The History of Rome by Theodor Mommsen (autobiographies to read txt) 📕

weighing on an average 15 grammes of silver, was made equal to 3 Roman -denarii-, which only weigh about 12 grammes; the -cistophorus- of Asia Minor was according to the value of silver above 3, according to the legal tariff =2 1/2 -denarii-; the Rhodian half -drachma- according to the value of silver=3/4, according to the legal tariff = 5/8 of a -denarius-, and so on.

117. III. III. Illyrian Piracy

118. The identity of this edict drawn up perhaps by Marcus Flavius (Macrob. Sat. i. 14, 2) and the alleged treatise of Caesar, De Stellis, is shown by the joke of Cicero (Plutarch, Caes. 59) that now the Lyre rises according to edict.

We may add that it was known even before Caesar that the solar year of 365 days 6 hours, which was the basis of the Egyptian calendar, and which he made the basis of his, was somewhat too long. the most exact calculation of the tropical year which the ancient world was acquainted with, that of Hipparchus, put it at 365 d. 5 h. 52' 12"; the true length is 365 d. 5 h. 48' 48".

119. Caesar stayed in Rome in April and Dec. 705, on each occasion for a few days; from Sept. to Dec. 707; some four months in the autumn of the year of fifteen months 708, and from Oct. 709 to March 710.

Notes for Chapter XII

1. V. VIII. Clodius

2. III. XIV. Cato's Encyclopedia

3. These form, as is well known, the so-called seven liberal arts, which, with this distinction between the three branches of discipline earlier naturalized in Italy and the four subsequently received, maintained their position throughout the middle ages.

4. IV. XII. Latin Instruction

5. Thus Varro (De R. R. i. 2) says: -ab aeditimo, ut dicere didicimus a patribus nostris; ut corrigimur ab recenlibus urbanis, ab aedituo-.

6. The dedication of the poetical description of the earth which passes under the name of Scymnus is remarkable in reference to those relations. After the poet has declared his purpose of preparing in the favourite Menandrian measure a sketch of geography intelligible for scholars and easy to be learned by heart, he dedicates—as Apollodorus dedicated his similar historical compendium to Attalus Philadelphus king of Pergamus

—athanaton aponemonta dexan Attalo teis pragmateias epigraphein eileiphoti— —

his manual to Nicomedes III king (663?-679) of Bithynia:

—ego d' akouon, dioti ton non basileon monos basilikein chreistoteita prosphereis peiran epethumeis autos ep' emautou labein kai paragenesthai kai ti basileus est' idein, dio tei prothesei sumboulon exelexamein … ton Apollena ton Didumei… ou dei schedon malista kai pepeismenos pros sein kata logon eika (koinein gar schedon tois philomathousin anadedeichas) estian—.

7. IV. XIII. Historical Composition

8. V. XII. Greek Instruction

9. Cicero testifies that the mime in his time had taken the place of the Atellana (Ad Fam. ix. 16); with this accords the fact, that the -mimi- and -mimae- first appear about the Sullan epoch (Ad Her. i. 14, 24; ii. 13, 19; Atta Fr. 1 Ribbeck; Plin. H. N. vii. 43, 158; Plutarch, Sull. 2, 36). The designation -mimus-, however, is sometimes inaccurately applied to the comedian generally. Thus the -mimus- who appeared at the festival of Apollo in 542-543 (Festus under -salva res est-; comp. Cicero, De Orat. ii. 59, 242) was evidently nothing but an actor of the -palliata-, for there was at this period no room in the development of the Roman theatre for real mimes in the later sense.

With the mimus of the classical Greek period—prose dialogues, in which -genre- pictures, particularly of a rural kind, were presented—the Roman mimus had no especial relation.

10. With the possession of this sum, which constituted the qualification for the first voting-class and subjected the inheritance to the Voconian law, the boundary line was crossed which separated the men of slender means (-tenuiores-) from respectable people. Therefore the poor client of Catullus (xxiii. 26) beseeches the gods to help him to this fortune.

