The Caesars

T >> Thomas de Quincey >> The Caesars

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It is the remark of Capitoline, that "gladiatoria spectacula omnifariam
temperavit; temperavit etiam scenicas donationes;"--he controlled in every
possible way the gladiatorial spectacles; he controlled also the rates of
allowance to the stage performers. In these latter reforms, which simply
restrained the exorbitant salaries of a class dedicated to the public
pleasures, and unprofitable to the state, Marcus may have had no farther
view than that which is usually connected with sumptuary laws. But in the
restraints upon the gladiators, it is impossible to believe that his
highest purpose was not that of elevating human nature, and preparing the
way for still higher regulations. As little can it be believed that this
lofty conception, and the sense of a degradation entailed upon human
nature itself, in the spectacle of human beings matched against each other
like brute beasts, and pouring out their blood upon the arena as a
libation to the caprices of a mob, could have been derived from any other
source than the contagion of Christian standards and Christian sentiments,
then beginning to pervade and ventilate the atmosphere of society in its
higher and philosophic regions. Christianity, without expressly affirming,
every where indirectly supposes and presumes the infinite value and
dignity of man as a creature, exclusively concerned in a vast and
mysterious economy of restoration to a state of moral beauty and power in
some former age mysteriously forfeited. Equally interested in its
benefits, joint heirs of its promises, all men, of every color, language,
and rank, Gentile or Jew, were here first represented as in one sense (and
that the most important) equal; in the eye of this religion, they were, by
necessity of logic, equal, as equal participators in the ruin and the
restoration. Here first, in any available sense, was communicated to the
standard of human nature a vast and sudden elevation; and reasonable
enough it is to suppose, that some obscure sense of this, some sympathy
with the great changes for man then beginning to operate, would first of
all reach the inquisitive students of philosophy, and chiefly those in
high stations, who cultivated an intercourse with all the men of original
genius throughout the civilized world. The Emperor Hadrian had already
taken a solitary step in the improvement of human nature; and not, we may
believe, without some sub-conscious influence received directly or
indirectly from Christianity. So again, with respect to Marcus, it is
hardly conceivable that he, a prince so indulgent and popular, could have
thwarted, and violently gainsaid, a primary impulse of the Roman populace,
without some adequate motive; and none _could_ be adequate which was
not built upon some new and exalted views of human nature, with which
these gladiatorial sacrifices were altogether at war. The reforms which
Marcus introduced into these "crudelissima spectacula," all having the
common purpose of limiting their extent, were three. First, he set bounds
to the extreme cost of these exhibitions; and this restriction of the cost
covertly operated as a restriction of the practice. Secondly,--and this
ordinance took effect whenever he was personally present, if not oftener,
--he commanded, on great occasions, that these displays should be
bloodless. Dion Cassius notices this fact in the following words:--"The
Emperor Marcus was so far from taking delight in spectacles of bloodshed,
that even the gladiators in Rome could not obtain his inspection of their
contests, unless, like the wrestlers, they contended without imminent
risk; for he never allowed them the use of sharpened weapons, but
universally they fought before him with weapons previously blunted."
Thirdly, he repealed the old and uniform regulation, which secured to the
gladiators a perpetual immunity from military service. This necessarily
diminished their available amount. Being now liable to serve their country
usefully in the field of battle, whilst the concurrent limitation of the
expenses in this direction prevented any proportionate increase of their
numbers, they were so much the less disposable in aid of the public
luxury. His fatherly care of all classes, and the universal benignity with
which he attempted to raise the abject estimate and condition of even the
lowest _Pariars_ in his vast empire, appears in another little
anecdote, relating to a class of men equally with the gladiators given up
to the service of luxury in a haughty and cruel populace. Attending one
day at an exhibition of rope-dancing, one of the performers (a boy) fell
and hurt himself; from which time the paternal emperor would never allow
the rope-dancers to perform without mattrasses or feather-beds spread
below, to mitigate the violence of their falls.] In this he meditated no
reflection upon his father by adoption, the Emperor Pius, (who also, for
aught we know, might secretly revolt from a species of amusement which, as
the prescriptive test of munificence in the popular estimate, it was
necessary to support;) on the contrary, he obeyed him with the
punctiliousness of a Roman obedience; he watched the very motions of his
countenance; and he waited so continually upon his pleasure, that for
three-and-twenty years which they lived together, he is recorded to have
slept out of his father's palace only for two nights. This rigor of filial
duty illustrates a feature of Roman life; for such was the sanctity of
law, that a father created by legal fiction was in all respects treated
with the same veneration and affection, as a father who claimed upon the
most unquestioned footing of natural right. Such, however, is the
universal baseness of courts, that even this scrupulous and minute
attention to his duties, did not protect Marcus from the injurious
insinuations of whisperers. There were not wanting persons who endeavored
to turn to account the general circumstances in the situation of the
Caesar, which pointed him out to the jealousy of the emperor. But these
being no more than what adhere necessarily to the case of every heir
_as_ such, and meeting fortunately with no more proneness to
suspicion in the temper of the Augustus than they did with countenance in
the conduct of the Caesar, made so little impression, that at length these
malicious efforts died away, from mere defect of encouragement.

