ous centuries, said in one of his decrees, "We do not permit a freeman to become a slave in punishment for crime. We do not transform liberty into bondage, we who have so much desire to elevate slaves to freedom.'

995

SEC. 498. Roman Virtue.-No statement of the distinguishing features of Roman society, written in antiquity, has been preserved to our times; nor can we infer those features from any book now in our possession, written before 70 B. C., when Cicero began his career as an author. He admitted that in his day the social as well as the political condition of the metropolis was sadly demoralized; but he boasted of the strict morals and severe manners of his forefathers; of whom he formed his opinion probably from such fictions as those preserved by Livy.

The subjugation and slaughter of aliens are occupations which do not develop tender feeling or mental refinement, especially when those occupations are pursued under the circumstances of systematic oppression and cruel perfidy, which marked the foreign policy of Rome. The military successes of the Romans under the republic imply that they possessed mutual fidelity and other martial virtues, which, however, are not sufficient, by themselves, to raise a people to a high ethical level. Such virtues were not entirely lacking in the army of Spartacus, base as it was in some respects. Many of the patricians were presumably honest; many of their wives were doubtless chaste, and many of their children dutiful; but we look in vain for any statesman with the combination of high talent with integrity found in half a dozen Athenians.

It is assumed by many authors that the general moral condition of the Romans grew worse after the establish

ment of the empire; but this is not probable. The administration in Italy, as well as in the provinces, became more systematic and honest; the rights of all classes of citizens and subjects received better protection. The slaughter, enslavement, and deportation of the people, the destruction of cities, and the confiscation of estates, diminished and almost disappeared; and their diminution meant the cessation of a vast amount of wrong.

The frequency of suicide was one of the characteristic features of Roman society. In no other state have so large a proportion of the leading men died by their own hands. According to the teachings of Epicurus and Zeno, the highest ethical authorities known to Pagan antiquity, it was obligatory, under the circumstances in which many Romans found themselves, to take a voluntary leave of life. Seneca and Epictetus considered suicide one of the most precious guaranties of morality and dignity. They thought that a man who feared death might be forced into baseness.

Lucretius, the greatest Latin advocate of Epicureanism, sought refuge in the grave from the horrors of the civil war. The younger Cato, Brutus, and Cassius escaped from victorious enemies by the help of their own swords, and the emperor Otho was praised for dying by his own hand, rather than engage in a civil war to retain his imperial office.1 Women as well as men faced death with composure in Pagan Rome; indeed, some of the most affecting incidents in history are the suicides of Roman women who insisted upon dying with their husbands or other near male relatives. When Pætus was condemned to death, in 42 A. D., his wife Arria claimed the privilege of precedence, and, inflicting a fatal stab upon herself in his presence, said, "Dear Pætus, it does

not hurt." In 66 A. D. her daughter found herself in a situation similar to that of her mother, but was persuaded to remain alive for the purpose of taking care of her young daughter. About the same time, when L. Vetus had to die under the command of a tyrant, his daughter and his mother-in-law opened their arteries and bled to death with him. Seneca died in the same manner, with a serenity worthy of his stoic faith, and his wife opened her veins to share his fate.

In republican Rome, as in Greece, there was little public charity, partly because of the clan organization which included nearly all the native freemen, and provided for the helpless among them. Those people who needed aid and were not within the limits of the clans might attach themselves to some noble patron, or join some club organized for mutual protection.

When a great disaster occurred, the general public came forward with aid. After a wooden theater in the suburbs of Rome had collapsed during a performance, injuring 50,000 persons, as report said, the houses of many wealthy persons were converted into temporary hospitals. To the sufferers by a conflagration in Bononia (now Bologna) the capital sent $500,000, and to those in Lyons $300,000.

In the reign of Augustus, provision was made for the maintenance and education of orphans, the first objects of systematic governmental charity. The first hospital for the sick made its appearance about two centuries later. The helpless blind, aged, and insane had to depend on the aid of individuals. Mendicants and people who relieved mendicancy were numerous. The general ethical tone in the letters of Cicero and Pliny is much like that in the enlightened society in our own time.

Many published comparisons between the condition of modern Europe and that of the ancient Roman empire, for the purpose of proving the superiority of Christianity over paganism in ethical influence, are extremely unfair. On one side favorable facts have been systematically exaggerated and unfavorable ones passed over with little notice, while on the other side, the facts have been treated with the partiality of hostility. That there has been a great improvement in ethics in the last sixteen centuries is unquestionable; but that a great part of this improvement can be traced to industrial, political, and scientific influences which were beyond sacerdotal control is equally certain. "Much candor and discrimination are required in comparing the sins of one age with those of another. The cruelty of our inquisitions, and sectarian persecutions, of our laws against sorcery, our serfdom and our slavery; the petty fraudulence we tolerate in almost every class and calling of the community; the bold front worn by our open sensuality; the deeper degradation of that which is concealed,—all these leave us little room for boasting of our modern discipline, and must deter the thoughtful inquirer from too confidently contrasting the morals of the old world and the new. Even at Rome, in the worst of times, all the relations of life were adorned in turn with bright instances of devotion, and mankind transacted their business with an ordinary confidence in the force of conscience and right reason. The steady development of enlightened legal principles conclusively proves the general dependence upon law as a guide and corrector of manners. In the camp, however, more especially, as the chief sphere of this purifying activity, the great qualities of the Roman character continued to

be plainly manifested. The history of the Cæsars presents to us a constant succession of brave, patient, resolute, and faithful soldiers, men deeply impressed with a sense of duty, superior to vanity, despisers of boasting, content to toil in obscurity, and shed their blood at the frontiers of the empire, unrepining at the cold mistrust of their masters, not clamorous for the honors so sparingly awarded to them, but satisfied in the daily work of their hands, and full of faith in the national destiny which they were daily accomplishing."

992

SEC. 499. Roman Education.-The education of the Romans was similar to that of the Athenians except that athletic exercises had a very small part in it, and that in the late republic and early empire the young men of wealthy families were sent to Greece to complete their studies in a foreign tongue and literature. Athens was the chief school of philosophy, and until after the time of Augustus, Rhodes had the most distinguished teachers of rhetoric. As late as 92 B. C. the Romans were still so rude that the two censors agreed in the publication of the following edict: "It has been reported to us that there are men who have opened a new kind of instruction, and have opened schools to receive youths; that these teachers have assumed the name of Latin rhetoricians, and that young men spend whole days in these schools. Our ancestors determined what their children should learn and to what schools they should go. This innovation does not meet with our approbation, nor is it judged to be right; wherefore we think that we ought to show both to those who keep those schools and to those who are accustomed to frequent them what our opinion is, which is this, that we do not approve these schools."