year-calendar by the insertion, where
chronologically necessary, of intercalary years, took place in the first half
of the fifth century. But even after it became a practically recognized duty of the pontifex maximus to record year after year campaigns and colonizations, pestilences and famines, eclipses and portents, the deaths of priests and other men of note, the new decrees of the people, and the results of the census, and to deposit these records in his official residence for permanent preservation and for any one's inspection, these records were still far removed from
the character of real historical writings. How scanty the contemporary record still was at the close of this period and how ample room is left for the caprice of subsequent annalists, is shown with incisive clearness by a comparison
of the accounts as to the campaign of 456 in the annal; 29f and in the epitaph of the consul Scipio. 1 The later historians were evidently unable to construct a readable and in some measure connected narrative out of these notices from the book of annals ; and we should have difficulty, even if the book of annals still lay before us with its original contents, in writing from it in duly connected sequence the history of the times. Such chronicles, however, did not exist merely in Rome ; every
Latin city possessed its annals as well as its pontifices, as is clear from isolated notices relative to Ardea for instance, Ameria, and Interamna on the Nar ; and from the collective
1 P. 93. According to the annals Scipio commands in Etruria and his colleague in Samnium, and Lucania is during this year in league with Rome ; according to the epitaph Scipio conquers two towns in Samnium and all Lucania.
Family pedigrees.
mass of these city-chronicles some result might perhaps have been attained similar to what has been accomplished for the earlier middle ages by the comparison of different monastic chronicles. Unfortunately the Romans in later times preferred to supply the defect by Hellenic or
Hellenizing falsehoods.
Besides these official arrangements, meagrely planned
and uncertainly handled, for commemorating past times and past events, there can scarcely have existed at this epoch any other records immediately serviceable for Roman history. Of private chronicles we find no trace. The leading houses, however, were careful to draw up genea logical tables, so important in a legal point of view, and to have the family pedigree painted for a perpetual memorial on the walls of the entrance-hall. These lists, which at least named the magistracies held by the family, not only furnished a basis for family tradition, but doubtless at an early period had biographical notices attached to them. The memorial orations, which in Rome could not be omitted at the funeral of any person of quality, and were ordinarily pronounced by the nearest relative of the deceased, consisted essentially not merely in an enumera tion of the virtues and excellencies of the dead, but also in a recital of the deeds and virtues of his ancestors ; and so
they were doubtless, even in the earliest times, transmitted traditionally from one generation to another. Many a valuable notice may by this means have been preserved ; but many a daring perversion and falsification also may have been in this way introduced into tradition.
But as the first steps towards writing real history
Roman early
history el Rome.
to this period, to it belonged also the first attempts to record, and conventionally distort, the primitive history of Rome. The sources whence it was formed were of course the same as they are everywhere. Isolated names like those of the kings Numa, Ancus, Tullus, to whom the
104
ART AND SCIENCE BOOK II
belonged
chap, IX ART AND SCIENCE
IOJ
clan-names were probably only assigned subsequently, and isolated facts, such as the conquest of the Latins by king Tarquinius and the expulsion of the Tarquinian royal house, may have continued to live in true general tradition orally transmitted. Further materials were furnished by the traditions of the patrician clans, such as the various tales that relate to the Fabii. Other tales gave a symbolic and historic shape to primitive national institutions, especially setting forth with great vividness the origin of rules of law. The sacredness of the walls was thus illus trated in the tale of the death of Remus, the abolition of blood-revenge in the tale of the end of king Tatius 190,
the necessity of the arrangement as to the pons sublicius in the legend of Horatius Codes,1 the origin of the provocatio in the beautiful tale of the Horatii and Curiatii, the origin of manumission and of the burgess- rights of freedmen in the tale of the Tarquinian conspiracy and the slave Vindicius. To the same class belongs the history of the foundation of the city itself, which was designed to connect the origin of Rome with Latium and with Alba, the general metropolis of the Latins. Historical glosses were annexed to the surnames of distinguished Romans that of Publius Valerius the " servant of the people" (Pop/tcola), for instance, gathered around
whole group of such anecdotes. Above all, the sacred
tree and other spots and notable objects in the city were associated with great multitude of sextons' tales of the same nature as those out of which, upwards of thousand yean afterwards, there grew up on the same ground the Miraoilia Urbis. Some attempts to link together these different tales —the adjustment of the series of the seven kings, the setting down of the duration of the monarchy at 240 years all, which was undoubtedly based on
This object of the legend clear from Pliny the Elder (H. N. xixvi. 15, 100).
