Life, private and public, individual and corporate, has never been lived more intensely than in ancient Italy. But the events of our own time are too vital and absorbing to let us spare interest for the details of municipal organization under the Caesars; the confusing diversities of constitution and the jealous gradations of franchise are no longer a part of that living past which is our matrix and our theme.
It was a basic feature of the Roman Empire that though divided into provinces it was organized into an assemblage of relatively self-governed city-states each owning an extensive hinterland. Patriotism meant love of one’s city rather than of the Empire. Normally the freemen of each community were content to exercise a purely local franchise; and those non-Romans who had won Roman citizenship rarely went to Rome to vote. As the example of Pompeii shows, the decay of the assemblies in the capital was not accompanied by a similar debasement in the cities of the Empire. Most Italian municipalities had a senate (curia)—and most Eastern cities had a council (boulé)—that formulated ordinances, and an assembly (comitia, ekklesia) that chose the magistrates. Each magistrate was expected to give his city a substantial sum (summa honoraria, from honos, office) for the privilege of serving it, and custom required him also to make incidental donations for public benefits or games. As no pay attached to office, the democracy—or aristocracy—of freemen issued almost everywhere in an oligarchy of wealth and power.
For two hundred years, from Augustus to Aurelius, the municipalities of Italy prospered. There was a majority of poor in them, of course; nature and privilege had seen to this; but never before or since, so far as history tells, have the rich done so much for the poor. Practically all the expenses of operating the city, of financing dramas, spectacles, and games, of building temples, theaters, stadiums, palaestras, libraries, basilicas, aqueducts, bridges; and baths, and adorning these with arches, porticoes, painting, and statuary, fell upon men of means; and in the first two centuries of the Empire these philanthropies were carried out with a competitive patriotism that in some cases bankrupted the families that contributed, or the cities that maintained, the benefactions. In time of famine it was usual for the wealthy to buy food and distribute it gratis among the poor; on occasion they furnished free oil or wine, or a public banquet, or a gift of money, to all citizens, sometimes to all inhabitants. Extant inscriptions abound in commemorations of such generosity. A millionaire gave Altinum, in Venetia, 1,600,000 sesterces for public baths; a rich lady built a temple and an amphitheater for Casinum; Desumius Tullus gave Tarquinii baths costing 5,000,000 sesterces; Cremona, destroyed by Vespasian’s troops, was rapidly rebuilt by the contributions of private citizens; and two physicians exhausted their fortunes in gifts to Naples. At populous Ostia, Lucilius Gemala invited all the inhabitants to dinner, paved a long and spacious avenue, repaired or restored seven temples, rebuilt the municipal baths, and donated 3,000,000 sesterces to the city treasury.22 It was the custom of many rich men to invite a considerable portion of the citizenry to a feast on the occasion of their birthday, their election to office, their daughter’s marriage, their son’s assumption of the toga virilis of manhood, or the dedication of a building which they had presented to the community. In return for such favors the city voted the giver an office, a statue, a panegyric, or an inscription. The poor were not overwhelmed with all these gifts; they accused the rich of deriving the means of philanthropy from exploitation, and they demanded less ornate buildings and cheaper corn, less statuary and more games.23
When we add to private munificence the donations of the emperors to the towns, the buildings erected, and the catastrophes mitigated, in them by imperial funds, and the public works and functions financed by the municipal treasury, we begin to feel the splendor and pride of the Italian cities under the Principate. Streets were paved, drained, policed, and adorned, free medical service was maintained for the poor, clean water was piped into private homes for a small fee, food was offered to the poor at a low price, public baths were often free through private subsidies, alimenta were paid to straitened families to help them rear their children, schools and libraries were built, plays were presented, concerts were given, games were arranged in reckless emulation of Rome. Civilization in the Italian towns was not so materialistic as in the capital. They rivaled one another in erecting amphitheaters, but also they raised noble temples, sometimes equaling Rome’s best,24 and made the months gay with picturesque religious festivals. They spent freely on works of art and provided halls for lecturers, poets, sophists, rhetors, philosophers, and musicians. They supplied their citizens with facilities for health, cleanliness, recreation, and a vigorous cultural life. From them, not from Rome, came most of the great Latin authors, and some of the finest sculptural masterpieces in our museums, like the Nike of Naples, the Eros of Centumcellae, the Zeus of Otricoli. They supported as large a population as their modern successors before our century, and gave it an unparalleled security from war. The first two hundred years of our era saw the zenith of the great peninsula.
I The reader may follow this pilgrimage on the end maps of this book.
II Tusculum’s heir, Frascati, is still the resort of the Italian rich; there are the villas Aldobrandini. Torlonia, Mondragone, etc.3