This book was originally intended to be a companion to Professor Tucker's Life in Ancient Athens , published in Messrs. Macmillan's series of Handbooks of Archaeology and Art; but the plan was abandoned for reasons on which I need not dwell, and before the book was quite finished I was called to other and more specialised work. As it stands, it is merely an attempt to supply an educational want. At our schools and universities we read the great writers of the last age of the Republic, and learn

ROME IN THE LAST YEARS OF THE REPUBLIC At end of Volume Translations of passages in foreign languages in this book will be found in the Appendix following page 362....

The modern traveller of to-day arriving at Rome by rail drives to his hotel through the uninteresting streets of a modern town, and thence finds his way to the Forum and the Palatine, where his attention is speedily absorbed by excavations which he finds it difficult to understand. It is as likely as not that he may leave Rome without once finding an opportunity of surveying the whole site of the ancient city, or of asking, and possibly answering the question, how it ever came to be where it is.

The walk we have been taking has led us only through the heart of the city, in which were the public buildings, temples, basilicas, porticos, etc., of which we hear so much in Latin literature. It was on the hills which are spurs of the plain beyond, and which look down over the Forum and the Campus Martius, the Caelian, Esquiline, and Quirinal, with the hollows lying between them, and also on the Aventine by the river, that the mass of the population lived. The most ancient fortification of com

The highest class in the social scale at Rome was divided, roughly rather than exactly, into two sections, according as they did or did not aim at being elected to magistracies and so entering the senate. To the senatorius ordo, which will be dealt with in the next chapter, belonged all senators, and all sons of senators whether or no they had as yet been elected to the quaestorship, which after Sulla was the magistracy qualifying for the senate. But outside the senatorial ranks there were numbe

Above the men of business of equestrian rank, in social standing though not necessarily in wealth, there was in Cicero's time an aristocracy which a Roman of that day would perhaps have found it a little difficult to explain or define to a foreigner. Fortunately all foreigners coming to Rome would know what was meant by the senate, the great council which received envoys from all nations outside the Empire; and the stranger might be told in the first place that all members of that august assembl

In order to appreciate the position of women of various types in the society we are examining, it is necessary to make it clear what Roman marriage originally and ideally meant. In any society, it will be found that the position and influence of woman can be fairly well discerned from the nature of the marriage ceremony and the conditions under which it is carried out. At Rome, in all periods of her history, a iustum matrimonium , i.e. a marriage sanctioned by law and religion, and therefore ent

From what has been said in preceding chapters of the duties and the habits of the two sections of the upper stratum of society, it will readily be inferred that the kind of education called for was one mainly of character. In these men, whether for the work of business or of government, what was wanted was the will to do well and justly, and the instinctive hatred of all evil and unjust dealing. Such an education of the will and character is supplied (whatever be its shortcomings in other ways)

In the last age of the Republic the employment of slave labour reached its high-water mark in ancient history.[306] We have already met with evidence of this in examining the life of the upper classes; in the present chapter we must try to sketch, first, the conditions under which it was possible for such a vast slave system to arise and flourish, and secondly, the economical and ethical results of it both in city and country. The subject is indeed far too large and complicated to be treated in

We saw that the poorer classes in Rome were lodged in huge insulae , and enjoyed nothing that can be called home life. The wealthy families, on the other hand, lived in domus , i.e. separate dwellings, accommodating only one family, often, even in the Ciceronian period, of great magnificence. But even these great houses hardly suggest a life such as that which we associate with the word home. As Mr. Tucker has pointed out in the case of Athens,[375] the warmer climates of Greece and Italy encour

Before giving some account of the way in which a Roman of consideration spent his day in the time of Cicero, it seems necessary to explain briefly how he reckoned the divisions of the day. The old Latin farmer knew nothing of hours or clocks. He simply went about his daily work with the sun and the light as guides, rising at or before sunrise, working till noon, and, after a meal and a rest, resuming his work till sunset. This simple method of reckoning would suffice in a sunny climate, even whe

The Italian peoples, of all races, have always had a wonderful capacity for enjoying themselves out of doors. The Italian festa of to-day, usually, as in ancient times, linked to some religious festival, is a scene of gaiety, bright dresses, music, dancing, bonfires, races, and improvisation or mummery; and all that we know of the ancient rural festivals of Italy suggests that they were of much the same lively and genial character. Tibullus gives us a good idea of them:   "Agricola assiduo primu

It is easy to write the word "religion" at the head of this chapter, but by no means easy to find anything in this materialistic period which answers to our use of the word. In the whole mass, for example, of the Ciceronian correspondence, there is hardly anything to show that Cicero and his friends, and therefore, as we may presume, the average educated man of the day, were affected in their thinking or their conduct by any sense of dependence on, or responsibility to, a Supreme Being. If, howe

These sketches of social life at the close of the Republican period have been written without any intention of proving a point, or any pre-conceived idea of the extent of demoralisation, social, moral, or political, which the Roman people had then reached. But a perusal of Mr. Balfour's suggestive lecture on "Decadence" has put me upon making a very succinct diagnosis of the condition of the patient whose life and habits I have been describing. The Romans, and the Italians, with whom they were n