CHAPTER THE THIRTEENTH.

ON THE PEACEFUL OCCUPATIONS OF THE ROMANS. FROM SCARCITY OF
SUBJECT, NECESSARILY A VERY SHORT CHAPTER.

Æsculapius. Æsculapius.

t is with sincere satisfaction that we turn from the monotonous details of war to the arts of peace; and though it is usually said that the stain of blood can never be wiped out, we are glad to find that the marks and traces of discord are doubtful and few, while the evidences of the nobler pursuits of man are numerous and genuine. Among the most enduring monuments of the art and industry of the Romans, may still be traced the remains of the celebrated Via Appia, or Appian Way, the secret for the formation of which would be invaluable to the inhabitants of our large towns, and particularly to the Paving Boards of the Metropolis. While parts of the Via Appia remain perfect after upwards of twenty centuries, the streets of London are torn to pieces year after year; and it might melt a heart of stone—if stone possessed a heart—to see the granite continually disturbed by the remorseless pickaxe. The Via Appia was constructed of large blocks placed very closely together; and though modern Paving Boards have done their best by laying their heads together to imitate the plan, success has never rewarded their labours.

Not less wonderful than the road of Appius, was the aqueduct that bore his name, and which had solved the question so apparently incapable of solution in our own times, of the means of securing a supply of water to a great Metropolis. Though water was not commonly drunk by the Romans as it is by ourselves, and though the Tiber was purity itself compared with the Thames, the liquid was so clearly or rather so thickly undrinkable, that a supply was brought from a distance of eight miles, in the manner we have mentioned.

While all admit the grandeur of the aqueducts of ancient Rome, objection has been made to their construction as a needless expense; and it has been said, that their lofty arches proved only the height to which folly and extravagance could be carried. Pipes have been suggested as capable of answering every useful purpose; but considering the difficulty of obtaining them sufficiently large, of keeping them always free from obstruction, and other obvious disadvantages, it is doubtful whether the pipe, after payment of the piper, would prove so economical in the main. The aqueduct, indeed, has been recently adopted on a large scale, by a people not likely to retrograde in arts and sciences, though the rapidity with which they go a-head may cause them to run through the whole circle of ingenuity, till the most modern invention, arriving at the same point as the most ancient, affords an illustration of the meeting of extremes. New York now receives its supply of water through an aqueduct,[33] carried on solid masonry, over valleys and rivers, under hills and tunnels, for a distance of forty miles; a proof that when a city has the will to obtain pure water, there is always a way—though it may be forty miles in length—for getting what is required.

In Rome, it had been customary to bore a well where water was wanted, but the water was so impure, that it soon became necessary to let well alone. The science of engineering, aided by that great moral engine, their own energy, enabled the inhabitants to bring their supplies from a considerable distance, and as the aqueducts were gradually sloped, the water followed, as it were, its own inclination in coming to Rome. Filtration was ingeniously provided for, at convenient distances, by reservoirs having two compartments, into one of which the water fell, and passing into the other before returning to the main body, there was time for the deposit of all impurities. Every precaution was taken against the intrusion of those unhappy families of animalculæ, which are continually tearing each other to pieces in every drop of the London element, and whose voracity seems to hold out a faint hope that, as they are continually demolishing each other, they may be all mutually swallowed, before the supply of the Metropolis with pure water is achieved.

During the Censorship of Appius Claudius, the cause of literature, or at least the dignity of the profession of a public writer, was advanced—though, perhaps, we ought rather to say, that official employment was honoured—by the promotion of Cn. Flavius, a scribe, to the Curule Ædileship. This individual appears to have possessed the happy gift of investing dry subjects with the garb of popularity; and he had won considerable reputation by giving the forms of legal actions in a shape that rendered them comprehensible to the general reader. He made law legible in his work on legis actiones, and had assisted the spread of information by an almanack or calendar, in which the dies fasti and nefasti were marked down, and other information afforded which could only have been obtained previously from the pontiffs.

The lawyers and the priests, who were less liberal in those days than in our own, were both enraged with an author who had laid open the mysteries of both professions by a few happy touches of his pen; and on his being called upon to give the public the benefit of his services as a curule ædile, they appealed to the miserable prejudice existing against a man who had shown talent in one line, when called upon to exert his abilities in some new direction. The nobility were especially affected at the prospect of the public service being thrown open to merit alone, instead of gentle or gentile dulness being allowed the sole use and abuse of official honour and emolument. Exclusiveness and illiberality could not, even in those days, wholly prevail, though the opponents of the public writer succeeded in causing him to abandon not only his literary pursuits, but to give up all his books, and thus render himself emblematically on a par with themselves in ignorance, by divesting himself of the types of knowledge on his acceptance of office.

At about the same period other and more important measures were adopted for infusing into the service of the State some of that intellectual vigour which is to be found most abundantly in the main body of the people. The pontiffs and the augurs had been hitherto chosen from the patricians alone, when by the Ogulnian law, passed in the tribuneship of Q. and Cn. Ogulnius, it was enacted that four pontiffs out of eight, and five augurs out of nine—at which the numbers were then fixed—should be plebeians. The science of augury certainly required no particular talent; but, as its professors were held in very high repute, the introduction of the plebeian element into the body, was a triumph for popular principles. The divining rod in an age of superstition was also a very powerful rod in the hands of those who held it; and the privilege of reading or rather interpreting the signs of the times according to the wish of the interpreter, was a source of so much influence among a people guided by omens, that the admission of the plebeians to the exercise of these functions was equivalent to allowing them an important share in the government.

