Footnotes (continued 2)

181.

On the minute supervision exercised by the censors on all the details of domestic life, see Aul. Gell. Noct. ii. 24; iv. 12, 20.

182.

Livy, xxxix. 6.

183.

Vell. Paterculus, i. 11-13; Eutropius, iv. 6. Sallust ascribed the decadence of Rome to the destruction of its rival, Carthage.

184.

Plutarch, De Adulatore et Amico.

185.

There is much curious information about the growth of Roman luxury in Pliny (Hist. Nat. lib. xxxiv.). The movement of decomposition has been lately fully traced by Mommsen (Hist. of Rome); Döllinger (Jew and Gentile); Denis ( Hist. des Idées morales dans l'Antiquité); Pressensé (Hist. des trois premiers Siècles); in the histories of Champagny, and in the beautiful closing chapters of the Apôtres of Renan.

186.

Sueton. Aug. xvi.

187.

Ibid. Calig. v.

188.

Persius, Sat. ii.; Horace, Ep. i. 16, vv. 57-60.

189.

See, on the identification of the Greek and Egyptian myths, Plutarch's De Iside et Osiride. The Greek and Roman gods were habitually regarded as identical, and Cæsar and Tacitus, in like manner, identified the deities of Gaul and Germany with those of their own country. See Döllinger, Jew and Gentile, vol. ii. pp. 160-165.

190.

“Ego deûm genus esse semper dixi et dicam cœlitum; Sed eos non curare opinor quid agat hominum genus.” Cicero adds: “magno plausu loquitur assentiente populo.”—De Divin. ii. 50.

191.

Plutarch, De Superstitione.

192.

St. Aug. De Civ. Dei, vi. 6; Tertul. Apol. 15; Arnobius, Adv. Gentes, iv.

193.

“Pars alia et hanc pellit, astroque suo eventus assignat, nascendi legibus; semelque in omnes futuros unquam Deo decretum; in reliquum vero otium datum. Sedere cœpit sententia hæc pariterque et eruditum vulgus et rude in eam cursu vadit. Ecce fulgurum monitus, oraculorum præscita, aruspicum prædicta, atque etiam parva dictu, in auguriis sternumenta et offensiones pedum.”—Hist. Nat. ii. 5. Pliny himself expresses great doubt about astrology giving many examples of men with different destinies, who had been born at the same time, and therefore under the same stars (vii. 50). Tacitus expresses complete doubt about the existence of Providence. (Ann. vi. 22.) Tiberius is said to have been very indifferent to the gods and to the worship of the temples, being wholly addicted to astrology and convinced that all things were pre-ordained. (Suet. Tib. lxix.)

194.

Ammianus Marcellinus, xxviii.

195.

De Profectibus in Virt. It was originally the custom at Roman feasts to sing to a pipe the actions and the virtues of the greatest men. (Cic. Tusc. Quæst. iv.)

196.

E.g. Epictetus, Ench. lii. Seneca is full of similar exhortations.

197.

According to Cicero, the first Latin work on philosophy was by the Epicurean Amafanius. (Tusc. Quæst. iv.)

198.

See on the great perfection of the character of Epicurus his life by Diogenes Laërtius, and on the purity of the philosophy he taught and the degree in which it was distorted and misrepresented by his Roman followers. Seneca De Vita Beata, c. xii. xiii. and Ep. xxi. Gassendi, in a very interesting little work entitled Philosophiæ Epicuri Syntagma, has abundantly proved the possibility of uniting Epicurean principles with a high code of morals. But probably the most beautiful picture of the Epicurean system is the first book of the De Finibus, in which Cicero endeavours to paint it as it would have been painted by its adherents. When we remember that the writer of this book was one of the most formidable and unflinching opponents of Epicureanism in all the ancient world, it must be owned that it would be impossible to find a grander example of that noble love of truth, that sublime and scrupulous justice to opponents, which was the pre-eminent glory of ancient philosophers, and which, after the destruction of philosophy, was for many centuries almost unknown in the world. It is impossible to doubt that Epicureanism was logically compatible with a very high degree of virtue. It is, I think, equally impossible to doubt that its practical tendency was towards vice.

199.

Mr. Grote gives the following very clear summary of Plato's ethical theory, which he believes to be original:—“Justice is in the mind a condition analogous to good health and strength in the body. Injustice is a condition analogous to sickness, corruption, impotence in the body.... To possess a healthy body is desirable for its consequences as a means towards other constituents of happiness, but it is still more desirable in itself as an essential element of happiness per se, i.e., the negation of sickness, which would of itself make us miserable.... In like manner, the just mind blesses the possessor twice: first and chiefly by bringing to him happiness in itself; next, also, as it leads to ulterior happy results. The unjust mind is a curse to its possessor in itself and apart from results, though it also leads to ulterior results which render it still more a curse to him.”—Grote's Plato, vol. iii. p. 131. According to Plutarch, Aristo of Chio defined virtue as “the health of the soul.” (De Virtute Morali.)

200.

“Beata est ergo vita conveniens naturæ suæ; quæ non aliter contingere potest quam si primum sana mens est et in perpetuâ possessione sanitatis suæ.”—Seneca, De Vita Beata, c. iii.

201.

The famous paradox that “the sage could be happy even in the bull of Phalaris,” comes from the writings not of Zeno but of Epicurus—though the Stoics adopted and greatly admired it. (Cic. Tusc. ii. See Gassendi, Philos. Epicuri Syntagma, pars iii. c. 1.)

202.

“Sed nescio quomodo dum lego assentior; cum posui librum et mecum ipse de immortalitate animorum cœpi cogitare, assensio omnis illa elabitur.”—Cic. Tusc. i.

203.

Sallust, Catilina, cap. li.

204.

See that most impressive passage (Hist. Nat. vii. 56). That the sleep of annihilation is the happiest end of man is a favourite thought of Lucretius. Thus: “Nil igitur mors est, ad nos neque pertinet hilum, Quandoquidem natura animi mortalis habetur.”—iii. 842. This mode of thought has been recently expressed in Mr. Swinburne's very beautiful poem on The Garden of Proserpine.

205.

Diog. Laërtius. The opinion of Chrysippus seems to have prevailed, and Plutarch (De Placit. Philos.) speaks of it as that of the school. Cicero sarcastically says, “Stoici autem usuram nobis largiuntur, tanquam cornicibus: diu mansuros aiunt animos; semper, negant.”—Tusc. Disp. i. 31.

206.

It has been very frequently asserted that Antigonus of Socho having taught that virtue should be practised for its own sake, his disciple, Zadok, the founder of the Sadducees, inferred the non-existence of a future world; but the evidence for this whole story is exceedingly unsatisfactory. The reader may find its history in a very remarkable article by Mr. Twisleton on Sadducees, in Smith's Biblical Dictionary.

207.

On the Stoical opinions about a future life see Martin, La Vie future (Paris, 1858); Courdaveaux De l'immortalité de l'âme dans le Stoïcisme (Paris, 1857); and Alger's Critical Hist. of the Doctrine of a Future Life (New York, 1866).

208.

His arguments are met by Cicero in the Tusculans.

209.

See a collection of passages from his discourses collected by M. Courdaveaux, in the introduction to his French translation of that book.

210.

Stobæus, Eclog. Physic. lib. i. cap. 52.

211.

In his consolations to Marcia, he seems to incline to a belief in the immortality, or at least the future existence, of the soul. In many other passages, however, he speaks of it as annihilated at death.

212.

“Les Stoïciens ne faisaient aucunement dépendre la morale de la perspective des peines ou de la rémunération dans une vie future.... La croyance à l'immortalité de l'âme n'appartenait donc, selon leur manière de voir, qu'à la physique, c'est-à-dire à la psychologie.”—Degerando, Hist. de la Philos. tome iii. p. 56.

213.

“Panætius igitur, qui sine controversia de officiis accuratissime disputavit, quemque nos, correctione quadam adhibita, potissimum secuti sumus.”—De Offic. iii. 2.

214.

Marcus Aurelius thanks Providence, as for one of the great blessings of his life, that he had been made acquainted with the writings of Epictetus. The story is well known how the old philosopher warned his master, who was beating him, that he would soon break his leg, and when the leg was broken, calmly remarked, “I told you you would do so.” Celsus quoted this in opposition to the Christians, asking, “Did your leader under suffering ever say anything so noble?” Origen finely replied, “He did what was still nobler—He kept silence.” A Christian anchorite (some say St. Nilus, who lived in the beginning of the fifth century) was so struck with the Enchiridion of Epictetus, that he adapted it to Christian use. The conversations of Epictetus, as reported by Arrian, are said to have been the favourite reading of Toussaint l'Ouverture.

215.

Tacitus had used this expression before Milton: “Quando etiam sapientibus cupido gloriæ novissima exuitur.”—Hist. iv. 6.

216.

Two remarkable instances have come down to us of eminent writers begging historians to adorn and even exaggerate their acts. See the very curious letters of Cicero to the historian Lucceius (Ep. ad Divers. v. 12); and of the younger Pliny to Tacitus (Ep. vii. 33). Cicero has himself confessed that he was too fond of glory.

217.

“Unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem; Non ponebat enim rumores ante salutem.”—Ennius.

218.

See the beautiful description of Cato's tranquillity under insults. Seneca, De Ira, ii. 33; De Const. Sap. 1, 2.

219.

De Officiis, iii. 9.

220.

Tusc. ii. 26.

221.

Seneca, De Vit. Beat. c. xx.

222.

Seneca, Ep. cxiii.

223.

Seneca, Ep. lxxxi.

224.

Persius, Sat. i. 45-47.

225.

Epictetus, Ench. xxiii.

226.

Seneca, De Ira, iii. 41.

227.

Seneca, Cons. ad Helv. xiii.

228.

Marc. Aur. vii. 67.

229.

Marc. Aur. iv. 20.

230.

Pliny, Ep. i. 22.

231.

“Non dux, sed comes voluptas.”—De Vit. Beat. c. viii.

232.

“Voluptas non est merces nec causa virtutis sed accessio; nec quia delectat placet sed quia placet delectat.”—Ibid., c. ix.

233.

Peregrinus apud Aul. Gellius, xii. 11. Peregrinus was a Cynic, but his doctrine on this point was identical with that of the Stoics.

234.

Marc. Aurel. ix. 42.

235.

Marc. Aurel. v. 6.

236.

Seneca, however, in one of his letters (Ep. lxxv.), subtilises a good deal on this point. He draws a distinction between affections and maladies. The first, he says, are irrational, and therefore reprehensible movements of the soul, which, if repeated and unrepressed, tend to form an irrational and evil habit, and to the last he in this letter restricts the term disease. He illustrates this distinction by observing that colds and any other slight ailments, if unchecked and neglected, may produce an organic disease. The wise man, he says, is wholly free from moral disease, but no man can completely emancipate himself from affections, though he should make this his constant object.

237.

De Clem. ii. 6, 7.

238.

“Peccantes vero quid habet cur oderit, cum error illos in hujusmodi delicta compellat?”—Sen. De Ira, i. 14. This is a favourite thought of Marcus Aurelius, to which he reverts again and again. See, too, Arrian, i. 18.

239.

“Ergo ne homini quidem nocebimus quia peccavit sed ne peccet, nec unquam ad præteritum sed ad futurum pœna referetur.”—Ibid. ii. 31. In the philosophy of Plato, on the other hand, punishment was chiefly expiatory and purificatory. (Lerminier, Introd. à l'Histoire du Droit, p. 123.)

240.

Seneca, De Constant. Sap. v. Compare and contrast this famous sentence of Anaxagoras with that of one of the early Christian hermits. Someone told the hermit that his father was dead. “Cease your blasphemy,” he answered, “my father is immortal.”—Socrates, Eccl. Hist. iv 23.

241.

Epictetus, Ench. 16, 18.

242.

The dispute about whether anything but virtue is a good, was, in reality, a somewhat childish quarrel about words; for the Stoics, who indignantly denounced the Peripatetics for maintaining the affirmative, admitted that health, friends, &c., should be sought not as “goods” but as “preferables.” See a long discussion on this matter in Cicero (De Finib. lib. iii. iv.). The Stoical doctrine of the equality of all vices was formally repudiated by Marcus Aurelius, who maintained (ii. 10), with Theophrastus, that faults of desire were worse than faults of anger. The other Stoics, while dogmatically asserting the equality of all virtues as well as the equality of all vices, in their particular judgments graduated their praise or blame much in the same way as the rest of the world.

