semi1la (seeds).
CHAP. VIII)  LITERATURE  UNDER  THE  REVOLUTION	I 5 I
lines; there is in their motion an incalculable "declination" or deviation, an elemental spontaneity that runs through all things and culminates in man's free will.*
All as once formless; but the gradual assortment of the moving atoms by their size and shape produced-without design-air, fire, water, and earth, and out of these the sun and moon, the planets and stars. In the infinity of space new worlds are ever being born, and old worlds are wasting away. The stars are fires set in the ring of ether (a mist of thinnest atoms) that surrounds each planetary system; this cosmic wall of fire constitutes the "flaming ramparts of the world." A portion of the primeval mist broke off from the mass, revolved separately, and cooled to form the earth. Earthquakes are not the growling of deities, but the expansion of subterranean gases and streams. Thunder and lightning are not the voice and breath of a god, but natural results of condensed and clashing clouds. Rain is not the mercy of Jove, but the return to earth of moisture evaporated from it by the sun.
Life does not differ essentially from other matter; it is a product of moving atoms which are individually dead. As the universe took form by the in herent laws of matter, so the earth produced by a purely natural selection all the species and organs of life.
Nothing arises in the body in order that we may use it, but what arises brings forth its own use.H ...  It was no design of the atoms that led them to arrange themselves in order with keen intelligence
...  but because many atoms in infinite time have moved and met in all manner of ways, trying all combinations.... Hence arose the beginnings of great things ... and the generations of living crea tures.15 •••   Many were the monsters that the earth tried to make:
...  some without feet, and others without hands or mouth or face, or with limbs bound to their frames.... Itwas in vain; nature denied them growth, nor could they find food or join in the way of love.... Many kinds of animals must have perished then, unable to forge the chain of procreation . . . for those to which nature gave no [protective] qualities lay at the mercy of others, and were soon destroyed.16
Mind (animus) is an organ precisely like feet or eyes; it is, like them, a tool or function of that soul (anima) or vital breath which is spread as a very fine matter throughout the body, and anim:1tes every part. Upon the highly sensitive atoms that form the mind fall the images or films that per petually emanate from the surfaces of things; this is the source of sensation. Taste, smell, hearing, sight, and touch are caused by particles coming from
Cf. the "indeterminacr" ascribed to the electrons by some physicists of our time.
CAESAR AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. VIII
objects and striking tongue or palate, nostrils, ears, eyes, or skin; all senses are forms of touch. The senses are the final test of truth; if they seem to err, it is only through misinterpretation, and only another sense can correct them. Reason cannot be the test of truth, for reason depends upon experience i.e., sensation.
The soul is neither spiritual nor immortal. It could not move the body unless it too were corporeal; it grows and ages with the body; it is affected like the body by disease, medicine, or wine; its atoms are apparently dis persed when the body dies. Soul without body would be senseless, mean ingless; of what use would soul be without organs of touch, taste, smell, hearing, and sight? Life is given us not in freehold but on loan, and for so long as we can make use of it. When we have exhausted our powers we should leave the table of life as graciously as a grateful guest rising from a feast. Death itself is not terrible; only our fears of the hereafter make it so. But there is no hereafter. Hell is here in the suffering that comes from ignorance, passion, pugnacity, and greed; heaven is here in the sapientum temp/a serena-"the serene temples of the wise." 17
Virtue lies not in the fear of the gods, nor in the timid shunning of pleasure; it lies in the harmonious operation of senses and faculties guided by reason. "Some men wear out their lives for the sake of a statue and fame"; but "the real wealth of man is to live simply with a mind at peace" (vivere parce aequo animo) .18 Better than living stiffly in gilded halls is "to lie in groups upon the soft grass beside a rivulet and under tall trees," 10 or to hear gentle music, or lose one's ego in the love and care of our children. Marriage is good, but passionate love is a madness that strips the mind of clarity and reason. "If one is wounded by the shafts of Venus-whether it be a boy with girlish limbs who launches the shaft, or a woman radiating love from her whole body-he is drawn toward the source of the blow, and longs to unite." 20 No marriage and no society can find a sound basis in such erotic befuddlement.
As Lucretius, exhausting his passions on philosophy, finds no room for romantic love, so he rejects the romantic anthropology of Greek Rousseau ians who had glorified primitive life. Men ,vere hardier then, to be sure; but they dwelt in caves without fire, they mated without marriage, killed with out law, and died of starvation as frequently as people in civilization die of overeating.21 How civilization developed, Lucretius tells in a pretty sum mary of ancient anthropology. Social organization gave man the power to survive animals far stronger than himself. He discovered fire from the friction of leaves and boughs, developed language from gestures, and learned song from the birds; he tamed animals for his use, and himself with marriage
CHAP.Vlll)  LITERATURE  UNDER THE  REVOLUTION	153
and law; he tilled the soil, wove clothing, molded metals into tools; he observed the heavens, measured time, and learned navigation; he improved the art of killing, conquered the weak, and built cities and states. History is a processio,n of states and civilizations rising, prospering, decaying, dying; but each in turn transmits the civilizing heritage of customs, morals, and arts; "like runners in a race they hand on the lamps of life" (et quasi cursores 'Vitai /ampada tradunt).22
All things that grow decay: organs, organisms, families, states, races, planets, stars; only the atoms never die. The forces of creation and develop ment are balanced by the forces of destruction in a vast diastole and systole of life and death. In nature there is evil as well as good; suffering, even un merited, comes to every life, and dissolution dogs the steps of every evolu tion. Our earth itself is dying: earthquakes are breaking it up. The land is becoming exhausted, rains and rivers erode it, and carry even the mountains at last into the sea. Someday our whole stellar system will suffer a like mortality; "the walls of the sky will be stormed on every side, and will collapse into a crumbling ruin." 23 But the very moment of mortality betrays the invincible vitality of the world. "The wailing of the newborn infant is mingled with the dirge sung for the dead." 2-1 New systems form, new stars and planets, another earth, and fresher life. Evolution begins again.
Looking back overthis "most marvelous performance in all antique litera ture," 25 we may first recognize its shortcomings: the chaos of its contents, left unrevised by the poet's early death; the repetition of phrases, lines, whole passages; the conception of sun, moon, and stars as no larger than we see them; 26 the inability of the system to explain how dead atoms became life and consciousness; the insensitiveness to the insights, consolations, inspira tions, and moving poetry of faith, and the moral and social functions of religion. But how light these faults are in the scale against the brave attempt at a rational interpretation of the universe, of history, of religion, of disease; * the picture of nature as a world oflaw, in which matter and motion are never diminished or increased; the grandeur of the theme and the nobility of its treatment; the sustained power of imagination that feels everywhere "the majesty of things," and lifts the visions of Empedocles, the science of Democritus, and the ethics of Epicurus into some of the loftiest poetry that any age has known. Here was a language still rough and immature, almost devoid 2s yet of philosophical or scientific terms; Lucretius does not merely create a new vocabulary, he forces the old speech into new channels of
"There are many seeds of things that suppon our life; and on the other hand there must be many flying about that make for disease and death." :?,
154	CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. VIII
rhythm and grace; and, while molding the hexameter into an unequaled masculinity of power, reaches now and then the mellow tenderness and fluency of Virgil. The sustained vitality of his poem shows Lucretius as one who amid all sufferings and disappointments enjoyed and exhausted life almost from birth to death.
How did he die? Saint Jerome reports that "Lucretius was driven mad by a love philter, after he had written several books. . . . He died by his own hand in his forty-fourth year." 28 The story is uncorroborated, and has been much doubted; no saint could be trusted to give an objective account of Lucretius. Some critics have found support for the story in the unnatural tension of the poem, its poorly organized contents, and its sudden end; 29 but one need not be a Lucretius to be excitable, disorderly, or dead.
Like Euripides, Lucretius is a modern; his thought and feeling are more congenial to our time than to the century before Christ. Horace and Virgil were deeply influenced by him in their youth, and recall him without name in many a lordly phrase; but the attempt of Augustus to restore the old faith made it unwise for these imperial proteges to express too openly their admiration and their debt. The Epicurean philosophy was as unsuited to the Roman mind as epicurean practices suited Roman taste in the age of Lucretius.* Rome wantea a metaphysic that would exalt mystic powers rather than natural law; an ethic that would make a virile and martial people rather than humanitarian lovers of quiet and peace; and a political philosophy that, like those of Virgil and Horace, would justify Rome's imperial mastery. In the resurrection of faith after Seneca, Lucretius was almost forgotten. Not till Poggio rediscovered him in 1418 did he begin to influence European thought. A physician of Verona, Girolamo Fracastoro (1483-1553) took from the poet the theory of disease as due to noxious "seeds" (senzina) .float ing in the air; and in 1647 Gassendi revived the atoinic philosophy. Voltaire read the De Rerunz Natura devotedly, and agreed with Ovid that its rebel verses would last as long as the earth.30
In the endless struggle of East and West, of "tender-Ininded" and con soling faiths vs. a "tough-Ininded" and materialistic science, Lucretius waged alone the most vigorous battle of his time. He is, of course, the greatest of philosophical poets. In him, as in Catullus and Cicero, Latin literature came of age, and leadership in letters passed at last from Greece to Rome.


Servant: Why, when you passed, they asked me,
"What! is the great Achilles here?" I answered, "No, it's his brother." Then says the other one, "Troth, he is handsome! What a noble man!
What splendid hair!" . . . and begged me, both of them,
...	To make you take a walk again today, That they might get a better sight of you.
Captain: 'Tis a great nuisance being so very handsome! 34
The Ampbitryon turns the laugh upon Jove, who, disguised as Alcmena's husband, calls upon himself to witness his own oath and offers pious sacri fice to Jupiter.35 The day after he seduces the lady she bears twins. At the end Plautus asks the god to forgive him and to take the lion's share of the applause. The story proved as popular in the Rome of Plautus as in the Athens of Menander, the Paris of l\1olierc, or the New York of our own time. The Aulularia is the tale of a miser's hoard, told with more sympathy than in Moliere's Avare; the miser collects the parings of lriis nails, and laments the wasted water in the tears he has shed. The Menaeclmti is the old story of twins and their climactic recognition-a source for Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors. Lessing thought the Capth.:i the best play ever staged;36 Plautus, too, liked it, and made its prologue say:
It is not hackneyed or just like the rest; It has no filthy lines one must not quote,
No perjured pander, and no wicked wench.