note),
fig-
is
1
in
a
it aa
a
;
(i.
106 ART AND SCIENCE book ii
calculation of the length of generations,1 and even the commencement of an official record of these assumed facts —probably took place already in this epoch. The outlines of the narrative, and in particular its quasi-chronology, make their appearance in the later tradition so unalterably fixed, that for that very reason the fixing of them must be placed not in, but previous to, the literary epoch of Rome. If a bronze casting of the twins Romulus and Remus sucking the teats of the she-wolf was already placed beside
296. the sacred fig-tree in 458, the Romans who subdued Latium and Samnium must have heard the history of the origin of their ancestral city in a form not greatly differing from what we read in Livy. Even the Aborigines —i. e. " those from the very beginning "—that simple rudimental form of historical speculation as to the Latin race—are met
289. with about 465 in the Sicilian author Callias. It is of the very nature of a chronicle that it should attach prehistoric speculation to history and endeavour to go back, if not to the origin of heaven and earth, at least to the origin of the community ; and there is express testimony that the table of the pontifices specified the year of the foundation of Rome. Accordingly it may be assumed that, when the pontifical college in the first half of the fifth century proceeded to substitute for the former scanty records— ordinarily, doubtless, confined to the names of the magis trates—the scheme of a formal yearly chronicle, it also added what was wanting at the beginning, the history of the kings of Rome and of their fall, and, by placing the institution of the republic on the day of the consecration
509. of the Capitoline temple, the 13th of Sept 245, furnished
1 They appear to have reckoned three generations to a hundred years and to have rounded off the figures 933} to 240, just as the epoch between the king's flight and the burning of the city was rounded off to 120 years (p. 103, note). The reason why these precise numbers suggested them selves, is apparent from the similar adjustment (above explained, L 965) of the measures of surface.
CHAP. IX ART AND SCIENCE
10?
a semblance of connection between the dateless and the annalistic narrative. That in this earliest record of the origin of Rome the hand of Hellenism was at work, can scarcely be doubted. The speculations as to the primitive and subsequent population, as to the priority of pastoral life over agriculture, and the transformation of the man Romulus into the god Quirinus 214), have quite Greek aspect, and even the obscuring of the genuinely national forms of the pious Numa and the wise Egeria by the admixture of alien elements of Pythagorean
primitive wisdom appears no means to be one of the most recent
ingredients in the Roman prehistoric annals.
The pedigrees of the noble clans were completed in
manner analogous to these origines of the community, and were, in the favourite style of heraldry, universally traced back to illustrious ancestors. The Aemilii, for instance, Calpumii, Pinarii, and Pomponii professed to be descended from the four sons of Numa, Mamercus, Calpus, Pinus, and Pompo; and the Aemilii, yet further, from Mamercus, the son of Pythagoras, who was named the " winning speaker "
(aXfiiKoi).
But, notwithstanding the Hellenic reminiscences that
are everywhere apparent, these prehistoric annals of the community and of the leading houses may be designated at least relatively as national, partly because they originated in Rome, partly because they tended primarily to form links of connection not between Rome and Greece, but between Rome and Latium.
was Hellenic story and fiction that undertook the Hellenic task of connecting Rome and Greece. Hellenic legend hStorvol exhibits throughout an endeavour to keep pace with the Rome, gradual extension of geographical knowledge, and to form
dramatized geography the aid of its numerous stories of voyagers and emigrants. In this, however, seldom follows simple course. An account like that of the
a
it
a
It
by
by
aa
(i.
