The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic by Arthur Gilman (story read aloud .txt) 📕

XV.

Pompey the principal citizen—Crassus feeds the people at ten thousand tables—How the pirates caught Cæsar, and how Cæsar caught the pirates —Gabinius makes a move—The Manilian law sets Pompey further on—

Mithridates fights and flees—Times of treasons, stratagems, and spoils—Catiline plots—The sacrilege of Clodius—Cæsar pushes himself to the front—The last agrarian law—Cæsar’s success in Gaul—

Vercingetorix appears—Cæsar’s conquests.

XVI.

HOW THE TRIUMVIRS CAME TO UNTIMELY ENDS

Pompey builds a theatre—Crassus must make his mark—Cato against Cæsar—Curio helps Cæsar—Solemn jugglery of the pontiffs—Curio warm enough—At the Rubicon—Crossing the little river—Pompey stamps in vain—Cato flees from Rome—Metellus stands aside—Pompey killed—

Veni, vidi, vici—Honors and plans of Cæsar—The calendar reformed—Cæsar has too much ambition—‘T was one of those coronets—

The Ides of March—Antony, the actor—Antony the chief man in Rome—

What next?.

XVII.

HOW THE REPUBLIC BECAME AN EMPIRE

How Octavius became a Cæsar—Agrippa and Cicero give him their help—

Octavius wins the soldiers, and Cicero launches his Philippics—Antony, Lepidus, and Octavius become Triumvirs—Their first work a bloody one—

Cicero falls—Brutus and Cassius defeated at Philippi—Antony forgets Fulvia—Antony and Octavius quarrel and meet for discussion at Tarentum—How Horace travelled to Brundusium—The duration of the Triumvirate extended five years—Cleopatra beguiles Antony a second time—The great battle off Actium—Octavius wins complete power, and a new era begins—The Republic ends.

XVIII.

SOME MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE ROMAN PEOPLE

How did these people live?—The first Roman house—The vestibule and the dark room—The dining-room and the parlor—Rooms for pictures and books—Cooking taken out of the atrium—How the houses were heated and lighted—Life in a villa—The extravagance of the pleasure villa—When a man and a woman had agreed to marry—How the bride dressed and what the groom did—The wife’s position and work—The stola and the toga—Foot-gear from soccus to cothurnus—Breakfast, luncheon, and dinner—The formal dinner—How the Romans travelled, and how they sought office—The law and its penalties.

XIX.

Grecian influence on Roman mental culture—Textbooks—Cato and Varro on education—Dictation and copy-books—The early writers—Fabius Pictor—

Plautus—Terence—Atellan plays—Cicero’s works—Varro’s works—Cæsar and Catullus—Lucretius—Ovid and Tibullus—Sallust—Livy—Horace—

Cornelius Nepos—Virgil and his works—Life at the villa of Mæcenas.

XX.

THE ROMAN REPUBLICANS SERIOUS AND GAY

The will of the gods sought for—The first temples—Festivals in the first month—Vinalia and Saturnalia—Fires of Vulcan and Vesta—

Matronly and family services—No mythology at first—Colleges of priests needed—An incursion of Greek philosophers—Games of childhood —Checkers and other games of chance—The people cry for games—Games in the circus—The amphitheatre invented—Men and beasts fight—Funeral ceremonies—Charon paid—The mourning procession—Inurning the ashes —The columbarium—The Roman May-day—Change from rustic simplicity to urban orgies.

INDEX.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

VIEW OF THE COLOSSEUM AND PORTION OF MODERN ROME

THE PLAIN OF TROY IN MODERN TIMES

ROMAN GIRLS WITH A STYLUS AND WRITING-TABLET

A ROMAN ALTAR MONUMENT OF THE HORATII AND THE CURIATII MOUTH OF THE CLOACA MAXIMA AT THE TIBER, AND THE SO-CALLED

ROMAN SOLDIERS, COSTUMES AND ARMOR

A PHOENICIAN VESSEL (TRIREME)

TERENCE, THE LAST ROMAN COMIC POET

ACTORS’ MASKS

PLAN OF A ROMAN CAMP IN THE TIME OF THE REPUBLIC

POMPEY (CNEIUS POMPEIUS MAGNUS)

CAIUS JULIUS CÆSAR

TRIUMPHAL PROCESSION OF A ROMAN GENERAL

THE FORUM ROMANUM IN MODERN TIMES

ITALIAN AND GERMAN ALLIES, COSTUMES AND ARMOR

CLEOPATRA’S SHOW SHIP

RUINS OF THE COLOSSEUM, SEEN FROM THE PALATINE HILL

THE STORY OF ROME.

I.

ONCE UPON A TIME.

Once upon a time, there lived in a city of Asia Minor, not far from Mount Ida, as old Homer tells us in his grand and beautiful poem, a king who had fifty sons and many daughters. How large his family was, indeed, we cannot say, for the storytellers of the olden time were not very careful to set down the actual and exact truth, their chief object being to give the people something to interest them. That they succeeded well in this respect we know, because the story of this old king and his great family of sons and daughters has been told and retold thousands of times since it was first related, and that was so long ago that the bard himself has sometimes been said never to have lived at all. Still; somebody must have existed who told the wondrous story, and it has always been attributed to a blind poet, to whom the name Homer has been given.

