The Populus or Plebs of a municipal town of the early Empire is often mentioned in the inscriptions along with the Ordo and the Augustales, generally in demanding some benefaction, or in doing honour to some benevolent patron.1416 They also appear as recipients of a smaller share at public feasts and distributions. They occasionally engage in a fierce conflict with the higher orders, as at Puteoli in the reign of Nero, when the discord was so menacing as to call for the presence of a praetorian cohort.1417 The election placards of Pompeii also disclose a keen popular interest in the municipal elections.1418 But the common people are now as a rule chiefly known to us from the inscriptions on their tombs. Fortunately there is an immense profusion, in all the provinces as well as in Italy, of these brief memorials of obscure lives. And although Roman literature, which was the product of the aristocratic class or of their dependents, generally pays but little attention to the despised mass engaged in menial services or petty trades, we have seen that the novel of Petronius flashes a brilliant light upon it in the reign of Nero.
The immense development of the free proletariat, in the time of the early Empire, is one of the most striking social phenomena which the study of the inscriptions has brought to light. It has sometimes been the custom to speak of that society as depending for the supply of its wants entirely on slave labour. And undoubtedly at one time slave labour occupied the largest part of the field of industry. A household in the [pg 252]time of the Republic, of even moderate wealth, might have 400 slaves, while a Crassus would have as many as 20,000, whom he hired out in various industries.1419 But several causes conspired gradually to work a great industrial revolution. From the days of Augustus, the wars beyond the frontier, which added fresh territory and yielded crowds of captives to the slave-markets, had become less frequent. And it is probable that births among the slave class hardly sufficed to maintain its numbers against the depletion caused by mortality and manumission. The practice of emancipating slaves of the more intelligent class went on so rapidly that it had even to be restrained by law.1420 Masters found it economically profitable to give skilful slaves an interest in the profits of their industry, and the peculium, which was thus accumulated, soon provided the means of purchasing emancipation. At the same time, the dispersion of colossal fortunes, gained in the age of rapine and conquest, and squandered in luxury and excess, together with the exploitation of the resources of favoured regions, which were now enjoying the blessings of unimpeded commerce, rapid intercommunication, and perfect security, must have given an immense stimulus to free industry. A very casual glance at the inscriptions, under the heading Artes et Opificia,1421 will show the enormous and flourishing development of skilled handicrafts, with all the minutest specialisation of the arts that wait on a highly-organised and luxurious society. The epitaphs of these obscure toilers have been brought to light in every part of the Roman world, in remote towns in Spain, Gaul, Noricum, Dacia, and North Africa, as well as in the ancient centres of refinement in Italy or the Greek East. On a single page or two you can read the simple record of the bridle-maker or flask-maker of Narbonne, the cabriolet-driver of Senegallia, the cooper of TrÈves, the stone-cutter of NÎmes, the purple-dealer of Augsburg, beside those of the wool-comber of Brescia, the oculist of Bologna, the plumber of Naples, or the vendors of unguents in the Via Sacra, and the humble fruiterer of the Circus Maximus.1422 Many of these people had risen from [pg 253]slavery into the freedman class. Most of them are evidently humble folk, although, like a certain female pearl-dealer of the Via Sacra, they may have freedmen and freedwomen of their own, for whom they provide a last resting-place beside themselves.1423 The barber, or auctioneer, or leather-seller, who had become the owner of lands and houses, and who could even give gladiatorial shows, excited the contempt of Juvenal and Martial.1424 But these insignificant people, although despised by the old world of aristocratic tradition, were proud of their crafts. They tell posterity who and what they were, without any vulgar concealment; nay, they have left expensive tombs, with the emblems or instruments of their petty trades proudly blazoned upon them like the armorial devices of our families of gentle birth. In the museum of S. Germain may be seen the effigy of the apple-seller commending his fruit to the attention of the ladies of the quarter; the cooper, with a cask upon his shoulder; the smith, hammer in hand, at the forge; the fuller, treading out and dressing the cloth.1425 This pride in honest industry is a new and healthy sign, as a reaction from the contempt for it which was engrained in old Roman society, and which is always congenial to an aristocratic caste supported by slave labour. In spite of the grossness and base vulgarity of sudden wealth, portrayed by Petronius and Juvenal, the new class of free artisans and traders had often, so far as we can judge by stone records, a sound and healthy life, sobered and dignified by honest toil, and the pride of skill and independence. Individually weak and despised, they were finding the means of developing an organisation, which at once cultivated social feeling, heightened their self-respect, and guarded their collective interests. While the old aristocracy were being rapidly thinned by vice and extravagance, or by confiscation, the leaders of the new industrial movement probably founded many a senatorial house, which, in the fourth and fifth centuries, in an ever-recurring fashion, came to regard manual industry with sublime contempt, and traced themselves to Aemilius Paullus or Scipio, or even to Aeneas or Agamemnon.1426