The most interesting political crisis in the reign of Marcus was the war
in Germany with the Marcomanni, concurrently with pestilence in Rome. The
agitation of the public mind was intense; and prophets arose, as since
under corresponding circumstances in Christian countries, who announced
the approaching dissolution of the world. The purse of Marcus was open, as
usual, to the distresses of his subjects. But it was chiefly for the
expense of funerals that his aid was claimed. In this way he alleviated
the domestic calamities of his capital, or expressed his sympathy with the
sufferers, where alleviation was beyond his power; whilst, by the energy
of his movements and his personal presence on the Danube, he soon
dissipated those anxieties of Rome which pointed in a foreign direction.
The war, however, had been a dreadful one, and had excited such just fears
in the most experienced heads of the State, that, happening in its
outbreak to coincide with a Parthian war, it was skilfully protracted
until the entire thunders of Rome, and the undivided energies of her
supreme captains, could be concentrated upon this single point. Both
[Footnote: Marcus had been associated, as Caesar and as emperor, with the
son of the late beautiful Verus, who is usually mentioned by the same
name.] emperors left Rome, and crossed the Alps; the war was thrown back
upon its native seats--Austria and the modern Hungary: great battles were
fought and won; and peace, with consequent relief and restoration to
liberty, was reconquered for many friendly nations, who had suffered under
the ravages of the Marcomanni, the Sarmatians, the Quadi, and the Vandals;
whilst some of the hostile people were nearly obliterated from the map,
and their names blotted out from the memory of men.

Since the days of Gaul as an independent power, no war had so much alarmed
the people of Rome; and their fear was justified by the difficulties and
prodigious efforts which accompanied its suppression. The public treasury
was exhausted; loans were an engine of fiscal policy, not then understood
or perhaps practicable; and great distress was at hand for the State. In
these circumstances, Marcus adopted a wise (though it was then esteemed a
violent or desperate) remedy. Time and excessive luxury had accumulated in
the imperial palaces and villas vast repositories of apparel, furniture,
jewels, pictures, and household utensils, valuable alike for the materials
and the workmanship. Many of these articles were consecrated, by color or
otherwise, to the use of the _sacred_ household; and to have been
found in possession of them, or with the materials for making them, would
have entailed the penalties of treason. All these stores were now brought
out to open day, and put up to public sale by auction, free license being
first granted to the bidders, whoever they might be, to use, or otherwise
to exercise the fullest rights of property upon all they bought. The
auction lasted for two months. Every man was guaranteed in the peaceable
ownership of his purchases. And afterwards, when the public distress had
passed over, a still further indulgence was extended to the purchasers.
Notice was given--that all who were dissatisfied with their purchases, or
who for other means might wish to recover their cost, would receive back
the purchase-money, upon returning the articles. Dinner-services of gold
and crystal, murrhine vases, and even his wife's wardrobe of silken robes
interwoven with gold, all these, and countless other articles were
accordingly returned, and the full auction prices paid back; or were
_not_ returned, and no displeasure shown to those who publicly displayed
them as their own. Having gone so far, overruled by the necessities of the
public service, in breaking down those legal barriers by which a peculiar
dress, furniture, equipage, &c., were appropriated to the imperial house,
as distinguished from the very highest of the noble houses, Marcus had a
sufficient pretext for extending indefinitely the effect of the
dispensation then granted. Articles purchased at the auction bore no
characteristic marks to distinguish them from others of the same form and
texture: so that a license to use any one article of the _sacred_ pattern,
became necessarily a general license for all others which resembled them.
And thus, without abrogating the prejudices which protected the imperial
precedency, a body of sumptuary laws--the most ruinous to the progress of
manufacturing skill, [Footnote: Because the most effectual extinguishers
of all ambition applied in that direction; since the very excellence of
any particular fabric was the surest pledge of its virtual suppression by
means of its legal restriction (which followed inevitably) to the use of
the imperial house.] which has ever been devised--were silently suspended.
One or two aspiring families might be offended by these innovations, which
meantime gave the pleasures of enjoyment to thousands, and of hope to
millions.

