exaggeration of this school were due to the horrible cruelty of the government of the cæsars. The one idea of a man of real worth was to accustom himself to pain and to prepare for death. Lucan with bad taste, and Persius with superior talent, expressed the highest sentiments of a great spirit. Seneca the philosopher, Pliny the Elder, and Papirius Fabianus kept up a high standard of learning and philosophy. All were not corrupted; there were some shining lights; but too often their only alternative was death. The ignoble portion of humanity from time to time got the upper hand. The spirit of frenzy and of cruelty then burst forth and turned Rome into a veritable hell.

The

The government, which in Rome was so uncertain, was far better in the provinces, and the shocks which disturbed the capital were hardly felt there. In spite of its faults the Roman administration was far superior to the monarchies and republics which had disappeared through conquest. reign of sovereign municipalities had passed away many centuries before. The small states had been killed by their egotism, their jealousy, their ignorance, and their disregard of private rights. The old Grecian life, made up of struggles entirely external, no longer satisfied the people. It had been charming in its day; but that brilliant Olympus, a democracy of demi-gods, having lost its freshness, had become hard, unfeeling, vain, superficial, for lack of sincerity and real uprightness. This was the cause which resulted in the Macedonian domination, followed by Roman rule.

The evils of excessive centralization were yet unknown to the empire. Up to the time of Diocletian the towns and provinces were allowed great liberty. In Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, Lower Armenia, and Thrace there were independent kingdoms under the protection of Rome. These kingdoms only became sources of danger from the time of Caligula onwards, because the great and far-sighted policy which Augustus had traced with regard to them had not been carried out. The free towns. and they were numerous governed themselves according to their own laws; they had legislative power and administered justice as in a self-governing country; until the third century, municipal decrees were promulgated with the formula, "the senate and the people." Theatres served not only for scenic pleasures, they were everywhere centres of agitation and public opinion. The favour of the Romans towards the human race was the theme of some adulatory orations which were not, however, devoid of all sincerity. The doctrine of the "Roman peace," the idea of a great democracy organised under the protection of Rome, was the basis of all thought. A Greek orator displayed vast learning in proving that the glory of Rome ought to be regarded by all the branches of the Hellenic race as a sort of common inheritance. As far as Syria, Asia Minor, and Egypt are concerned, it may be said that the Roman conquest did not destroy a single liberty. Those countries were either indifferent to political life or had never known it.

In spite of the exactions of the governors and the acts of violence inseparable from absolute government, the world, in many ways, had never been so happy. An administration coming from a centre far away was such an advantage, that even the pillage of the prætors of the latter end of the republic did not succeed in rendering it odious. Moreover, the lex Julia had greatly limited the field of abuses and extortion. Excepting under Nero, the follies or the cruelty of the emperor did not go beyond the Roman aristocracy and the immediate surroundings of the prince. Never had those who wished to leave politics alone lived in greater peace. The republic of ancient times, where everyone was forced into party quarrels, was not pleasant to live in; supersession and exile were too frequent.

Now it seemed as if the times were ripe for wide propagandism, superior to the quarrels of little towns, to the rivalries of dynasties. Attempts against liberty owed their origin to the independence which still remained to the provinces and communities, rather than to the Roman administration. In those conquered countries where political needs had not existed for several centuries, and where the people were deprived only of the power of tearing each other to pieces by continual warfare, the empire was an era of prosperity and welfare until then unknown and, we may add without paradox, of liberty. On the one hand the freedom of trade, and industry, and that personal liberty of which the Greek had no idea, became possible. On the other hand the freedom which consists in liberty of opinion could only be benefited by the new régime.

This liberty always gains in dealing with kings and princes more than in dealing with a jealous and narrow-minded middle class. The Greek republics had no such liberty of opinion. The Greeks achieved great things without it, thanks to the unequalled power of their genius, but for all that, Athens was actually under an inquisition. The inquisitor was the archon, the holy office was the royal portico where charges of impiety were tried. Accusations of this nature were very frequent it was the favourite theme of Attic orators. Not only philosophical offences, such as denying God or providence, but the slightest offence against the municipal doctrines, preaching a strange religion, the most puerile omissions of the scrupulous laws pertaining to the mysteries, were crimes punished with death. The gods whom Aristophanes scoffed at on the stage could sometimes slay. They slew Socrates, they all but slew Alcibiades; Anaxagoras, Protagoras, Theodorus the atheist, Diagoras of Melos, Prodicus of Ceos, Stilpo, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Aspasia, Euripides, were more or less seriously threatened.