The organisation of industry through the colleges attained [pg 254]an immense development in the Antonine age, and still more in the third century, after the definite sanction and encouragement given to these societies by Alexander Severus. The records of the movement are numerous, and we can, after the scholarly sifting of recent years, now form a tolerably complete and vivid conception of these corporations which, springing up at first spontaneously, in defiance of government, or with its reluctant connivance, were destined, under imperial control, to petrify into an intolerable system of caste servitude in the last century of the Empire of the West.1427
The sodalitia and collegia were of immemorial antiquity. Certain industrial colleges and sacred sodalities were traced back to Numa, and even to the foundation of Rome.1428 In the flourishing days of the Republic they multiplied without restraint or suspicion, the only associations at which the law looked askance being those which met secretly or by night. It was only in the last century of the Republic that the colleges came to be regarded as dangerous to the public peace, and they were, with some necessary exceptions, suppressed by a decree of the Senate in 64 B.C. They were revived again for factious or revolutionary purposes in 58 B.C. by Clodius.1429 The emperors Julius and Augustus abolished the free right of association, except in the case of a few consecrated by their antiquity or their religious character.1430 And it was enacted that new colleges could not be created without special authorisation. In the middle of the second century, the jurist Gaius lays it down that the formation of new colleges was restrained by laws, decrees of the Senate, and imperial constitutions, although a certain number of societies, both in Rome and the provinces, such as those of the miners, salt workers, bakers, and boatmen, were authorised.1431 And down to the time of Justinian, the right of free association was jealously watched as a possible menace to the public peace. The refusal of Trajan to sanction the formation of a company of firemen in Nicomedia, with the reasons which he gave to Pliny for his decision, furnishes the best concrete illustration [pg 255]of the imperial policy towards the colleges.1432 That the danger from the colleges to the public order was not an imaginary one, is clear from the passage in Tacitus describing the bloody riots between the people of Nuceria and Pompeii in the reign of Nero, which had evidently been fomented by “illicit” clubs.1433 It is seen even more strikingly in the serious troubles of the reign of Aurelian, when 7000 people were killed in the organised outbreak of the workmen of the mint.1434 Yet it is pretty clear that, in spite of legislation, and imperial distrust, the colleges were multiplying, not only in Rome, but in remote, insignificant places, and even in the camps, from which the legislator was specially determined to avert their temptations. In the blank wilderness, created by a universal despotism, the craving for sympathy and mutual succour inspired a great social movement, which legislation was powerless to check. Just as in the reigns of Theodosius and Honorius, imperial edicts and rescripts were paralysed by the impalpable, quietly irresistible force of a universal social need or sentiment. One simple means of evasion was provided by the government itself, probably as early as the first century. In an inscription of Lanuvium, of the year 136 A.D., there is a recital of a decree of the Senate according the right of association to those who wish to form a funerary college, provided the members did not meet more than once a month to make their contributions.1435 It appears from Marcian’s reference to this law that other meetings for purposes of religious observance might be held, the provisions of the senatusconsultum against illicit colleges being carefully observed.1436 Mommsen has shown that many other pious and charitable purposes could be easily brought within the scope of the funerary association. And it was not difficult for a society which desired to make a monthly contribution for any purpose to take the particular form recognised by the law. In the reign of M. Aurelius, although membership of two colleges is still prohibited, the colleges obtained the legal right to receive bequests, and to emancipate [pg 256]their slaves. And finally, Alexander Severus organised all the industrial colleges and assigned them defensores.1437