Stesicho- 682-558
voyages the whole earlier poetry has no knowledge; in Homer Aeneas after the fall of Ilion rules over the Trojans that remained at home.
was the great remodeller of myths, Stesichorus (122- 2QI) who ^Ki m his " Destruction of Ilion " brought Aeneas to the land of the west, that he might poetically enrich the world of fable in the country of his birth and of his adop
tion, Sicily and Lower Italy, by the contrast of the Trojan
424.
io8 ART AND SCIENCE book ii
earliest Greek historical work which mentions Rome, the " Sicilian History " of Antiochus of Syracuse (which ended in 330) — that a man named Sikelos had migrated from Rome to Italia, that to the Bruttian peninsula —such
an account, simply giving historical form to the family affinity between the Romans, Siculi, and Bruttians, and free from all Hellenizing colouring, a rare phenomenon. Greek legend as whole pervaded — and the more so, the later its rise — by tendency to represent the whole barbarian world as having either issued from the Greeks or having been subdued by them and early in this sense spun its threads also around the west For Italy the legends of Herakles and of the Argonauts were of less importance —although Hecataeus after 257) already
497.
with the Pillars of Herakles, and carries the Argo from the Black Sea into the Atlantic Ocean, from the latter into the Nile, and thus back to the Mediterranean — than were the homeward voyages connected with the fall of Ilion. With the first dawn of information as to Italy Diomedes begins to wander in the Adriatic, and Odysseus
in the Tyrrhene Sea 177); as indeed the latter localiza tion at least was naturally suggested by the Homeric con ception of the legend. Down to the times of Alexander the countries on the Tyrrhene Sea belonged in Hellenic fable to the domain of the legend of Odysseus Ephorus, who ended his history with the year 414, and the so-called
acquainted
840.
836. Scylax (about 418) still substantially follow it. Of Trojan
It
;
it is
(i.
(+
;
is
a
is,
a
is
a
chap, « ART AND SCIENCE
109
heroes with the Hellenic. With him originated the poetical outlines of this fable as thenceforward fixed, especially the group of the hero and his wife, his little son and his aged father bearing the household gods, departing from burning Troy, and the important identification of the Trojans with the Sicilian and Italian autochthones, which is especially apparent in the case of the Trojan trumpeter Misenus who gave his name to the promontory of Misenum. 1 The old poet was guided in this view by the feeling that the barbarians of Italy were less widely removed from the Hellenes than other barbarians were, and that the relation between the Hellenes and Italians might, when measured poetically, be conceived as similar to that between the Homeric Achaeans and the Trojans. This new Trojan
fable soon came to be mixed up with the earlier legend of Odysseus, while it spread at the same time more widely
over Italy. According to Hellanicus (who wrote about 350) Odysseus and Aeneas came through the country of 400. the Thracians and Molottians (Epirus) to Italy, where the Trojan women whom they had brought with them burnt
the ships, and Aeneas founded the city of Rome and named it after one of these Trojan women. To a similar effect, only with less absurdity, Aristotle (370-432) related that an Achaean squadron cast upon the Latin coast had been set on fire by Trojan female slaves, and that the Latins had originated from the descendants of the Achaeans who were thus compelled to remain there and of their Trojan wives. With these tales were next mingled elements from the indigenous legend, the knowledge of which had been diffused as far as Sicily by the active intercourse between Sicily and Italy, at least towards the end of this epoch. In the version of the origin of Rome, which the Sicilian
1 The "Trojan colonies" in Sicily, mentioned by Thucydides, the
884-812,
and others, as well as the designation of Capua as a Trojan foundation in Hecataeus, must also be traced to Stesichorus and his identification of the natives of Italy and Sicily with the Trojans.
pseudo-Scylax,
289. Timaeus.
282.
