that most men were restrained by the common affections of paternity from pushing the exercise of their authority to the extremities to which it was allowed to be extended. The power thus absolute over one's own flesh and blood need not be described in its other domestic, or followed into its various public relations, in order to be conceived of aright, as the striking expression of that authority committed to the superior individual or the superior class, as well by the later as by the earlier laws of Rome. The power of law was ample to secure whatsoever it commanded. Apart from the obedience it received spontaneously from a people remarkable for pride in their own institutions, it was armed besides with penalties to strike an offender from his place as a magistrate, a priest, or a citizen: the highest could be made as the lowest, if he were seditious or unfaithful. But the law of Rome was not merely denunciatory or compulsive; it maintained, at least in name, the higher principles of preservation and security; and sought the objects of its interest in things divine as well as human.10 Its materials were prepared was of Impuberes, to the age of twelve or fourteen, according to the sex; the other, of Puberes, to the age of twenty-five. Each period was subdivided into other two. After twenty-five, though a man were included in the Majores, as those above that age were called, he was still under his father's power, until it was dissolved by emancipation or death. The same remarks apply to adopted children. 10 66 De omnibus divinis et humanis rebus." Cic., De Orat., III. 33. amongst the Italian races, before the single state was formed upon the seven hills; nor can we undertake to learn how these were gathered, how wrought into the forms they are afterwards seen to wear. The forms themselves are susceptible of very simple definitions. In one great body of civil law, the civil and political laws of the Commonwealth formed one division, while the other was composed of the canon law, as we might style it, of the Pontiffs, otherwise called the pontifical or sacred code. The religion which Numa is said to have established seems, in its early ages, to have exerted a twofold influence. One of its effects was to cheer the people with boisterous games and to encourage them by joyous festivals; in which, if the gods would not be tempted down from their celestial dwellingplaces to join in the revelries they loved as well as any mortals, their worshippers might yet be persuaded to greater confidence, and, as would follow thence, to greater vigor in their relations to one another and to their common country. The other effect of the religious system amongst the elder generations of the Romans was the subjection it imposed upon its votaries. It was not so much that the priesthood possessed supreme authority in matters of religion, much less of government, as that the whole body of the higher citizens, from whom the priests were chosen and on whom they were made dependent, would be strengthened at the expense of every other order beneath their own. The chief obstacle to the elevation of the lower classes consisted, as we may learn hereafter from actual examples, in the concealment, not only of religious doctrines, but, likewise, of the commonest observances, such as the business and the holy days of the year, from their knowledge." The auspices, particularly, were long the stumbling-blocks of the Plebeians. Many a one amongst them kept himself apart from his brethren, with whom he had real sympathy and to whom he would have given real assistance, because the Augur bade him, with ominous frown, to beware. But the submission which religion required was not simply of a political character, nor yet incumbent upon the inferior classes alone. Every mind, as under all heathenism, was burdened by a weight which, it is true, was as far from being grievous in Rome as in Greece, yet beneath which there could really be no play of true feeling and no aspiration of true piety. No priesthood, in these later centuries of heathenism, could have watched the burden, careful that it kept its place, for it was upon their souls likewise; and the power of the superior Roman priests, the Pontiffs, great and irresponsible as it was, is to be regarded only under the former view suggested, of the Patricianism, so to speak, even of religion. 12 These considerations, compressed as they have necessarily been, of the relations between the various classes of people and the influences to which their 11" Diligentiusque urbem religione quam moenibus cingitis." Cic., De Nat. Deor., III. 40. 12 The subject of Roman religion will, of course, be resumed. See Book II. ch. 9, Book III. ch. 7. public life was variously exposed, may make the preeminence of the Patricians not only more distinct, but more accountable, to some, it might be added, more excusable. They were the real citizens, in whose possession alone the rights of liberty and law were inalienable,13 and on whose character alone the destinies of their country and its institutions appeared to be dependent. It was, however, the good fortune of Rome, that another class of citizens, at first inferior, was included within her fold, to whose elevation her prosperity and freedom, before both failed her under heathenism, are, humanly speaking, to be ascribed. But behind the Plebeians, a pall was dropped upon aliens, menials, and slaves, as upon men who could not, except as one or another amongst them might be individually admitted to the light, anticipate, much less enjoy, as a class, the liberty of Rome. The citizens were also the proprietors of Rome. One had a plot of land in town, or a narrow field in the country, just large enough, perhaps, to give him food and supply him with an overplus to meet his taxes. Another, able to support clients or laborers, would have a larger estate, or else obtain a greater share of the public land, for which the rent was merely nominal. The latter was the Patrician or the very rich Plebeian; the former was the Plebeian or the very poor Patrician. Below them both were 13 Which Cicero describes as the ludorum, festorum, dierum, cetero"possessionem gratiæ, libertatis, rum omnium commodorum." De suffragiorum, dignitatis, urbis, fori, Leg. Agr., II. 27. many who had parted with their scanty possessions in times of prodigality or distress; who also were citizens, or they would never have been proprietors. Distinctions analogous to those existing between the higher and lower classes of citizens affected the relations between the different orders of proprietors. Within the Pomarium, the sacred limit of the city, lay all the public and most of the private possessions of the Patricians; while without the same boundary the homes and sanctuaries of the Plebeians were mostly situated, as upon the Aventine. The occupation, however, of all the citizens in times of peace was husbandry; and the abundance of the whole nation was chiefly that which arises from well-tilled fields. One cannot go back, indeed, to the years of the Monarchy and the revolution in Rome, without seeming to behold the destiny of the people wavering between that of an agricultural and that of a warlike nation: but the scale was soon turned. The song of the Fratres Arvales, the Brothers of the Fields, is an appeal to Mars, the god of war, that he would bless their labors of the plough and the pruning-hook; and the procession winding through the cultivated lands in the spring-time, to insure the fruits of the earth,14 was one in which the husbandman does not appear to have put off the mien of the warrior. The citizens were not only the proprietors, but the soldiers, of the Commonwealth. They who had homes and rights to defend were most relied on for incessant 14 66 Fruges lustramus et agros." Tibull., II. 1. |