The law against illicit associations, with all its serious penalties, remained in the imperial armoury. But the Empire, which had striven to prevent combination, really furnished the greatest incentive to combine. In the face of that world-wide and all-powerful system, the individual subject felt, ever more and more, his loneliness and helplessness. The imperial power might be well-meaning and beneficent, but it was so terrible and levelling in the immense sweep of its forces, that the isolated man seemed, in its presence, reduced to the insignificance of an insect or a grain of sand. Moreover, the aristocratic constitution of municipal society became steadily more and more exclusive. If the rich decurions catered for the pleasures of the people, it was on the condition that they retained their monopoly of political power and social precedence. The plebeian crowd, recruited from the ranks of slavery, and ever growing in numbers and, in their higher ranks, in wealth, did not indeed dream of breaking down these barriers of exclusiveness; but they claimed, and quietly asserted, the right to organise a society of their own, for protection against oppression, for mutual sympathy and support, for relief from the deadly dulness of an obscure and sordid life. Individually weak and despised, they might, by union, gain a sense of collective dignity and strength. To our eyes, as perhaps to the eyes of the Roman aristocrat, the dignity might seem far from imposing. But these things are greatly a matter of imagination, and depend on the breadth of the mental horizon. When the brotherhood, many of them of servile grade, met in full conclave, in the temple of their patron deity, to pass a formal decree of thanks to a benefactor, and regale themselves with a modest repast, or when they passed through the streets and the forum with banners flying, and all the emblems of their guild, the meanest member felt himself lifted for the moment above the dim, hopeless obscurity of plebeian life.
No small part of old Roman piety consisted in a scrupulous reverence for the dead, and a care to prolong their memory by solid memorial and solemn ritual, it might be to maintain some faint tie of sympathy with the shade which had passed [pg 257]into a dim and rather cheerless world. The conception of that other state was always vague, often purely negative. It is not often that a spirit is sped on its way to join a loved one in the Elysian fields, and we may fear that such phrases, when they do occur, are rather literary and conventional.1438 The hope of blessed reunion after death seldom meets us till we come to some monument of a Christian freedman.1439 But two of the deepest feelings in the Roman mind did duty for a clear faith in the life beyond the tomb: one was family piety, the other the passionate desire of the parting spirit to escape neglect and oblivion. Whoever will cast his eyes over some pages of the sepulchral inscriptions will be struck with the intensity and warmth of affection, the bitterness of loss and grief, which have been committed to the stone. The expressions, of course, are often conventional, like obituary memorials in every age. The model wife appears again and again, loving, chaste, pious, a woman of the antique model, a keeper at home, who spun among her maids and suckled her own children, who never gave her husband a moment’s vexation, except when she died.1440 Good husbands seem to have been not less common. And the wife’s grief sometimes far outruns the regular forms of eulogy or regret. In one pathetic memorial of a union formed in earliest youth, the lonely wife begs the unseen Powers to let her have the vision of her spouse in the hours of night, and bring her quickly to his side.1441 There is just the same pure affection in the less regular, but often as stable, unions of the slaves and soldiers, and the contubernalis is lamented with the same honourable affection as the great lady, although the faulty Latin sometimes betrays the class to which the author belongs. The slave world must always have its shame and tragedy; yet many an inscription shows, by a welcome gleam of light, that even there human love and ties of family were not always desecrated.1442 The slave nurse erects a monument to her little foster child; or a master and mistress raise an affectionate memorial to two young vernae [pg 258]who died on one day. A freedman bewails, with warm sincerity, a friendship begun in the slave market, and never interrupted till the last fatal hour.1443 The common tragedies of affection meet us on these slabs, as they are reproduced from age to age with little variation. The prevalent note is, Vale vale in aeternum, with thoughts of the ghostly ferryman and the infernal stream and hopeless separation. Now and then, but seldom, a soul passes cheerfully from the light which it has loved, happy to escape the burden of old age.1444 And sometimes, too, but seldom, we meet with a cold, hard grossness, which looks back with perfect content upon a full life of the flesh and takes the prospect of nothingness with a cheerful acquiescence.1445