But these, though very noticeable relaxations of the existing prerogative,
were, as respected the temper which dictated them, no more than everyday
manifestations of the emperor's perpetual benignity. Fortunately for
Marcus, the indestructible privilege of the _divina domus_ exalted it
so unapproachably beyond all competition, that no possible remissions of
aulic rigor could ever be misinterpreted; fear there could be none, lest
such paternal indulgences should lose their effect and acceptation as pure
condescensions. They could neither injure their author, who was otherwise
charmed and consecrated, from disrespect; nor could they suffer injury
themselves by misconstruction, or seem other than sincere, coming from a
prince whose entire life was one long series of acts expressing the same
affable spirit. Such, indeed, was the effect of this uninterrupted
benevolence in the emperor, that at length all men, according to their
several ages, hailed him as their father, son, or brother. And when he
died, in the sixty-first year of his life (the 18th of his reign), he was
lamented with a corresponding peculiarity in the public ceremonial, such,
for instance, as the studied interfusion of the senatorial body with the
populace, expressive of the levelling power of a true and comprehensive
grief; a peculiarity for which no precedent was found, and which never
afterwards became a precedent for similar honors to the best of his
successors.

But malice has the divine privilege of ubiquity; and therefore it was that
even this great model of private and public virtue did not escape the
foulest libels: he was twice accused of murder; once on the person of a
gladiator, with whom the empress is said to have fallen in love; and
again, upon his associate in the empire, who died in reality of an
apoplectic seizure, on his return from the German campaign. Neither of
these atrocious fictions ever gained the least hold of the public
attention, so entirely were they put down by the _prima facie_
evidence of facts, and of the emperor's notorious character. In fact his
faults, if he had any in his public life, were entirely those of too much
indulgence. In a few cases of enormous guilt, it is recorded that he
showed himself inexorable. But, generally speaking, he was far otherwise;
and, in particular, he carried his indulgence to his wife's vices to an
excess which drew upon him the satirical notice of the stage.

The gladiators, and still more the sailors of that age, were constantly to
be seen playing naked, and Faustina was shameless enough to take her
station in places which gave her the advantages of a leisurely review; and
she actually selected favorites from both classes on the ground of a
personal inspection. With others of greater rank she is said even to have
been surprised by her husband; in particular with one called Tertullus, at
dinner. [Footnote: Upon which some _mimographus_ built an occasional
notice of the scandal then floating on the public breath in the following
terms: One of the actors having asked "_Who was the adulterous paramour?_"
receives for answer, _Tullus_. Who? he asks again; and again for three
times running he is answered, _Tullus_. But asking a fourth time, the
rejoinder is, Jam dixi _ter Tullus_.] But to all remonstrances on this
subject, Marcus is reported to have replied, "_Si uxorem dimittimus,
reddamus et dotem;_" meaning that, having received his right of succession
to the empire simply by his adoption into the family of Pius, his wife's
father, gratitude and filial duty obliged him to view any dishonors
emanating from his wife's conduct as joint legacies with the splendors
inherited from their common father; in short, that he was not at liberty
to separate the rose from its thorns. However, the facts are not
sufficiently known to warrant us in criticising very severely his behavior
on so trying an occasion.