tio ART AND SCIENCE book ii
Callias put on record about 465, the fables of Odysseus, Aeneas, and Romulus were intermingled. 1
But the person who really completed the conception subsequently current of this Trojan migration was Timaeus of Tauromenium in Sicily, who concluded his historical work with 492. It is he who represents Aeneas as first founding Lavinium with its shrine of the Trojan Penates, and as thereafter founding Rome ; he must also have interwoven the Tyrian princess Elisa or Dido with the legend of Aeneas, for with him Dido is the foundress of Carthage, and Rome and Carthage are said by him to have been built in the same
These alterations were manifestly suggested by cer tain accounts that had reached Sicily respecting Latin manners and customs, in conjunction with the critical struggle which at the very time and place where Timaeus wrote was preparing between the Romans and the Cartha ginians. In the main, however, the story cannot have been derived from Latium, but can only have been the good- for-nothing invention of the old "gossip-monger" himself. Timaeus had heard of the primitive temple of the household gods in Lavinium; but the statement, that these were regarded by the Lavinates as the Penates brought by the followers of Aeneas from Ilion, is as certainly an addition of his own, as the ingenious parallel between the Roman
October horse and the Trojan horse, and the exact inventory taken of the sacred objects of Lavinium—there were, our worthy author affirms, heralds' staves of iron and copper, and an earthen vase of Trojan manufacture ! It is true that these same Penates might not at all be seen by any one for centuries afterwards ; but Timaeus was one of the
1 According to his account Romg, a woman who had fled from Ilion to Rome, or rather her daughter of the same name, married Latinos, king of the Aborigines, and bore to him three sons, Romos, Romylos, and Telegonos. The last, who undoubtedly emerges here as founder of Tusculum and Praeneste, belongs, as is well known, to the legend of Odysseus.
year.
chap. vs. ART AND SCIENCE ill
historians who upon no matter are so fully informed as upon things unknowable. It is not without reason that Polybius, who knew the man, advises that he should in no case be trusted, and least of all where, as in this instance, he appeals to documentary proofs. In fact the Sicilian rhetorician, who professed to point out the grave of Thucydides in Italy, and who found no higher praise for Alexander than that he had finished the conquest of Asia sooner than Iso- crates finished his "Panegyric," was exactly the man to knead the naive fictions of the earlier time into that confused medley on which the play of accident has conferred so sin gular a celebrity.
How far the Hellenic play of fable regarding Italian matters, as it in the first instance arose in Sicily, gained admission during this period even in Italy itself, cannot be ascertained with precision. Those links of connection with
the Odyssean cycle, which we subsequently meet with in
the legends of the foundation of Tusculum, Praeneste, Antium, Ardea, and Cortona, must probably have been already concocted at this period ; and even the belief in
the descent of the Romans from Trojan men or Trojan women must have been established at the close of this epoch in Rome, for the first demonstrable contact between Rome and the Greek east is the intercession of the senate
on behalf of the "kindred" Ilians in 472. That the fable 282. of Aeneas was nevertheless of comparatively recent origin
in Italy, is shown by the extremely scanty measure of its localization as compared with the legend of Odysseus ; and at any rate the final redaction of these tales, as well as their reconciliation with the legend of the origin of Rome, belongs only to the following age.
While in this way historical composition, or what was so called among the Hellenes, busied itself in its own fashion with the prehistoric times of Italy, it left the contemporary history of Italy almost untouched —a circumstance as signi
Opinions.
355. 369)-
While the mass of written legal documents thus in
creased, the foundations of jurisprudence in the proper sense were also firmly laid. was necessary that both the magistrates who were annually changed and the jurymen taken from the people should be enabled to resort to men of skill, who were acquainted with the course of law and knew how to suggest decision accordant with precedents or, in the absence of these, resting on reasonable grounds.
