direction was the New Stoicism, which numbered Cato and Brutus among its earliest representatives at Rome, and found in Seneca (A.D. 2-66) its most noted literary exponent. But what was the practical result of all this preaching and indoctrination? A few men made stronger and more robust in character, and probably only a few. Those who used the fine sounding dialect of Stoical virtue were greatly in excess of those who fulfilled its difficult precepts. Even the Seneca who moralized so grandly on the nothingness of the world is credited with having added to his immense fortune by oppressive usury. He seems also not to have been above a species of accommodation in his relation to the emperors, having written the official laudation of Claudius which was pronounced by his successor, though his real opinion of that emperor was expressed in a satire; and having composed, moreover, the lying epistle to the Senate, which attempted to clear Nero from the guilt of murdering his mother. Other charges of a very serious nature were whispered by contemporaries, but they may properly be disregarded as being perhaps only the malicious insinuations of the slanderer. Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius seem to have been better models as respects personal conduct. They stood, however, in a small group. The Stoic morality was in general powerless to heal either society or the individual. It was strikingly destitute of motive power. In pursuance of its pantheistic theory it obscured the

1 Merivale, General History of Rome. Dio Cassius, lxii. 2.

2 Tacitus, Annal., xiii. 3.

8 Dio Cassius, lx. 35.

4 Tacitus, Annal., xiv. 10, 11. J. F. Hurst, Meth. Rev., April, 1876. 5 A full list is given by Dio Cassius, lx. 8, lxi. 10.

reality of sin, the personality of God, the distinction between providence and fate, and set a limit to the separate existence of the soul. Pushed to its logical issue, it stamped emptiness and vanity upon the very nature of man. It is scarcely surprising, therefore, that it did so little to arrest the progress of corruption. The work of the philosopher is not indeed to be despised. All honor is due to his good intent, his noble lessons in morals, and, in some instances, his example of high-minded conduct. But Roman society evidently needed more powerful means of regeneration than any which he was able to contribute.

In the states of Greece, a marked decline in morals. was apparent soon after the Peloponnesian war. The binding power of the oath was greatly diminished; honesty and purity were at a discount. A similar declension began in the Roman Republic after the second Punic war, and went on with widening and deepening effect far into the first century of the Christian era. As the field of conquest was enlarged, the sturdy Roman virtue came into contact with demoralizing customs and influences. Greek laxity, Oriental indulgence, and abounding wealth brought their temptations to bear. As if to make up for ages of continence in the past, pleasure-seeking was now pursued to an amazing extreme of voluptuousness and license.

The moral bankruptcy of the times is amply attested both by the statements of writers and the evidence of facts. The vigorous impeachment by the Apostle to the Gentiles1 is not at all in excess of that which comes from Seneca. "All things," says the Roman moralist,

1 Epistle to the Romans, i.

"are full of crimes and vices. A great struggle is waged for pre-eminence in iniquity. Daily grows the appetite for sin; daily wanes the sense of shame. All respect for excellence and justice being cast aside, lust rushes on at will. Crimes are no longer secret: they stalk before the eyes of men. Iniquity is given such a range in public, and is so mighty in the breasts of all, that innocence is not merely rare: it has no existence. Think you that there are only a few individuals who have made an end of law? From all sides, as at a given signal, men have sprung to the task of confounding right and wrong." In the satires of Juvenal the strictures upon the age, if less serious in tone than the above, are no less indicative of moral degeneracy. Some allowance may be made for rhetorical exaggeration in the statements of these writers; but a glance at the different ranks of society and the different phases of social and domestic life will satisfy us that their arraignment was far from groundless.

1

(1) The Emperors and the Imperial Court. To judge society at large by such emperors as Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Domitian, and others of like stamp, would doubtless be gross injustice. They are not to be taken unqualifiedly as exponents of their times. On the other hand, it would be an irrational excess of charity to regard them as complete exceptions to their age. They were not so much foreign to the soil upon which they grew, as its ranker and more towering growths. Their tyranny was only an exaggerated form of the current disregard of human life. When we hear Caligula remarking, in a moment of disappointment and spite, that 1 De Ira, ii. 9.

he wished the Roman people had but one neck,1 we recognize simply the same temper, grown to monstrous proportions, which made the populace delight in the cruel and bloody sports of the amphitheatre. In like manner their overgrown luxury was but a crowning expression of the voluptuousness and prodigality of the age. A Caligula spending four or five hundred thousand dollars on a single day's banqueting;2 or a Nero building his "golden house," 3 with its lavish adornment, and its triple colonnade reaching the length of a mile, or travelling with a thousand vehicles as his ordinary retinue (the animals being shod with silver, the drivers

1 Suetonius, in the same paragraph in which he records this exclamation of Caligula, says, "He generally prolonged the sufferings of his victims, by causing them to be inflicted by slight and frequently repeated strokes; this being his well-known and constant order: 'Strike so that he may feel himself die.'" (Lives of the Twelve Cæsars: Caligula, xxx.)

2 Seneca says, "C. Cæsar Augustus, quem mihi videtur rerum natura edidisse, ut ostenderet, quid summa vitia in summa fortuna possent, centies sestertio cœnavit uno die. Et in hoc omnium adjutus ingenio vix tamen invenit, quomodo trium provinciarum tributum una cœna fieret. (Ad Helvium, x.) Compare the following from Suetonius: "In the devices of his profuse expenditure, he surpassed all the prodigals that ever lived, inventing a new kind of bath, with strange dishes and suppers, washing in precious unguents, drinking pearls of immense value dissolved in vinegar, and serving up for his guests loaves and other victuals modelled in gold; often saying that a man ought to be a good economist or an emperor." (Caligula, xxxvii.) It has been suspected that in the eccentricity of Caligula there was a spice of real insanity.

3 A special feature in Nero's palace was the provision for luxurious banqueting. "The supper-rooms were vaulted; and compartments of the ceilings, inlaid with ivory, were made to revolve and scatter flowers, while they contained pipes which shed unguents upon the guests. The chief banqueting-room was circular, and revolved perpetually, night and day, in imitation of the motion of the celestial bodies." (SUETONIUS: Nero, xxxi.)

and footmen dressed in showy and costly garments), while a herd of five hundred she-asses was added for his wife Poppaa, that she might daily bathe in their milk, — these were examples which many were ready to imitate in proportion to their means.

(2) The Nobility. — In the closing period of the Republic, the civil wars had greatly reduced the number of the old senatorial families. To keep their ranks good, it was necessary from time to time to add recruits from the second rank of the nobility, the knights. Sometimes men of the third rank were promoted to the first. Even freedmen, in the later times of the Empire, were occasionally lifted to the summit of the nobility. The senators, in virtue of their position, belonged especially to the city of Rome; the knights were scattered over the Empire, and occupied the first place in the provincial cities.

The senators were the foremost sharers in the spoils of conquest. In the current phraseology, a senatorial estate was but another name for a large fortune. The richest had an annual income approaching to a million of dollars. The annual income of senators of the second rank ranged from two hundred to three hundred thousand dollars.1 Senatorial estates were found in all parts of the Empire. In the time of Nero, six land-owners possessed half of the province of North Africa.2

Expenditure, however, was quite on a par with inTo support the ordinary senatorial dignity, in accordance with the ideas of the times, required no

come.

1 See estimates of Friedlaender, vol. i.

2 Ibid.