11. In the "Descensus ad Inferos" of Laberius all sorts of people come forward, who have seen wonders and signs; to one there appeared a husband with two wives, whereupon a neighbour is of opinion that this is still worse than the vision, recently seen by a soothsayer in a dream, of six aediles. Caesar forsooth desired— according to the talk of the time—to introduce polygamy in Rome (Suetonius, Caes. 82) and he nominated in reality six aediles instead of four. One sees from this that aberius understood how to exercise the fool's privilege and Caesar how to permit the fool's freedom.

12. V. VIII. Attempts of the Regents to Check It

13. V. XI. The Poor

14. IV. XIII. Dramatic Arrangements

15. He obtained from the state for every day on which he acted 1000 -denarii- (40 pounds) and besides this the pay for his company. In later years he declined the honorarium for himself.

16. Such an individual apparent exception as Panchaea the land of incense (ii. 417) is to be explained from the circumstance that this had passed from the romance of the Travels of Euhemerus already perhaps into the poetry of Ennius, at any rate into the poems of Lucius Manlius (iv. 242; Plin. H. N. x. a, 4) and thence was well known to the public for which Lucretius wrote.

17. III. XIV. Moral Effect of Tragedy

18. This naively appears in the descriptions of war, in which the seastorms that destroy armies, and the hosts of elephants that trample down those who are on their own side—pictures, that is, from the Punic wars—appear as if they belong to the immediate present. Comp. ii. 41; v. 1226, 1303, 1339.

19. "No doubt," says Cicero (Tusc. iii. 19, 45) in reference to Ennius, "the glorious poet is despised by our reciters of Euphorion." "I have safely arrived," he writes to Atticus (vii. 2 init.), "as a most favourable north wind blew for us across from Epirus. This spondaic line you may, if you choose, sell to one of the new-fashioned poets as your own" (-ita belle nobis flavit ab Epiro lenissumus Onchesmites. Hunc- —spondeiazonta— -si cui voles —ton neoteron— pro tuo vendito-).

20. V. VIII. Literature of the Opposition

21. "For me when a boy," he somewhere says, "there sufficed a single rough coat and a single under-garment, shoes without stockings, a horse without a saddle; I had no daily warm bath, and but seldom a river-bath." On account of his personal valour he obtained in the Piratic war, where he commanded a division of the fleet, the naval crown.

22. V. X. The Pompeians in Spain

23. There is hardly anything more childish than Varro's scheme of all the philosophies, which in the first place summarily declares all systems that do not propose the happiness of man as their ultimate aim to be nonexistent, and then reckons the number of philosophies conceivable under this supposition as two hundred and eighty-eight. The vigorous man was unfortunately too much a scholar to confess that he neither could nor would be a philosopher, and accordingly as such throughout life he performed a blind dance- not altogether becoming—between the Stoa, Pythagoreanism, and Diogenism.

24. On one occasion he writes, "-Quintiforis Clodii foria ac poemata ejus gargaridians dices; O fortuna, O fors fortuna-!" And elsewhere, "-Cum Quintipor Clodius tot comoedias sine ulla fecerit Musa, ego unum libellum non 'edolem' ut ait Ennius?-" This not otherwise known Clodius must have been in all probability a wretched imitator of Terence, as those words sarcastically laid at his door "O fortuna, O fors fortuna!" are found occurring in a Terentian comedy.

The following description of himself by a poet in Varro's
 —Onos Louras—,

   -Pacuvi discipulus dicor, porro is fuit Enni,
   Ennius Musarum; Pompilius clueor-

might aptly parody the introduction of Lucretius (p. 474), to whom Varro as a declared enemy of the Epicurean system cannot have been well disposed, and whom he never quotes.

25. He himself once aptly says, that he had no special fondness for antiquated words, but frequently used them, and that he was very fond of poetical words, but did not use them.