112 ART AND SCIENCE book n
ficant of the sunken condition of Hellenic history, as it is
to be for our sakes regretted. Theopompus of Chios (who 886. ended his work with 418) barely noticed in passing the capture of Rome by the Celts; and Aristotle 432),
Clitarchus Theophrastus 44), Heraclides of 800. Pontus (fabout 450), incidentally mention particular events relating to Rome. only with Hieronymus of Cardia,
who as the historian of Pyrrhus narrated also his Italian wars, that Greek historiography becomes at the same time an authority for the history of Rome.
Among the sciences, that of jurisprudence acquired an invaluable basis through the committing to writing of the 4S1. 450. laws of the city in the years 303, 304. This code, known under the name of the Twelve Tables, perhaps the oldest Roman document that deserves the name of book. The nucleus of the so-called leges regiae was probably not much
Jurispru-
more recent. These were certain precepts chiefly of ritual nature, which rested upon traditional usage, and were probably promulgated to the general public under the form of royal enactments by the college of pontifices, which was entitled not to legislate but to point out the law. Moreover
may be presumed that from the commencement of this period the more important decrees of the senate at any rate — not those of the people — were regularly recorded writing; for already in the earliest conflicts between the orders disputes took place as to their
preservation
a
It is
It
(••
it if
in a
is a
(p.
1),
(p.
(i.
CHAP. ix ART AND SCIENCE 1 13
The pontifices who were wont to be consulted by the people regarding court-days and on all questions of difficulty and of legal observance relating to the worship of the gods, delivered also, when asked, counsels and opinions on other points of law, and thus developed in the bosom of their college that tradition which formed the basis of Roman private law, more especially the formulae of action proper for each particular case. A table of formulae which embraced all these actions, along with a calendar which specified the court-days, was published to the people about 450 by Appius Claudius or by his clerk, Gnaeus Flavius. This attempt, however, to give formal shape to a science, that as yet hardly recognized itself, stood for a long time completely isolated.
Table of
foracdom, 300.
That the knowledge of law and the setting it forth were even now a means of recommendation to the people and of attaining offices of state, may be readily conceived, although
the story, that the first plebeian pontifex Publius Sempro-
nius Sophus (consul 450), and the first plebeian pontifex 304. maximus Tiberius Coruncanius (consul 474), were indebted 280. for these priestly honours to their knowledge of law, is prob
ably rather a conjecture of posterity than a statement of tradition.
That the real genesis of the Latin and doubtless also of the other Italian languages was anterior to this period, and that even at its commencement the Latin language was sub stantially an accomplished fact, is evident from the frag ments of the Twelve Tables, which, however, have been largely modernized by their semi-oral tradition. They contain doubtless a number of antiquated words and harsh combinations, particularly in consequence of omitting the indefinite subject ; but their meaning by no means presents, like that of the Arval chant, any real difficulty, and they exhibit far more agreement with the language of Cato than with that of the ancient litanies. If the Romans at the
Language.
vox- u
40
Technical Kyle.
ART AND SCIENCE BOOK II
of the seventh century had difficulty in under standing documents of the fifth, the difficulty doubtless pro ceeded merely from the fact that there existed at that time in Rome no real, least of all any documentary, research.
On the other hand it must have been at this period, when the indication and redaction of law began, that the Roman technical style first established itself—a style which at least in its developed shape is nowise inferior to the
modern legal phraseology of England in stereotyped formulae and turns of expression, endless enumeration of particulars, and long-winded periods ; and which commends itself to the initiated by its clearness and precision, while the layman who does not understand it listens, according to his character and humour, with reverence, impatience, or chagrin.
Moreover at this epoch began the treatment of the native languages after a rational method. About its commence ment the Sabellian as well as the Latin idiom threatened, as we saw 282), to become barbarous, and the abrasion of endings and the corruption of the vowels and more delicate consonants spread on all hands, just as was the
case with the Romanic languages in the fifth and sixth centuries of the Christian era. But reaction set in the sounds which had coalesced in Oscan, and r, and the sounds which had coalesced in Latin, and were again separated, and each was provided with its proper sign
and u, for which from the first the Oscan alphabet had lacked separate signs, and which had been in Latin originally separate but threatened to coalesce, again became distinct, and in Oscan even the was resolved into two signs different in sound and in writing; lastly, the writing again came to follow more closely the pronun ciation —the for instance among the Romans being in many cases replaced r. Chronological indications point
to the fifth century as the period of this reaction; the
"4
beginning
Philology.