The place in which the old king and his great family lived was Ilium, though it is better known as Troja or Troy, because that is the name that the Roman people used for it in later times. One of the sons of Priam, for that was the name of this king, was Paris, who, though very handsome, was a wayward and troublesome youth. He once journeyed to Greece to find a wife, and there fell in love with a beautiful daughter of Jupiter, named Helen. She was already married to Menelaus, the Prince of Lacedæmonia (brother of another famous hero, Agamemnon), who had most hospitably entertained young Paris, but this did not interfere with his carrying her off to Troy. The wedding journey was made by the roundabout way of Phoenicia and Egypt, but at last the couple reached home with a large amount of treasure taken from the hospitable Menelaus.

This wild adventure led to a war of ten years between the Greeks and King Priam, for the rescue of the beautiful Helen. Menelaus and some of his countrymen at last contrived to conceal themselves in a hollow wooden horse, in which they were taken into Troy. Once inside, it was an easy task to open the gates and let the whole army in also. The city was then taken and burned. Menelaus was naturally one of the first to hasten from the smoking ruins, though he was almost the last to reach his home. He lived afterwards for years in peace, health, and happiness with the beautiful wife who had cost him so much suffering and so many trials to regain.

[Illustration: THE PLAINS OF TROY IN MODERN TIMES.]

Among the relatives of King Priam was one Anchises, a descendant of Jupiter, who was very old at the time of the war. He had a valiant son, however, who fought well in the struggle, and the story of his deeds was ever afterwards treasured up among the most precious narratives of all time. This son was named Æneas, and he was not only a descendant of Jupiter, but also a son of the beautiful goddess Venus. He did not take an active part in the war at its beginning, but in the course of time he and Hector, who was one of the sons of the king, became the most prominent among the defenders of Troy. After the destruction of the city, he went out of it, carrying on his shoulders his aged father, Anchises, and leading by the hand his young son, Ascanius, or Iulus, as he was also called. He bore in his hands his household gods, called the Penates, and began his now celebrated wanderings over the earth. He found a resting-place at last on the farther coast of the Italian peninsula, and there one day he marvellously disappeared in a battle on the banks of the little brook Numicius, where a monument was erected to his memory as “The Father and the Native God.” According to the best accounts, the war of Troy took place nearly twelve hundred years before Christ, and that is some three thousand years ago now. It was before the time of the prophet Eli, of whom we read in the Bible, and long before the ancient days of Samuel and Saul and David and Solomon, who seem so very far removed from our times. There had been long lines of kings and princes in China and India before that time, however, and in the hoary land of Egypt as many as twenty dynasties of sovereigns had reigned and passed away, and a certain sort of civilization had flourished for two or three thousand years, so that the great world was not so young at that time as one might at first think If only there had been books and newspapers in those olden days, what revelations they would make to us now! They would tell us exactly where Troy was, which some of the learned think we do not know, and we might, by their help, separate fact from fiction in the immortal poems and stories that are now our only source of information. It is not for us to say that that would be any better for us than to know merely what we do, for poetry is elevating and entertaining, and stirs the heart; and who could make poetry out of the columns of a newspaper, even though it were as old as the times of the Pharaohs? Let us, then, be thankful for what we have, and take the beginnings of history in the mixed form of truth and fiction, following the lead of learned historians who are and long have been trying to trace the true clue of fact in the labyrinth of poetic story with which it is involved.

When the poet Milton sat down to write the history of that part of Britain now called England, as he expressed it, he said: “The beginning of nations, those excepted of whom sacred books have spoken, is to this day unknown. Nor only the beginning, but the deeds also of many succeeding ages, yes, periods of ages, either wholly unknown or obscured or blemished with fables.” Why this is so the great poet did not pretend to tell, but he thought that it might be because people did not know how to write in the first ages, or because their records had been lost in wars and by the sloth and ignorance that followed them.

Perhaps men did not think that the records of their own times were worth preserving when they reflected how base and corrupt, how petty and perverse such deeds would appear to those who should come after them. For whatever reason, Milton said that it had come about that some of the stories that seemed to be the oldest were in his day regarded as fables; but that he did not intend to pass them over, because that which one antiquary admitted as true history, another exploded as mere fiction, and narratives that had been once called fables were afterward found to “contain in them many footsteps and reliques of something true,” as what might be read in poets “of the flood and giants, little believed, till undoubted witnesses taught us that all was not feigned.”

For such reasons Milton determined to tell over the old stories, if for no other purpose than that they might be of service to the poets and romancers who knew how to use them judiciously. He said that he did not intend even to stop to argue and debate disputed questions, but, “imploring divine assistance,” to relate, “with plain and lightsome brevity,” those things worth noting.

After all this preparation Milton began his history of England at the Flood, hastily recounted the facts