The true Roman had a horror of the loneliness of death, of the day when no kindly eye would read his name and style upon the slab, when no hand for evermore would bring the annual offering of wine and flowers. It is pathetic to see how universal is the craving to be remembered felt even by slaves, by men plying the most despised or unsavoury crafts. The infant Julius Diadumenus, who has only drawn breath for four hours, receives an enduring memorial. A wife consoles her grief with the thought that her husband’s name and fame will be forever prolonged by the slab which she dedicates.1446 On another monument the traveller along the Flaminian Way is begged to stop and read again the epitaph on a boy of nine.1447 Many are tortured by the fear of the desertion or the violation of their “eternal home.” An old veteran bequeaths from his savings a sum of about £80, to provide a supply of oil for the lamp above his tomb.1448 An unguent seller of Montferrat leaves a fine garden to afford to the guardians of his grave an annual feast upon his birthday, and the roses which are to be laid upon it for ever.1449 Many a prayer, by the gods of the upper and the lower worlds, appeals to the passing wayfarer not to disturb the eternal rest.1450 The alienation or desecration of a tomb is forbidden with curses or the threat of heavy [pg 259]penalties.1451 A place of burial was a coveted possession, which was not easily attainable by the poor and friendless, and practical persons guarded their repose against lawless intrusion by requiring the delinquent to pay a heavy fine to the municipal or to the imperial treasury, or to the pontifical college. It was the most effectual way of securing the peace of the dead. For the public authorities had a direct pecuniary interest in enforcing the penalty for the desecration. But it would be interesting to know how long these provisions to protect for ever the peace of the departed fulfilled the hopes of the testator.
The primary object of a multitude of colleges, like that of the worshippers of Diana and Antinous at Lanuvium, was undoubtedly, after the reign of Nerva, the care of the memory of their members after death. In the remarkable inscription of Lanuvium, as we have seen, the formal permission by decree of the Senate, to meet once a month for the purpose of a funerary contribution is recorded.1452 It was a momentous concession, and carried consequences which the legislator may or may not have intended.1453 The jurist Marcian, who gives an imperfect citation of this part of the decree, goes on to add, that meetings for a religious purpose were not prohibited, provided that the previous legislation against illicit societies was observed.1454 And the law of the Lanuvian College shows how often such meetings might take place. It did not need much ingenuity to multiply occasions for reunion. The anniversary of the foundation, the birthday of founders or benefactors, the feast of the patron deity, the birthday of the emperor, these and the like occasions furnished legal pretexts for meetings of the society, when the members might have a meal together, and when the conversation would not always be confined to the funerary business of the college. At a time when, according to juristic theory, a special permission was needed for each new foundation, and when the authority was grudgingly accorded, the whole vast plebeian mass of petty traders, artisans, freedmen, and slaves were at one stroke [pg 260]allowed to organise their societies for burial. We may fairly assume that, liberally interpreted, the new law was allowed to cover with its sanction many a college of which funeral rites were not the sole, or even the primary object. And this would be made all the easier because many of the industrial colleges, and perhaps still more of the strictly religious colleges, had a common burial-place, and often received bequests for funerary purposes. This is the case, for example, with a college of worshippers of Hercules at Interamna, and a similar college at Reate.1455 A young Belgian, belonging to the guild of armourers of the 20th legion, was buried by his college at Bath.1456 One C. Valgius Fuscus gave a burial-ground at Forum Sempronii, in Umbria, to a college of muleteers of the Porta Gallica, for their wives or concubines, and their posterity.1457 There is even a burial-place, duly defined by exact measurement, for those “who are in the habit of dining together,” a description which, as time went on, would have applied as accurately as any other to many of these clubs.1458
We are, by a rare piece of good fortune, admitted to the interior of one of the purely funerary colleges. In the reign of Hadrian there was at Lanuvium a college which, by a curious fancy, combined the worship of the pure Diana with that of the deified minion of the emperor. It was founded in A.D. 133, three years after the tragic death of the young favourite. And in 136, the patron of the society, who was also a magnate of the town, caused it to be convened in the temple of Antinous. There he announced the gift of a sum of money, the interest of which was to be spent at the festivals of the patron deities; and he directed that the deed of foundation should be inscribed on the inner walls of the portico of the temple, so that newly admitted members might be informed of their rights and their obligations. This document, discovered among the ruins of the ancient Lanuvium in 1816, reveals many important facts in the constitution and working of funerary colleges.1459 It recites, as we have seen, a part of the senatusconsultum, which [pg 261]authorised the existence of such colleges, and after loyal wishes for the prosperity of the emperor and his house, it prays for an honest energy in contributing to the due interment of the dead, that by regular payments the society may prolong its existence.