The science of augury is intimately connected with the history of the Romans, for they never took a step of a private or a public nature without consulting the soothsayers, who were, in fact, the fortune-tellers of antiquity. That a nation should place its destinies in such doubtful hands, seems in the present day as absurd as if the Prime Minister, before arranging his measures for a session, were to take counsel with Dr. Francis Moore, and the Opposition were to frame their tactics on the advice of Zadkiel. A glimpse at the nature of the art of augury will demonstrate to the student the ease with which the seer could see exactly the thing he wanted. The subjects of his observation were, first, the clouds, which afforded ample opportunity for obscurity; secondly, the birds, which, when seen to the right, meant exactly opposite to that which they indicated when seen on the left—thus allowing for a good deal to be said on both sides; thirdly, the chickens, who were supposed to give a favourable omen if they ate abundantly—a theory which gave rise to many a tremendous cram; fourthly, the quadrupeds, from which the augurs could easily draw a deduction at all fours with their own wishes; and, fifthly, and last, a miscellaneous class of signs, or incidents, comprising a sneeze, which enabled the augur to lead the sneezer by the nose, or a casualty, such as a tumble, which, in the absence of any other more important sign, the soothsayer was always willing to fall back upon.

A remarkable instance of ignorance and superstition was afforded by the conduct of the Romans, when the city, being in about its four hundred and sixtieth year, was visited by a pestilence. Recourse was had to the Sibylline books for a prescription to get rid of the plague, when the augurs, like a doctor who, unable to cure his patient, orders him abroad, declared that the only thing to be done was to go to Epidaurus, a town in Greece, and bring to Rome the god Æsculapius. Ten ambassadors were despatched on the mission; but after looking in all directions for Æsculapius, they happened to stumble over a stone, in which they were told he was resident. Having been induced to purchase the article at a high price, they were taking it on board their ship, when they fell in with the proprietor of a small menagerie, who, directing their attention to a tame snake in the collection, offered it to them a bargain as the identical Æsculapius they were looking for. The Roman envoys, thinking there might, after all, be nothing in the stone, concluded there might be something in the snake, which began to twine itself affectionately about them; and having been bought and paid for, sagaciously glided through the town, made for the Roman vessel, and coiled himself up like a coil of rope in the cabin of the ambassadors.

On their way home, a storm caused them to put in at Antium, when the snake, who might have been a very good snake, but was a very bad sailor, went ashore, took a turn or two round a palm-tree, hung out there for three days, and then went back to the vessel. On the arrival of the ambassadors at Rome, they began describing at some length the result of their journey, when the snake gave them the slip, and while their tongues were running on, managed to run off to the island in the Tiber. Having looked in vain for the snake in the grass, they built a temple on the spot, in honour of Æsculapius, and the serpent glided on—no one knows where—to the end of his existence.

The wars which had been so exhausting to the almost inexhaustible Sabines, had been scarcely less ruinous to the Romans, and indeed the opening up of so many bones of contention had, to use the words of a recent writer, consumed "the very marrow of the nation."[34] In spite of all their conquests, the people were miserably poor; for destruction, instead of production, had been their occupation during a series of years; and though their wants had been supplied for a time by plunder, scarcity was sure to ensue at last, from a stoppage of the very source of all wealth, the peaceful exercise of industry. The tide of adversity which, in the first instance, overwhelms only the lower ranks, rises, with unerring certainty, until even the highest are absorbed, and few are able, in the end, to keep their heads above water. When circumstances appear hopeless, remedies become desperate, rash legislation ensues, and thus, during the distresses of Rome, the plebs having seceded, a proposal was adopted, in the shape of the Hortensian Law, to allow them to do just as they liked, in order to tempt them back again.

The Ambassadors purchasing Æsculapius. The Ambassadors purchasing Æsculapius.

This was, happily, the last secession of the plebs, who, in their dignified withdrawal, remained completely within the pale of the law, while passing beyond the gates of the city. The intention of the seceders was to get on as they could without the patrician class, leaving the latter to do their best by themselves—a proceeding that had speedily the effect of showing that there is a mutual dependence between all ranks, and that one cannot exist in comfort without the association and support of the other. In Rome, the patricians had played the dangerous game of exercising the rights of their position without fulfilling its duties; and the plebeians finding themselves deprived of their share of the profits of the connection, were quite justified in cutting it. After the passing of the Hortensian Law, the invidious distinction between the patricians and the people was at an end, and the word populus was applied to the whole body of citizens; but with the natural tendency of all classes to level only down to themselves, the Romans who were well to do in the world continued to use the term plebs, or plebecula, in a depreciatory sense, to denote the multitude.

It is true, that some works of great utility were accomplished during the unhappy period to which we have been alluding; and the aqueduct as well as the Via Appia, to both of which we have already referred, were executed at the time stated. Instead, however, of being the result of the free industry of the nation, these undertakings were extorted chiefly from the labour of the Samnite prisoners; so that the Romans may be said to have watered their city with the tears, and paved their road with the sighs,[35] of their miserable captives. The arts made considerable progress, notwithstanding the general poverty, and perhaps the fact, that necessity is the mother of invention, may account for the stimulus given to the skill and ingenuity of the nation. The still existing figure, in which two bronze babies are represented in an attitude of playful satisfaction, deriving sustenance from a bronze wolf, who looks as easy as the hardness of the material will allow, has been assigned to the age alluded to, and the Sarcophagus of Scipio Barbatus, complete even to the ancient funeral verse, which the irreverent might estimate at the value of an old song, belongs, probably, to the same period.

FOOTNOTES:

[33] The Croton Aqueduct, commenced in 1837, and finished in 1842, for conveying water from the river Croton to the City of New York.

[34] Dr. Schmidtz, p. 223

[35] The sigh of a pavier is really a very formidable matter. We always fancy the heart of the poor fellow is in his mouth, whenever we hear him at his labours.