Liberty of thought was, in fact, the fruit of the kingdoms which sprang from the Macedonian conquest. Attalus and Ptolemy were the first to give to thinkers a liberty which none of the old republics had ever offered them. The Roman Empire continued on the same lines. There existed, under the empire, more than one severe law against philosophers, but that was on account of their meddling in politics. One might look in vain, in the collection of Roman laws previous to Constantine, for a passage against liberty of thought, or in the history of the emperors for a lawsuit about abstract doctrines. Not a scholar was disturbed. Men who would have been burned in the Middle Ages, such as Galen, Lucian, Plotinus, lived peacefully, protected by the law.

The empire inaugurated a period of liberty, in the sense that it abolished absolute government in families, towns, and tribes, and replaced or modified such governments by that of the state. Absolute power is even more vexatious than usual when it exercises its power in a narrower circle. The ancient republics and feudalism tyrannised over the individual more than the state has ever done. Granted that the Roman Empire, at certain epochs, cruelly persecuted Christianity, at least it did not kill it. The republics would have made it quite impossible; Judaism, if it had not felt the pressure of Roman authority, would have sufficed to crush it. It was the Roman magistrates who prevented the Pharisees from destroying Christianity.

A broad idea of universal brotherhood, the outcome for the most part of stoicism, and a kind of general sentiment of humanity were the fruit of the less narrow form of government, and of the less circumscribed education to which the individual was subjected. A new era and new worlds were dreamed of. The public wealth was great, and, in spite of the imperfections

of the economic doctrines of the times, comfort was widespread. Manners were not what they are often imagined to be. In Rome, certainly, vice vaunted itself with revolting cynicism. Theatres, above all, had introduced horrible depravity; certain countries, such as Egypt, had also fallen to the lowest depths. But in the greater number of the provinces there existed a middle class, amongst whom kindness, conjugal fidelity, domestic virtue, and uprightness were sufficiently common.

Does there exist a more charming and ideal picture of family life in the world of the honest middle class of small towns than that described by Plutarch? What good nature, what peaceful habits, what chaste and amiable simplicity! Chæronea was certainly not the only town where life was so pure and innocent. There still remained in the general customs, even beyond Rome, something cruel, either as a relic of ancient habits, everywhere equally sanguinary, or through the special influence of Roman austerity. But there was improvement in that respect. What sweet and pure sentiment, what an impression of melancholy tenderness there is in the writings of Virgil and of Tibullus! The world was taking shape and losing its ancient rigour, acquiring freedom and moral sensibility. Principles of humanity

spread everywhere; equality and abstract ideas of the rights of man were loudly preached by stoicism. Woman, thanks to the system of dowries under Roman law, became more and more her own mistress; rules as to the treatment of slaves were made-Seneca dined with his. Slaves were no longer necessarily the grotesque and evil beings who were introduced into Latin plays to be laughed at, and of whom Cato urges that they should be treated as beasts of burden. Times had changed. The slave was his master's moral equal, and admittedly capable of virtue and fidelity, of which he gave proof. Prejudice concerning nobility of birth was diminishing.

Humane and just laws were passed even under the worst emperors. Tiberius was an able financier; he founded a system of land tenure on a sound basis. Nero introduced into the system of taxation, until then iniquitous and barbarous, improvements which might shame even the present day. The progress made in legislation was considerable, although the death penalty was much too common. Love for the poor, charity, and universal sympathy were accounted virtues.

The theatre was one of the scandals which gave the greatest offence to virtuous people, and one of the first causes to excite the antipathy of Jews and Judaisers of all kinds against the profane civilisation of the time. These

gigantic cauldrons seemed to them sewers in which all the vices simmered. Whilst the front rows were applauding, scenes of the greatest repulsiveness and horror were often taking place on the upper benches. In the provinces gladiatorial combats were only established with difficulty. The Hellenic countries, at least, disapproved of them, and kept for the most part to the ancient Greek exercises. In the East, cruel games always preserved a marked stamp of their Roman origin. The Athenians, wishing to rival the Corinthians, having one day discussed the subject of imitating their barbarous games, a philosopher got up and proposed that first of all the altar of Pity should be overthrown. The horror of the theatre, the stadium, the gymnasium, that is of all public places which were the essential elements of a Greek or Roman town, was thus one of the deepest sentiments of the Christians, and one of those which had the greatest results.