The entrance fee of the college is to be 100 sesterces (16s. 8d.), together with a flagon of good wine. A monthly subscription of five asses is appointed. It is evident that the members are of the humblest class, and one clause shows that they have even a sprinkling of slaves among them, who, with the permission of their masters, might connect themselves with these burial clubs.1460 The brethren could not aspire to the erection even of a columbarium, still less to the possession of a common burial-ground. They confined themselves to making a funeral grant of HS.300 to the appointed heir of each member who had not intermitted his payments to the common fund.1461 Out of this sum, HS.50 are to be paid to members present at the funeral. The member dying intestate will be buried by the society, and no claim upon his remaining interest in it will be recognised. The slave, whose body was retained by his master after death, was to have a funus imaginarium, and probably a cenotaph. In the case of a member dying within a radius of twenty miles from Lanuvium, three members, on timely notice, were deputed to arrange for the funeral, and required to render an account of the expenses so incurred. A fee of HS.20 was granted to each. But if any fraud were discovered in their accounts, a fine of quadruple the amount was imposed. Lastly, when a member died beyond the prescribed limit, the person who had arranged his funeral, on due attestation by seven Roman citizens, and security given against any further claims, received the burial grant, with certain deductions.1462 In such precise and orderly fashion, with all the cautious forms of Roman law, did this poor little society order its performance of duty to the dead.
Our knowledge of the funerary colleges is still further amplified by an inscription of a date twenty years later than [pg 262]that of Lanuvium.1463 In the reign of Antoninus Pius a lady named Salvia Marcellina resolved to commemorate her husband by a gift to the college of Aesculapius and Hygia. She presented to it the site for a shrine close to the Appian Way, a marble statue of Aesculapius, and a hall opening on a terrace, where the banquets of the brotherhood should be held. To this benefaction Marcellina, along with one P. Aelius Zeno, who apparently was her brother, added two donations of HS.15,000 and HS.10,000 respectively, the interest of which was to be distributed in money, or food and wine, at six different festivals. The proportions assignable to each rank in the college were determined at a full meeting, held in the shrine of the “Divine Titus.” Marcellina attaches certain conditions to her gift. The society is to be limited to sixty members, and the place of each member, on his decease, is to be filled by the co-optation of his son. If any member chooses to bequeath his place and interest, his choice is confined to his son, his brother, or his freedman, and he is required to pay for this limited freedom of selection by refunding one-half of his burial grant to the chest of the college.1464 The college of Aesculapius is nominally a religious and funerary corporation, yet there is only a single reference, in a long document, to the subject of burial. No information is given as to the amount of the funeraticium or burial grant, the sources from which it is derived, or the conditions on which it is to be paid. The chief object of Marcellina seems to have been to connect the memory of her husband with a number of festivals, for the perpetuity of which she makes provision, to promote social intercourse, and to prevent the intrusion of strangers by making membership practically hereditary.
The colleges, of whose inner working we have tried to give a picture, are classed as religious corporations in the collections of the inscriptions. They bear the name of a god, and they provide a solemn interment for their members. But in these respects they do not differ from many other colleges which are regarded as purely secular. The truth is, that any attempt to make a sharp division of these societies on such lines seems futile. Sepulture and religion being admitted by the [pg 263]government as legitimate objects for association, any college, however secular in its tone, might, and probably would, screen itself under sacred names. Nor would this be merely a hypocritical pretence. It is clear that many of the purely industrial colleges, composed as they were of poor people who found it impossible to purchase a separate burial-place, and not easy, unaided, to bear the expense of the last rites, at once consulted their convenience, and gratified the sentiment of fraternity, by arranging for a common place of interment. And with regard to religion, it is a commonplace to point out that all Graeco-Roman societies, great or small, rested on religion. The state, the clan, the family, found their ideal and firmest bond in reverence for divine or heroic ancestors, a reverent piety towards the spirits who had passed into the unseen world. The colleges, as we shall see presently, were formed on the lines of the city which they almost slavishly imitated.1465 It would be strange and anomalous if they should desert their model in that which was its most original and striking characteristic. And just as Cleisthenes found divine and heroic patrons for his new tribes and demes,1466 so would a Roman college naturally place itself under the protection of one of the great names of the Roman pantheon. Sometimes, no doubt, there may not have been much sincerity in this conformity to ancient pieties. But do we need to remind ourselves how long a life the form of ancient pieties may have, even when the faith which gave birth to them has become dim and faint?