(60. Latin for instance was not yet in existence about
300
g
s
(i.
by
i
k,
ga d
: o
;
chap, ix ART AND SCIENCE
115
but was so probably about 500 ; the first of the Papirian 250. clan, who called himself Papirius instead of Papisius, was
the consul of 418; the introduction of that r instead of s 838. is attributed to Appius Claudius, censor in 442. Beyond 312. doubt the re-introduction of a more delicate and precise pronunciation was connected with the increasing influence
of Greek civilization, which is observable at this very period in all departments of Italian life ; and, as the silver coins of Capua and Nola are far more perfect than the contem porary asses of Ardea and Rome, writing and language appear also to have been more speedily and fully reduced to rule in the Campanian land than in Latium. How little, notwithstanding the labour bestowed on the Roman language and mode of writing had become settled at the close of this epoch, shown by the inscriptions preserved from the end of the fifth century, in which the greatest arbitrariness prevails, particularly as to the insertion or omission of m, and in final sounds and of n in the body of a word, and as to the distinguishing of the vowels u and i. 1 probable that the contemporary Sabellians were in these points further advanced, while the Umbrians were but slightly affected by the regenerating influence of
the Hellenes.
In consequence of this progress of jurisprudence and Instruc
grammar, elementary school-instruction also, which in itself t'on* had doubtless already emerged earlier, must have undergone
In the two epitaphs, of Lucius Scipio consul in 456, and of the 298. consul of the same name in 495, m and are ordinarily wanting in the 259. termination of cases, yet Luciom and Gnaivod respectively occur once
there occur alongside of one another in the nominative Cornelia and fttios
cowl, ctsor, alongside of consol, censor aidiles, dedet, ploirume =plurimi)
hec (110m. sing. ) alongside of aidHis, cepit, quei, hic. Rhotacism
already carried out completely; we find duonoro = lonorum), ploirume,
not as in the chant of the Saiii foedesmn, plusima. Our surviving inscrip
tions do not in general precede the age of rhotacism of the older only isolated traces occur, such as afterwards honos, labos alongside of honor, labor; and the similar feminine praenomina, Maio = maios maior) and
itino in recently found epitaphs at Praeneste.
( (;
s
is ;;
0
(
;
d
1
e
It is
d s
is
it,
Exact
Regulation calendar,
Ilfi ART AND SCIENCE BOOK II
a certain improvement As Homer was the oldest Greek, and the Twelve Tables was the oldest Roman, book, each became in its own land the essential basis of instruction ; and the learning by heart the juristico-political catechism was a chief part of Roman juvenile training. Alongside of the Latin "writing-masters'' (litieratores) there were of course, from the time when an acquaintance with Greek was indispensable for every statesman and merchant, also Greek "language-masters" {grammatici)} partly tutor-slaves, partly private teachers, who at their own dwelling or that of their pupil gave instructions in the reading and speaking of Greek. As a matter of course, the rod played its part in instruction as well as in military discipline and in police. * The instruction of this epoch cannot however have passed beyond the elementary stage : there was no material shade of difference, in a social respect, between the educated and the non-educated Roman.
That the Romans at no time distinguished themselves in the mathematical and mechanical sciences is well known, and is attested, in reference to the present epoch, by almost the only fact which can be adduced under this head with certainty —the regulation of the calendar attempted by the decemvirs. They wished to substitute for the previous calendar based on the old and very imperfect IrieterU 270) the contemporary Attic calendar of the octaeteris, which retained the lunar month of 29 days but assumed the solar year at 365J days instead of 368J, and therefore, without
Litterator and grammaticus are related nearly as elementary teacher and teacher of languages with us the latter designation belonged by earlier usage only to the teacher of Greek, not to a teacher of the mother- tongue. Litttratus more recent, and denotes not a schoolmaster but a man of culture.