243.

See Seneca (Ep. lxxxix.). Seneca himself, however, has devoted a work to natural history, but the general tendency of the school was certainly to concentrate all attention upon morals, and all, or nearly all the great naturalists were Epicureans. Cicero puts into the mouth of the Epicurean the sentence, “Omnium autem rerum natura cognita levamur superstitione, liberamur mortis metu, non conturbamur ignoratione rerum” (De Fin. i.); and Virgil expressed an eminently Epicurean sentiment in his famous lines:— “Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, Quique metus omnes et inexorabile fatum Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari.” Georg. 490-492.

244.

Plutarch, Cato Major.

245.

Cicero, Ad Attic. vi. 2.

246.

This contrast is noticed and largely illustrated by M. Montée in his interesting little work Le Stoïcisme à Rome, and also by Legendre in his Traité de l'Opinion, ou Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de l'esprit humain (Venise, 1735).

247.

“Atque hoc quidem omnes mortales sic habent ... commoditatem prosperitatemque vitæ a diis se habere, virtutem autem nemo unquam acceptam deo retulit. Nimirum recte. Propter virtutem enim jure laudamur et in virtute recte gloriamur. Quod non contingeret si id donum a deo, non a nobis haberemus.”—Cicero, De Nat. Deor. iii. 36.

248.

Ep. i. 18.

249.

Seneca Ep. lxvi.

250.

Lucretius, v. It was a Greek proverb, that Apollo begat Æsculapius to heal the body, and Plato to heal the soul. (Legendre, Traité de l'Opinion, tome i. p. 197.)

251.

“Orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano: Fortem posce animum, mortis terrore carentem.... Monstro, quod ipse tibi possis dare.” Juvenal, Sat. x. 356. Marcus Aurelius recommends prayer, but only that we may be freed from evil desires. (ix. 11.)

252.

Seneca, Ep. lxvi.

253.

Ibid. Ep. liii.

254.

De Const. Sap. viii.

255.

Ench. xlviii.

256.

Arrian, i. 12.

257.

Arrian, ii. 8. The same doctrine is strongly stated in Seneca, Ep. xcii.

258.

Cicero, De Nat. Deor. ii. 66.

259.

Ep. lxxxiii. Somewhat similar sentiments are attributed to Thales and Bion (Diog. Laërt.).

260.

Ep. xli. There are some beautiful sentiments of this kind in Plutarch's treatise, De Sera Numinis Vindicta. It was a saying of Pythagoras, that “we become better as we approach the gods.”

261.

Marc. Aur. iii. 5.

262.

Marcus Aurelius.

263.

Seneca, Præf. Nat. Quæst. iii.

264.

Marc. Aur. x. 25.

265.

Epict. Ench. xvii.

266.

Epict. Ench. xi.

267.

Seneca, De Prov. i.

268.

Ibid. iv.

269.

Marc. Aurel. ii. 2, 3.

270.

The language in which the Stoics sometimes spoke of the inexorable determination of all things by Providence would appear logically inconsistent with free will. In fact, however, the Stoics asserted the latter doctrine in unequivocal language, and in their practical ethics even exaggerated its power. Aulus Gellius (Noct. Att. vi. 2) has preserved a passage in which Chrysippus exerted his subtlety in reconciling the two things. See, too, Arrian, i. 17.

271.

We have an extremely curious illustration of this mode of thought in a speech of Archytas of Tarentum on the evils of sensuality, which Cicero has preserved. He considers the greatest of these evils to be that the vice predisposes men to unpatriotic acts. “Nullam capitaliorem pestem quam corporis voluptatem, hominibus a natura datam.... Hinc patriæ proditiones, hinc rerumpublicarum eversiones, hinc cum hostibus clandestina colloquia nasci,” etc.—Cicero, De Senect. xii.

272.

Diog. Laërt. Anax.

273.

“Cari sunt parentes, cari liberi, propinqui, familiares; sed omnes omnium caritates patria una complexa est; pro qua quis bonus dubitet mortem oppetere si ei sit profuturus?”—De Offic. i. 17.

274.

See Seneca, Consol. ad Helviam and De Otio Sapien.; and Plutarch, De Exilio. The first of these works is the basis of one of the most beautiful compositions in the English language, Bolingbroke's Reflections on Exile.

275.

De Officiis.

276.

Epist. i. 10.

277.

“Tota enim philosophorum vita, ut ait idem, commentatio mortis est.”—Cicero, Tusc. i. 30, ad fin.

278.

Essay on Death.

279.

Spinoza, Ethics, iv. 67.

280.

Camden. Montalembert notices a similar legend as existing in Brittany (Les Moines d'Occident, tome ii. p. 287). Procopius (De Bello Goth. iv. 20) says that it is impossible for men to live in the west of Britain, and that the district is believed to be inhabited by the souls of the dead.

281.

In his De Sera Numinis Vindicta and his Consolatio ad Uxorem.

282.

In the Phædo, passim. See, too, Marc. Aurelius, ii. 12.

283.

See a very striking letter of Epicurus quoted by Diogenes Laërt. in his life of that philosopher. Except a few sentences, quoted by other writers, these letters were all that remained of the works of Epicurus, till the recent discovery of one of his treatises at Herculaneum.

284.

Tusc. Quæst. i.

285.

Consol. ad Polyb. xxvii.

286.

Maury, Hist. des Religions de la Grèce antique, tom. i. pp. 582-588. M. Ravaisson, in his Memoir on Stoicism (Acad. des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres, tom. xxi.) has enlarged on the terrorism of paganism, but has, I think, exaggerated it. Religions which selected games as the natural form of devotion can never have had any very alarming character.

287.

Plutarch, Ad Apollonium.

288.

Ibid.

289.

Cic. Tusc. Quæst. i.

290.

Philost. Apoll. of Tyan. v. 4. Hence their passion for suicide, which Silius Italicus commemorates in lines which I think very beautiful:— “Prodiga gens animæ et properare facillima mortem; Namque ubi transcendit florentes viribus annos Impatiens ævi, spernit novisse senectam Et fati modus in dextra est.”—i. 225-228. Valerius Maximus (ii. vi. § 12) speaks of Celts who celebrated the birth of men with lamentation, and their deaths with joy.

291.

Aulus Gellius, Noctes, i. 3.

292.

Tacitus, Annales, xv. 62.

293.

Sueton. Titus, 10.

294.

Capitolinus, Antoninus.

295.

See the beautiful account of his last hours given by Ammianus Marcellinus and reproduced by Gibbon. There are some remarks well worth reading about the death of Julian, and the state of thought that rendered such a death possible, in Dr. Newman's Discourses on University Education, lect. ix.

296.

“Lex non pœna mors” was a favourite saying among the ancients. On the other hand, Tertullian very distinctly enunciated the patristic view, “Qui autem primordia hominis novimus, audenter determinamus mortem non ex natura secutam hominem sed ex culpa.”—De Anima, 52.

297.

Plutarch, Ad Uxorem.

298.

St. Augustine, Epist. 166.

299.

“At hoc quidem commune est omnium philosophorum, non eorum modo qui deum nihil habere ipsum negotii dicunt, et nihil exhibere alteri; sed eorum etiam, qui deum semper agere aliquid et moliri volunt, numquam nec irasci deum nec nocere.”—Cic. De Offic. iii. 28.

300.

See the refutation of the philosophic notion in Lactantius, De Ira Dei.

301.

“Revelation,” as Lessing observes in his essay on this subject, “has made Death the ‘king of terrors,’ the awful offspring of sin and the dread way to its punishment; though to the imagination of the ancient heathen world, Greek or Etrurian, he was a youthful genius—the twin brother of Sleep, or a lusty boy with a torch held downwards.”—Coleridge's Biographia Litteraria, cap. xxii., note by Sara Coleridge.

302.

“Vetat Pythagoras injussu imperatoris, id est Dei, de præsidio et statione vitæ decedere.”—Cic. De Senec. xx. If we believe the very untrustworthy evidence of Diog. Laërtius (Pythagoras) the philosopher himself committed suicide by starvation.

303.

See his Laws, lib. ix. In his Phædon, however, Plato went further, and condemned all suicide. Libanius says (De Vita Sua) that the arguments of the Phædon prevented him from committing suicide after the death of Julian. On the other hand, Cicero mentions a certain Cleombrotus, who was so fascinated by the proof of the immortality of the soul in the Phædon that he forthwith cast himself into the sea. Cato, as is well known, chose this work to study, the night he committed suicide.

304.

Arist. Ethic. v.

305.

See a list of these in Lactantius' Inst. Div. iii. 18. Many of these instances rest on very doubtful evidence.

306.

Adam Smith's Moral Sentiments, part vii. § 2.

307.

“Proxima deinde tenent mœsti loca qui sibi lethum Insontes peperere manu, lucemque perosi Projecere animas. Quam vellent æthere in alto Nunc et pauperiem et duros perferre labores.” —Æneid, vi. 434-437.

308.

Cicero has censured suicide in his De Senectute, in the Somn. Scipionis, and in the Tusculans. Concerning the death of Cato, he says, that the occasion was such as to constitute a divine call to leave life.—Tusc. i.

309.

Apuleius, De Philos. Plat. lib. i.

310.

Thus Ovid:— “Rebus in adversis facile est contemnere vitam, Fortiter ille facit qui miser esse potest.” See, too, Martial, xi. 56.

311.

Especially Ep. xxiv. Seneca desires that men should not commit suicide with panic or trepidation. He says that those condemned to death should await their execution, for “it is a folly to die through fear of death;” and he recommends men to support old age as long as their faculties remain unimpaired. On this last point, however, his language is somewhat contradictory. There is a good review of the opinions of the ancients in general, and of Seneca in particular, on this subject in Justus Lipsius' Manuductio ad Stoicam Philosophiam, lib. iii. dissert. 22, 23, from which I have borrowed much.

312.

In his Meditations, ix. 3, he speaks of the duty of patiently awaiting death. But in iii. 1, x. 8, 22-32, he clearly recognises the right of suicide in some cases, especially to prevent moral degeneracy. It must be remembered that the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius were private notes for his personal guidance, that all the Stoics admitted it to be wrong to commit suicide in cases where the act would be an injury to society, and that this consideration in itself would be sufficient to divert an emperor from the deed. Antoninus, the uncle, predecessor, and model of M. Aurelius, had considered it his duty several times to prevent Hadrian from committing suicide (Spartianus, Hadrianus). According to Capitolinus, Marcus Aurelius in his last illness purposely accelerated his death by abstinence. The duty of not hastily, or through cowardice, abandoning a path of duty, and the right of man to quit life when it appears intolerable, are combined very clearly by Epictetus, Arrian, i. 9; and the latter is asserted in the strongest manner, i. 24-25.

313.

Porphyry, De Abst. Carnis, ii. 47; Plotinus, 1st Enn. ix. Porphyry says (Life of Plotinus) that Plotinus dissuaded him from suicide. There is a good epitome of the arguments of this school against suicide in Macrobius, In Som. Scip. 1.

314.

Quoted by Seneca, Ep. xxvi. Cicero states the Epicurean doctrine to be, “Ut si tolerabiles sint dolores, feramus, sin minus æquo animo e vita, cum ea non placet, tanquam e theatro, exeamus” (De Finib. i. 15); and again, “De Diis immortalibus sine ullo metu vera sentit. Non dubitat, si ita melius sit, de vita migrare.”—Id. i. 19.

315.

This is noticed by St. Jerome.

316.

Corn. Nepos, Atticus. He killed himself when an old man, to shorten a hopeless disease.

317.

Petronius, who was called the arbitrator of tastes (“elegantiæ arbiter”), was one of the most famous voluptuaries of the reign of Nero. Unlike most of his contemporaries, however, he was endowed with the most exquisite and refined taste; his graceful manners fascinated all about him, and made him in matters of pleasure the ruler of the Court. Appointed Proconsul of Bithynia, and afterwards Consul, he displayed the energies and the abilities of a statesman. A Court intrigue threw him out of favour; and believing that his death was resolved on, he determined to anticipate it by suicide. Calling his friends about him, he opened his veins, shut them, and opened them again; prolonged his lingering death till he had arranged his affairs; discoursed in his last moments, not about the immortality of the soul or the dogmas of philosophers, but about the gay songs and epigrams of the hour; and partaking of a cheerful banquet, died as recklessly as he had lived. (Tacit. Annal. xvi. 18-19.) It has been a matter of much dispute whether or not this Petronius was the author of the Satyricon, one of the most licentious and repulsive works in Latin literature.

318.

Seneca, De Vita Beata, xix.

319.

“Imperfectæ vero in homine naturæ præcipua solatia, ne Deum quidem posse omnia; namque nec sibi potest mortem consciscere si velit, quod homini dedit optimum in tantis vitæ pœnis.”—Hist. Nat. ii. 5.

320.

Hist. Nat. ii. 63. We need not be surprised at this writer thus speaking of sudden death, “Mortes repentinæ (hoc est summa vitæ felicitas),” vii. 54.

321.

Tusc. Quæst. lib. 1. Another remarkable example of an epidemic of suicide occurred among the young girls of Miletus. (Aul. Gell. xv. 10.)

322.

Sir Cornewall Lewis, On the Credibility of Early Roman History, vol. ii. p. 430. See, too, on this class of suicides, Cromaziano, Istorica Critica del Suicidio (Venezia, 1788), pp. 81-82. The real name of the author of this book (which is, I think, the best history of suicide) was Buonafede. He was a Celestine monk. The book was first published at Lucca in 1761. It was translated into French in 1841.

323.

Senec. De Provid. ii.; Ep. xxiv.

324.

See some examples of this in Seneca, Ep. lxx.

325.

See a long catalogue of suicides arising from this cause, in Cromaziano, Ist. del Suicidio, pp. 112-114.

326.

Consol. ad Marc. c. xx.

327.

De Ira, iii. 15.

328.

Ep. lxx.

329.

See Donne's Biathanatos (London, 1700), pp. 56-57. Gibbon's Decline and Fall, ch. xliv. Blackstone, in his chapter on suicide, quotes the sentence of the Roman lawyers on the subject: “Si quis impatientia doloris aut tædio vitæ aut morbo aut furore aut pudore mori maluit non animadvertatur in eum.” Ulpian expressly asserts that the wills of suicides were recognised by law, and numerous examples of the act, notoriously prepared and publicly and gradually accomplished, prove its legality in Rome. Suetonius, it is true, speaks of Claudius accusing a man for having tried to kill himself (Claud, xvi.), and Xiphilin says (lxix. 8) that Hadrian gave special permission to the philosopher Euphrates to commit suicide, “on account of old age and disease;” but in the first case it appears from the context that a reproach and not a legal action was meant, while Euphrates, I suppose, asked permission to show his loyalty to the emperor, and not as a matter of strict necessity. There were, however, some Greek laws condemning suicide, probably on civic grounds. Josephus mentions (De Bell. Jud. iii. 8) that in some nations “the right hand of the suicide was amputated, and that in Judea the suicide was only buried after sunset.” A very strange law, said to have been derived from Greece, is reported to have existed at Marseilles. Poison was kept by the senate of the city, and given to those who could prove that they had sufficient reason to justify their desire for death, and all other suicide was forbidden. The law was intended, it was said, to prevent hasty suicide, and to make deliberate suicide as rapid and painless as possible. (Valer. Maximus, ii. 6, § 7.) In the Reign of Terror in France, a law was made similar to that of Domitian. (Carlyle's Hist. of the French Revolution, book v. c. ii.)

330.

Compare with this a curious “order of the day,” issued by Napoleon in 1802, with the view of checking the prevalence of suicide among his soldiers. (Lisle, Du Suicide, pp. 462-463.)

331.

See Suetonius, Otho. c. x.-xi., and the very fine description in Tacitus, Hist. lib. ii. c. 47-49. Martial compares the death of Otho to that of Cato: “Sit Cato, dum vivit, sane vel Cæsare major; Dum moritur, numquid major Othone fuit?” —Ep. vi. 32.

332.

Xiphilin, lxviii. 12.

333.

Tacit. Hist. ii. 49. Suet. Otho, 12. Suetonius says that, in addition to these, many soldiers who were not present killed themselves on hearing the news.

334.

Ibid. Annal. xiv. 9.

335.

Plin. Hist. Nat. vii. 54. The opposite faction attributed this suicide to the maddening effects of the perfumes burnt on the pile.

336.

Tacit. Annal. vi. 26.

337.

Plin. Ep. i. 12.

338.

This history is satirically and unfeelingly told by Lucian. See, too, Ammianus Marcellinus, xxix. 1.

339.

Sophocles.

340.

Arrian, i. 24.

341.

Seneca, Ep. lviii.

342.

Stobæus. One of the most deliberate suicides recorded was that of a Greek woman of ninety years old.—Val. Maxim. ii. 6, § 8.

343.

Plin. Ep. iii. 7. He starved himself to death.

344.

Ep. i. 22. Some of Pliny's expressions are remarkable:—“Id ego arduum in primis et præcipua laude dignum puto. Nam impetu quodam et instinctu procurrere ad mortem, commune cum multis: deliberare vero et causas ejus expendere, utque suaserit ratio, vitæ mortisque consilium suscipere vel ponere, ingentis est animi.” In this case the doctors pronounced that recovery was possible, and the suicide was in consequence averted.

345.

Lib. vi. Ep. xxiv.

346.

Ep. lxxvii. On the former career of Marcellinus, see Ep. xxix.

347.

See the very beautiful lines of Statius:— “Urbe fuit media nulli concessa potentum Ara Deum, mitis posuit Clementia sedem: Et miseri fecere sacram, sine supplice numquam Illa novo; nulla damnavit vota repulsa. Auditi quicunque rogant, noctesque diesque Ire datum, et solis numen placare querelis. Parca superstitio; non thurea flamma, nec altus Accipitur sanguis, lachrymis altaria sudant ... Nulla autem effigies, nulli commissa metallo Forma Deæ, mentes habitare et pectora gaudet. Semper habet trepidos, semper locus horret egenis Cœtibus, ignotæ tantum felicibus aræ.”—Thebaid, xii. 481-496. This altar was very old, and was said to have been founded by the descendants of Hercules. Diodorus of Sicily, however, makes a Syracusan say that it was brought from Syracuse (lib. xiii. 22). Marcus Aurelius erected a temple to “Beneficentia” on the Capitol. (Xiphilin, lib. lxxi. 34.)

348.

Herodotus, vi. 21.

349.

See Arrian's Epictetus, i. 9. The very existence of the word φιλανθρωπία shows that the idea was not altogether unknown.

350.

Diog. Laërt. Pyrrho. There was a tradition that Pythagoras had himself penetrated to India, and learnt philosophy from the gymnosophists. (Apuleius, Florid. lib. ii. c. 15.)

351.

This aspect of the career of Alexander was noticed in a remarkable passage of a treatise ascribed to Plutarch (De Fort. Alex.). “Conceiving he was sent by God to be an umpire between all, and to unite all together, he reduced by arms those whom he could not conquer by persuasion, and formed of a hundred diverse nations one single universal body, mingling, as it were, in one cup of friendship the customs, marriages, and laws of all. He desired that all should regard the whole world as their common country, ... that every good man should be esteemed a Hellene, every evil man a barbarian.” See on this subject the third lecture of Mr. Merivale (whose translation of Plutarch I have borrowed) On the Conversion of the Roman Empire.

352.

They were both born about b.c. 250. See Sir C. Lewis, Credibility of Early Roman History, vol. i. p. 82.

353.

Aulus Gellius mentions the indignation of Marcus Cato against a consul named Albinus, who had written in Greek a Roman history, and prefaced it by an apology for his faults of style, on the ground that he was writing in a foreign language. (Noct. Att. xi. 8.)

354.

See a vivid picture of the Greek influence upon Rome, in Mommsen's Hist. of Rome (Eng. trans.), vol. iii. pp. 423-426.

355.

Plin. Hist. Nat. vii. 31.

356.

See Friedlænder, Mœurs romaines du règne d'Auguste à la fin des Antonins (French trans., 1865), tome i. pp. 6-7.

357.

See the curious catalogue of Greek love terms in vogue (Lucretius, lib. iv. line 1160, &c.). Juvenal, more than a hundred years later, was extremely angry with the Roman ladies for making love in Greek (Sat. vi. lines 190-195). Friedlænder remarks that there is no special term in Latin for to ask in marriage (tome i. p. 354).

358.

Aul. Gell. Noct. xv. 4; Vell. Paterculus, ii. 65. The people were much scandalised at this elevation, and made epigrams about it. There is a curious catalogue of men who at different times rose in Rome from low positions to power and dignity, in Legendre, Traité de l'Opinion, tome ii. pp. 254-255.

359.

Dion Cassius, xlviii. 32. Plin. Hist. Nat. v. 5; vii. 44.

360.

The history of the influence of freedmen is minutely traced by Friedlænder, Mœurs romaines du règne d'Auguste à la fin des Antonins, tome i. pp. 58-93. Statius and Martial sang their praises.

361.

See Tacit. Ann. vi. 23-25.

362.

On the Roman journeys, see the almost exhaustive dissertation of Friedlænder, tome ii.

363.

Joseph. (Antiq. xvii. 11, § 1) says above 8,000 Jews resident in Rome took part in a petition to Cæsar. If these were all adult males, the total number of Jewish residents must have been extremely large.

364.

See the famous fragment of Seneca cited by St. Augustin (De Civ. Dei, vi. 11): “Usque eo sceleratissimæ gentis consuetudo convaluit, ut per omnes jam terras recepta sit: victi victoribus leges dederunt.” There are numerous scattered allusions to the Jews in Horace, Juvenal, and Martial.

365.

The Carthaginian influence was specially conspicuous in early Christian history. Tertullian and Cyprian (both Africans) are justly regarded as the founders of Latin theology. (See Milman's Latin Christianity (ed. 1867), vol. i. pp. 35-36.)

366.

Milo had emancipated some slaves to prevent them from being tortured as witnesses. (Cic. Pro Milo.) This was made illegal. The other reasons for enfranchisement are given by Dion. Halicarn. Antiq. lib. iv.

367.

This subject is fully treated by Wallon, Hist. de l'Esclavage dans l'Antiquité.

368.

Senec. De Clemen. i. 24.

369.

See, on the prominence and the insolence of the freedmen, Tacit. Annal. iii. 26-27.

370.

Montesquieu, Décadence des Romains, ch. xiii.

371.

See the very curious speech attributed to Camillus (Livy, v. 52).

372.

“Caritas generis humani.”—De Finib. So, too, he speaks (De Leg. i. 23) of every good man as “civis totius mundi.”

373.

He speaks of Rome as “civitas ex nationum conventu constituta.”

374.

De Legib. i. 7.

375.

De Offic.

376.

Ibid. iii. 6.

377.

De Offic. iii. 6.

378.

De Legib. i. 15.

379.

“Tunc genus humanum positis sibi consulat armis, Inque vicem gens omnis amet.” —Pharsalia, vi.

380.

Ep. xcv.

381.

Ep. xxxi.

382.

De Vita Beata, xx.

383.

Arrian, ii. 10.

384.

vi. 44.

385.

“Hæc duri immota Catonis Secta fuit, servare modum, finemque tenere, Naturamque sequi, patriæque impendere vitam, Nec sibi sed toti genitum se credere mundo.” Lucan, Phars. ii. 380-383.

386.

There is a passage on this subject in one of the letters of Pliny, which I think extremely remarkable, and to which I can recall no pagan parallel:—“Nuper me cujusdam amici languor admonuit, optimos esse nos dum infirmi sumus. Quem enim infirmum aut avaritia aut libido solicitat? Non amoribus servit, non appetit honores ... tunc deos, tunc hominem esse se meminit.”—Plin. Ep. vii. 26.

387.

Ep. viii. 16. He says: “Hominis est enim affici dolore, sentire, resistere tamen, et solatia admittere, non solatiis non egere.”

388.

This characteristic of Stoicism is well noticed in Grant's Aristotle, vol. i. p. 254. The first volume of this work contains an extremely good review of the principles of the Stoics.

389.

Cie. De Finib. lib. iv.

390.

Arrian, Epict. ii. 14.

391.

Ibid. i. 9.

392.

Ibid. i. 14.

393.

Ibid. i. 16.

394.

Arrian, ii. 8.

395.

Plutarch, De Profect. in Virt. This precept was enforced by Bishop Sanderson in one of his sermons. (Southey's Commonplace Book, vol. i. p. 92.)

396.

Diog. Laërt. Pythagoras.

397.

Thus Cicero makes Cato say: “Pythagoreorumque more, exercendæ memoriæ gratia, quid quoque die dixerim, audiverim, egerim, commemoro vesperi.”—De Senect. xi.

398.

Ibid.

399.

Sermon, i. 4.

400.

He even gave up, for a time, eating meat, in obedience to the Pythagorean principles. (Ep. cviii.) Seneca had two masters of this school, Sextius and Sotion. He was at this time not more than seventeen years old. (See Aubertin, Étude critique sur les Rapports supposés entre Sénèque et St. Paul, p. 156.)

401.

See his very beautiful description of the self-examination of Sextius and of himself. (De Ira, iii. 36.)

402.

Arrian, ii. 18. Compare the Manual of Epictetus, xxxiv.

403.

“Quod de Romulo ægre creditum est, omnes pari consensu præsumserunt, Marcum cœlo receptum esse.”—Aur. Vict. Epit. xvi. “Deusque etiam nunc habetur.”—Capitolinus.

404.

The first book of his Meditations was written on the borders of the Granua, in Hungary.

405.

i. 14.

406.

See his touching letter to Fronto, who was about to engage in a debate with Herod Atticus.

407.

i. 6-15. The eulogy he passed on his Stoic master Apollonius is worthy of notice. Apollonius furnished him with an example of the combination of extreme firmness and gentleness.

408.

E.g. “Beware of Cæsarising.” (vi. 30.) “Be neither a tragedian nor a courtesan.” (v. 28.) “Be just and temperate and a follower of the gods; but be so with simplicity, for the pride of modesty is the worst of all.” (xii. 27.)

409.

iii. 4.

410.

i. 17.

411.

v. 1.

412.

ix. 29.

413.

viii. 59.

414.

xi. 18.

415.

ix. 11.

416.

viii. 15.

417.

vii. 70.

418.

vii. 63.

419.

vii. 22.

420.

Mr. Maurice, in this respect, compares and contrasts him very happily with Plutarch. “Like Plutarch, the Greek and Roman characters were in Marcus Aurelius remarkably blended; but, unlike Plutarch, the foundation of his mind was Roman. He was a student that he might more effectually carry on the business of an emperor.”—Philosophy of the First Six Centuries, p. 32.

421.

vi. 47.

422.

Capitolinus, Aurelius Victor.

423.

M. Suckau, in his admirable Étude sur Marc-Aurèle, and M. Renan, in a very acute and learned Examen de quelques faits relatifs à l'impératrice Faustine (read before the Institut, August 14, 1867), have shown the extreme uncertainty of the stories about the debaucheries of Faustina, which the biographers of Marcus Aurelius have collected. It will be observed that the emperor himself has left an emphatic testimony to her virtue, and to the happiness he derived from her (i. 17); that the earliest extant biographer of Marcus Aurelius was a generation later; and that the infamous character of Commodus naturally predisposed men to imagine that he was not the son of so perfect an emperor.

424.

“Quid me fletis, et non magis de pestilentia et communi morte cogitatis?” Capitolinus, M. Aurelius.

425.

Ibid.

426.

Many examples of this are given by Coulanges, La Cité antique, pp. 177-178.

427.

All this is related by Suetonius, August.

428.

Tacit. Annal. iv. 36.

429.

See, e.g., the sentiments of the people about Julius Cæsar, Sueton. J. C. lxxxviii.

430.

Sueton. Vesp. xxiii.

431.

“Qualis artifex pereo” were his dying words.

432.

See Sueton. Calig. 1.

433.

Sueton. Calig. xxii. A statue of Jupiter is said to have burst out laughing just before the death of this emperor.

434.

Seneca, De Ira, i. 46; Sueton. Calig. xxii.

435.

Lampridius, Heliogab.

436.

Senec. De Clemen. i. 18.

437.

Tacit. Annal. iii. 36.

438.

Senec. De Benefic. iii. 26.

439.

Tacit. Annal. i. 73. Tiberius refused to allow this case to be proceeded with. See, too, Philost. Apollonius of Tyana, i. 15.

440.

Suet. Tiber. lviii.

441.

“Mulier quædam, quod semel exuerat ante statuam Domitiani, damnata et interfecta est.”—Xiphilin, lxvii. 12.

442.

“Eos demum, qui nihil præterquam de libertate cogitent, dignos esse, qui Romani fiant.”—Livy, viii. 21.

443.

Valerius Maximus, iv. 3, § 14.

444.

See the picture of this scene in Tacitus, Hist. iii. 83.

445.

Dion. Halicarnass.

446.

“Divina Natura dedit agros; ars humana ædificavit urbes.”

447.

See a collection of passages from these writers in Wallon, Hist. de l'Esclavage, tome ii. pp. 378-379. Pliny, in the first century, noticed (Hist. Nat. xviii. 7) that the latifundia, or system of large properties, was ruining both Italy and the provinces, and that six landlords whom Nero killed were the possessors of half Roman Africa.

448.

Tacit. Annal. xii. 43. The same complaint had been made still earlier by Tiberius, in a letter to the Senate. (Annal. iii. 54.)

449.

Augustus, for a time, contemplated abolishing the distributions, but soon gave up the idea. (Suet. Aug. xlii.) He noticed that it had the effect of causing the fields to be neglected.

450.

M. Wallon has carefully traced this history. (Hist. de l'Esclav. tome iii. pp. 294-297.)

451.

Livy, iv. 59-60. Florus, i. 12.

452.

Livy, xxiv. 49.

453.

Sallust, Bell. Jugurth. 84-86.

454.

Livy, xxxix. 6.

455.

“Primus Cæsarum fidem militis etiam præmio pigneratus.”—Suet. Claud. x.

456.

See Tacitus, Annal. xiii. 35; Hist. ii. 69.

457.

M. Sismondi thinks that the influence of Christianity in subduing the spirit of revolt, if not in the army, at least in the people, was very great. He says: “Il est remarquable qu'en cinq ans, sept prétendans au trône, tous bien supérieurs à Honorius en courage, en talens et en vertus, furent successivement envoyés captifs à Ravenne ou punis de mort, que le peuple applaudit toujours à ces jugemens et ne se sépara point de l'autorité légitime, tant la doctrine du droit divin des rois que les évêques avoient commencé à prêcher sous Théodose avoit fait de progrès, et tant le monde romain sembloit determiné à périr avec un monarque imbécile plutôt que tenté de se donner un sauveur.”—Hist. de la Chute de l'Empire romain, tome i. p. 221.

458.

See Gibbon, ch. v.; Merivale's Hist. of Rome, ch. lxvii. It was thought that troops thus selected would be less likely to revolt. Constantine abolished the Prætorians.

459.

The gladiatorial shows are treated incidentally by most Roman historians, but the three works from which I have derived most assistance in this part of my subject are the Saturnalia of Justus Lipsius, Magnin, Origines du Théâtre (an extremely learned and interesting book, which was unhappily never completed), and Friedlænder's Roman Manners from Augustus to the Antonines (the second volume of the French translation). M. Wallon has also compressed into a few pages (Hist. de l'Esclavage, tome ii. pp. 129-139) much information on the subject.

460.

Hence the old name of bustuarii (from bustum, a funeral pile) given to gladiators (Nieupoort, De Ritibus Romanorum, p. 514). According to Pliny (Hist. Nat. xxx. 3), “regular human sacrifices were only abolished in Rome by a decree of the senate, b.c. 97,” and there are some instances of them at a still later period. Much information about them is collected by Sir C. Lewis, Credibility of Roman History, vol. ii. p. 430; Merivale, Conversion of the Roman Empire, pp. 230-233; Legendre, Traité de l'Opinion, vol. i. pp. 229-231. Porphyry, in his De Abstinentia Carnis, devoted considerable research to this matter. Games were habitually celebrated by wealthy private individuals, during the early part of the empire, at the funerals of their relatives, but their mortuary character gradually ceased, and after Marcus Aurelius they had become mere public spectacles, and were rarely celebrated at Rome by private men. (See Wallon, Hist. de l'Esclav. tome ii. pp. 135-136.) The games had then really passed into their purely secular stage, though they were still nominally dedicated to Mars and Diana, and though an altar of Jupiter Latiaris stood in the centre of the arena. (Nieupoort, p. 365.)

461.

Cicero, Tusc. lib. ii.

462.

Capitolinus, Maximus et Balbinus. Capitolinus says this is the most probable origin of the custom, though others regarded it as a sacrifice to appease Nemesis by an offering of blood.

463.

Much curious information on this subject may be found in Friedlænder, Mœurs romaines, liv. vi. ch. i. Very few Roman emperors ventured to disregard or to repress these outcries, and they led to the fall of several of the most powerful ministers of the empire. On the whole these games represent the strangest and most ghastly form political liberty has ever assumed. On the other hand, the people readily bartered all genuine freedom for abundant games.

464.

Valer. Maximus, ii. 4, § 7.

465.

On the gladiators at banquets, see J. Lipsius, Saturnalia, lib. i. c. vi., Magnin; Origines du Théâtre, pp. 380-385. This was originally an Etruscan custom, and it was also very common at Capua. As Silius Italicus says:— “Exhilarare viris convivia cæde Mos olim, et miscere epulis spectacula dira.” Verus, the colleague of Marcus Aurelius, was especially addicted to this kind of entertainment. (Capitolinus, Verus.) See, too, Athenæus iv. 40, 41.

466.

Senec. De Brevit. Vit. c. xiii.

467.

Sueton. J. Cæsar, xxvi. Pliny (Ep. vi. 34) commends a friend for having given a show in memory of his departed wife.

468.

Pliny, Hist. Nat. xxxiii. 16.

469.

Sueton. Cæsar, x.; Dion Cassius, xliii. 24.

470.

Sueton. Aug. xxix. The history of the amphitheatres is given very minutely by Friedlænder, who, like nearly all other antiquaries, believes this to have been the first of stone. Pliny mentions the existence, at an earlier period, of two connected wooden theatres, which swung round on hinges and formed an amphitheatre. (Hist. Nat. xxxvi. 24.)

471.

Dion Cassius, liv. 2. It appears, however, from an inscription, that 10,000 gladiators fought in the reign and by the command of Augustus. Wallon, Hist. de l'Esclavage, tome ii. p. 133.

472.

Sueton. Tiber. xxxiv. Nero made another slight restriction (Tacit. Annal. xiii. 31), which appears to have been little observed.

473.

Martial notices (Ep. iii. 59) and ridicules a spectacle given by a shoemaker at Bologna, and by a fuller at Modena.

474.

Epictetus, Enchir. xxxiii. § 2.

475.

Arrian, iii. 15.

476.

See these points minutely proved in Friedlænder.

477.

Suet. Aug. xliv. This was noticed before by Cicero. The Christian poet Prudentius dwelt on this aspect of the games in some forcible lines:— “Virgo modesta jubet converso pollice rumpi Ne lateat pars ulla animæ vitalibus imis Altius impresso dum palpitat ense secutor.”

478.

Sueton. Tiberius, xl. Tacitus, who gives a graphic description of the disaster (Annal. iv. 62-63), says 50,000 persons were killed or wounded.

479.

Tacit. Annal. xiii. 49.

480.

Joseph. Bell. Jud. vi. 9.

481.

See the very curious picture which Livy has given (xli. 20) of the growth of the fascination.

482.

Joseph. Antiq. Jud. xix. 7.

483.

Lucian, Demonax.

484.

Philost. Apoll. iv. 22.

485.

Friedlænder, tome ii. pp. 95-96. There are, however, several extant Greek inscriptions relating to gladiators, and proving the existence of the shows in Greece. Pompeii, which was a Greek colony, had a vast amphitheatre, which we may still admire; and, under Nero, games were prohibited at Pompeii for ten years, in consequence of a riot that broke out during a gladiatorial show. (Tacit. Annal. xiv. 17.) After the defeat of Perseus, Paulus Emilius celebrated a show in Macedonia. (Livy, xli. 20.)

486.

These are fully discussed by Magnin and Friedlænder. There is a very beautiful description of a ballet, representing the “Judgment of Paris,” in Apuleius, Metamorph. x.

487.

Pacuvius and Accius were the founders of Roman tragedy. The abridger, Velleius Paterculus, who is the only Roman historian who pays any attention to literary history, boasts that the latter might rank honourably with the best Greek tragedians. He adds, “ut in illis [the Greeks] limæ, in hoc pœne plus videatur fuisse sanguinis.”—Hist. Rom. ii. 9.

488.

Thus, e.g., Hobbes: “Alienæ calamitatis contemptus nominatur crudelitas, proceditque a propriæ securitatis opinione. Nam ut aliquis sibi placeat in malis alienis sine alio fine, videtur mihi impossibile.”—Leviathan, pars i. c. vi.

489.

Sueton. Claudius, xxxiv.

490.

“Et verso pollice vulgi Quemlibet occidunt populariter.”—Juvenal, Sat. iii. 36-37.

491.

Besides the many incidental notices scattered through the Roman historians, and through the writings of Seneca, Plutarch, Juvenal, and Pliny, we have a curious little book, De Spectaculis, by Martial—a book which is not more horrible from the atrocities it recounts than from the perfect absence of all feeling of repulsion or compassion it everywhere displays.

492.

These are but a few of the many examples given by Magnin, who has collected a vast array of authorities on the subject. (Origines du Théâtre, pp. 445-453.) M. Mongez has devoted an interesting memoir to “Les animaux promenés ou tués dans le cirque.” (Mém. de l'Acad. des Inscrip. et Belles-lettres, tome x.) See, too, Friedlænder. Pliny rarely gives an account of any wild animal without accompanying it by statistics about its appearances in the arena. The first instance of a wild beast hunt in the amphitheatre is said to be that recorded by Livy (xxxix. 22), which took place about 80 b.c.

493.

Capitolinus, Gordiani.

494.

Vopiscus, Aurelian.

495.

Xiphilin, lxviii. 15.

496.

Tacit. Annal. xv. 44.

497.

Xiphilin, lxvii. 8; Statius, Sylv. i. 6.

498.

During the Republic, a rich man ordered in his will that some women he had purchased for the purpose should fight in the funeral games to his memory, but the people annulled the clause. (Athenæeus, iv. 39.) Under Nero and Domitian, female gladiators seem to have been not uncommon. See Statius, Sylv. i. 6; Sueton. Domitian, iv.; Xiphilin, lxvii. 8. Juvenal describes the enthusiasm with which Roman ladies practised with the gladiatorial weapons (Sat. vi. 248, &c.), and Martial (De Spectac. vi.) mentions the combats of women with wild beasts. One, he says, killed a lion. A combat of female gladiators, under Severus, created some tumult, and it was decreed that they should no longer be permitted. (Xiphilin, lxxv. 16.) See Magnin, pp. 434-435.

499.

Martial, De Spectac. vii.

500.

Ibid. Ep. viii. 30.

501.

Tertullian, Ad Nation. i. 10. One of the most ghastly features of the games was the comic aspect they sometimes assumed. This was the case in the combats of dwarfs. There were also combats by blind-folded men. Petronius (Satyricon, c. xlv.) has given us a horrible description of the maimed and feeble men who were sometimes compelled to fight. People afflicted with epilepsy were accustomed to drink the blood of the wounded gladiators, which they believed to be a sovereign remedy. (Pliny, Hist. Nat. xxviii. 2; Tertul. Apol. ix.)

502.

“Nec unquam sine humano cruore cœnabat”—Lactan. De Mort. Persec. Much the same thing is told of the Christian emperor Justinian II., who lived at the end of the seventh century. (Sismondi, Hist. de la Chute de l'Empire Romain, tome ii. p. 85.)

503.

Winckelmann says the statue called “The Dying Gladiator” does not represent a gladiator. At a later period, however, statues of gladiators were not uncommon, and Pliny notices (Hist. Nat. xxxv. 33) paintings of them. A fine specimen of mosaic portraits of gladiators is now in the Lateran Museum.

504.

Plutarch's Life of Cæsar.

505.

Dion Cassius, li. 7.

506.

Faustina, the wife of Marcus Aurelius, was especially accused of this weakness. (Capitolinus, Marcus Aurelius.)

507.

Seneca, De Provident. iv.

508.

Arrian's Epictetus, i. 29.

509.

Seneca, De Provident. iii.

510.

Aulus Gellius, xii. 5.

511.

Cicero, Tusc. lib. ii.

512.

Some Equites fought under Julius Cæsar, and a senator named Fulvius Setinus wished to fight, but Cæsar prevented him. (Suet. Cæsar, xxxix.; Dion Cassius, xliii. 23.) Nero, according to Suetonius, compelled men of the highest rank to fight. Laws prohibiting patricians from fighting were several times made and violated. (Friedlænder, pp. 39-41.) Commodus is said to have been himself passionately fond of fighting as a gladiator. Much, however, of what Lampridius relates on this point is perfectly incredible. On the other hand, the profession of the gladiator was constantly spoken of as infamous; but this oscillation between extreme admiration and contempt will surprise no one who has noticed the tone continually adopted about prize-fighters in England, and about the members of some other professions on the Continent. Juvenal dwells (Sat. viii. 197-210) with great indignation on an instance of a patrician fighting.

513.

“Quis mediocris gladiator ingemuit, quis vultum mutavit unquam?”—Cic. Tusc. Quæst. lib. ii.

514.

E.g. Clem. Alex. Strom. iii. There is a well-known passage of this kind in Horace, Ars Poet. 412-415. The comparison of the good man to an athlete or gladiator, which St. Paul employed, occurs also in Seneca and Epictetus, from which some have inferred that they must have known the writings of the Apostle. M. Denis, however, has shown (Idées morales dans l'Antiquité, tome ii. p. 240) that the same comparison had been used, before the rise of Christianity, by Plato, Æschines, and Cicero.

515.

Confess. vi. 8.

516.

“[Servi] etsi per fortunam in omnia obnoxii, tamen quasi secundum hominum genus sunt.”—Florus, Hist. iii. 20.

517.

Macrinus, however, punished fugitive slaves by compelling them to fight as gladiators. (Capitolinus, Macrinus.)

518.

Tacit. Annal. xii. 56. According to Friedlænder, however, there were two classes of criminals. One class were condemned only to fight, and pardoned if they conquered; the others were condemned to fight till death, and this was considered an aggravation of capital punishment.

519.

“Ad conciliandum plebis favorem effusa largitio, quum spectaculis indulget, supplicia quondam hostium artem facit.”—Florus, iii. 12.

520.

Tusc. Quæst. ii. 17.

521.

See his magnificent letter on the subject. (Ep. vii.)

522.

In his two treatises De Esu Carnium.

523.

Pliny. Ep. iv. 22.

524.

Xiphilin, lxxi. 29. Capitolinus, M. Aurelius. The emperor also once carried off the gladiators to a war with his army, much to the indignation of the people. (Capit.) He has himself noticed the extreme weariness he felt at the public amusements he was obliged to attend. (vii. 3.)

525.

Sueton. Titus, viii.

526.

“Visum est spectaculum inde non enerve nec fluxum, nec quod animos virorum molliret et frangeret, sed quod ad pulchra vulnera contemptumque mortis accenderet.”—Pliny, Paneg. xxxiii.

527.

“Præterea tanto consensu rogabaris, ut negare non constans sed durum videretur.”—Plin. Epist. vi. 34.

528.

Symmach. Epist. ii. 46.

529.

Sueton. Domitian, iii. It is very curious that the same emperor, about the same time (the beginning of his reign), had such a horror of bloodshed that he resolved to prohibit the sacrifice of oxen. (Suet. Dom. ix.)

530.

“Pendant qu'il restait au logis, il n'était incommode à personne; il y passait la meilleure partie de son temps tranquillement dans sa chambre.... Il se divertissait aussi quelquefois à fumer une pipe de tabac; ou bien lorsqu'il voulait se relâcher l'esprit un peu plus longtemps, il cherchait des araignées qu'il faisait battre ensemble, ou des mouches qu'il jetait dans la toile d'araignée, et regardait ensuite cette bataille avec tant de plaisir qu'il éclatait quelquefois de rire.”—Colerus, Vie de Spinoza.

531.

This is noticed by George Duval in a curious passage of his Souvenirs de la Terreur, quoted by Lord Lytton in a note to his Zanoni.

532.

Essay on Goodness.

533.

This contrast has been noticed by Archbishop Whately in a lecture on Egypt. See, too, Legendre, Traité de l'Opinion, tome ii. p. 374.

534.

Tacit. Annal. xiv. 45.

535.

Senec. De Clemen. i. 14.

536.

Val. Max. ii. 9. This writer speaks of “the eyes of a mistress delighting in human blood” with as much horror as if the gladiatorial games were unknown. Livy gives a rather different version of this story.

537.

Tacit. Annal. i. 76.

538.

Sueton. Calig. xi.

539.

Spartian. Caracalla. Tertullian mentions that his nurse was a Christian.

540.

Capitolinus, Marcus Aurelius. Capitolinus, who wrote under Diocletian, says that in his time the custom of spreading a net under the rope-dancer still continued. I do not know when it ceased at Rome, but St. Chrysostom mentions that in his time it had been abolished in the East.—Jortin's Remarks on Ecclesiastical History, ii. 71 (ed. 1846).

541.

Tacit. Ann. iii. 55.

542.

Champagny, Les Antonins, tome ii. pp. 179-200.

543.

πολιτεύεσθαι.—Diog. Laërt. Zeno.

544.

Thus Tigellinus spoke of “Stoicorum arrogantia sectaque quæ turbidos et negotiorum appetentes faciat.”—Tacit. Ann. xiv. 57. The accusation does not appear to have been quite untrue, for Vespasian, who was a very moderate emperor, thought it necessary to banish nearly all the philosophers from Rome on account of their factiousness. Sometimes the Stoics showed their independence by a rather gratuitous insolence. Dion Cassius relates that, when Nero was thinking of writing a poem in 400 books, he asked the advice of the Stoic Cornutus, who said, that no one would read so long a work. “But,” answered Nero, “your favourite Chrysippus wrote still more numerous books.” “True,” rejoined Cornutus, “but then they were of use to humanity.” On the other hand, Seneca is justly accused of condescending too much to the vices of Nero in his efforts to mitigate their effects.

545.

The influence of Stoicism on Roman law has been often examined. See, especially, Degerando, Hist. de la Philosophie (2nd ed.), tome iii. pp. 202-204; Laferrière, De l'Influence du Stoïcisme sur les Jurisconsultes romains; Denis, Théories et Idées morales dans l'Antiquité, tome ii. pp. 187-217; Troplong, Influence du Christianisme sur le Droit civil des Romains; Merivale, Conversion of the Roman Empire, lec. iv.; and the great work of Gravina, De Ortu et Progressu Juris civilis.

546.

Cic. De Legib. ii. 4, 23.

547.

There were two rival schools, that of Labeo and that of Capito. The first was remarkable for its strict adherence to the letter of the law—the second for the latitude of interpretation it admitted.

548.

Dig. lib. i. tit. 17-32.

549.

Ibid. i. tit. 1-3.

550.

Ibid. i. tit. 1-4.

551.

Dig. lib. i. tit. 4-5.

552.

Laferrière, p. 32. Wallon, Hist. de l'Esclavage dans l'Antiquité, tome iii. pp. 71-80. M. Wallon gives many curious instances of legal decisions on this point.

553.

To prove that this is the correct conception of law was the main object of Cicero's treatise De Legibus. Ulpian defined jurisprudence as “divinarum atque humanarum rerum notitia, justi atque injusti scientia.”—Dig. lib. i. tit. 1-10. So Paul “Id quod semper æquum ad bonum est jus dicitur ut est jus naturale.”—Dig. lib. i. tit. 1-11. And Gaius, “Quod vero naturalis ratio inter omnes homines constituit ... vocatur jus gentium.”—Dig. lib. i. tit. 1-9. The Stoics had defined true wisdom as “rerum divinarum atque humanarum scientia.”—Cic. De Offic. i. 43.

554.

Cicero compares the phraseology of the Stoics with that of the Peripatetics, maintaining that the precision of the former is well adapted to legal discussions, and the redundancy of the latter to oratory. “Omnes fere Stoici prudentissimi in disserendo sint et id arte faciant, sintque architecti pene verborum; iidem traducti a disputando ad dicendum, inopes reperiantur: unum excipio Catonem.... Peripateticorum institutis commodius fingeretur oratio ... nam ut Stoicorum astrictior est oratio, aliquantoque contractior quam aures populi requirunt: sic illorum liberior et latior quam patitur consuetudo judiciorum et fori.”—De Claris Oratoribus. A very judicious historian of philosophy observes: “En général à Rome le petit nombre d'hommes livrés à la méditation et à l'enthousiasme préférèrent Pythagore et Platon; les hommes du monde et ceux qui cultivaient les sciences naturelles s'attachèrent à Épicure; les orateurs et les hommes d'État à la nouvelle Académie; les juris-consultes au Portique.”—Degerando, Hist. de la Philos. tome iii. p. 196.

555.

See a very remarkable passage in Aulus Gellius, Noct. ii. 15.

556.

“Fere enim nulli alii sunt homines qui talem in filios suos habeant potestatem qualem nos habemus.”—Gaius.

557.

A full statement of these laws is given by Dion. Halicarn. ii. 4. It was provided that if a father sold his son and if the son was afterwards enfranchised by the purchaser, he became again the slave of his father, who might sell him a second, and, if manumission again ensued, a third time. It was only on the third sale that he passed for ever out of the parental control. A more merciful law, attributed to Numa, provided that when the son married (if that marriage was with the consent of the father), the father lost the power of selling him. In no other way, however, was his authority even then abridged.

558.

Velleius Paterculus, ii. 67. A great increase of parricide was noticed during the Empire (Senec. De Clem. i. 23). At first, it is said, there was no law against parricide, for the crime was believed to be too atrocious to be possible.

559.

Numerous instances of these executions are collected by Livy, Val. Maximus, &c.; their history is fully given by Cornelius van Bynkershoek, “De Jure occidendi, vendendi, et exponendi liberos apud veteres Romanos,” in his works (Cologne, 1761).

560.

This proceeding of Hadrian, which is related by the lawyer Marcian, is doubly remarkable, because the father had surprised his son in adultery with his stepmother. Now a Roman had originally not only absolute authority over the life of his son, but also the right of killing any one whom he found committing adultery with his wife. Yet Marcian praises the severity of Hadrian, “Nam patria potestas in pietate debet, non atrocitate, consistere.”—Digest. lib. xlviii. tit. 9, § 5.

561.

Valer. Max. vii. 7.

562.

See, on all this subject, Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ch. xliv.; Troplong, Influence du Christianisme sur le Droit, ch. ix.; Denis, Hist. des Idées morales, tome ii. pp. 107-120; Laferrière, Influence du Stoïcisme sur les Jurisconsultes, pp. 37-44.

563.

Ælian, Hist. Var. vi. 7.

564.

Livy, ii. 36; Cicero, De Divin. ii. 26.

565.

Cicero, De Legibus, ii. 8-12. Cato, however, maintained that slaves might on those days be employed on work which did not require oxen.—Wallon, Hist. de l'Esclavage, tome ii. p. 215.

566.

See the Saturnalia of Macrobius.

567.

See his Life by Plutarch, and his book on agriculture.

568.

The number of the Roman slaves has been a matter of much controversy. M. Dureau de la Malle (Econ. politique des Romains) has restricted it more than any other writer. Gibbon (Decline and Fall, chap. ii.) has collected many statistics on the subject, but the fullest examination is in M. Wallon's admirable Hist. de l'Esclavage. On the contrast between the character of the slaves of the Republic and those of the Empire, see Tac. Ann. xiv. 44.

569.

Tacit. Annal. xiii. 32; xiv. 42-45. Wallon, Hist. de l'Esclav. ii. 293. I have already noticed the indignant rising of the people caused by the proposal to execute the 400 slaves of the murdered Pedanius. Their interposition was, however (as Tacitus informs us), unavailing, and the slaves, guarded against rescue by a strong band of soldiers, were executed. It was proposed to banish the freedmen who were in the house, but Nero interposed and prevented it. Pliny notices (Ep. viii. 14) the banishment of the freedmen of a murdered man.

570.

See all this fully illustrated in Wallon. The plays of Plautus and the Roman writers on agriculture contain numerous allusions to the condition of slaves.

571.

Wallon, tome ii. pp. 209-210, 357. There were no laws till the time of the Christian emperors against separating the families of slaves, but it was a maxim of the jurisconsults that in forced sales they should not be separated. (Wallon, tome iii. pp. 55-56.)

572.

Ibid. tome ii. pp. 211-213.

573.

Plin. Epist. viii. 16. It was customary to allow the public or State slaves to dispose of half their goods by will. (Wallon, tome iii. p. 59.)

574.

Wallon, tome ii. p. 419. This appears from an allusion of Cicero, Philip. viii. 11.

575.

Senec. De Clem. i. 18.

576.

Ibid. Ep. xlvii.

577.

Pliny, Ep. viii. 16.

578.

Spartianus, Hadrianus.

579.

Compare Wallon, tome ii. p. 186; tome iii. pp. 65-66. Slaves were only to be called as witnesses in cases of incest, adultery, murder, and high treason, and where it was impossible to establish the crime without their evidence. Hadrian considered that the reality of the crime must have already acquired a strong probability, and the jurisconsult Paul laid down that at least two free witnesses should be heard before slaves were submitted to torture, and that the offer of an accused person to have his slaves tortured that they might attest his innocence should not be accepted.

580.

Numerous and very noble instances of slave fidelity are given by Seneca, De Benefic. iii. 19-27; Val. Max. vi. 8; and in Appian's History of the Civil Wars. See, too, Tacit. Hist. i. 3.

581.

Aristotle had, it is true, declared slavery to be part of the law of nature—an opinion which, he said, was rejected by some of his contemporaries; but he advocated humanity to slaves quite as emphatically as the other philosophers (Economics, i. 5). Epicurus was conspicuous even among Greek philosophers for his kindness to slaves, and he associated some of his own with his philosophical labours. (Diog. Laërt. Epicurus.)

582.

De Benef. iii. 18-28; De Vita Beata, xxiv.; De Clem. i. 18, and especially Ep. xlvii. Epictetus, as might be expected from his history, frequently recurs to the duty. Plutarch writes very beautifully upon it in his treatise De Cohibenda Ira.

583.

Diog. Laërt. Zeno.

584.

Bodin thinks it was promulgated by Nero, and he has been followed by Troplong and Mr. Merivale. Champagny (Les Antonins, tome ii. p. 115) thinks that no law after Tiberius was called lex.

585.

Sueton. Claud. xxv.; Dion Cass. lx. 29.

586.

See Dumas, Secours publics chez les Anciens (Paris, 1813), pp. 125-130.

587.

Senec. De Clem. i. 18.

588.

Senec. De Benef. iii. 22.

589.

Spartian. Hadrianus. Hadrian exiled a Roman lady for five years for treating her slaves with atrocious cruelty. (Digest. lib. i. tit. 6, § 2.)

590.

See these laws fully examined by Wallon, tome iii. pp. 51-92, and also Laferrière, Sur l'Influence du Stoïcisme sur le Droit. The jurisconsults gave a very wide scope to their definitions of cruelty. A master who degraded a literary slave, or a slave musician, to some coarse manual employment, such as a porter, was decided to have ill-treated him. (Wallon, tome iii. p. 62.)

591.

Thus, e.g., Livia called in the Stoic Areus to console her after the death of Drusus (Senec. Ad Marc.). Many of the letters of Seneca and Plutarch are written to console the suffering. Cato, Thrasea, and many others appear to have fortified their last hours by conversation with philosophers. The whole of this aspect of Stoicism has been admirably treated by M. Martha (Les Moralistes de l'Empire Romain).

592.

We have a pleasing picture of the affection philosophers and their disciples sometimes bore to one another in the lines of Persius (Sat. v.) to his master Cornutus.

593.

Grant's Aristotle, vol. i. pp. 277-278.

594.

Champagny, Les Antonins, tome i. p. 405.

595.

Arrian, iii. 22. Julian has also painted the character of the true Cynic, and contrasted it with that of the impostors who assumed the garb. See Neander's Life of Julian (London, 1850), p. 94.

596.

Seneca the rhetorician (father of the philosopher) collected many of the sayings of the rhetoricians of his time. At a later period, Philostratus wrote the lives of eminent rhetoricians, Quintilian discussed their rules of oratory, and Aulus Gellius painted the whole society in which they moved. On their injurious influence upon eloquence, see Petronius, Satyricon, i. 2. Much curious information about the rhetoricians is collected in Martha, Moralistes de l'Empire Romain, and in Nisard, Etudes sur les Poëtes Latins de la Dècadence, art. Juvenal.

597.

“Cependant ces orateurs n'étaient jamais plus admirés que lorsqu'ils avaient le bonheur de trouver un sujet où la louange fut un tour de force.... Lucien a fait l'éloge de la mouche; Fronton de la poussière, de la fumée, de la négligence; Dion Chrysostome de la chevelure, du perroquet, etc. Au cinquième siècle, Synésius, qui fut un grand évêque, fera le panégyrique de la calvitie, long ouvrage où toutes les sciences sont mises à contribution pour apprendre aux hommes ce qu'il y a non-seulement de bonheur mais aussi de mérite à être chauve.”—Martha, Moralistes de l'Empire Romain (ed. 1865), p. 275.

598.

There is a good review of the teaching of Maximus in Champagny, Les Antonins, tome ii. pp. 207-215.

599.

Orat. xv.; De Servitute.

600.

See the singularly charming essay on Dion Chrysostom, in M. Martha's book.

601.

Mr. Buckle, in his admirable chapter on the “Proximate Causes of the French Revolution” (Hist. of Civilisation, vol. i.), has painted this fashionable enthusiasm for knowledge with great power, and illustrated it with ample learning.

602.

The saying of Mme. Dudeffand about Helvétius is well known: “C'est un homme qui a dit le secret de tout le monde.” How truly Helvétius represented this fashionable society appears very plainly from the vivid portrait of it in the Nouvelle Hèloïse, part ii. letter xvii., a masterpiece of its kind.

603.

Musonius tried to stop this custom of applauding the lecturer. (Aul. Gell. Noct. v. i.) The habits that were formed in the schools of the rhetoricians were sometimes carried into the churches, and we have notices of preachers (especially St. Chrysostom) being vociferously applauded.

604.

Thus Gellius himself consulted Favorinus about a perplexing case which he had, in his capacity of magistrate, to determine, and received from his master a long dissertation on the duties of a judge (xiv. 2).

605.

i. 10.

606.

Noct. Att. vi. 13. They called these questions symposiacæ, as being well fitted to stimulate minds already mellowed by wine.

607.

xviii. 2.

608.

We have a curious example of this in a letter of Marcus Aurelius preserved by Gallicanus in his Life of Avidius Cassius.

609.

“Senserunt hoc Stoici qui servis et mulieribus philosophandum esse dixerunt.”—Lact. Nat. Div. iii. 25. Zeno was often reproached for gathering the poorest and most sordid around him when he lectured. (Diog. Laërt. Zeno.)

610.

This decadence was noticed and rebuked by some of the leading philosophers. See the language of Epictetus in Arrian, ii. 19, iv. 8, and of Herod Atticus in Aul. Gell. i. 2, ix. 2. St. Augustine speaks of the Cynics as having in his time sunk into universal contempt. See much evidence on this subject in Friedlænder, Hist. des Mœurs Romaines, tome iv. 378-385.

611.

This movement is well treated by Vacherot, Hist. de l'École d'Alexandrie.

612.

De Superstitione.

613.

Dissertations, x. § 8 (ed. Davis, London, 1740). In some editions this is Diss. xxix.

614.

Dissert. xxxviii.

615.

De Dæmone Socratis.

616.

De Dæmone Socratis. See, on the office of dæmons or genii, Arrian i. 14, and a curious chapter in Ammianus Marcell. xxi. 14. See, too, Plotinus, 3rd Enn. lib. iv.

617.

De Dæmone Socratis.

618.

I should except Plotinus, however, who was faithful in this point to Plato, and was in consequence much praised by the Christian Fathers.

619.

“Omnium malorum maximum voluptas, qua tanquam clavo et fibula anima corpori nectitur; putatque vera quæ et corpus suadet, et ita spoliatur rerum divinarum aspectu.”—Iamblichus, De Secta Pythagor. (Romæ, 1556), p. 38. Plotinus, 1st Enn. vi. 6.

620.

De Sect. Pyth. pp. 36, 37.

621.

Porphyry, Life of Plotinus.

622.

Iamblichus, De Mysteriis. 1.

623.

See, on this doctrine of ecstasy, Vacherot, Hist. de l'École d'Alexandrie, tome i. p. 576, &c.

624.

“Sic habeto, omnibus qui patriam conservaverint, adjuverint, auxerint, certum esse in cœlo ac definitum locum ubi beati ævo sempiterno fruantur.”—Cic. Somn. Scip.

625.

Φῶς, which, according to Plutarch (who here confuses two distinct words), is poetically used for man (De Latenter Vivendo). A similar thought occurs in M. Aurelius, who speaks of the good man as light which only ceases to shine when it ceases to be.

626.

Diss. xxi. § 6.

627.

Iamblichus, De Sect. Pythagoræ, p. 35.

628.

Porphyry, Life of Plotinus, cap. vii.; Plotinus, 1st Enn. iv. 7. See on this subject Degerando, Hist. de la Philos. iii. p. 383.

629.

Thus it was said of Apollonius that in his teaching at Ephesus he did not speak after the manner of the followers of Socrates, but endeavoured to detach his disciples from all occupation other than philosophy.—Philostr. Apoll. of Tyana, iv. 2. Cicero notices the aversion the Pythagoreans of his time displayed to argument: “Quum ex iis quæreretur quare ita esset, respondere solitos, Ipse dixit; ipse autem erat Pythagoras.”—De Nat. Deor. i. 5.

630.

See Vacherot, tome ii. p. 66.

631.

See Degerando, Hist. de la Philosophie, tome iii. pp. 400, 401.

632.

Plotinus, 1st Enn. ix.

633.

See a strong passage, on the universality of this belief, in Plotinus, 1st Enn. i. 12, and Origen, Cont. Cels. vii. A very old tradition represented the Egyptians as the first people who held the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. Cicero (Tusc. Quæst.) says that the Syrian Pherecydes, master of Pythagoras, first taught it. Maximus of Tyre attributes its origin to Pythagoras, and his slave Zamolxis was said to have introduced it into Greece. Others say that Thales first taught it. None of these assertions have any real historical value.

634.

We have a remarkable instance of the clearness with which some even of the most insignificant historians recognised the folly of confining history to the biographies of the Emperors, in the opening chapter of Capitolinus, Life of Macrinus.—Tacitus is full of beautiful episodes, describing the manners and religion of the people.

635.

The passages relating to the Jews in Roman literature are collected in Aubertin's Rapports supposés entre Sénèque et St. Paul. Champagny, Rome et Judée, tome i. pp. 134-137.

636.

Cicero, pro Flacco, 28; Sueton. Claudius, 25.

637.

Juvenal, Sat. xiv.

638.

Hist. v.

639.

Lact. Inst. Div. vii. 3.

640.

See their history fully investigated in Aubertin. Augustine followed Jerome in mentioning the letters, but neither of these writers asserted their genuineness. Lactantius, nearly at the same time (Inst. Div. vi. 24), distinctly spoke of Seneca as a Pagan, as Tertullian (Apol. 50) had done before. The immense number of forged documents is one of the most disgraceful features of the Church history of the first few centuries.

641.

Fleury has written an elaborate work maintaining the connection between the apostle and the philosopher. Troplong (Influence du Christianisme sur le Droit) has adopted the same view. Aubertin, in the work I have already cited, has maintained the opposite view (which is that of all or nearly all English critics) with masterly skill and learning. The Abbé Dourif (Rapports du Stoïcisme et du Christianisme) has placed side by side the passages from each writer which are most alike.

642.

Quoted by St. Augustine.—De Civ. Dei, vi. 11.

643.

xi. 3.

644.

The history of the two schools has been elaborately traced by Ritter, Pressensé, and many other writers. I would especially refer to the fourth volume of Degerando's most fascinating Histoire de la Philosophie.

645.

“Scurra Atticus,” Min. Felix, Octav. This term is said by Cicero to have been given to Socrates by Zeno. (Cic. De Nat. Deor. i. 34.)

646.

Tertull. De Anima, 39.

647.

See especially his Apol. ii. 8, 12, 13. He speaks of the σπερματικὸς λόγος.

648.

See, on all this, Clem. Alex. Strom. v., and also i. 22.

649.

St. Clement repeats this twice (Strom. i. 24, v. 14). The writings of this Father are full of curious, and sometimes ingenious, attempts to trace different phrases of the great philosophers, orators, and poets to Moses. A vast amount of learning and ingenuity has been expended in the same cause by Eusebius. (Præp. Evan. xii. xiii.) The tradition of the derivation of Pagan philosophy from the Old Testament found in general little favour among the Latin writers. There is some curious information on this subject in Waterland's “Charge to the Clergy of Middlesex, to prove that the wisdom of the ancients was borrowed from revelation; delivered in 1731.” It is in the 8th volume of Waterland's works (ed. 1731).

650.

St. Clement (Strom. i.) mentions that some think him to have been Ezekiel, an opinion which St. Clement himself does not hold. See, on the patristic notions about Pythagoras, Legendre, Traité de l'Opinion, tome i. p. 164.

651.

This was the opinion of Julius Firmicus Maternus, a Latin writer of the age of Constantine, “Nam quia Saræ pronepos fuerat ... Serapis dictus est Græco sermone, hoc est Σαρᾶς ἄπο.”—Julius Firmicus Maternus, De Errore Profanarum Religionum, cap. xiv.

652.

Justin Martyr, Apol. i. 54; Trypho, 69-70. There is a very curious collection of Pagan legends that were parallel to Jewish incidents, in La Mothe le Vayer, let. xciii.

653.

Suet. Vesp. 7; Tacit. Hist. iv. 81. There is a slight difference between the two historians about the second miracle. Suetonius says it was the leg, Tacitus that it was the hand, that was diseased. The god Serapis was said to have revealed to the patients that they would be cured by the emperor. Tacitus says that Vespasian did not believe in his own power; that it was only after much persuasion he was induced to try the experiment; that the blind man was well known in Alexandria, where the event occurred, and that eyewitnesses who had no motive to lie still attested the miracle.

654.

The following is a good specimen of the language which may still be uttered, apparently without exciting any protest, from the pulpit in one of the great centres of English learning: “But we have prayed, and not been heard, at least in this present visitation. Have we deserved to be heard? In former visitations it was observed commonly how the cholera lessened from the day of the public humiliation. When we dreaded famine from long-continued drought, on the morning of our prayers the heaven over our head was of brass; the clear burning sky showed no token of change. Men looked with awe at its unmitigated clearness. In the evening was the cloud like a man's hand; the relief was come.” (And then the author adds, in a note): “This describes what I myself saw on the Sunday morning in Oxford, on returning from the early communion at St. Mary's at eight. There was no visible change till the evening.”—Pusey's Miracles of Prayer, preached at Oxford, 1866.

655.

E.g.: “A master of philosophy, travelling with others on the way, when a fearful thunderstorm arose, checked the fear of his fellows, and discoursed to them of the natural reasons of that uproar in the clouds, and those sudden flashes wherewith they seemed (out of the ignorance of causes) to be too much affrighted: in the midst of his philosophical discourse he was struck dead with the dreadful eruption which he slighted. What could this be but the finger of that God who will have his works rather entertained with wonder and trembling than with curious scanning?”—Bishop Hall, The Invisible World, § vi.

656.

Sir C. Lewis On the Credibility of Roman Hist. vol. i. p. 50.

657.

Cic. De Divin. lib. i. c. 1.

658.

“The days on which the miracle [of the king's touch] was to be wrought were fixed at sittings of the Privy Council, and were solemnly notified by the clergy to all the parish churches of the realm. When the appointed time came, several divines in full canonicals stood round the canopy of state. The surgeon of the royal household introduced the sick. A passage of Mark xvi. was read. When the words ‘They shall lay their hands on the sick and they shall recover,’ had been pronounced, there was a pause and one of the sick was brought to the king. His Majesty stroked the ulcers.... Then came the Epistle, &c. The Service may still be found in the Prayer Books of the reign of Anne. Indeed, it was not until some time after the accession of George I. that the University of Oxford ceased to reprint the office of healing, together with the Liturgy. Theologians of eminent learning, ability, and virtue gave the sanction of their authority to this mummery, and, what is stranger still, medical men of high note believed, or affected to believe, it.... Charles II., in the course of his reign, touched near 100,000 persons.... In 1682 he performed the rite 8,500 times. In 1684 the throng was such that six or seven of the sick were trampled to death. James, in one of his progresses, touched 800 persons in the choir of the cathedral of Chester.”—Macaulay's History of England, c. xiv.

659.

One of the surgeons of Charles II. named John Brown, whose official duty it was to superintend the ceremony, and who assures us that he has witnessed many thousands touched, has written an extremely curious account of it, called Charisma Basilicon (London, 1684). This miraculous power existed exclusively in the English and French royal families, being derived, in the first, from Edward the Confessor, in the second, from St. Lewis. A surgeon attested the reality of the disease before the miracle was performed. The king hung a riband with a gold coin round the neck of the person touched; but Brown thinks the gold, though possessing great virtue, was not essential to the cure. He had known cases where the cured person had sold, or ceased to wear, the medal, and his disease returned. The gift was unimpaired by the Reformation, and an obdurate Catholic was converted on finding that Elizabeth, after the Pope's excommunication, could cure his scrofula. Francis I. cured many persons when prisoner in Spain. Charles I., when a prisoner, cured a man by his simple benediction, the Puritans not permitting him to touch him. His blood had the same efficacy; and Charles II., when an exile in the Netherlands, still retained it. There were, however, some “Atheists, Sadducees, and ill-conditioned Pharisees” who even then disbelieved it; and Brown gives the letter of one who went, a complete sceptic, to satisfy his friends, and came away cured and converted. It was popularly, but Brown says erroneously, believed that the touch was peculiarly efficacious on Good Friday. An official register was kept, for every month in the reign of Charles II., of the persons touched, but two years and a half appear to be wanting. The smallest number touched in one year was 2,983 (in 1669); the total, in the whole reign, 92,107. Brown gives numbers of specific cases with great detail. Shakspeare has noticed the power (Macbeth, Act iv. Scene 3). Dr. Johnson, when a boy, was touched by Queen Anne; but at that time few persons, except Jacobites, believed the miracle.

660.

Lucretius, lib. vi. The poet says there are certain seeds of fire in the earth, around the water, which the sun attracts to itself, but which the cold of the night represses, and forces back upon the water. The fountain of Jupiter Ammon, and many others that were deemed miraculous, are noticed by Pliny, Hist. Nat. ii. 106. “Fly not yet; the fount that played In times of old through Ammon's shade, Though icy cold by day it ran, Yet still, like souls of mirth, began To burn when night was near.”—Moore's Melodies.

661.

Tacit. Annal. i. 28. Long afterwards, the people of Turin were accustomed to greet every eclipse with loud cries, and St. Maximus of Turin energetically combated their superstition. (Ceillier, Hist. des Auteurs sacrés, tome xiv. p. 607.)

662.

Suet. Aug. xci.

663.

See the answer of the younger Pliny (Ep. i. 18), suggesting that dreams should often be interpreted by contraries. A great many instances of dreams that were believed to have been verified are given in Cic. (De Divinatione, lib. i.) and Valerius Maximus (lib. i. c. vii.). Marcus Aurelius (Capitolinus) was said to have appeared to many persons after his death in dreams, and predicted the future.

664.

The augurs had noted eleven kinds of lightning with different significations. (Pliny, Hist. Nat. ii. 53.) Pliny says all nations agree in clapping their hands when it lightens (xxviii. 5). Cicero very shrewdly remarked that the Roman considered lightning a good omen when it shone upon his left, while the Greeks and barbarians believed it to be auspicious when it was upon the right. (Cic. De Divinat. ii. 39.) When Constantine prohibited all other forms of magic, he especially authorised that which was intended to avert hail and lightning. (Cod. Theod. lib. ix. tit. xvi. 1. 3.)

665.

Suet. Aug. xc.

666.

Ibid. Tiber. lxix. The virtue of laurel leaves, and of the skin of a sea-calf, as preservatives against lightning, are noticed by Pliny (Hist. Nat. ii. 56), who also says (xv. 40) that the laurel leaf is believed to have a natural antipathy to fire, which it shows by its angry crackling when in contact with that element.

667.

Suet. Calig. ii.

668.

Suet. Jul. Cæs. lxxxviii.

669.

Plin. Hist. Nat. ii. 23.

670.

“Prodigia eo anno multa nuntiata sunt, quæ quo magis credebant simplices ac religiosi homines eo plura nuntiabantur” (xxiv. 10). Compare with this the remark of Cicero on the oracles: “Quando autem illa vis evanuit? An postquam homines minus creduli esse cœperunt?” (De Div. ii. 57.)

671.

This theory, which is developed at length by the Stoic, in the first book of the De Divinatione of Cicero, grew out of the pantheistic notion that the human soul is a part of the Deity, and therefore by nature a participator in the Divine attribute of prescience. The soul, however, was crushed by the weight of the body; and there were two ways of evoking its prescience—the ascetic way, which attenuates the body, and the magical way, which stimulates the soul. Apollonius declared that his power of prophecy was not due to magic, but solely to his abstinence from animal food. (Philost. Ap. of Tyana, viii. 5.) Among those who believed the oracles, there were two theories. The first was that they were inspired by dæmons or spirits of a degree lower than the gods. The second was, that they were due to the action of certain vapours which emanated from the caverns beneath the temples, and which, by throwing the priestess into a state of delirium, evoked her prophetic powers. The first theory was that of the Platonists, and it was adopted by the Christians, who, however, changed the signification of the word dæmon. The second theory, which appears to be due to Aristotle (Baltus, Réponse à l'Histoire des Oracles, p. 132), is noticed by Cic. De Div. i. 19; Plin. H. N. ii. 95; and others. It is closely allied to the modern belief in clairvoyance. Plutarch, in his treatise on the decline of the oracles, attributes that decline sometimes to the death of the dæmons (who were believed to be mortal), and sometimes to the exhaustion of the vapours. The oracles themselves, according to Porphyry (Fontenelle, Hist. des Oracles, pp. 220-222, first ed.), attributed it to the second cause. Iamblichus (De Myst. § iii. c. xi.) combines both theories, and both are very clearly stated in the following curious passage: “Quamquam Platoni credam inter deos atque homines, natura et loco medias quasdam divorum potestates intersitas, easque divinationes cunctas et magorum miracula gubernare. Quin et illud mecum reputo, posse animum humanum, præsertim, puerilem et simplicem, seu carminum avocamento, sive odorum delenimento, soporari, et ad oblivionem præsentium externari: et paulis per remota corporis memoria, redigi ac redire ad naturam suam, quæ est immortalis scilicet et divina; atque ita veluti quodam sopore, futura rerum præsagire.”—Apuleius, Apolog.

672.

Aul. Gell. Noct. ii. 28. Florus, however (Hist. i. 19), mentions a Roman general appeasing the goddess Earth on the occasion of an earthquake that occurred during a battle.

673.

Ælian, Hist. Var. iv. 17.

674.

Hist. Nat. ii. 81-86.

675.

Ibid. ii. 9.

676.

Ibid. ii. 23.

677.

I have referred in the last chapter to a striking passage of Am. Marcellinus on this combination. The reader may find some curious instances of the superstitions of Roman sceptics in Champagny, Les Antonins, tome iii. p. 46.

678.

viii. 19. This is also mentioned by Lucretius.

679.

viii. 1.

680.

viii. 50. This was one of the reasons why the early Christians sometimes adopted the stag as a symbol of Christ.

681.

xxix. 23.

682.

xxxii. 1.

683.

vii. 2.

684.

xxviii. 7. The blind man restored to sight by Vespasian was cured by anointing his eyes with spittle. (Suet. Vesp. 7; Tacit. Hist. iv. 81.)

685.

Ibid. The custom of spitting in the hand before striking still exists among pugilists.

686.

ii. 101.

687.

Legendre, Traité de l'Opinion, tome ii. p. 17. The superstition is, however, said still to linger in many sea-coast towns.

688.

Lucian is believed to have died about two years before Marcus Aurelius.

689.

See his very curious Life by Philostratus. This Life was written at the request of Julia Domna, the wife of Septimus Severus, whether or not with the intention of opposing the Gospel narrative is a question still fiercely discussed. Among the most recent Church historians, Pressensé maintains the affirmative, and Neander the negative. Apollonius was born at nearly the same time as Christ, but outlived Domitian. The traces of his influence are widely spread through the literature of the empire. Eunapius calls him “Ἀπολλώνιος ὁ ἐκ Τυάνων, οὐκέτι φιλόσοφος ἀλλ᾽ ἦν τι θεῶν τε καὶ ἀνθρώπου μέσον.”—Lives of the Sophists. Xiphilin relates (lxvii. 18) the story, told also by Philostratus, how Apollonius, being at Ephesus, saw the assassination of Domitian at Rome. Alexander Severus placed (Lampridius Severus) the statue of Apollonius with those of Orpheus, Abraham, and Christ, for worship in his oratory. Aurelian was reported to have been diverted from his intention of destroying Tyana by the ghost of the philosopher, who appeared in his tent, rebuked him, and saved the city (Vopiscus, Aurelian); and, lastly, the Pagan philosopher Hierocles wrote a book opposing Apollonius to Christ, which was answered by Eusebius. The Fathers of the fourth century always spoke of him as a great magician. Some curious passages on the subject are collected by M. Chassang, in the introduction to his French translation of the work of Philostratus.

690.

See his defence against the charge of magic. Apuleius, who was at once a brilliant rhetorician, the writer of an extremely curious novel (The Metamorphoses, or Golden Ass), and of many other works, and an indefatigable student of the religious mysteries of his time, lived through the reigns of Hadrian and his two successors. After his death his fame was for about a century apparently eclipsed; and it has been noticed as very remarkable that Tertullian, who lived a generation after Apuleius, and who, like him, was a Carthaginian, has never even mentioned him. During the fourth century his reputation revived, and Lactantius, St. Jerome, and St. Augustine relate that many miracles were attributed to him, and that he was placed by the Pagans on a level with Christ, and regarded by some as even a greater magician. See the sketch of his life by M. Bétolaud prefixed to the Panckoucke edition of his works.

691.

Life of Alexander. There is an extremely curious picture of the religious jugglers, who were wandering about the Empire, in the eighth and ninth books of the Metamorphoses of Apuleius. See, too, Juvenal, Sat. vi. 510-585.

692.

Porphyry's Life of Plotinus.

693.

Eunapius, Porph.

694.

Ibid. Iamb. Iamblichus himself only laughed at the report.

695.

Eunapius, Iamb.

696.

See her life in Eunapius, Œdescus. Ælian and the rhetorician Aristides are also full of the wildest prodigies. There is an interesting dissertation on this subject in Friedlænder (Trad. Franc. tome iv. p. 177-186).

697.

“Credat Judæus Apella.”—Hor. Sat. v. 100.

698.

This appears from all the writings of the Fathers. There were, however, two forms of Pagan miracles about which there was some hesitation in the early Church—the beneficent miracle of healing and the miracle of prophecy. Concerning the first, the common opinion was that the dæmons only cured diseases they had themselves caused, or that, at least, if they ever (in order to enthral men more effectually) cured purely natural diseases, they did it by natural means, which their superior knowledge and power placed at their disposal. Concerning prophecy, it was the opinion of some of the Fathers that intuitive prescience was a Divine prerogative, and that the prescience of the dæmons was only acquired by observation. Their immense knowledge enabled them to forecast events to a degree far transcending human faculties, and they employed this power in the oracles.

699.

De Origine ac Progressu Idolatriæ (Amsterdam).

700.

This characteristic of early Christian apology is forcibly exhibited by Pressensé, Hist. des trois premiers Siècles, 2me série, tome ii.

701.

The immense number of these forged writings is noticed by all candid historians, and there is, I believe, only one instance of any attempt being made to prevent this pious fraud. A priest was degraded for having forged some voyages of St. Paul and St. Thecla. (Tert. De Baptismo, 17.)

702.

Apol. i.

703.

Strom. vi. c. 5.

704.

Origen, Cont. Cols. v.

705.

Oratio (apud Euseb.) xviii.

706.

De Civ. Dei, xviii. 23.

707.

Constantine, Oratio xix. “His testimoniis quidam revicti solent eo confugere ut aiant non esse illa carmina Sibyllina, sed a nostris conficta atque composita.”—Lactant. Div. Inst. iv. 15.

708.

Antonius Possevinus, Apparatus Sacer (1606), verb. “Sibylla.”

709.

This subject is fully treated by Middleton in his Free Enquiry, whom I have closely followed.

710.

Irenæus, Contr. Hæres. ii. 32.

711.

Epiphan. Adv. Hæres. ii. 30.

712.

St. Aug. De Civ. Dei, xxii. 8.

713.

This history is related by St. Ambrose in a letter to his sister Marcellina; by St. Paulinus of Nola, in his Life of Ambrose; and by St. Augustine, De Civ. Dei, xxii. 8; Confess. ix. 7.

714.

Plutarch thought they were known by Plato, but this opinion has been much questioned. See a very learned discussion on the subject in Farmer's Dissertation on Miracles, pp. 129-140; and Fontenelle, Hist. des Oracles, pp. 26, 27. Porphyry speaks much of evil dæmons.

715.

Josephus, Antiq. viii. 2, § 5.

716.

This very curious subject is fully treated by Baltus (Réponse à l'Histoire des Oracles, Strasburg, 1707, published anonymously in reply to Van Dale and Fontenelle), who believed in the reality of the Pagan as well as the patristic miracles; by Bingham (Antiquities of the Christian Church, vol. i. pp. 316-324), who thinks the Pagan and Jewish exorcists were impostors, but not the Christians; and by Middleton (Free Enquiry, pp. 80-93), who disbelieves in all the exorcists after the apostolic times. It has also been the subject of a special controversy in England, carried on by Dodwell, Church, Farmer, and others. Archdeacon Church says: “If we cannot vindicate them [the Fathers of the first three centuries] on this article, their credit must be lost for ever; and we must be obliged to decline all further defence of them. It is impossible for any words more strongly to express a claim to this miracle than those used by all the best writers of the second and third centuries.”—Vindication of the Miracles of the First Three Centuries, p. 199. So, also, Baltus: “De tous les anciens auteurs ecclésiastiques, n'y en ayant pas un qui n'ait parlé de ce pouvoir admirable que les Chrétiens avoient de chasser les démons” (p. 296). Gregory of Tours describes exorcism as sufficiently common in his time, and mentions having himself seen a monk named Julian cure by his words a possessed person. (Hist. iv. 32.)

717.

Vit. Hilar. Origen notices that cattle were sometimes possessed by devils. See Middleton's Free Enquiry, pp. 88, 89.

718.

The miracle of St. Babylas is the subject of a homily by St. Chrysostom, and is related at length by Theodoret, Sozomen, and Socrates. Libanius mentions that, by command of Julian, the bones of St. Babylas were removed from the temple. The Christians said the temple was destroyed by lightning; the Pagans declared it was burnt by the Christians, and Julian ordered measures of reprisal to be taken. Amm. Marcellinus, however, mentions a report that the fire was caused accidentally by one of the numerous candles employed in the ceremony. The people of Antioch defied the emperor by chanting, as they removed the relics, “Confounded be all they that trust in graven images.”

719.

See the Life of Gregory Thaumaturgus, by Gregory of Nyssa. St. Gregory the Great assures us (Dial. iii. 10) that Sabinus, Bishop of Placentia, wrote a letter to the river Po, which had overflowed its banks and flooded some church lands. When the letter was thrown into the stream the waters at once subsided.