It is true; but the plot is so intricate, so dependent upon improbable coinci dences and revelations, that a mind allergic to dead history may be forgiven for passing it by. \Vhat made these comedies succeed was not their ancient plots but their wealth of humorous incident, their rollicking puns as bad as Shakespeare's, their boisterous indecency, their gallery of precipitate wcmen, and their occasional sentiment; in every play the audience could rely upon finding a love affair, a seduction, a handsome and virtuous hero, and a slave with more brains than all the rest of the char::!cters put together. Here, almost at its outset, Roman literature touches the common man, and reaches, through
CHAP. v)	THE  GREEK  CONQUEST	IOI
Greek disguises, to the realities of daily life as Latin poetry would never do agam.
Probably in the year of Plautus' death ( 184), Publius Terentius Afer was born at Carthage of Phoenician, perhaps also of African, blood. "\Ve kno:w nothing more of him until he appears as the slave of Terentius Lucanus in Rome. This senator recognized the shy lad's talent, gave him :.:n education, and freed him; the youth in gratitude took his master's name. \Ve get a pleasant note of Roman manners when we hear how Terence, "poor and meanly clad," came to the house of Caecilius Statius-whose comedies, now lost, were then dominating the Roman stage-and read him the first scene of the Andria. Caecilius was so charmed that he invited the poet to dinner and listened admiringly to the rest.37 Terence soon won a hearing from Aemilianus and Laelius, who sought to form his style in the polished Latin so dear to their hearts. Hence gossip said that Laelius was writing Terence's plays-a report which the author, with tact and prudence, neither confirmed nor denied.38 .Moved perhaps by the respectful Hellenism of the Scipionic circle., Terence adhered faithfully to his Greek originals, gave his plays Greek titles, avoided allusions to Roman life, and called himself merely a translator39-a modest understatement of his work.
We do not know the fate of the play that Caecilius liked so well. The Hecyra, which Terence wrote next, failed because its audience slipped away to watch a bear fight. Fortune smiled in 162 when he produced his most famous play-the Heauton Ti1narou111e12os, or "Self-Tormentor." It told the story of a father who had forbidden his son to marry the girl of his choice; the son married her nevertheless; the f.:!ther disowned and banished him, and then, in self-punishing remorse, refused to touch his wealth, bur lived in hard labor and poverty. A neighbor proposes to mediate; the father asks why he rakes so kindly an interest in the troubles of others; and the neighbor replies in a world-renowned line which all the audience applauded:
Ho1110 sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto-
"I am a man; I consider nothing human alien to me." In the following year The Eunucb was so well received that it was performed twice in the same day (then a rare event), and earned Terence 8000 sesrerces ( $1 2 oo) between morning and night.40 A few months later appeared the Phormio, named from the witty servant who saved his master from paternal ire, and became the model for Beaumarchais' lusty Figaro. In 160 Terence's last play, the Adelphi, or "Brothers." was performed at the funeral games of Aemilius Paulus. Soon afterward the plar.vrighr sailed for Greece. On the way back he died of illness in Arc.::dia, in his twenty-fifth year.
His later plays had suffered in popularity because Hellenism had won in
102	CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. V
him too full a victory. He lacked the vivacity and abounding humor of Plautus; he never thought to deal with Roman life. There were no lusty villains in his comedies, no reckless strumpets; all his feminine characters were handled with tenderness, and even his prostitutes hovered on the brink of virtue. There were fine pithy lines 2nd memorable phrases: hinc illae lacrimae ("hence those tears"), fortes fortuna adiuvat ("fortune favors the brave"), quot homines tot sententiae ("as many opinions as men"), and a hundred more; but they required for their appreciation a philosophical intel ligence or literary sensitivity which the African slave found wanting in the Roman plebs. It did not care for his comedies that were half tragedies, his well-built hut slowly moving plots, his subtle studies of strange ch:racters, his quiet dialogue and too even style, and the almost insulting purity of his
' language; it was as if the audience felt that a breach, never to be healed, had been opened between the people and the literature of Rome. Cicero, too near to Catullus to see him, and too prudent to relish Lucretius, thought Terence the finest poet of the Republic. G1esar estimated him more justly when he praised the "lover of pure speech," but deplored the lack of vis comica-the power of laughter-in Terence, and called him dimidiatus Menander-"half a Menander." One thing, nevertheless, Terence had achieved: this Semitic alien, inspired by Laelius and Greece, had molded the Latin language at last into a literary instrument that would in the next century make possible the prose of Cicero, and Virgil's poetry.
CATO AND THE  COXSERVATIVE OPPOSITION
This Greek invasion, in literature, philosophy, religion, science, and art, this revolution in manners, morals, and blood, filled old-fashioned Romans with disgust and dread. Out on a Sabine farm a retired senator, Valerius Flaccus, fretted over the decay of the Roman character, the corruption of politics, the replacement of the mos maiormn wit 1 Greek ideas and ways. He was too old to fight the tide himself. But on a near-by homestead, just outside Reate, was a young plebeian peasant who showed all the old Roman qualities, loved the soil, worked hard, saved carefully, lived with conserva tive simplicity, and yet talked as brilliantly as a radical. He bore the names Marcus Porcius Cato: Porcius because his family had for generations raised pigs; Cato because they had been shrewd. Flaccus encouraged him to study law; Cato did, and won his neighbors' cases in the local courts. Flaccus advised him to go to Rome; Cato went, and by the age of thirty obtained the quaestorship (204). By 199 he was aedik, by 198 praetor, by 195 consul; in 19 1 tribune, in 1 84 censor. 1\leanwhile he served twenty-six years in the
CHAP. v)	THE  GREEK  CONQUEST	103
army as a fearless soldier and an able and ruthless general. He considered discipline the mother of character and freedom; he despised a soldier "who plied his hands in marching and his feet in fighting, and whose snore was louder than his battle cry"; but he won the respect of his troops by marching beside them on foot, giving each of them a pound of silver from the spoils, and keeping nothing for himself.41
In the intervals of peace he denounced rhetors and rhetoric, and became the most powerful orator of his time. The Romans listened in reluctant fascination, for no one had ever spoken to them with such obvious honesty and stinging wit; the lash of his tongue might fall upon any man present, but it was pleasant to see it descend upon one's neighbor. Cato fought cor ruption recklessly, and seldom let the sun set without having made new enemies. Few loved him, for his scar-covered face and wild red hair dis concerted them, his big teeth threatened them, his asceticism shamed them, his industry left them lagging, his green eyes looked through their words into their selfishness. Forty-four times his patrician enemies tried to destroy him by public indictments; forty-four times he was saved by the votes of farmers who, like him, resented venality and luxury.42 vVhen their votes made him censor, all Rome shuddered. He carried out the threats with which he had won the campaign; bd heavy taxes upon luxuries, fined a senator for extravagance, and excluded from the Senate six members in whose record he found malfeasance. He expelled Manilius for kissing his wife in public; as for himself, he said, he never embraced his wife except when it thundered-though he was glad when it thundered. He completed the drainage system of the city, cut the pipes that had clandestinely tapped water from the public aqueducts or conduits, compelled ovmers to demolish the illegal projections of their buildings upon or over the public right of way, forced down the price paid by the state for public works, and frightened the tax collectors into remitting a larger share of their receipts to the Treas ury.43 After five years of heroic opposition to the nature of man, he retired from office, made successful investments, manned his now vast fam: wi h
slaves, lent monevJ


.M.edicormn.
Under Vespasian auditoria were opened for the teaching of medicine, and recognized professors were paid by the state. Greek was the language of in struction, as Latin is now the language of prescription, and for a like reason its intelligibility to persons of diverse tongues. Graduates of these state schools received the title of medicus a republica, and after Vespasian they alone could legally practice medicine in Rome.103 The lex Aquilia provided for state super vision of physicians, and held them responsible for negligence; and the lex Cornelia severely punished practitioners whose carelessness or culpable ignorance caused the death of a patient.10-1 Quacks continued, but sound practice increased.
Midwives saw most Romans into the world, but many of these women were well trained.105 About A.D. 100  military medicine reached its ancient zenith: every
legion had twenty-four surgeons, first-aid and field-ambulance service were well organized, and hospitals were maintained near every imponant encampment.106 Private hospitals (valetudinaria) were opened by physicians; from these evolved
the public hospitals of the J\Iiddle Ages. Doctors were appointed and paid by
the state to give free treatment to the poor.107 Rich men kept their own physi cians, and well-paid arcbiatri ("chief healers") took care of the emperor, his
familv, his servants, and his aides. Sometimes families would contract with a doct r to attend to their health and illnesses for a period of time; in this way Quintus Steninius made 600,000 sesterces a year.108 The surgeon Alcon, fined
10,000,000 sesterces by Claudius, paid it with a few years' fees.109
The  profession now reached a high degree of specialization. There were
CHAP. XIV)	THE  SIL VER  AGE	313
urologists, gynecologists, obstetricians, ophthalmologists, eye and ear specialists, veterinarians, dentists. Romans could have gold teeth, wired teeth, false teeth, bridgework, and plates.11° There were many women physicians; some of them wrote manuals of abortion, which were popular among great ladies and prosti tutes. Surgeons were divided into further specialit1es and seldom engaged in general practice. Mandragora juice or atropin was used as an anesthetic.111 Over
200 different surgical instruments have been found in the ruins of Pompeii. Dissection was illegal, but the examination of wounded or dying gladiators offered a frequent substitute. Hydrotherapy was popular; in a measure the great thernzae were hydrotherapeutic institutes. Charmis of Marseilles made a fortune by administering cold baths. Consumptives were sent to Egypt or north Africa. Sulphur was used as a skin specific and to fumigate rooms after an infectious disease.112 Drugs were a final but frequent resort. Physicians made them by processes kept secret from the public and charged for them all that patients could be persuaded to pay.113 Repulsive drugs were held in high honor: the offal of lizards was used as a purgative, human entrails were sometimes prescribed, An tonius Musa recommended the excreta of dogs for angina, Galen applied a boy's dung to swellings of the throat.114 In compensation for all this a cheerful quack offerea to cure almost any ailment with wine.115
Of the known medical writers in this age only one was a Roman, and he was not a physician. Aurelius Cornelius Celsus was an aristocrat who about A.D. 30 gathered into an encyclopedia De Artibus his studies in agriculture, war, oratory, law, philosophy, and medicine; only the section De Medicina survives. It is the greatest work on medicine that has come down to us from the six centuries be tween Hippocrates and Galen; it has also the distinction of being written in such pure and classical Latin that Celsus was dubbed Cicero medicorum. The Latin terms into which he translated the nomenclature of Greek medicine have ruled the science ever since. The sixth book shows considerable knowledge, in an tiquity, of venereal disease. The seventh is an illuminating description of surgical methods; it contains the earliest known account of ligature, and describes ton sillectomy, lateral lithotomy, plastic surgery, and operations for cataract. Al together this is the soundest achievement in Roman scientific literature, and suggests that we might have a better opinion of Roman science if Pliny had not been preserved. It is a pity that scholarship has concluded that Celsus' treatise is largely a compilation or paraphrase of Greek texts.116 Lost in the Middle Ages, it was rediscovered in the fifteenth century, was printed before Hippocrates or Galen, and took a leading part in stimulating the reconstruction of medicine in modem times.