The usual fashion of writing Roman history has concentrated attention on the doings of the emperor, the life of the noble class in the capital, or on the stations of the legions and the political organisation of the provinces. It is a stately and magnificent panorama. But it is apt to throw the life of the masses into even deeper shadow than that in which time has generally enwrapped them. We are prone to forget that, behind all this stately life, there was a quiet yet extraordinarily busy industrial activity which was its necessary basis and which catered for all its caprices. In the most cursory way Tacitus tells us that a great part of Italy [pg 264]was gathered for the great fair at Cremona, on the fateful days when the town was stormed by the army of Vespasian.1467 Yet what a gathering it must have been! There were laid out in the booths the fine woollens of Parma and Mutina, the mantles of Canusium, the purples of Tarentum, the carpets of Patavium. Traders from Ilva brought their iron wares, Pompeii sent its fish sauces, and Lucania its famous sausages. Nor would there be missing in the display the oil of Venafrum, and the famous Setine and Falernian vintages.1468 The improvement of the great roads in the reign of Trajan must have given a vast stimulus to inland commerce. And we may be sure that many a petty merchant with his pack was to be seen along the Aemilian or Flaminian ways, like the travelling vendor of honey and cheese, whom Lucius, in the tale of Apuleius, meets hurrying to Hypata.1469 The great roads of Spain, since the days of Augustus, carried an immense traffic, which made even the distant Gades a magnificent emporium and one of the richest places in the Roman world.1470
The wandering traders in Germany, Spain, or Syria, by a natural instinct drew together in their exile. In the revolt of Julius Civilis, they are found settled among the Batavians, and a collegium peregrinorum has left its memorial on the lower Rhine.1471 The sodalicium urbanum at Bracara Augusta is a similar society.1472 Another mercantile college meets us at Apulum in Dacia.1473 The Syrians of Berytus had a club at Puteoli, and there were at least two clubs of Syrian traders at Malaga.1474 The graves of Syrian traders have been found at Sirmium in Pannonia, and, on the other hand, there are memorials of Roman merchants at Apamea and Tralles, at Salamis and Mitylene.1475 Immense stimulus to this transmarine trade must have been given by the Emperor Claudius, who provided insurance against loss by storms, and a liberal system of bounties and rewards for shipping enterprise.1476 Apollonius of Tyana once expostulated with a young Spartan, who claimed descent from Callicratidas, for having forsaken the true career [pg 265]of a man of his race, to soil himself with the trade of Carthage and Sicily. It is the sentiment of Juvenal who treats as a lunatic the man who will venture his life with a cargo on the wintry Aegean.1477 But the antiquarian rhetoric attributed to Apollonius embalms the fact that at the opening of a springtime in the reign of Domitian, a great merchant fleet was lying at Malea, ready to sail to the western seas.1478 These wandering merchants, wherever they went, banded themselves in colleges for mutual protection and for society. In the same way, old soldiers, on their return from long service on the frontiers, gathered in military brotherhoods at such places as Ostia or Misenum.1479 The veterans of Augustus seem to have become a distinct and recognised class, like the Augustales.1480 Colleges of youth sprang up everywhere from the days of Nero, at Beneventum, Cremona, and Ameria, or at Moguntiacum, Lauriacum, and Poetovio.1481 They were formed, like our own sporting clubs, for exercise and healthy rivalry, often under the patronage of the divine hero who, to all the moralists of that age, had become the mythic type of the continent vigour of early manhood. There is one sodality at least devoted to the preservation of chastity.1482 But it is balanced by the clubs of the “late sleepers” and “late drinkers” of Pompeii.1483