It would be too much for human frailty, that absolutely no stain should
remain upon his memory. Possibly the best use which can be made of such a
fact is, in the way of consolation to any unhappy man, whom his wife may
too liberally have endowed with honors of this kind, by reminding him that
he shares this distinction with the great philosophic emperor. The
reflection upon this story by one of his biographers is this--"Such is the
force of daily life in a good ruler, so great the power of his sanctity,
gentleness, and piety, that no breath of slander or invidious suggestion
from an acquaintance can avail to sully his memory. In short, to Antonine,
immutable as the heavens in the tenor of his own life, and in the
manifestations of his own moral temper, and who was not by possibility
liable to any impulse or 'shadow of turning' from another man's
suggestion, it was not eventually an injury that he was dishonored by some
of his connections; on him, invulnerable in his own character, neither a
harlot for his wife, nor a gladiator for his son, could inflict a wound.
Then as now, oh sacred lord Diocletian, he was reputed a god; not as
others are reputed, but specially and in a peculiar sense, and with a
privilege to such worship from all men as you yourself addressed to him--
who often breathe a wish to Heaven, that you were or could be such in life
and merciful disposition as was Marcus Aurelius."

What this encomiast says in a rhetorical tone was literally true. Marcus
was raised to divine honors, or canonized [Footnote: In reality, if by
_divus_ and _divine honors_ we understand a saint or spiritualized being
having a right of intercession with the Supreme Deity, and by his temple,
&c., if we understand a shrine attended by a priest to direct the prayers
of his devotees, there is no such wide chasm between this pagan
superstition and the adoration of saints in the Romish church, as at first
sight appears. The fault is purely in the names: _divus_ and _templum_ are
words too undistinguishing and generic.] (as in Christian phrase we might
express it.) That was a matter of course; and, considering with whom he
shared such honors, they are of little account in expressing the grief and
veneration which followed him. A circumstance more characteristic, in the
record of those observances which attested the public feeling, is this--
that he who at that time had no bust, picture, or statue of Marcus in his
house, was looked upon as a profane and irreligious man. Finally, to do
him honor not by testimonies of men's opinions in his favor, but by facts
of his own life and conduct, one memorable trophy there is amongst the
moral distinctions of the philosophic Caesar, utterly unnoticed hitherto by
historians, but which will hereafter obtain a conspicuous place in any
perfect record of the steps by which civilization has advanced, and human
nature has been exalted. It is this: Marcus Aurelius was the first great
military leader (and his civil office as supreme interpreter and creator
of law consecrated his example) who allowed rights indefeasible--rights
uncancelled by his misfortune in the field, to the prisoner of war. Others
had been merciful and variously indulgent, upon their own discretion, and
upon a random impulse to some, or possibly to all of their prisoners; but
this was either in submission to the usage of that particular war, or to
special self-interest, or at most to individual good feeling. None had
allowed a prisoner to challenge any forbearance as of right. But Marcus
Aurelius first resolutely maintained that certain indestructible rights
adhered to every soldier, simply as a man, which rights, capture by the
sword, or any other accident of war, could do nothing to shake or to
diminish. We have noticed other instances in which Marcus Aurelius
labored, at the risk of his popularity, to elevate the condition of human
nature. But those, though equally expressing the goodness and loftiness of
his nature, were by accident directed to a perishable institution, which
time has swept away, and along with it therefore his reformations. Here,
however, is an immortal act of goodness built upon an immortal basis; for
so long as armies congregate, and the sword is the arbiter of
international quarrels, so long it will deserve to be had in remembrance,
that the first man who set limits to the empire of wrong, and first
translated within the jurisdiction of man's moral nature that state of war
which had heretofore been consigned, by principle no less than by
practice, to anarchy, animal violence, and brute force, was also the first
philosopher who sat upon a throne.

In this, and in his universal spirit of forgiveness, we cannot but
acknowledge a Christian by anticipation; nor can we hesitate to believe,
that through one or other of his many philosophic friends, [Footnote: Not
long after this, Alexander Severus meditated a temple to Christ; upon
which design Lampridius observes,--_Quod et Hadrianus cogitasse
fertur;_ and, as Lampridius was himself a pagan, we believe him to have
been right in his report, in spite of all which has been written by
Casaubon and others, who maintain that these imperfect temples of Hadrian
were left void of all images or idols,--not in respect to the Christian
practice, but because he designed them eventually to be dedicated to
himself. However, be this as it may, thus much appears on the face of the
story,--that Christ and Christianity had by that time begun to challenge
the imperial attention; and of this there is an indirect indication, as it
has been interpreted, even in the memoir of Marcus himself. The passage is
this: "Fama fuit sane quod sub philosophorum specie quidam rempublicam
vexarent et privates." The _philosophi_, here mentioned by Capitoline, are
by some supposed to be the Christians; and for many reasons we believe it;
and we understand the molestations of the public services and of private
individuals, here charged upon them, as a very natural reference to the
Christian doctrines falsely understood. There is, by the way, a fine
remark upon Christianity, made by an infidel philosopher of Germany, which
suggests a remarkable feature in the merits of Marcus Aurelius. There
were, as this German philosopher used to observe, two schemes of thinking
amongst the ancients, which severally fulfilled the two functions of a
sound philosophy, as respected the moral nature of man. One of these
schemes presented us with a just ideal of moral excellence, a standard
sufficiently exalted: this was the Stoic philosophy; and thus far its
pretensions were unexceptionable and perfect. But unfortunately, whilst
contemplating this pure ideal of man as he ought to be, the Stoic totally
forgot the frail nature of man as he is; and by refusing all compromises
and all condescensions to human infirmity, this philosophy of the Porch
presented to us a brilliant prize and object for our efforts, but placed
on an inaccessible height.

On the other hand, there was a very different philosophy at the very
antagonist pole,--not blinding itself by abstractions too elevated,
submitting to what it finds, bending to the absolute facts and realities
of man's nature, and affably adapting itself to human imperfections. This
was the philosophy of Epicurus; and undoubtedly, as a beginning, and for
the elementary purpose of conciliating the affections of the pupil, it was
well devised; but here the misfortune was, that the ideal, or _maximum
perfectionis_, attainable by human nature, was pitched so low, that the
humility of its condescensions and the excellence of its means were all to
no purpose, as leading to nothing further. One mode presented a splendid
end, but insulated, and with no means fitted to a human aspirant for
communicating with its splendors; the other, an excellent road, but
leading to no worthy or proportionate end. Yet these, as regarded morals,
were the best and ultimate achievements of the pagan world. Now
Christianity, said he, is the synthesis of whatever is separately
excellent in either. It will abate as little as the haughtiest Stoicism of
the ideal which it contemplates as the first postulate of true morality;
the absolute holiness and purity which it demands are as much raised above
the poor performances of actual man, as the absolute wisdom and
impeccability of the Stoic. Yet, unlike the Stoic scheme, Christianity is
aware of the necessity, and provides for it, that the means of
appropriating this ideal perfection should be such as are consistent with
the nature of a most erring and imperfect creature. Its motion is
_towards_ the divine, but _by_ and _through_ the human. In fact, it offers
the Stoic humanized in his scheme of means, and the Epicurean exalted in
his final objects. Nor is it possible to conceive a practicable scheme of
morals which should not rest upon such a synthesis of the two elements as
the Christian scheme presents; nor any other mode of fulfilling that
demand than, such a one as is there first brought forward, viz., a double
or Janus nature, which stands in an equivocal relation,--to the divine
nature by his actual perfections, to the human nature by his participation
in the same animal frailties and capacities of fleshly temptation. No
other vinculum could bind the two postulates together, of an absolute
perfection in the end proposed, and yet of utter imperfection in the means
for attaining it.

Such was the outline of this famous tribute by an unbelieving philosopher
to the merits of Christianity as a scheme of moral discipline. Now, it
must be remembered that Marcus Aurelius was by profession a Stoic; and
that generally, as a theoretical philosopher, but still more as a Stoic
philosopher, he might be supposed incapable of descending from these airy
altitudes of speculation to the true needs, infirmities, and capacities of
human nature. Yet strange it is, that he, of all the good emperors, was
the most thoroughly human and practical. In evidence of which, one body of
records is amply sufficient, which is, the very extensive and wise reforms
which he, beyond all the Caesars, executed in the existing laws. To all the
exigencies of the times, and to all the new necessities developed by the
progress of society, he adjusted the old laws, or supplied new ones. The
same praise, therefore, belongs to him, which the German philosopher
conceded to Christianity, of reconciling the austerest ideal with the
practical; and hence another argument for presuming him half baptized into
the new faith.] whose attention Christianity was by that time powerful to
attract, some reflex images of Christian doctrines--some half-conscious
perception of its perfect beauty--had flashed upon his mind. And when we
view him from this distant age, as heading that shining array, the Howards
and the Wilberforces, who have since then in a practical sense hearkened
to the sighs of "all prisoners and captives"--we are ready to suppose him
addressed by the great Founder of Christianity, in the words of Scripture,
"_Verily, I say unto thee, Thou art not far from the kingdom of
heaven._"

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