QU TILIAN
When Vespasian established a state professorship of rhetoric in Rome he appointed to it a man who, like so many authors of this Silver Age, was of Spanish birth. Marcus Fabius Quintilianus was born at Calagurris (A.D. 35? ),
CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. XIV
went to Rome to study oratory, and opened a school of rhetoric there which numbered Tacitus and the younger Pliny among its pupils. Juvenal de scribes him in his prime as handsome, noble, wise, well bred, with a fine voice and delivery, and a senato:1al dignity. In old age he retired to write for the guidance of his son the classic treatment of his subject, the lnstitutio Ora toria (96).
I thought that this work would be the most precious part of the inheritance ot my son, whose ability was so remarkable that it called for the most anxious cultivation on the part of his father   Night
and day I pursued this design, and hastened its completion in the fear that ceath might cut me off with my task unfinished. Then misfortune ovenvhelmed me with such suddenness that the success of mv labors now interests no one less than myself.... I have lost him of whom I had formed the highest expectations, and in whom I reposed all the hopes that should solace my old age.117
His wife had died at nineteen, leaving him two sons; one of these had died at the age of five, "robbing me, as it were, of one of my two eyes"; now the other went, le:iving the old teacher "to outlive all my nearest and dearest."
He deEnes rhetoric as the science of speaking well. The training of the orator should begin before birth: it is desirable that he should come of educated p::irents, so that he may receive correct speech and good manners from the very air he breathes; it is impossible to become both educated and a gent!em:m in one generation. The future orator should study music, to give him an e:ir for harmony; the dance, to give him grace and rhythm; dram:1, to ani!!late his eloquence with gesture and action; gymnastics, to keep him in health and strength; literature, to form his style, train his memory, and arm him with a treasury of great thoughts; science, to acquaint him with some understanding of nature; and philosophy, to mold his char acter on the dictates of reason and the precepts of wise men. For all prepara tions will be of no avail unless integrity of conduct and nobility of spirit are present to generate an irresistible sincerity of speech. Then the student must write as much as possible and with the utmost care. It is a hard training, and "I trust," says Quintilian, "that no one among my readers would think of calculating its monetary value." 118
The oration itself has five ph2ses: conception, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. Having chosen his subject and clearly conceived his purpose, let the orator gather his material, from observation, inquiry, and books, and arranJ'e it both los-ically and_ psychologically-so that each part will be in its proper place and lead as n turally to the next as in geometry,119 A well
organized ad ress will cons t of introduction (exordium), proposition, proof, refutation, and peroration. The speech should be written out only if
CHAP. XIV)	THE  SILVER  AGE
it is to be fully memorized; otherwise fragmentary memories of the written form will obstruct and confuse an extempore style. If it is written it must be with care. "\V rite quickly and you will never write well; write well, and you will soon write quickly"; shun the lazy "luxury of dictation now so fashionable among writers." 120 "Clearness is the first essential," then brevity, beauty, and vigor. Correct repeatedly and stoically:


cmnina faciei feminineae, a metrical manual of cosmetics, pilfered from the Greeks. These little volumes sold so well that Ovid soared to heights of insolent fame. "So long as I am celebrated all the world over, it matters not to me what one or two pettifoggers say about me." 91 He did not know that one of these pettifoggers was Augustus, that the Prince resented his poems
CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. XII
as an insult to the Julian laws, and would not forget the insult when imperial scandal should touch the poet's careless head.
About the third year of our era Ovid married a third time. His new wife belonged to one of the most distinguished families in Rome. Now forty-six, the poet settled down to domestic life and seems to have lived in mutual faith and happiness with Fabia. Age did to him what law could not; it cooled his fires and made his poetry respectable. In the H eroides he told again the love
stories of famous women-Penelope, Phaedra, Dido, Ariadne, Sappho, Helen, Hero; told them, perhaps, at too great length, for repetition can make even love a bore. Startling, however, is a sentence in which Phaedra expresses Ovid's philosophy: "Jove decreed that virtue is whatever brings us pleas ure." 92 About A.D. 7 the poet published his greatest work, the Jlfeta111or phoses. These fifteen "books" recounted in engaging hexameters the renowned transformations of inanimate objects, animals, mortals, and gods. Since almost everything in Greek and Roman legend changed its form, the scheme permitted Ovid to range through the whole realm of classical mythology from the creation of the world to the deification of Caesar. These are the old tales that until a generation ago were de rigueur in every college, and whose memory has not yet been erased by the revolution of our time: Phaethon's chariot, Pyramus and Thisbe, Perseus and Andromeda, the Rape of Proserpine, Arethusa, Medea, Daedalus and Icarus, Baucis and Philemon, Orpheus and Eurydice, Atalanta, Venus and Adonis, and many more; here is the treasury from which a hundred thousand poems, paintings, and statues have taken their themes. If one must still learn the old myths there is no more painless way than by reading this kaleidoscope of men and gods stories told with skeptical humor and amorous bent, and worked up with such patient art as no mere trifler could ever have achieved. Little wonder that at the end the confident poet announced his own immortality: per saecula onmia vivam-"I shall live forever."
He had hardly written the words ,vhen news came that Augustus had banished him to cold and barbarous Tomi on the Black Sea-even today unalluring as Constanta. It was a blow for which the poet, rounding fifty one, was wholly unprepared. He had just composed, toward the close of the Metamorphoses, an elegant tribute to the Emperor, whose statesmanship he now recognized as the source of that peace, security, and lmury which Ovid's generation had enjoyed. He had half completed, under the title of Fasti, an almost pious poem celebrating the religious feasts of the Roman
Year. In these verses he was on the wa•v to makino0 - an epic out of a calendar'
for he applied to the tales of the old religion, and to the honoring of its
shrines and gods, the same lucid facility, delicacy of word and phrase, and even flow of racy narrative that he had devoted to Greek mythology and
CHAP. XII)	THE  GOLDEN  AGE	257
Roman love. He had hoped to dedicate the work to Augustus as a contribu tion to the religious restoration and as an apologetic palinode to the faith he once had scorned.
The Emperor gave no reason for his edict, and no one today can fathom its causes confidently. He offered some hint, however, by at the same time banishing his granddaughter Julia, and ordering that Ovid's works should be removed from the public libraries. The poet had apparently played some role in Julia's misconduct-whether as witness, accomplice, or principal. He himself declared that he was punished for "an error" and his poems, and implied that he had been the unwilling observer of some indecent scene.93 He was given the remaining months of the year (A.D. 8) to arrange his affairs. The decree was relegatio, softer than exile in allowing him to retain his property, harsher in commanding him to stay in one city. He burned his manuscripts of the Af etamorpboses, but some readers had made copies, and preserved them. Most of his friends avoided him;94 a few dared the light ning by staying with him till his departure; and his wife, who remained behind at his bidding, supported him with affection and loyalty. Otherwise Rome took no notice as the bard of its joys sailed out of Ostia on the long voyage from everything that he had loved. The sea was rough nearly all the days of that trip, and the poet thought once that the waves would engulf the vessel. When he saw Tomi he regretted that he had survived, and gave himself over to grief.
On the voyage he had begun those verses which we know as Tristia, "Sorrows." Now he continued them, and sent them to his wife, his daughter, his stepdaughter, and his friends. Probably the sensitive Roman exaggerated the horrors of his new home: a treeless rock where nothing would grow, and yet shut out from the sun by the Euxine mists; the cold so bitter that in some years the snow remained all summer long; the Black Sea stiff with ice through gloomy winters, and the Danube so frozen that it offered no bar to the raids of hinterland barbarians upon the city's mixture of knife-wearing Getae and half-breed Greeks. \Vhen he thought of Roman skies and Sulmo's fields his heart broke, and his poetry, still beautiful in form and phrase, took on a depth of feeling that it had never fathomed before.
These Tristia, and the poetic letters to his friends Ex Ponto-"From the Fontus" or Black Sea-haYe nearly all the charms of his greater works. A simple vocabulary that made him a pleasure even in school, scenes vividly realized by insight and imagery, characters brought to life by touches of ps?chological subtlety, phrases compact with experience or thought,* an
E.g., •video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor-"I see and approve the better, I follow the worse"; est deus in nobis agitame ca!esciums illo-'"there is a god in us, and by his action we have the warmth of life."
CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. Xll
unfailing grace of speech and :flowing ease of line: all these stayed with him in his exile, attended by a seriousness and tenderness whose absence makes the earlier poems umvorthy of a man. Strength of character never came to him; as once he had spoiled his verse with superficial sensuality, so now he flooded his lines with tears and suppliant adulation of the Prince.
He envied these poems which could go to Rome. "Go, my book, and in my name greet the places I love" and "the dear soil of my native land";95 perhaps, he tells it, some brave friend will hand it to a relenting emperor. In every letter he still hopes for pardon, or pleads for at least some milder home. He thinks each day of his wife and calls her name in the night; he prays that he may kiss her whitened hairs before he dies.96 But no pardon came. After nine years of exile the broken man of sixty welcomed death. His bones, as he had begged, were brought to Italy and buried near the capital.
His prediction of lasting fame was justified by time. His hold on the Middle Ages rivaled Virgil's; his Metamorphoses and Heroides became rich sources of medieval romance; Boccaccio and Tasso, Chaucer and Spenser, drew upon him without stint; and the painters of the Renaissance had a treasure trove of subjects in his sensuous verse. He was the great romanticist of a classic age.
\Vith his passing ended one of the great flowering epochs in the history of letters. The Augustan was not a supreme literary age, like the Periclean or Elizabethan; even at its best there is in its prose a pompous rhetoric, and in its verse a formal perfection, that seldom come from soul to soul. We find no Aeschylus here, no Euripides, no Socrates, not even a Lucretius or a Cicero. Imperial patronage inspired and nourished, repressed and narrowed, the literature of Rome. An aristocratic age-like that of Augustus, or Louis XIV, or eighteenth-century England-exalts moderation and good taste and tends in letters to a "classic" style in which reason and form dom inate feeling and life. Such literature is more finished and less powerful, more mature and less influential, than the literature of passionately creative periods or minds. But within the classic range this age deserved the com pliment of its name. Never had sober judgment found expression in such perfect art; even the madcap revelry of Ovid was cooled into a classic mold. In him and Virgil and Horace the Latin language as a poetic medium reached its zenith. It would never be so rich and resonant, so subtle and compact, so pliant and melodious again.
CHAPTER XIII
TheOther Si e of Monarchy
A.D. 14-96*
TIBERIUS
HEN great men stoop to sentiment the world grows fonder of them; but when sentiment governs policy empires totter. Augustus had chosen Tiberius wisely, but too late. When Tiberius was saving the state with patient generalship the Emperor had almost loved him. "Farewell," one o? his letters ended, "most agreeable of men . . . most valiant of men, most conscientious of commanders." 1 Then the pathos of propinquity blinded Augustus, as later Aurelius; he set Tiberius aside for his pretty grandsons; compelled him to renounce a fortunate marriage to become the cuckold of Julia; resented his resentment, and let him grow old with philos ophy in Rhodes. When at last Tiberius reached the principate he was already


Probably ""e shall ne,·er know whether the most brilliant of the Roman emperors ,van his throne by amorous connivance or by Trajan's conviction
CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. XIX
of his worth. "His appointment," says Dio Cassius, "was due to the fact that when Trajan died without an heir, his widow Plotina, who was in love with Hadrian, conspired to secure him the succession." 12 Spartianus repeats the story.13 Plotina and Hadrian denied the rumor, which nevertheless persisted to the end of his reign. He settled the matter by distributing a generous dona tive among the troops.
Publius Aelius Hadrianus traced his cognomen and family to the town of Adria, on the Adriatic coast; thence, said his autobiography, his ancestors had migrated to Spain. The same Spanish town, ltalica, that had seen the birth of Trajan in 52 saw that of his nephew Hadrian in 76. \Vhen the boy's father died (86) he was placed under the guardianship of Trajan and Caelius At tianus. The latter tutored him and instilled in him so warm a fondness for Greek literature that the youth was nicknamed Graeculus. He studied also singing, music, medicine, mathematics, painting, and sculpture, and later dabbled in half a dozen arts. Trajan called him to Rome (91) and gave him his niece in marriage ( roo). Vivia Sabina, as preserved in portrait busts that may have idealized her, was a woman of distinguished and conscious beauty, in whom Hadrian found no lasting happiness. Possibly he loved dogs and horses too keenly, and spent too much time hunting with them, and building tombs for them when they died. Perhaps he was unfaithful, or seemed so. In any case, she bore him no children, and though she accompanied him on many of his travels, they lived in lifelong estrangement. He showed her every favor and courtesy, and gave her every kindness but affection. \Vhen Suetonius, one of his secretaries, spoke disrespectfully of her he dismissed him.
Hadrian's first decision as emperor was to revise the imperialistic policy
of his uncle. He had counseled Trajan against the Parthian expedition as too great an expenditure of men and means so soon after the Dacian Wars, and as promising, at best, gains difficult to hold; and Trajan's generals, eager for glory, had never pardoned his opposition. Now he withdrew the legions from Armenia, Assyria, Mesopotamia, and Parthia, made Armenia a client kingdom instead of a province, and accepted the Euphrates as the eastern boundary of the Empire; he played Augustus to Trajan's Caesar, and con solidated with peaceful administration as much as he could of the un precedented realm that reckless arms had won. The generals who had led Trajan's forces-P ma, Celsus, Quietus, Nigrinus-thought this policy cowardly and unwise; to cease to attack, they felt, was merely to defend, and merely to defend was to begin to die. \Vhile Hadrian was with his legions on the Danube the Senate announced that the four generals had been detected in a conspiracy to overthrow the government and had been exe cuted by the Senate's orders. Rome was shocked to find that the men had
CHAP.XIX)	THE   PHILOSOPHER  KINGS	415
received no trial; and though Hadrian, returning hurriedly to Rome, pro tested that he had had nothing to do with the matter, no one believed him. He vowed to put no senator to death except at the Senate's bidding, dis tributed a gift of money among the people, amused them with abundant games, canceled tax arrears to the amount of 900,000,000 sesterces, publicly burned the tax records in a fiscal auto-da-fe, and for twenty years governed with wisdom, justice, and peace. But his unpopularity remained complete.
His ancient biographer describes him as tall and elegant, with hair curled, and "a full beard to hide the natural blemishes of his face";14 thenceforth all Rome wore beards. He was strongly built and kept himself in vigor by fre quent exercise, above all by hunting; on several occasions he killed a lion with his own hands.15 So many elements were mingled in him that description is baffled. \Ve are told that he was "stem and cheerful, humorous and grave, sensual and cautious, hard and liberal, severe and merciful, deceptively simple, and always in all things various." 16 He had a quick, impartial, skepti cal and penetrating mind, but he respected tradition as the connective tissue of generations. He read and admired the Stoic Epictetus, but he sought pleas ure with shamelessness and taste. He was irreligious and superstitious, laughed at oracles, played with magic and astrology, encouraged the national faith, and sedulously performed the duties of pontifex 111axi111us. He was couneous and obstinate, sometimes cruel, usually kind; perhaps his contradictions were merely adaptations to circumstance. He visited the sick, helped the unfor tunate, extended existing charities to orphans and widows, and was a gener ous patron to artists, writers, and philosophers. He was a good singer, dancer, and harpist, a competent painter, a middling sculptor. He wrote several volumes-a grammar, an autobiography, poems decent and indecent,17 in Latin and Greek. He preferred Greek to Latin literature, and old Cato's simple Latin to Cicero's smooth eloquence; under his example many authors now affected an archaic style. He organized the state-paid professors into a university, paid them well, and built for them a magnificent Athenaeum to
rival the Museum of Alexandria. It delighted him to gather scholars and
thinkers about him, to puzzle them with questions, and laugh at their con tradictions and disputes. Favorinus of Gaul was the wisest of this philosophic coun; when his friends rallied him for yielding to Hadrian in argument, he answered that any man with thirty legions behind him must be right.18
Along with these multiple intellectual interests went an unerring sense for the practical. Fallowing Domitian's lead, Hadrian reduced his freedmen to subordinate functions, chose businessmen of tried ability to administer the government, and formed from them and senators and jurists a concilium to meet in regular sessions for the consideration of policies. He appointed an
CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. XIX
advocatus fisci, or Attorney for the Treasury, to detect corruption or deceit in the payment of taxes, with the illuminating result that while taxes re mained as before, revenues were decidedly increased. He himself kept watch on each department and, like Napoleon, astonished its heads by detailed knowledge of their field. "His memory was vast," says Spanianus; "he wrote, dictated, listened, and conversed with his friends, all at the same time" 19-though the frequency of this tale invites suspicion. Under his care, and with the help of an extended civil service, the Empire was probably better governed than ever before or afterward. The price of this zealous order was a swelling bureaucracy, and a "mania of regulation" that moved the principate still closer to absolute monarchy. Hadrian observed all the forms of co-operation with the Senate; nevertheless, his appointees and their executive orders encroached more and more upon the functions of what had once seemed "an assembly of kings." He was too close to his problems to foresee that his efficient but proliferating bureaucracy might become in time an unbearable burden upon the taxpayers. On the contrary, he believed that within the framework of law and ordinance which his government had established every person in the Empire would find career open to talent and any man could rise rapidly from class to class.
His clear and logical mind resented the chaos of accumulated, obscure, and contradictory laws. He commissioned Julianus to co-ordinate the enact ments of past praetors into a Perpetual Edict, and encouraged further codifi cations that paved the way for Justinian. He acted as a supreme court both in Rome and on hii, journeys, and earned the reputation of a fair and learned judge, always as lenient as the reign of law would permit. He issued innu merable decrees, usually in favor of the weak against the strona, the slave against the master, the small farmer against the large estate, the te ant aaainst the landlord, the consumer against the deceptions of retailers and the ulti plicacion of rniddlemen.20 He rejected accusations for maiestas, refused be quests from parents, or persons unknown to him, and ordered a tolerant application of the laws again Christians.21 By his own example on state lands he encouraged the pracuce of emphyteusis ("implanting"), by which owners rented rough acres to tenants to be planted with orchards and remain rent-free till fruit grew. He was not a radical reformer; he was only a superla tive administrator seeking, within the limits and inequalities of .human na ture, the greatest goo of the whole. H preserved old forms, but he quietly poured new content mto them accordmg to the needs of the time. Once, he? his passion or administr tion .fla gc_d, h ,efuse,d audience to a peti nonmg woman with the plea, _I ha\-en t tune.  Don t be emperor, then,"
she cried. He granted her a hea_:1ng.22
Frc. 28-Ro111a11 Soldier and Dacian
Relief from the Column of Trajan
FIG.  z9-A11tinoiis
1\Iuseo Nazionale, Naples
CHAP, XIX)	THE   PHILOSOPHER  KINGS
The Wanderer
Unlike his predecessors Hadrian was as interested in the Empire as in the capital. Fallowing the wholesome precedent of Augustus, he decided to visit every province, examining its conditions and needs and alleviating them with the expedition and resources available to an emperor. He was curious, too, about the ways and arts, dress and beliefs, of the diverse peoples in his realm; he wished to see the famous places of Greek history, to steep himself in that Hellenic culture which was the background and adornment of his mind. ''.He loved," says Fronto, "not only to govern, but to perambulate, the world." 23 In 121 he set out from Rome, accompanied not by the pomp and trappings of royalty, but by experts, architects, builders, engineers, and artists. He went first to Gaul and "came to the relief of all the communities with various acts of generosity." 24 He passed into Germany and astonished everyone by the thoroughness with which he inspected the defenses of the Empireiagainst its future destroyers. He reorganized, extended and improved the limes between the Rhine and the Danube. A man of peace, he knew the arts of war and was resolved that his pacific temper should neither weaken his armies nor misguide his enemies. He issued severe regulations to maintain military discipline and obeyed these rules while visiting the camps; there he lived the life of the soldiers, eating their fare, never using a vehicle, walking with full equipment twenty miles on a march, and showing such endurance that no one could have guessed that he was at heart a scholar and a philoso pher. At the same time he rewarded excellence, raised the legal and economic status of the legionaries, gave them better weapons and ample supplies, and rela.-xed the discipline of their free hours, merely insisting that their amuse ments should not unfit them for their tasks. The Roman army was never in better condition than in his reign.
He now traveled down the Rhine to its mouth and sailed across to Britain
( 122). Weare not informed of his activities there, except that he ordered a wall built from the Solway Firth to the mouth of the Tyne "to divide the barbarians from the Romans." Returning to Gaul he passed leisurely through Avignon, N1mes, and other towns of the provincia, and settled down for the winter at Tarragona in northern Spain. \Vhile he was strolling alone in the gardens of his host a slave rushed upon him with drawn sword and tried to kill him. Hadrian overpmvered him and quietly handed him over to the servants, who found that he was insane.


Montaigne. He has an author's inevitable vanity, but so openly that it hardly offends. "Nothing, I confess, so strongly affects me as the desire of a lasting name." 33 He speaks appreciatively of others as well as of himself, adding that "one may be sure a man has many virtues if he admires those of others"; 34 in any case it is a relief, coming from Juvenal and Tacitus, to hear an author speak well of his fellow men. He was as generous in act as in words, ever ready with favors, loans, or gifts, from finding a husband for a friend's niece to enriching his native town. Finding that Quintilian could not give his daughter a dowry befitting the high station of the man she was marrying, he sent her 50,000 sesterces, excusing the smallness of the gift.35 He gave an old schoolmate 300,000 to make him eligible for the equestrian class; when the daughter of a friend inherited a leaacy of debts he paid them off; and at some risk he lent a considerable sum to a philosopher banished by Domitian. To Como he gave a temple, a secondary school, an institute for poor children, a municipal bath, and 11,000,000 sesterces for a public library.
What is especially pleasing in him is his love for his home, or his homes. He does not denounce Rome, but he is happier in Como or Laurentum, near the lake or the sea. There his chief enterprises are reading and doing nothing. He loves his gardens, and the mountain scenery behind them; he did not have to wait for Rousseau to make him enjoy nature. He speaks with the greatest tenderness _of hi_s th rd ,yif e, Calp nia, her sweet temper and pure mind, her fond delight m his success and his books. She read them all (he believed) and learned many of his pages by heart; she set his poems to music and sang them, and had a private corps of couriers to keep her informed of every development when he was trying an important case. She was but one of many good women in his circle. He tells of the modesty, patience, and
CHAP. xx)	LIFE  IN  THE  SECOND  CENTURY	441
courage of a fourteen-year-old girl who, just betrothed, learned that she had an incurable illness, and cheerfully awaited death;•36 of Pompeius Saturninus' wife, whose letters to her husband were lyrics of affection and fine Latin; 37 of Thrasea's daughter Fannia, who uncomplainingly bore exile for defending her husband Helvidius, nursed a relative through a dangerous illness, caught it, and died of it; "How complete," he exclaims, "is her virtue, her sanctity, her sobriety, her courage!" 38
He had a hundred friends, some great, many good. He joined with Tacitus in prosecuting Marius·Priscus for dishonesty and cruelty as pro consul in Africa; the two orators corrected each other's speeches and in vested in mutual compliments; Tacitus lifted Pliny to heaven by reporting that the literary world was pairing them as the leading writers of the age.39 He knew Martial, but from an aristocratic distance. He took Suetonius with him to Bithynia and helped him to get the "right of three children" without having any. His circle buzzed with literary and musical amate,1rs, with public recitals of poetry and speeches. "I do not believe," says the :?amed Boissier, "that in any other period has literature been so greatly loved." 40 Homer and Virgil were being studied on the banks of the Danube and the Rhine, and the Thames was trembling with rhetoric.41 It was, in its upper half, an elegant and amiable society, rich in loving marriages, parental affection, humane masters, sincere friendships, and fine courtesies. "I accept your invitation to supper," reads one letter, "but I must make this agreement beforehand, that you dismiss me soon, and treat me frugally. Let our table abound only in philosophical conversation, and let us enjoy even that within limits." 42
Most. of the men whom Pliny describes were members of the new aristocracy stemming from the provinces; they were not idlers, for nearly every one of them held public office and shared in the admirable adminis tration of the Empire under Trajan. Pliny himself was sent as propraetor to Bithynia to restore the solvency of some cities there. His letters include some inquiries addressed to the Prince, and Trajan's pithy replies; they show Pliny accomplishing his mission with ability and honor, though with a strangely detailed dependence upon the Emperor's advice. His final letter begs forgiveness for sending his sick wife home by the coaches of the im perial post. Thereafter Pliny disappears from literature and history, leaving behind him a redeeming picture of a Roman gentleman, and of Italy in her happiest age.
THE CULTURAL DECLINE
We should obscure these outstanding figures if we were to surround them with lesser lights. After them there were no giants in pagan Latin letters. Reason
442	CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. XX
had made its great effort from Ennius to Tacitus and had spent itself. It is a shock to pass from the grandeur of the Histories and the Annals to the scandalous chronicle of Suetonius' Lives of Illustrious Men (110); history is here degenerat ing into biography, and biography into anecdote; portents and miracles and superstitions crowd the pag:::s, and only the Elizabethan English of Philemon Holland's translation (1606) has raised the book to the level of literature. Less disturbing is the descent from Pliny to the letters of Fronto. Perhaps these were not meant for publication, and cannot be fairly compared with Pliny's; some were spoiled by a search for archaic phraseology, but many are touched by real affection of the teacher for his pupil. Aulus Gellius supported the archaizing movement in h:s Attic Nights (169)-the largest collection of worthless trifles in ancient literature; and Apuleius brought it to a climax in The Golden Ass. Apuleius and Fronto came from Africa, and the fad may have had partial source in the fact that written Latin there had departed less than in Rome from the language of the people and the RepubEc. Fronto rightly believed in strengthen ing literat Jre with popular speech, as one fre hens a plant by turning over the earth at its roots. But youth does not come twice to a man, a nation, a literature, or a! :nguage. Orientalization had s:t in and could not be stopped. The common Greek tongue of the Hellen:stic East and Oriental Rome was becoming the language of literature as well as of life; Fronto's pupil chose it for his Meditations. Appian, an Alexandrian Greek living at Rome, chose Greek for his vivid Histories of Rome's wars (ca. 160); so did Claudi-::is Aelian, a Roman by birth and blood; a half century later Dio Cassius, a Roman senator, would write his history of Rome in Greek. Leadership in literature was passing back from Rome to the Greek East; not to the Greek spirit, but to the Oriental soul using Hellenic speech. There would be giants again in Latin; but they would be Christian saints. Roman art declined more slowly than Roman letters. Technical ability lin gered on and produced good architecture, sculpture, painting, and mosaic. The head of Nerva, in the Vatican, carries on the vivid realism of Flavian portraits, and the Column of Trajan is an impressive relief despite much crudity. Hadrian labored to revive Hellenic classicism, but found no one to play Pheidias to his Pericles; the inspiration that had stirred Greece after Marathon, and Rome after Actium, was missing in an age of self-limitation, contentment, and peace. The busts of Hadrian lose character by their smooth Hellenistic lines; the heads of Plotina and Sabina are pretty; but the portraits of Antinous repel us by their sleek effeminate insipidity. Probably Hadrian's classical reaction was a mistake: it ended the forceful naturalism and individuation of Flavian and Trajan:c sculp ture, which had had indigenous roots in Italian tradition and character. Nothing
reaches maturity except through the fulfi lment of its own nature.
Under the Antonin':!S Roman sculpture haJ its penult:mate fling. Once at least it achieved perfection, in the figure of a young woman whose veiled head and modest robes are molded with a bewitching delicacy and firmness of line.43 Al most as good is the portrait of Marcus' Faustina, aristocratically refined, and sensuous enough to accord with the innuendoes of history. Aurelius himself was
CHAP, XX)	LIFE  IN  THE  SECOND  CENTURY	443
carved or c:1st in a thousand forms, from the meditative and guileless yet eagerly sens:tive yoi.:th of th::: Capitoline bust to the curly-headed professor in armor of that same collect.:.on. Every tourist knows the stately brcnze of Aurelius lnz perator on horseback, ,vhich, since Michelangelo restored it, has dominated the piazza of Rome's Capitol.
Rdief remained to the end a favorite Roman art. The Etruscan and Hellen:stic custom of carving mythological or historical scenes upon sarcophagi returned in Hadrian's time•as the hope of immortality took more personal and even physical form, and burial replaced cremation. Eleven panels surviving from triumphal arches erected to commemorate th campaigns of Aurelius* show the naturalistic style in perfection: no one is idealized, every participant is individualized; Marcus, receiving without pride the submission of a fallen enemy, is an appealingly human figure; and the defeated are shown not as barbarians but as men worthy of their long struggle for freedom. In 174 the Senate and people of Rome raised that Column of Aurelius which still adorns the P azza Colonna; inspired by Trajan's Column, it pictured the Marcomannic Wars with a sympathetic art that honored conquerors and conquered al:ke.
The spirit of the Emperor had helped to form the art and morals of his time. The games were less cruel, the laws more considerate of the weak; marriage was apparently more lasting and content. Immorality cont:nued, openly in a minority, clandestinely in the majority, as at all times; but it had passed its peak with Nero and had ceased to be fashionable. Men as well as women were returning to the old religion or devoting themselves to new ones; and the philosophers approved. Rome was now teeming with them, invited, welcomed, or tolerated by Aurelius; they took full advantage of his generosity and his power, crowded his court, re ceived appointments and emoluments, delivered countless l ctures, and opened many schools. In their imperial pupil they gave the world the culmination and d:sintegration of ancient philosophy.
THE E:\1PEROR AS PHILOSOPHER
Six years before his death Marcus Aurelius sat down in his tent to fornrn late his thoughts on human life and destiny. We cannot be sure that the Ta eis heauton-"to himself"-was intended for the public eye; probably so, for even saints are vain, and the greatest man of action has moments of weakness in which he aspires to write a book. Marcus was not an expert author; most of the training that Fronto had given him in Latin was wasted now, since he wrote in Greek; besioes, these "Golden Thoughts" were penned in the intervals of travel, battles, revolts, and many tribulations; we must forgive them for being disconnected and formless, often repetitious,
Eight adorn the Arch of Constantine; three are in the Museo de' Conservatori.
444	CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. XX
sometimes dull. The book is precious only for its contents-its tenderness and candor, its half-conscious revelations of a pagan-Christian, ancient-medieval soul.
Like most thinkers of his time, Aurelius conceived philosophy not as a speculative description of infinity, but as a school of virtue and a way of life. He hardly bothers to make up his mind about God; sometimes he talks like an agnostic, acknowledging that he does not know; but having made that admission, he accepts the traditional faith with a simple piety. "Of what worth is it to me," he asks, "to live in a universe without gods or Provi dence?" 44 He speaks of deity now in the singular, now in the plural, with all the indifference of Genesis. He offers public prayer and sacrifice to the old divinities, but in his private thought he is a pantheist, deeply impressed with the order of the cosmos and the wisdom of God. He has a Hindu's sense of the interdependence of the world and man. He marvels at the growth of the child out of a little seed, the miraculous formation of organs, strength, mind, and aspiration out of a little food.45 He believes that if we could under stand we should find in the universe the same order and creative power as in man. "All things are implicated with one another, and the bond is holy.
. . . There is a common reason in all intelligent beings; one god pervades all things, one substance, one law, one truth.... Can a clear order sub sist in thee, and disorder in the All?" 46
He admits the difficulty of reconciling evil, suffering, apparently un merited misfortune, with a good Providence; but we cannot judge the place of any element or event in the scheme of things unless we see the whole; and who shall pretend to such total perspective? It is therefore insolent and ridiculous for us to judge the world; wisdom lies in recognizing our limita tions, in seeki g to b harmonious parts of the universal order, in trying to sense the Mmd behind the body of the world, and co-operating with it willingly. To one who has reached this view "everything that happens hap pens justly"-i.e., as in the course of nature; 47 nothing that is according to
nature can be evil; 48 everything natural is beautiful to him who under stands.49 All things are determined by the universal reason, the inherent logic of the whole; and every part must welcome cheerfully its modest role and fate. "Equanimity" (the watchword of the dying Antoninus) "is the volun tary acceptance of the things that are assigned to thee by the nature of the whole." 50


THE DEATH OF SOCRATES
Strange to say, the only cruelty of the restored democracy was com mitted upon an old philosopher whose seventy years should have put him beyond the possibility of being a ,danger to the state. But among the lead ers of the victorious faction was the same Anytus who years before had threatened to revenge himself upon Socrates for dialectical slights and the "corruption" of his son. Anytus was a good man: he had fought bravely under Thrasybulus, had saved the lives of oligarchs who had been taken captive by his soldiers, had been instrumental in arranging the amnesty, and had left in undisturbed enjoyment of his property those to whom it had been sold after confiscation by the Thirty. But his generosity failed when it came to Socrates. He could not forget that when he had gone into exile his son had stayed in Athens with Socrates, and had become a drunk ard."" It did not appease Anytus to observe that Socrates had refused to obey the Thirty, and (if we may take Xenophon's word for it) had de nounced Critias as a bad ruler... To Anytus it seemed that Socrates, more than any Sophist, was an evil influence both on morals and on politics; he was undermining the religious faith that had supported morality, and his persistent criticism was weakening the belief of educated Athenians in the institutions of democracy. The murderous tyrant Critias had been one of Socrates' pupils; the immoral and treasonable Alcibiades had been his lover; Charmides, his early favorite, had been a general under Critias, and had just died in battle against the democracy.• It seemed fitting to Anytus that Socrates should leave Athens, or die.
The indictment was brought forward by Anytus, Meletus, and Lycon
Critias and Alcibiades had left the tutelage of Socrates early in his career as a teacher, not liking the restraints which he preached to them...
CHAP. XVIII)	THE	SUICIDE  OF  GREECE	453
in 399, and read as follows: "Socrates is a public offender in that he does not recognize the gods that the state recognizes, but introduces new demoniacal beings" (the Socratic daimonion) ; "he has also off ended by cor rupting the youth."*11 The trial was held before a popular court, or dikas terion, of some five hundred citizens, mostly of the less educated class. We have no means of knowing how accurately Plato and Xenophon have re ported Socrates' defense; we do ,know that Plato was present at the trial,.., and that his account of Socrates' "apology" agrees in many points with Xenophon's. Socrates, says Plato, insisted that he believed in the state1gods, even in the divinity of the sun and moon. "You say first that I do not be
lieve in gods, and then again that I believe in demigods. . .. You might as well affirm the existence of mules, and deny that of horses and asses.,,.. And then he referred sadly to the effects of Aristophanes' satire:
I have had many accusers, who accused me of old, and their false charges have continued during many years; and I am more afraid of them than of Anytus and his associates.... For they began when you were children, and took possession of your minds with their falsehoods, telling of one Socrates, a wise man, who speculated about the heavens above, and searched into the earth beneath, and made the worse appear the better cause. These are the accusers I dread; for they are the circulators of this rumor, and their hearers are too apt to fancy that speculators of this sort do not believe in the gods. And they are many, and their charges against me are of ancient date, and they made them in days when you were impres sionable-in childhood, or perhaps in youth-and the cause when heard went by default, for there was none to answer. And hardest of all, their names-I do not know and cannot tell, unless in the chance case of a comic poet.... That is the nature of the accusation, and that is what you have seen yourselves in the comedy of Aristoph anes.•
He lays claim to a divine mission to teach the good and simple life, and no threat will deter him.
Strange, indeed, would be my conduct, 0 men of Athens, if I who, when I was ordered by the generals whom you chose to com mand me at Potidaea and Amphipolis and Dellum, remained where
Croiset believed that the real cause of the indictment was the hostility of the Attic peasantry to anyone who cast doubt upon the state gods. One of the chief markets for cattle was provided by the pious who-beught the animals to offer in sacrifice; any decrease in faith would lessen this market. Aristophanes, in this -interpretation, was the mouthpiece of these peasants, before whom his plays, if successful, would be repeated.88
454	THE	LIFE  OF GREECE	(CHAP.XVIll
they placed me, like any other man, facing death-if, I say, now when, as I conceive and imagine, God orders me to fulfil the philoso pher's mission of searching into myself and other men, I were to desert my post through fear of death   If you say to me, Socrates,
this time we will let you off, but upon one condition, that you are not to inquire and speculate in this way any more . . . I should reply: Men of Athens, I honor and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting anyone whom I meet, after my manner, and convincing him, saying: 0 my frien'd, why do you, who are a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city of Athens, care so much about laying up the great est amount of money and honor and reputation, and so little about wisdom and truth? Wherefore, 0 men of Athens, I say to you, do as Anytus bids, and either acquit me or not; but whatever you do, know that I shall never alter my ways, not even if I have to die many times."'
The judges appear to have interrupted him at this point, and to have bidden him desist from what seemed to them insolence; but he continued in even haughtier vein.
I would have you know that if you kill such a one as I am, you will injure yourselves more than you will injure me   For if you
kill me you will not easily find another like me, who, if I may use such a ludicrous figure of speech, am a sort of gadfly, given to the
state by the God; and the state is like a great and noble steed who is tardy in his motions owing to his very size, and requires to be stirred into life   And as you will not easily find another like me,
I would advise you to spare me."'
The sentence of guilty was pronounced upon him by the small majority of sixty; had his defense been more conciliatory it is likely that he would have been acquitted. He had the privilege of proposing an alternative pen alty in place of death. At .first he refused to make even this concession; but on the appeal of Plato and other friends, who underwrote his pledge, he offered to pay a fine of thirty minas ($3000). The second polling of the jury condemned him by eighty more votes than the first...
It still remained open to him to escape from the prison; Crito and other friends (if we may follow Plato) prepared the way with bribery, and prob
ably Anytus had hoped for such a compromise. But Socrates remained himself to the last. He felt that he had but a few more years to live, and
CHAP. XVIII)	THE   SUICIDE  OF  GREECE	455
that "he relinquished only the most burdensome part of life, in which all feel their powers of intellect diminished."'" Instead of accepting Crito's proposal he examined it from an ethical point of view, discussed it dia lectically, and played the game of logic to the end." His disciples visited him daily in his cell during the month between his trial and his execution, and he seems to have discoursed with them calmly until the final hour. Plato pictures him as fondling the hair and head of the young Phaedo, and saying, "Tomorrow, Phaedo, I suppose that these fair locks will be cut" in mourning.'" Xanthippe came in tears, with their youngest child in her arms; he comforted her, and asked Crito to have her escorted home. "You die undeservedly," said an ardent disciple; "Would you, then," Socrates answered, "have me deserve death?"'"
After he was gone, says Diodorus,"" the Athenians regretted their treat ment of him, and put his accusers to death. Suidas makes Meletus die by public stoning."' Plutarch varies the tale: the accusers became so unpopular that no citizen would light their fires, or answer their questions, or bathe in the same water with them; so that they were at last driven in despair to hang themselves.02 Diogenes Laenius reports that Meletus was executed, Anytus exiled, and a bronze statue put up by Athens in memory of the philosopher... We do not know if these stories are true.•


Antisthenes agreed with the conclusion, but not the arguments, of this philosophy, and drew out of the same Socrates an ascetic theory of life.
Those who omit philosophy from their education, said Aristippus, "are like the suitors of Penelope; they ... find it easier to win over the maidservants than to marry the mistress.,,.
5o6	THE   LIFE  OF GREECE	(CHAP. XXI
The founder of the Cynic school was the son of an Athenian citizen and a Thracian slave. He fought bravely at Tanagra in 426. He studied for a time with Gorgias and Prodicus, and then set up his own school; but having heard Socrates discourse, he went over-taking his pupils with him-to learn the wisdom of the older man. Like Eudoxus he lived at the Piraeus, and walked to Athens nearly every day-four or five miles each way. Perhaps he was present when Socrates (or Plato) discussed with a complaisant interlocutor the problem of pleasure.
Socr. Do you think that the philosopher ought to care about the pleasures of ... eating and drinking?
Simmias. Certainly not.
Socr. And what do you say of the pleasures of love-should he care about them?
Sim. By no means.
Socr. And will he think much of the other ways of indulging the body-for example, the acquisition of costly raiment, or sandals, or other adornments of the body? Instead of caring about these does he not rather despise anything beyond what nature needs?
Sim. I should say that the true philosopher would despise them."
This is the essence of the Cynic philosophy: to reduce the things of the flesh to bare necessities in order that the soul may be as free as possible. Antisthenes took the doctrine literally, and became a Greek Franciscan without theology. Aristippus' motto was, "I possess, but am not possessed"; Antisthenes' was, "I do not possess, in order not to be possessed." He had no property,• and dressed in so ragged a cloak that Socrates twitted him: "I can see your vanity, Antisthenes, through the holes of your cloak."'• Aside from this his only weakness was the writing of books, of which he left ten; one of them was a history of philosophy. After Socrates died Antisthenes resumed his role as teacher. He chose as his lecture center the gymnasium Cynosarges (Dogfish) because it was maintained for people of low, or alien, or illegitimate birth; the name Cynic became attached to the school rather from the place than from the creed."' Antisthenes dressed like a workman, took no pay for his teaching, and preferred the poor for his pupils; anyone unwilling to practice poverty and hardship was driven away by Antisthenes' tongue or his club.
He refused at first to take Diogenes as a pupil; Diogenes insisted, bore insult patiently, was received, and made his teacher's doctrine famous throughout Bellas by living it completely. Antisthenes had been half
CHAP.XX!)	THE  ZENITH  OF PHILOSOPHY
slave in origin; Diogenes was a bankrupt banker from Sinope. Diogenes had begged from actual want, and was pleased to learn that this was a part of virtue and wisdom. He adopted the beggar's garb, wallet, and staff, and for a time made his home in a tub or cask in the court of the temple of Cybele at Athens... He envied the simple life of animals, and tried to imitate it; he slept on the ground, ate what he could find wherever he found it, and (we are assured) performed the duties of nature and the rites of love in the sight of all... Seeing a child drink from its hands, he threw away his cup.'0 Sometimes he carried a candle or a lantern, saying that he was looking for a man." He injured no one, but refused to recognize laws, and announced himself, long before the Stoics, a kosmopolites, or Citizen of the World. He traveled leisurely, and we hear of him living for a time in Syracuse. On one of his journeys he was captured by pirates, who sold him as a slave to Xeniades of Corinth. When his owner asked him what he could do, he answered, "Govern men." Xeniades made him tutor of his sons and manager of his household, in which capacities Diogenes did so well ,that his master called him "a good genius," and took his advice in many things. Diogenes continued to live his simple life, so consistently that he became, next to Alexander, the most famous man in Greece.
He was something of a poseur, and evidently relished his renown. He had a gift for debate, and his namesake reports that he never lost an argu ment... He called freedom of speech the greatest of social goods, and made much use of it, with coarse humor and unfailing wit. He rebuked a woman who knelt with head to the ground before a holy image: "Are you not afraid," he asked her, "to be in so indecent an attitude, when some god may be behind you, for every place is full of them?,,.. When he saw the son of a courtesan throw a stone at a crowd he warned him, "Take care lest you hit your father."" He disliked women, and despised men who-behaved like them; when a richly dressed and perfumed young Corinthian asked him a question he said, "I will not answer you until you tell me whether you are a boy or a girl."<G All the world knows the story of how Alexander, at Corinth, came upon Diogenes lying in the sun. "I am Alexander the Great King," said the ruler. "I am Diogenes the dog," said the philosopher. "Ask of me any favor you choose," said the King. "Stand out of the sun," an swered Diogenes. "If I were not Alexander," said the young warrior, "I would be Diogenes";'" but we do not hear that the philosopher returned the compliment. The two men died, we are asked to believe, on the same day in 323: Alexander at Babylon in his thirty-third year, Diogenes at Corinth in his nineties." The Corinthians placed a marble dog over his
508	THE	LIFE  OF GREECE	(CHAP. XXI
grave; and Sinope, which had banished him, raised a monument to his memory.
Nothing could be clearer than the Cynic philosophy. It dallied with logic only long enough to dismiss as moonshine that theory of Ideas with which Plato was bewildering the intellectuals of Athens. Metaphysics, too, seemed to the Cynics a vain game; we should study nature not in order to explain the world, which is impossible, but that we may learn the wisdom of nature as a guide to life. The only real philosophy is ethics. The aim of life is happiness; but this is to be found not in the pursuit of pleasure but in a simple and natural life, independent as possible of all external aids. For though pleasure is legitimate if it results from one's own labor and effort, and is not followed by remorse,'" yet it so often eludes us in the chase, or disappoints us when captured, that it may more wisely be called an evil than a good. A modest and virtuous life is the only road to abiding content; wealth destroys peace, and envious desire, like a rust, eats away the soul. Slavery is unjust but unimportant; the sage will find it as easy to be happy in bondage as in freedom; only internal freedom counts. The gods, said Diogenes, gave man an easy existence, but man has complicated it by itch ing foF luxuries. Not that the Cynics put much faith in the gods. When a priest explained to Antisthenes how many good things the virtuous will enjoy after death, he asked, "Why, then, do you not die?"'" Diogenes smiled at the Mysteries, and remarked of the offerings set up in Samothrace by those who had survived shipwreck, "The offerings would have been much more numerous if those who were lost had offered them instead of those who were saved.".. Everything in religion but the practice of virtue seemed to the Cynics superstition. Virtue must be accepted as its own re ward and should not depend upon the existence or justice of the gods. Virtue consists in eating, possessing, and desiring as little as possible, drink ing only water, and injuring no one. Asked how to defend oneself against an adversary, Diogenes answered, "By proving honorable and upright.'"a Only sexual desire seemed reasonable to the Cynics. They avoided mar riage as an external bond, but patronized prostitutes. Diogenes advocated free love and a community of wives,.. and Antisthenes, seeking independ ence in everything, complained that he could not satisfy his hunger as solitarily as he could assuage his lust... Having accepted sexual desire as normal and natural, like hunger, the Cynics professed themselves unable to understand why men should be ashamed to satisfy the one appetite, like the other, in public." Even in death a man should be independent, choos-
CHAP. XXI)	THE   ZENITH  OF PHILOSOPHY
ing for it his own place and time; suicide is legitimate. Diogenes, some say, killed himself by holding his breath.""
The Cynic philosophy was part of a "back-to-nature" movement which arose in fifth-century Athens as a reaction of maladjustment to an irksomely complex civilization. Men are not civilized by nature, and bear the re straints of ordered life only because they fear punishment or solitude. Diogenes stood to Socrates in somewhat the same relation as Rousseau to Voltaire: he thought that civilization was a mistake, and that Prometheus had deserved his crucifixion for bringing it to mankind... The Cynics, like the Stoics and Rousseau, idealized "nature peoples";"' Diogenes tried to eat meat raw because cooking was unnatural.18 The best society, he thought, would be one without artifices or laws.
The Greeks smiled upon the Cynics, and tolerated them as medieval so ciety tolerated its saints. After Diogenes the Cynics became a religious order without religion; they made a rule of poverty, lived on alms, tem pered their celibacy with promiscuity, and opened schools of philosophy. They had no homes, but taught and slept in the street or the temple por ticoes. Through Diogenes' disciples, Stilpo and Crates, the Cynic doctrine passed down into the Hellenistic age, and formed the basis of Stoicism. The school disappeared as an entity about the end of the third century; but its influence remained strong in the Greek tradition, and perhaps reap peared in the Essenes of Judea and the monks of early Christian Egypt. How far all these movements were influenced by, or influenced, similar sects in India, scholarship cannot yet say. The "back-to-nature" devotees of our own day are the intellectual descendants of those men and women of Oriental or Greek antiquity who, tired of unnatural and cramping re straints, thought that they could turn and live with the animals. No full life is without a touch of this urban fantasy.
m. PLATO
The Teacher
Even Plato was moved by the Cynic ideal. In the second book of the Republic"" he describes with relish and sympathy a communistic and nat uralistic Utopia. He rejects it, and goes on to portray a "second-best" state; but when he comes to picture his philosopher-kings we find the Cynic dream-of men without property and without wives, dedicated to plain liv-


phy of Cyrene, and was resolved to enjoy each monochronos hed<me every pleasure that the moment gave. He ate himself into obesity, tried a variety of mistresses, repudiated his wife, and finally married his sister Arsinoe.• The new queen ruled the Empire and managed its wars while Ptolemy II reigned among the chefs and scholars of his court. Following and improving upon the example of his father, he invited to Alexandria as his guests famous poets, savants, critics, scientists, philosophers, and artists,
and made his capital beautiful with architecture in the Greek style. Dur
ing his long reign Alexandria became the literary apd scientific capital of the Mediterranean, and Alexandrian literature flourished as it would never do again. Nevertheless Philadelphus was unhappy in his old age; his gout and his cares increased with the extent of his wealth and his power. Look ing out from his palace window he saw and envied a beggar who lay at ease in the sun on the harbor dunes, and he mourned, "Alas, that I was not born one of these!"' Haunted by the fear of death, he sought in the lore of Egyptian priests the magic elixir of eternal life.•
He had so enlarged and lavishly financed the Museum and Library that Inter history named him as their founder. In 307 Demetrius of Phalerum, expelled from Athens, had taken refuge in Egypt. Ten years later we find him at the court of Ptolemy I. It was he, apparently, who suggested to Ptolemy Soter that the capital and the dynasty might be made illustrious by establishing a Museum-i.e., a House of the Muses-i.e., of the arts and sciences-which would rival the universities of Athens. Inspired, probably, by Aristotle's industry in collecting and classifying books, knowledge, ani mals, plants, and constitutions, Demetrius appears to have recommended the erection of a group of buildings capable not only of sheltering a great collection of books, but also of housing scholars who would devote their lives to research. The plan appealed to the first two Ptolemies; funds were provided, and the new university slowly took form near the royal palaces. There was a general mess hall, where the scholars seem to have had their meals; there was an exedra, or lecture hall, a court, a cloister, a garden, an astronomical observatory, and the great Library. The head of the entire institution was technically a priest, since it was formally dedicated to the Muses as actual goddesses. Living in the Museum were four groups of scholars: astronomers, writers, mathematicians, and physicians. All of these men were Greeks, and all received a salary from the royal treasury. Their function was not to teach, but to make researches, studies, and experi
.ments. In later decades, as students multiplied about the Museum, its mem bers undertook to give lectures, but the Museum remained to the end an
CHAP. XXV)	EGYPT  AND  THE  WEST
Institute for Advanced Studies rather than a university. It was, so far as we know, the first establishment ever set up by a state for the promotion of literature and science. It was the distinctive contribution of the Ptolemies and Alexandria to the history of civilization.
