This edict was probably the subject of much ridicule; and the later censors made no objection to the study of rhetoric, in which Cicero, then a boy, became a master, and by its aid became one of the most influential men in Rome, and one of the chief contributors to her literary glory.

The first public library of Rome was founded by Julius Cæsar, and the next one of note by Vespasian, who also, about 65 A. D., established a corporation of salaried teachers, so that students could obtain a university education in Rome as well as in Athens or Alexandria. In the next century the capital had twenty-nine public libraries. Herculaneum, a small place, had seventeen hundred books in her public library, but many of the Latin books were what we should call chapters, each a single roll or long sheet of papyrus, about a foot wide.

The papyrus was not smooth in surface, and the pen was not used upon it, and writing was not easy and rapid as it is now. Books were therefore really dearer than manuscript books are now, and as the people who were educated and wealthy were relatively few, so books were not abundant. G. C. Lewis doubted "whether there ever were a hundred copies of Virgil or Horace in existence at any one time before the invention of printing," whereas now, when Latin has become a dead lan guage, there are probably more than 30,000 complete copies of each of those two authors.

About 60 B. C. an important advance in education was made by the publication of the first grammar in Rome. Its author, Dionysius Thrax, a Thracian, after studying in Alexandria, established himself in the Eternal City as a teacher of Greek. For the purpose of aiding his pupils and gaining reputation for himself, he wrote out

the main principles of linguistic construction, as they had been discovered by the scholars of Athens, Pergamus, and Alexandria. Plato had observed the distinction between nouns and verbs; Aristotle wrote of articles and conjunctions; and their successors, besides defining other parts of speech, made tables of regular and irregular conjugations and declensions, and explained many of the rules of syntax. The study of grammar had been greatly stimulated at Alexandria by the establishment of the Roman power over the countries bordering on the Mediterranean. The Latin tongue had acquired such importance that its study became necessary to many of the provincials, as Greek became necessary to the Latins, and the comparison of the two languages suggested many new ideas. The work of Thrax is still in existence, and has been the basis of all the later treatises on the same subject. "With Dionysius Thrax," says Max Muller, "the framework of grammar was finished. Later writers have improved and completed it, but they have added nothing really new and original."

992

SEC. 500. Dress, etc.-The Roman wore a dress similar to that of the Athenian. His under-garment, or tunic, was a sleeveless shirt, fastened over the shoulder with strings or a buckle. The mantle, or toga, a rectangular piece of cloth without sewing or fastening of any kind, was five or six feet wide, and at least twelve long. Both garments were of wool. There was a narrow purple stripe on the tunic of the senator and a broad one on that of the consul. The toga, and the bare head were required for full dress at meetings of the senate, triumphs, funerals, theater, or amphitheater, sacrifices, and state dinners. In cold weather laborers wore tunics with sleeves, and wrapped their legs with cloth.

The national dish of the Romans was porridge, usually made of spelt before 200 B. C. and afterwards of wheat. Among the freemen in the capital, under the empire, bread supplanted porridge, but the latter always retained its prominence among the poor freemen in the rural districts, and among the slaves everywhere. Onions, garlic, peas, beans, salt fish, salt meat, cheese, and pickled olives were other common articles of food. Fresh meat, fish and fruits, apples, pears, peaches, plums, and cherries were common on the tables of the rich. Wine was the ordinary beverage for all classes, and was frequently prepared for drinking by mixing with water and honey. Beer was known, but rare. Saffron, thyme, and, under the empire, cinnamon and nutmegs, were used for flavor. The favorite sauce for fish, garum, was made from the inner parts of the entrails of mackerel caught on the Spanish coast. These were packed down for a time in salt, then cooked; then allowed to ferment for two months; and finally passed through a sieve, the liquid part being the sauce. Everybody, except the very poor, had a silver salt cellar, out of which a pinch could be thrown on the floor as an offering to the god of the house or place. The small spoons of the Romans had sharp handles, which in case of need could be used as forks.

At a dinner given by Lentulus on the day of his installation as flamen of Mars in 63 B. C., and attended by the highest sacerdotal officials of the state, including Julius Cæsar (as king of the sacrifices) and the vestal virgins, the bill of fare, as preserved by Macrobius, mentions sea urchins, raw oysters, large clams, small clams, thrushes, asparagus, chicken, pies of oysters and large clams, acorn mollusks, small clams again, muscles, sea nettles, beccaficos, loin of deer and of wild boar, quail,

beccaficos again, murex, sea urchin, sow's udder, boar's head, fish pie, pie of sow's udder, ducks, boiled teal, hare, poultry, flour pudding, and sweet cakes.

Every large city in the empire had its public baths. They had separate tubs, each for one person, and large tanks where multitudes could bathe together. The large bathing establishment had four main departments. In the first the bather undressed, and sat for a while in the warm air; in the second he entered the warm water, and if he wished, into the hot air or steam; in the third, after passing through cool water, he was wiped dry and oiled; and in the fourth he was rubbed and kneaded. In every large Roman city there was at least one large public bath house; and in the capital there were eleven, with accommodations for 16,000 persons at one time in the aggregate, with a very small charge for admission.

Oiling was considered an important part of the daily toilet among the wealthy and an indispensable feature in the processes of the bath house. Cæsar ordered the purchase of 300,000 gallons of oil annually for the public baths of the capital. Anointing was necessary for full dress. The business of the anointer (unctor) and that of the dealer in materials for the use of the anointer (unguentarius) were distinct occupations. In the summer many Roman nobles made a practice of exposing themselves without clothing to the sunlight for several hours daily. To the ancient Roman oil was more needful than soap is to us. Anointment was regarded by him as essential to comfort, especially in wet weather. It was said that one of the reasons why Hannibal won the victory of the Trebbia was that his troops were prepared for it by their breakfast and their anointment, while the Romans had neither on a wet and chilly morning.

SEC. 501. Latin Literature.-Centuries of continuous, arduous, destructive, and merciless warfare, in which the vanquished were always impoverished and often enslaved or exterminated, developed in the Romans a remarkable combination of courage, fortitude, persistence, discipline, and contempt of death. It made them a coarse, hard, domineering people, with little social refinement, delicate sentiment, artistic perception, or literary taste. In the long period of their national existence they produced not one beautiful religious myth, not one great statue, painting, or tragic drama, not one philosophical or ethical system, not one scientific discovery, not one industrial invention traceable unmistakably to a native of Rome or Latium, not one work surpassing everything else of its kind in a leading branch of thought, except the civil law. In many departments they remained remarkably deficient to the last; in others, they did creditable work, but not until after centuries of national prosperity, and then in small quantity, as imitators of the Greeks, and in most cases by men who were not natives of Rome.

Virgil admitted the inferiority of his countrymen in literature and art, and tried to make a boast of the fact that they had had enough to do with the task of governing; a boast for which there would have been abundant reason if the task had been always well done. In Conington's translation he says: