Rome and Athens in the Age of Constantine by Jacob Burckhardt

Between this Christian society and the more educated and noble pagans of the fourth century we insert the description of the great masses of Rome it is presented to us, to be sure not without artful illumination, by Ammianus Marcellinus.

Ammanius begins on the occasion of a commotion because of a shortage of wine, and teaches us, incidentally, that the Roman population was very bibulous; even today there is somewhat more drinking in Rome than in Florence or Naples. The distributions of wine instituted in the time of Constantine did not suffice; anyone with money to spend passed whole nights in the taverns. When it was rumored of the City Prefect Symmachus that he would rather use wine to slake lime than reduce its price his house was set on fire. When Rome was mentioned anywhere, there was at once  talk of riotous drinking houses. Like morra today, dice was the pastime inside and outside the inn and filled all leisure; this was accompanied by jarring cries which penetrated the marrow of all within earshot. If games with tesserae were considered more respectable than those with aleae, Ammanius is of the opinion that the difference is no greater than that between a thief and a highwayman. Unfortunately, he says, gambling companionship was the only bond which still held people together.

 

The ordinary Romans were moreover still a defiant people filled with conscious pride; despite accretions of half a millennium from all lands, there were still many ancient citizen families who prided themselves on such names as Cimessor, Statarius, Cicimbricus, Pordaca, Salsula, and the like, even if they were barefoot. From time to time, at least in the theater, the wild and menacing cry was heard, ‘Out with the foreigners!’ – these foreigners, says Ammanius, who were their sole support and salvation. But the chief cry of Rome was still panem et circenses. As regards bread, there was no more anxious moment than when the corn fleets from Africa were held back by war or adverse winds. On one such occasion the City Prefect Tertullus ( 359)  presented his children to the raging mob as a pledge, and thereby so far calmed them that it was possible to proceed to the ever-green Tiber Island near Ostia, fragrant with roses and adorned with the temple of the Dioscuri (‘The Sons of Zeus’), where the Roman people were accustomed to celebrate a gay festival annually; there Tertullus offered sacrificed to Castor and Pollux, and the sea became calm and a gentle south wind wafted the corn-laden  fleet to the shore. That part of the holiday crowd which was not content with the bread, wine, and pork which had been distributed took places at the vents of cook shops and enjoyed at least the aroma of roasts and other foods.

The Romans were altogether insatiable for anything that might be called a spectacle. In the fourth century state subsidies for the purpose were far from sufficient, and the want was supplied by the munificence of the newly nominated higher officials and of senators. This obligation constituted a very heavy burden upon these persons, who were not necessarily wealthy, for everyone must seek to outdo his predecessors, not  merely out of ambition but even more because of the insatiability of the populace. A great part of the correspondence of Symmaachus is devoted to the anxiety which the necessity of providing entertainment, at the time of his own promotion and that of his relatives on other occasions, caused him. Since Diocletian there was no longer such imperial extravagance in entertainment as had suggested to Carinus the notion of covering half a quarter in the region of the Capitol with a wooden amphitheater, decorating it most sumptuously with precious stones, gold, and ivory, and then display, among other rarities, mountain goats and hippopotamuses, and presenting fights between bears and seals.

The emperor still provided for the buildings, as for example when Constantine carried out a magnificent restoration of the Circus Maximus; but the spectacles themselves had become predominantly the affair of wealthy dignitaries who were required to compensate the state in this fashion and to expend their incomes in return for their immunity from taxation. It was of no avail to leave Rome, the registrars of taxes, as it appears, presented the games in the name of the absent donor in such cases. A man was lucky if he could import the exotic beasts duty-free.

The most important item was always the choice of horses for the Circus; it was in the horse races that the distinguished like the ordinary Roman satisfied his superstitious passion for wager, and where a jockey could acquire the greatest personal glory and every kind of inviolability. Roman taste in these matters had grown so refined that breeds had to be constantly changed; commissioners traversed half the known world to find something new and extraordinary and to transport it carefully to Rome. Symmachus’ letters to these agents could not be more obsequious. For the beast fights in the theaters and the Colosseum and for the hunts (sylvae) in the Circus Maximus there were required gladiators, ‘a band of fighters worse than those of Spartacus.’ Captive barbarians, as for example the Saxons, occasionally appeared, but by now, in keeping with the spirit of the time, fights between animals probably predominated. Here we find the givers of the games in constant embarrassment as to how the requisite animals were be provided – the bears, which sometimes arrived in an emaciated state and sometimes exchanged in transit, the  Libyan lions, the crowds of leopards, Scottish hounds, crocodiles, and even animals whose identity cannot now certainly be determined. There is mention of the Emperor’s helping out with a few elephants after a Persian victory, but this was an exception.

To this same category belongs the scenic decoration of the Circus or a specific theater, for which Symmachus once summoned artists from Sicily. Of Symmachus, we can assume that he only did what his office required and was himself above such interests; but there were as fanatic admirers of individual gladiators in his day as ever there had been in the earlier Empire. The very extensive but somewhat barbarized mosaics in the Villa Borghese representing gladiatorial games and beast fights probably derive from the fourth century; the persons who appear in these mosaics have their names inscribed by their figures. Art now had often to reconcile itself to perpetuating such displays and to decorating entire halls and facades with them. The theater proper still had its ardent admirers also, among them persons bearing great names, like that Junius Messala who, in the age of Constantine, bestowed upon his mimes his entire wealth, including the valuable clothing of his parents. ‘Comedy’ at least still enjoyed a certain interest in Rome, but more among ordinary people, whose greatest pleasure was said to be hissing the actors off the stage, a fate which the actors are said to have sought to avoid by bribery. We may presume that the ‘comedy’ in question is the farce (mimus). Much more important was the pantomime, that is, the ballet, which, according to perhaps a hyperbolic statement, still employed three thousand dancing girls and a large number of musicians.

If our sources are adequate on the subject of bread and circuses, we re left wholly in the dark concerning a thousand other details which are necessary for a complete picture of contemporary Rome. For example, the prime question of the numerical relationship of slaves to freemen cannot be answered even approximately, and attempted estimates vary widely. Here and there a chasm opens before the eyes of the researcher and provides a glimpse into that cross between state factory and slave galley where work was done for the public need. This is the case with the great bakeries which provided for the general distribution of bread.  In the course of time the superintendent of these bakeries (mancipes) built taverns and brothels near by, from which many an imprudent man was suddenly shanghaied into the factory to spend the rest of his life in slave labor; he disappeared completely, and his family regarded him as dead. The Romans must have known of this practice, and the victims were usually foreigners. The officials were informed about it as surely as certain modern governments are informed concerning the impressing of sailors; and if Theodosius put an end to the cruelty on a specific occasion, we may not therefore infer we that it was first discovered at that time.

Ammianus’s account of the life and conduct of the upper classes raises a strong suspicion that that proud and spirited man was unduly irked by a feeling of offended pride. As an Antiochene he had no special justification for depreciating the Romans; but as a courtier of Constantius and Julian his reception in the great Roman families was probably not vert cordial. Many of his complaints are directed against the vices which are ascribed to rich rich and prominent people at all times and in all places; others refer to his own age in general. Ammianus deplores the prodigious passion for gilded honorific states on the part of a class immersed in trivial novelties and complete effeminacy. He scores the habit of refusing to know strangers who have been presented after their first visit, and of making it plain that persons who are seen again after a long absence have not been missed. He describes the unfortunate practice of giving dinner parties only to discharge social obligations – dinner parties at which the nomenclatores ( a sort of master of ceremonies of the slave class) sometimes provide substitutes from the common people for a gratuity.

 Even in Juvenal’s day vanity frequently found an outlet in riding at breakneck speed and in showing a fanatical enthusiasm for one’s own and for the circus horses; this fashion also continued. Many would appear in public only if they were surrounded by a whole procession of servants and domestics; ‘under the command of the majordomos with their staves there marched by the carriage first a company of slave weavers, then the kitchen slaves in black dress, then the other servants of the household, mingled with idle folk from the neighborhood; the procession is closed by an army of eunuchs of every age, from old men to mere lads, all sickly and deformed.’ At home even in the better families, as presently among ourselves, music concealed numerous social gaps. Song and harp sound continuously; ‘instead of the philosopher, the singer was employed’ instead of the rhetor, the teacher of the arts of enjoyment; while libraries were closed tight as a tomb, hydraules (water organ) were constructed and lyres as big as stage-coaches.’ Rage for the theater was characteristic of the higher classes also, and the coquetry of many a lady was comprised in imitating theatrical poses with slight variations. Gestures and bearing continued to be of studied artifice; Ammianus knew a city prefect named Lampadius who took it amiss when the sense of style he displayed in spitting was not properly appreciated. The practice of maintaining clients and parasites was probably not much changed since Juvenal’s day; neither was legacy-hunting among the childless rich and many other similar abuses of the early Empire. But it must be emphasized that despite his sour mood Ammianus has almost nothing to say of the iniquities and enormities which Juvenal excoriates. Christianity contributed little to this improvement; the transformation which caused the new moral standard had already made is appearance in the third century.

This fashionable society is plainly pagan, as can be observed in the first instance by its superstitions. Whenever there was a question of wills and legacies, for example, the haruspices were summoned, to seek a decision in te entrails of animals. Even unbelievers would refuse to walk in the street, take their place at a table, or go to the bath without consulting the ephemeris, or astrological calendar, for the positon of the planets. We know from other sources that the majority of the Senate was pagan until the times of Theodosius. Everything possible was done to maintain the priesthoods and the ceremonies in their complete forms; this endeavor cost Symmachus enormous effort and anxiety. But along with the public sacra, the  most respectable Romans of the fourth century addressed themselves with great enthusiasm to occult worship, and indeed, as we have observed above, in a peculiar amalgamation.  By taking practically all available secret initiations, the individual sought to secure and strengthen himself against the inroads of Christianity.

All things considered, Rome’s pagan Senate may still have been the Emperor’s most respected assembly and society .Despite Ammianus’s slanders, the Senate must still of contained many men- provincials as well as Romans- of the old stalwart Roman spirit, in whose families traditions were cherished which would be sought in vain in Alexandria and Antioch and certainly in Constantinople. Above all, the senators themselves revered the Senate, the asylum mundi totius. They still demanded a specific simple and serious style of eloquence, which would display nothing of the theatrical; always the effort was made to maintain at least the fiction that Rome was still its ancient self and that the Romans were still citizens. These were merely big words, to be sure, but there were men of stature among the senators and it was not their fault if big things did not issue from them. In Symmachus himself the courage of his advocacy for persons oppressed arouses high admiration and, like the patriotism of Eumenius, balances the inevitable flatteries in which he elsewhere indulges. As a gentleman of large and independent stature he was personally above the titles of dignity which were the ambition of so many others.

 

The higher education which prevailed in these circles can no more be judged according to the literal words of Ammianus than can other matters. He allows the Romans no other readings than Juvenal and the imperial history of Marius Maximus, of which we know the first half of the Historia Augustus is a jejune reworking. Of the literary rendezvous at the Temple of Peace (where one of the twenty-eight public libraries was located) there is not much to say, for even Trebellius Pollio could display his wares there. But the circle of friends which Macrobius gathered about himself, the environment in which Symmachus himself moved, shows how much true education still survived in the upper classes. We must not be misled by the pedantry of the former (very useful to us) or by the Plinian preciosity of the latter. The literary age is indeed one of decline, more appropriate for the collection and criticism than for creation.. . .

There was another city in the ancient world Empire, a city which was perhaps never named under Constantine, but concerning whose life and survival our sympathetic curiosity may well be aroused.

The position of ATHENS ha been greatly diminished after the Peloponnesian war, and after the conquest of Sulla it had grown more and more deserted and was reduced to small compass. But the aura of glory which surrounded the city, its easy and pleasant life, the majestic monuments, the reverence for the Attic mysteries, and the awareness of the whole Hellenic world of of its debt to Athens –all of this drew a continual stream of free and educated spirits to the city; philosophers and rhetors appeared, and numerous disciples followed. From the time of Hadrian – the new founder of Athens, as gratitude styled him- study burgeoned into a sort of university, which was made secure by imperial endowments and later became the most important source of livelihood for the impoverished city.

All who cherished antiquity in these late ages must needs love the Athenians. Lucian has his  Nigrinus utter beautiful and moving words concerning this people, among who philosophy and poverty were equally at home, and who were not ashamed of their poverty but regarded themselves as rich and happy in their freedom, the moderation of their life, and in their golden leisure. ‘The climate there is altogether philosophical, the fairest for fair-thinking men; indeed, one who wishes luxury, power, flattery, lies, servitude must live in Rome.’ But not only the Syrian of Samosata, who is otherwise so seldom serious, but also an Alciphron, a Maximus of Tyre, a Libanius of Antioch, and other even later figures burst into flame whenever the Athenians are mentioned; we can never be certain whether in a given case ancient Athens of the period of bloom is thought of or whether the virtues of ancient Athens are discovered or assumed in the contemporary population. Speaking of forgiveness for insults which might be avenged, Libanius says, for example, that such conduct is ‘worthy of the Greeks, the Athenians, and godlike men.’ Heliodorus of Emesa has an Athenian girl who has been captured by Egyptian robbers write: ‘Barbarian love is not of so much worth as Athenian hatred.’ These later pagans, who could not be at ease either in the organized life of Rome or in the Christian Church, adhered to the most sacred site of ancient Greek life with a genuine tenderness. Anyone who could spend his life in that environment counted himself happy.

But the studies for which the sophists and their disciples assembled in Athens bore the stamp of their age all too plainly. Just As Philostratus and Gellius are copious sources for the school of Athens in the early Empire, so are Libanius and Eunapius for its condition the fourth century, and it cannot be said that it had improved in the interval. The one-sided predominance of rhetorical education and the extravagance and mysterious airs of individual Neoplatonists, the vanity of the teachers and the partisanship of their devotees – all of this disrupted the calm of Athens with a peculiar kind of rivalry. The very arrival of the student was a perilous affair; at the Piraeus, if he had not already been encountered at the headland of Sunium, men stood ready to watch for new students to recruit them for one or another lecture hall (didascaleion), even employing threats to change a decision the student might already taken at home. Teachers suddenly appeared at the harbor to make sure of their prey. If a man got safely to Athens, perhaps under the protection of the ship’s captain, he found himself ex[posed to actual violence, not infrequently there were assault, murder, and consequent criminal investigations, and all because of the rivalry of teachers. The student’s country of origin was a matter of great importance; when Eunapius was a student in Athens the easterners adhered to Epiphanius, the Arabs to Diophantus, the men of Pontus to their divine countryman Proaeresius, who also attracted many from Asia Minor, Egypt and Libya. But no student was bound to follow this practice, and moreover the incessant transfers from school to school kept enmities constantly  aflame. The students were divided into armed ‘choruses’ with prostates at their head, their bloody brawls appeared to them ‘of equal value with battles for the fatherland.’ If things went so far that two parties, comprised of teachers and auditors, were required to answer for their deeds before the proconsul of Achaia at Corinth, a regular ceremonious rhetorical context was staged in the presence of the proconsul, especially when it was worthwhile, when the official was ‘quite well educated for a mere Roman.’ There was no sort of comradely feeling. It ha long been imprudent to venture an appearance in public theaters and halls, which might immediately arouse bloody riots. The more prosperous sophists built themselves small theaters in their homes. Eunapius gives us a description of the house of Julianus, which was so equipped: ‘It was a small, modest house, but it breathed  of Hermes and the Muses, so like it was to a sanctuary, with statues of its owner’s friends; the theater was of stone masonry, an imitation of the public theater on a small scale.’ But a teacher who was as poor as Proaeresius, who at first shared only a robe, a cloak and a few carpets with his friend Hephaestion, had to help himself a best he could.

In the ‘choruses’ of the students there were great and deeply rooted abuses. At his first arrival the new student was pledge to a costly and elaborate initiation and permanent obligation under oath, and this not infrequently led to acquaintanceship with usurers. By day there was a great deal of ball playing, by night wanderings and visits to ‘ the sweet singing siren’. Crude and unscrupulous elements thought it a prank to attack unprotected houses in robbery fashion. When Libanius finally  disentangled himself from these ‘fraternities’- not without some difficulty – he took pleasure in peaceful excursions, especially to Corinth. Apparently many still journeyed, as they had done at the time of Philostratus, to the Olympian, Isthmian, and other national festivals, which were even then held in high esteem. But the greatest prize which a zealous pagan could take with him was the Eleusinian initiation.

All this colorful activity took place among the most majestic monuments of the world, in which the noblest o forms and the most significant of historical reminiscences united to produce and inexpressible effect. We no longer know what these works meant to the sophist of the four century and his pupils. It was the period during which one mainspring after another of the Greek genius died, until only hair-splitting dialectic and lifeless compilation remained. The Parthenon of Pallas Athene and the Propylaea looked down upon the city in their ancient and virtually undisturbed majesty; despite the Gothic incursion under Decius and despite the plunder under Constantine, perhaps most of what Pausanias had seen and described in the second century still survived. But the pure harmony of architectural forms, the untrammeled grandeur of the images of  the gods, uttered a language that was no longer wholly intelligible ot the spirit of this age.