It at any rate true Roman picture, which Plautus [Batch. 431) produces as a specimen of the good old mode of training children J—
. . uii revenisses domum,
Cifuticulo praecinetus in sella afud magistrum adsidtra; Si, librum cum legem, unam peccavisses syllaiam,
Fitrct curium lam macules um, guam est nutrUis pallium
1* is
a
is
;
\
(i.
CHAP. IX ART AND SCIENCE
117
making any alteration in the length of the common year of 354 days, intercalated, not as formerly 59 days every 4 years, but 90 days every 8 years. With the same view the improvers of the Roman calendar intended —while otherwise retaining the current calendar —in the two inter calary years of the four years' cycle to shorten not the inter calary months, but the two Februaries by 7 days each, and consequently to fix that month in the intercalary years at 22 and 21 days respectively instead of 29 and 28. But want of mathematical precision and theological
scruples, especially in reference to the annual festival of Terminus
which fell within those very days in February, disarranged the intended reform, so that the Februaries of the inter calary years came to be of 24 and 23 days,Jand thus the new Roman solar year in reality ran to 3 66 days. Some remedy for the practical evils resulting from this was found in the practice by which, setting aside the reckoning by the months or ten months of the calendar 270) as now no longer applicable from the inequality in the length of the months, wherever more accurate specifications were required, they accustomed themselves to reckon by terms of ten months of solar year of 365 days or the so-called ten-month year of 304 days. Over and above this, there
came early into use in Italy, especially for agricultural purposes, the farmers' calendar based on the Egyptian solar year of 365 days by Eudoxus (who flourished 386).
higher idea of what the Italians were able to do in Structural
tl0
these departments furnished by their works of structural and plastic art, which are closely associated with the mechanical sciences. Here too we do not find phenomena of real originality but the impress of borrowing, which the plastic art of Italy bears throughout, diminishes its artistic interest, there gathers around historical interest all the more lively, because on the one hand
preserves the most remarkable evidences of an international inter-
868.
it
it a
(i. by
;
J is
if
JJT p
A
a
Architec ture.
Etruscan.
Latin.
u8 ART AND SCIENCE BOOK II
course of which other traces have disappeared, and on the other hand, amidst the well-nigh total loss of the history of the non-Roman Italians, art is almost the sole surviving index of the living activity which the different peoples of the peninsula displayed. No novelty is to be reported in this period; but what we have already shown 306) may be illustrated in this period with greater precision and on
broader basis, namely, that the stimulus derived from Greece powerfully affected the Etruscans and Italians on different sides, and called forth among the former richer and more luxurious, among the latter — where had any influence at all — more intelligent and more genuine, art.
We have already shown how wholly the architecture of all the Italian lands was, even in its earliest period, per vaded Hellenic elements. Its city walls, its aqueducts, its tombs with pyramidal roofs, and its Tuscanic temple, are not at all, or not materially, different from the oldest Hellenic structures. No trace has been preserved of any advance in architecture among the Etruscans during this period we find among them neither any really new recep tion, nor any original creation, unless we ought to reckon as such the magnificent tombs, e. g. the so-called tomb of Porsena at Chiusi described by Varro, which vividly recalls the strange and meaningless grandeur of the Egyptian pyramids.
In Latium too, during the first century and half of the republic, probable that they moved solely in the previous track, and has already been stated that the exercise of art rather sank than rose with the introduction of the republic 84). There can scarcely be named any Latin building of architectural importance belonging to this period, except the temple of Ceres built in the Circus
498. at Rome in 261, which was regarded in the period of the empire as a model of the Tuscanic style. But towards the close of this epoch new spirit appeared in Italian and
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particularly in Roman architecture 85); the building of the magnificent arches began. It true that we are not entitled to pronounce the arch and the vault Italian inventions.