26. The following description is taken from the -Marcipor- ("Slave of Marcus"):—

   -Repente noctis circiter meridie
   Cum pictus aer fervidis late ignibus
   Caeli chorean astricen ostenderet,
   Nubes aquali, frigido velo leves
   Caeli cavernas aureas subduxerant,
   Aquam vomentes inferam mortalibus.
   Ventique frigido se ab axe eruperant,
   Phrenetici septentrionum filii,
   Secum ferentes tegulas, ramos, syrus.
   At nos caduci, naufragi, ut ciconiae
   Quarum bipennis fulminis plumas vapor
   Perussit, alte maesti in terram cecidimus-.

In the —'Anthropopolis— we find the lines:

   -Non fit thesauris, non auro pectu' solutum;
   Non demunt animis curas ac relligiones
   Persarum montes, non atria diviti' Crassi-.

But the poet was successful also in a lighter vein. In the -Est Modus Matulae- there stood the following elegant commendation of wine:—

   -Vino nihil iucundius quisquam bibit.
   Hoc aegritudinem ad medendam invenerunt,
   Hoc hilaritatis dulce seminarium.
   Hoc continet coagulum convivia-.

And in the —Kosmotonounei— the wanderer returning home thus concludes his address to the sailors:

   -Delis habenas animae leni,
   Dum nos ventus flamine sudo
   Suavem ad patriam perducit-.

27. The sketches of Varro have so uncommon historical and even poetical significance, and are yet, in consequence of the fragmentary shape in which information regarding them has reached us, known to so few and so irksome to study, that we may be allowed to give in this place a resume of some of them with the few restorations indispensable for making them readable.

The satire Manius (Early Up!) describes the management of a rural household. "Manius summons his people to rise with the sun, and in person conducts them to the scene of their work. The youths make their own bed, which labour renders soft to them, and supply themselves with water-jar and lamp. Their drink is the clear fresh spring, their fare bread, and onions as relish. Everything prospers in house and field. The house is no work of art; but an architect might learn symmetry from it. Care is taken of the field, that it shall not be left disorderly and waste, or go to ruin through slovenliness and neglect; in return the grateful Ceres wards off damage from the produce, that the high-piled sheaves may gladden the heart of the husbandman. Here hospitality still holds good; every one who has but imbibed mother's milk is welcome. the bread-pantry and wine-vat and the store of sausages on the rafters, lock and key are at the service of the traveller, and piles of food are set before him; contented sits the sated guest, looking neither before nor behind, dozing by the hearth in the kitchen. the warmest double-wool sheepskin is spread as a couch for him.

"Here people still as good burgesses obey the righteous law, which neither out of envy injures the innocent, nor out of favour pardons the guilty. Here they speak no evil against their neighbours. Here they trespass not with their feet on the sacred hearth, but honour the gods with devotion and with sacrifices, throw for the house-spirit his little bit of flesh into his appointed little dish, and when the master of the household dies, accompany the bier with the same prayer with which those of his father and of his grandfather were borne forth."

In another satire there appears a "Teacher of the Old" (—Gerontodidaskalos—), of whom the degenerate age seems to stand more urgently in need than of the teacher of youth, and he explains how "once everything in Rome was chaste and pious," and now all things are so entirely changed. "Do my eyes deceive me, or do I see slaves in arms against their masters?—Formerly every one who did not present himself for the levy, was sold on the part of the state into slavery abroad; now the censor who allows cowardice and everything to pass is called [by the aristocracy, III. XI. Separation Of the Orders in the Theatre; IV. X. Shelving of the Censorship, V. III. Renewal of the Censorship; V. VIII. Humiliations of the Republicans] a great citizen, and earns praise because he does not seek to make himself a name by annoying his fellow-citizens.— Formerly the Roman husbandman had his beard shaven once every week; now the rural slave cannot have it fine enough.—Formerly one saw on the estates a corn-granary, which held ten harvests, spacious cellars for the wine-vats and corresponding wine-presses; now the master keeps flocks of peacocks, and causes his doors to be inlaid with African cypress-wood.—Formerly the housewife turned the spindle with the hand and kept at the same time the pot on the hearth in her eye, that the pottage