Ancient civilisation was of a public kind; everything took place in the open air, before the assembled citizens; in opposition to ours, where life is private and secluded within the precincts of the home. The theatre had succeeded the agora and the Forum. The anathema hurled against the theatres reflected upon the whole of society. A deep rivalry was established between the church, on the one hand, and the public games on the other. The slave, hunted from the games, took refuge in the church. One cannot sit down in these gloomy arenas, which are always the best preserved remains of an ancient town, without seeing in spirit the struggle between the two classes; here, the poor honest man, seated in the last row, hiding his face and going out indignant, there a philosopher getting up suddenly and reproaching the crowd with its depravity.

These instances were rare in the first century. Nevertheless protestations began to be heard, and the theatre fell into disrepute. The legislation and administration of the empire was still in a state of chaos. The central despotism, municipal and provincial liberty, the caprice of governors, the outrages of independent communities, jostled each other violently. But religious liberty gained in these conflicts. The perfected autocratic government which was established from the time of Trajan was to be far more fatal to the newly born religion than the state of disorder, fertile in surprises, and the absence of a regular police which characterised the time of the cæsars.

The institutions for public relief, founded on the principle that the state has paternal duties towards its subjects, only developed to any great degree from the time of Nerva and Trajan onwards. A few instances of it are however found during the first century. There already existed asylums for children, organised distributions of food to the needy, fixed prices for bread with indemnities to the bakers, precautions for provisioning, premiums and insurance for ship-owners, bread bonuses, which permitted the purchase of corn at a reduced rate. All the emperors, without exception, showed the greatest solicitude for these questions, minor ones, perhaps, but such as at certain epochs took precedence of all others. In remote antiquity, it might be said, the world needed no charity. The world was then young and vigorous, almshouses were useless. The good and simple Homeric ethics, according to which the guest and the beggar come from Jupiter, are the ethics of a robust and gay adolescence.

Greece, in her classical age, enunciated the most exquisite maxims of pity, of beneficence, of humanity, without a latent thought of social anxiety or of melancholy. Man in that epoch was still healthy and happy, evil could not be realised. With respect to mutual assistance the Greeks were far in advance of the Romans. No liberal and benevolent disposition came

from that cruel aristocracy which exercised such oppressive sway during the republic. At the time of which we are writing the colossal fortunes of the aristocracy, luxury, the concentration of population in certain places, and especially the hardness of heart peculiar to the Roman and his aversion to pity, resulted in the birth of "pauperism." The kindness shown by certain emperors towards the riff-raff of Rome only aggravated the danger. Bribery and the tessera frumentariæ not only encouraged the vice of idleness, but brought no remedy to misery. In this particular, as in many others, the East was really superior to the Western world. The Jews had true charitable institutions. The temple of Egypt seemed to have possessed almsboxes. The college of monks and nuns of the Serapeum of Memphis was also, in a manner, a charitable institution. The terrible crisis through which mankind was passing in the capital of Europe was little felt in remote lands, where everyday life had remained more simple. The reproach of having poisoned the earth, the comparison of Rome to a courtesan who has poured out to the world the wine of her immorality, was true in many ways. The provinces were better than Rome, or rather the impure elements from all parts, accumulating in Rome as in a sink, had formed an infectious spot where the old Roman virtues were stifled and where good seed germinated slowly.b

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS

But it is the life of the capital itself that must chiefly claim our attention here. Let us turn from the glowing generalities of Renan to a more specific consideration of some important phases of the everyday life of the people in the great centre to which all roads were said to lead.

In the early days of the empire, Rome was in the crisis of that transitional state which most great capitals have experienced, when a rapid increase in their population and in the transactions of daily life has begun to outstrip the extension of their means of accommodation. The increase of numbers must necessarily multiply the operations of industry, which cross and recross each other in the streets of a great city; and though neither the commerce nor manufactures of Rome were conducted on the scale to which our ideas are accustomed, the retail traffic which passed from hand to hand, and the ordinary affairs of business and pleasure, must have caused an ever increasing stir and circulation among the vast assemblage of human beings collected within its walls. The uninterrupted progress of building operations, and the extension of the suburbs simultaneously with the restoration of the city, must have kept every avenue constantly thronged with wagons and vehicles of all sorts, engaged in the transport of the cumbrous materials employed therein; the crush of these heavy-laden machines, and the portentous swinging of the long beams they carried round the corners of the narrow streets, are mentioned among the worst nuisances and even terrors of the citizen's daily walk.

Neither of the rival institutions of the shop and the bazaar had been developed to any great extent in ancient Rome. A vast number of trades was exercised there by itinerant vendors. The street cries, which have almost ceased within our own memory in London, were rife in the city of the cæsars. The incessant din of these discordant sounds is complained of as making existence intolerable to the poor gentleman who is compelled to reside in the midst of them. The streets were not contrived, nor was it possible generally to adapt them, for the passage of the well-attended litters and