Ptolemy Philadelphus died in 246, after a long and largely beneficent reign. Ptolemy III Euergetes (Well-Doer) was another Thothmes III, intent on conquering the Near East; he took Sardis and Babylon, marched as far as India, and so effectually disorganized the Seleucid Empire that it crumbled at the touch of Rome. We shall not follow the record of his wars, for thougitfl:lere is drama in the details of strife, there is a dreary eternity in its causes and results; such history becomes a menial attendance upon the vicissitudes of ·R?wer, in which victories and defeats cancel one another into a resounding zero. Euergetes' young wife Berenice gave thanks for his successes by dedicating a lock of her hair to the gods; the poets celebrated the story, and the astronomers lauded her to the skies by naming one of the constellations Coma Berenices-Berenice's Hair.
Ptolemy IV Philopator so loved his father that he imitated his wars and his triumphs. But his victory over Antiochus III at Raphia ( 2 17) had been won with native troops-their first use by any Ptolemy; and the Egyptians, now armed and conscious of their strength, began from this time onward to break down the authority of the Greeks on the Nile. Philopator gave himself to amusement, spent much time on his spacious pleasure boat, introduced the Bacchanalia into Egypt, and half persuaded himself that he was descended from Dionysus. In 205 his wife was killed by his mistress; and shortly afterward Philopator himself passed away. In the ensuing chaos Philip V of Macedon and Antiochus III of Seleucia were about to dismember and absorb Egypt when Rome-with which the sec ond Ptolemy had made a treaty of friendship-entered upon the scene, de feated Philip, sent Antiochus packing, and made Egypt a Roman protec torate (205).
SOCIALISM UNDER THE PTOLEMIES
By far the most interesting aspect of Ptolemaic Egypt is its extensive experiment in state socialism. Royal ownership of the land had long been a sacred custom in Egypt; the Pharaoh, as king and god, had full right to the soil and all that it produced. The fellah was not a slave, but he could not leave his place without the permission of the government, and he was t'equired to tum over the larger part of his crops to the state." The Ptole-
588	THE	LIFE  OF GREECE	(CHAP. XXV
mies accepted this system, and extended it by appropriating the great tracts which, under previous dynasties, had belonged to the Egyptian nobles or priests. A great bureaucracy of governmental overseers, supported by armed guards, managed all Egypt asa vast state farm.• Nearly every peasant in Egypt was told by these officials what soil to till and what crops to grow; his labor and his animals could at any time be requisitioned by the state for mining, building, hunting, and the making of canals or roads; his harvest was gauged by state measurers, registered by the scribes, threshed on the royal threshing floor, and conveyed by a living chain of fellahs into the granaries of the king.a There were exceptions to the sys tem: the Ptolemies allowed the farmer to own his house and garden; they resigned the cities to private property; and they gave a right of leasehold to soldiers whose services were rewarded with land. But this leasehold was usually confined to areas which the owner agreed to devote to vine yards, orchards, or olive groves; it excluded the power of bequest, and might at any time be canceled by the king. As Greek energy and skill improved these cleruchic (shareholders') lands, a demand arose for the right to transmit the property from father to son. In the second century such bequest was permitted by custom, but not by law; in the last cen tury before Christ it was recognized by law,° and the usual evolution from common property to private property was complete.
Doubtless this system of socialism had been evolved because the condi tions of tillage in Egypt required more co-operation, more unison of action in time and space, than individual ownership could be expected to provide. The amount and character of the crops to be sown depended upon the extent of the annual inundation, and the efficiency of irrigation and drain age; these matters naturally made for central control. Greek engineers in the employ of the government improved the ancient processes, and ap plied a more scientific and intensive agriculture to the land. The ancient shaduf was replaced by the noria, a large wheel sometimes forty feet in diameter, equipped with buckets hanging freely on the interior rim; at the top of the revolution each bucket was tilted by an obstructing bar, and emptied its contents into an irrigation reservoir; better still, the "screw of Archimedes" and the pump of Ctesibius* raised water with a speed un known before the Ptolemies.10 The centralization of economic manage ment in the hands of the government, and the institution of forced labor, made possible great public works of flood control, road construction, irri gation, and building, and prepared the way for the engineering feats of
See Chap. XXVII b low.
CHAP.XXV)	EGYPT  AND  THE  WEST
Rome. Ptolemy II drained Lake Moeris, and turned its bed into a great tract of fertile land for distribution among the soldiers. In 285 he began to restore the canal from the Nile near Heliopolis to the Red Sea near Suez;" Pharaoh Necho and Darius I had built and rebuilt this, but twice the shifting sands had choked it up, as in a century they would do again.
Industry operated under similar conditions. The government not only owned the mines, but either worked them itself, or appropriated the ore."' The Ptolemies opened up valuable gold deposits in Nubia, and had a stable gold coinage. They controlled the copper mines of Cyprus and Sinai. They had a monopoly of oil-derived not from the soil but from plants like linseed, croton, and sesame. The government fixed, each year, the amount of land to be sown to such plants; it took the whole produce at its own price; it extracted the oil in state factories through great beam presses worked by serfs; it sold the oil to retailers at its own price, and excluded foreign competition by a heavy tariff; its profit ranged from seventy to three hundred per cent."" Apparently there were similar governmental sub sidies in salt, natron (carbonate of soda used as soap), incense, papyrus, and textiles; there were some private textile factories, but they had to sell alJ their product to the state.1' Minor industries were left in private hands; the state merely licensed and supervised them, bought a large share of their output at fixed prices, and taxed a good part of the profits into the royal treasury. Handicrafts were carried on by ancient guilds, whose members were by tradition bound to their trade, their village, even to·their domi cile.3 Industry was well developed; chariots, furniture, terra cotta, carpets, cosmetics were produced in abundance; glass blowing and the weaving of linen were Alexandrian specialties. Invention was more advanced in Ptole maic Egypt than in any economy before imperial Rome's; the screw chain, the wheel chain, the cam chain, the ratchet chain, the pulley chain, and the screw press were all in use;"' and the chemistry of dyes had progressed to the point of treating cloths with diverse reagents which brought forth, from immersion in one dye, a variety of fast colors." In general the fac tories of Alexandria were worked by slaves, whose low cost of mainte nance enabled the Ptolemies to undersell in foreign trade the products of Greek handicraft.111
All commerce was controlled and regulated by the government; retail traders were usually state agents distributing state goods.1' All caravan routes and waterways were owned by the state. Ptolemy II introduced the camel into Egypt, and organized a camel post to the south; this carried only governmental communications, but these included nearly all the com-
59°	THE   LIFE  OF GREECE	(CHAP. XXV
mercial correspondence of the country. The Nile was busy with passen ge!" and freight traffic, apparently under private management subject to state regulation... For the Mediterranean trade the Ptolemies built the largest commercial fleet of the time, with vessels of three hundred tons burden.11 The warehouses of Alexandria invited world trade; its double harbor was the envy of other cities; its lighthouse was one of the Seven Wonders.• The fields, factories, and workshops of Egypt supplied a great surplus, which found markets as far east as China, as far south as central Africa, as far north as Russia and the British Isles. Egyptian explorers sailed down to Zanzibar and Somaliland, and told the world about the Troglodytes who lived along the east African coast on sea food, ostriches, carrots, and roots." To break the Arab hold on Indian trade with the Near East, Egyptian ships sailed directly from the Nile to India. Under the wise en couragement of the Ptolemies Alexandria became the leading port of re shipment for Eastern merchandise destined for the markets of the Medi terranean.
This flowering of commerce and industry was quickened by excellent banking conveniences. Payment in kind survived to some degree, as a legacy from ancient Egypt; and the grain of the royal treasuries was used as part of the bank reserve; but deposits, withdrawals, and transfers of grain might be made on paper instead of being physically performed." Be side this modified barter rose a complex money economy. Banking was a government monopoly, but its operations might be delegated to private firms.• Bills were paid by drafts on bank balances; banks lent money at interest, and paid the accounts of the royal treasury. The central bank, at Alexandria, had branches in all the important towns. Never in known his tory had agriculture, industry, commerce, and finance reached so rich, so unified, and so brutal a development.
The masters and beneficiaries of this system were the free Greeks of the capi tal At the head of all was the Pharaoh-god-king. From the viewpoint of the Greek population the Ptolemy was truly a Soter or Savior, a Euergetes or Bene factor; he gave them a hundred thousand places in the bureaucracy, endless eco-
Sostratus of Cnidus designed it for Ptolemy Il, at a cost of eight hundred talents (about
$2,400,000) ,• It rose in several setbacks to a height of four hundred feet; it was covered with white marble and adorned with sculptures in marble and bronze; above the pillared cupola that contained the light rose a twenty-one-foot statue of Poseidon. The flame came from the burning of resinous wood, and was made visible, probably by convex metal mirrors, to a