rectly speaking, all who were neither citizens, on the one hand, nor, on the other, bondmen in Rome. The ancient law regarded them as enemies,10 against whom the faces of gods and men were to be turned; and though the letter was changed in after times, the spirit of the law remained the same towards all of foreign birth, especially if they were also of foreign residence. It is not yet, however, in season to take our view of the world as it was seen from Rome; and we have only to consider the position in which the alien who was attracted to or born in the city or the country would find himself situated while pursuing his trade for life or seeking temporary gains amongst the warlike people. It was simply in respect to their trades and occupations that the aliens were allowed to live beneath the safeguard of the Roman laws; though it may be seriously doubted if they were not much oftener obliged to defend themselves against injustice than allowed to accuse their more powerful neighbours who had done them wrong. There were few privileges of any sort, indeed, within their grasp, and even those which were could not be claimed except through the intervention of a Roman patron, or through the Roman Prætor afterwards appointed to control rather than to befriend them. Escaped, as it were, by a hair's breadth from bondage, the aliens, whether Italians, as in the early, or actual foreigners and barbarians, as in the later times, were always regarded 10" Hostis enim apud majores regrinum dicimus." Cic., De Off., nostros is dicebatur, quem nunc pe- I. 12. in so obnoxious a light, that none would come to swell the numbers in the great city except they were utterly ruined by conquest, or totally hardened by corruption or barbarity. The influence of mere intercourse with such a class upon the citizens of Rome will be easily conceived. The divisions of the people into the four great classes of citizens, freedmen, slaves, and aliens will of themselves explain the nature of the personal relations existing in Rome, and the manner in which the destiny of every man, according to his birth in one or another class, was generally, though not in all cases, as we have seen, inevitably, determined. So wide, however, became the distinctions of character resulting from those of fortune, that there was scarcely an opportunity or a pretence of union preserved, and, as we read on, we shall often mark the want of that sympathy which touches the proudest temper with tenderness and exalts the humblest action to success. Other wants will be as clear; and the separation between the different classes, incapable of pliancy before the demands and the perils of successive years, will end at last in the decay of all. There are some things which have to be foretold in every history. The social relations of the present period were also extended into the future. One universal distinction prevailed, as well amongst the free as between the free and the enslaved; it was that which separated the rich from the poor. No longer so gradual as it had been, no longer mingling itself, on supremacy were past, that the influence of religion was employed, not to make men better, but to render them more powerful. And as the days of heathenism draw nearer to their close, it will appear how greatly they were hastened by the prevalence of such a system as that of Rome, content to rest upon the authority of human laws and the efficacy of human powers. It is the river from which men drink and live, not such as they bend over to see themselves reflected before they die, that flows untainted and perennial. CHAPTER X. THE POPULAR PARTY. and relied too unhesitatingly on "They disdained a cooperation with the lower orders, . . . their power as a body."-PRESCOTT, Ferdinand and Isabella, Introd., Sect. I. GREATLY as the city in which the scene of our history is laid had increased in the three quarters of a century now passed since its destruction by the Gauls, it was but rudely fashioned, and but partially spread upon its seven hills. The gardens or the fields of the richer citizens still occupied much of the space within the walls, and the great edifices as well as the common dwellings that covered other portions of the upper and the lower ground had not yet assumed the stateliness we are apt to associate with the image of ancient Rome. But though there were few, if any, signs of magnificence, much less of taste, in the aspect of the city, at the time of our narrative, the difference between the private and the public buildings was very remarkable. The temple, with its company of columns, kept the foremost place upon the hill; and the broad square beneath, adorned with monuments and trophies, lay open for the assemblies of the people. Here and there, a glimpse might be caught of some larger dwelling, where the rich man lived, surrounded by retainers and slaves; but the houses more frequently seen would be the narrow and squalid tenements which blocked up the crooked streets, where the dampness of day and the darkness of night maintained continual gloom. It may be a view, not only of the city, but of the contrast between public and domestic interests, that we can conceive ourselves to have thus obtained. Turn where we will, indeed, there are testimonies of every kind to the predominance of the Commonwealth above its citizens. The poor man did not cultivate his field for himself, it sometimes seems, so much as for the taxes he was bound to pay into the public treasury. The rich man, at his banquet, entertained his guests with the praises of heroes and distinguished citizens,' as if his revelry were incomplete without the display of patriotism or ambition. So the games, the sacrifices, and the triumphs, of public celebration, were never regarded as redounding to the glory, the advantage, or the amusement of their spectators or their performers so much as to the majesty of universal Rome. It was more natural that the services of the magistrate and the general, the soldier and the citizen, should be claimed as due. to the Commonwealth from every individual, to whom it was sufficient honor that they should be rendered at his hands.2 But it was not alone to the 1" Utinam extarent illa carmina," exclaimed Cicero, "quæ multis seculis ante suam ætatem in epulis cantitata a singulis convivis de clarorum virorum laudibus, in Originibus scriptum reliquit Cato." Brutus, 19. 2 As is more livelily expressed by one of Metastasio's Romans : "La patria è un tutto Di cui siam parti. Al cittadino è fallo Separato da lei. L'utile o il danno Regolo, Att. II. sc. 1. |