The colleges in which the artisans and traders of the Antonine age grouped themselves are almost innumerable, even in the records which time has spared. They represent almost every conceivable branch of industry or special skill or social service, from the men who laid the fine sand in the arena, to the rich wine merchants of Lyons or Ostia.1484 The mere catalogue of these associations in an index will give an enlarged conception of the immense range and minute specialisation of Roman industry. It may be doubted whether a similar enumeration of our English crafts would be longer or more varied. The great trades, which minister to the first necessities of human life, occupy of course the largest space, the bakers, the cloth-makers, the smiths, carpenters, and wood-[pg 266]merchants, trades often grouped together, the shoemakers and fullers and carders of wool. The mechanics, who made the arms and engines for the legions, naturally hold a prominent place. Nor less prominent are the boatmen of Ostia, and of the Rhone and the SaÔne.1485 The sailors of these great rivers had several powerful corporations at Lyons, and, on many an inscription,1486 claim the wealthiest citizens, men who have gained the whole series of municipal honours, as their chiefs and patrons. Arles, which was then a great sea-port, had its five corporations of sailor-folk, and Ostia an equal number, charged with the momentous task of taking up the cargoes of the African corn-ships for the bakeries of Rome.1487 Transport by land is represented by colleges of muleteers and ass drivers in the Alps and Apennines.1488 All the many trades and services which ministered to the wants or pleasures of the capital were similarly banded together, the actors and horn-blowers, the porters and paviors, down to the humble dealers in pastils and salt fish.1489 We have seen that even the gladiators, in their barrack-prisons, were allowed to form their clubs. Although traces of these combinations are found in remote and obscure places all over the Roman world, it is at great commercial centres, at Ostia, Puteoli, Lyons, and Rome itself, that they have left the most numerous remains. They had probably for one of their objects the protection of their members against encroachments or fiscal oppression. Strabo once came across a deputation of fishermen on their way to plead with the Emperor for a reduction of their dues.1490 Yet it would be a mistake to suppose that these trades unions were always organised for trade objects, or that the separate colleges were composed of people engaged in the same occupation. They had many honorary members from among the richer classes, and, even in the lower ranks, in defiance of the law,1491 a dealer in salt might be enrolled among the boatmen of the Rhone, and member of a college of builders.1492 In truth, the great object of association among these humble people appears to have been not so much the protection of their trade, as the cheer[pg 267]fulness of intercourse, the promotion of fellowship and good-will, the relief of the dulness of humdrum lives.
Probably no age, not even our own, ever felt a greater craving for some form of social life, wider than the family, and narrower than the State. It was a movement at which, as we have seen, even the greatest and strongest of the emperors had to connive. It penetrated society down to its lowest layers. Even the slaves and freedmen of great houses organised themselves in colleges. There were colleges in the imperial household.1493 T. Aelius Primitivus, chief of the imperial kitchen, being a man of great posthumous ambition, left the care of his own and his wife’s monument to the college of the palatine cooks.1494 In the inscriptions of Moesia there is the album of a Bacchic club of household slaves containing 80 names, with apparently different grades among them, designated by such titles as archimysta, bouleuta, frater and filius.1495 A similar club of the servile class, devoted to the worship of Isis, existed at Tarraco.1496 The officers of another bear the pompous titles of tribune, quaestor, and triumvir, and the slab records the thanks of one Hilara, that her ashes have been allowed to mingle in the same urn with those of Mida the chamberlain.1497 A provincial treasurer at Ephesus, who was a verna Augusti, commits the custody of his wife’s monument to five colleges of slaves and freedmen in the emperor’s household. One of the colleges bears the name of Faustina. Another college is devoted to the cult of the Lares and images of Antoninus Pius.1498 Private masters seem to have encouraged the formation of such associations among their dependents, and sometimes to have endowed them with a perpetual foundation.1499 It was probably politic, as well as kind, to provide for slaves social pleasures within the circle of the household, and thus to forestall the attractions of the numerous clubs outside, which freely offered their hospitality.1500 We may be sure that the college “which was in the house of Sergia Paulina” was not encouraged by the mistress without good reason.
[pg 268] Thus it appears that in every part of the Roman world, in the decaying little country town, and in the great trading centres, the same great movement of association, is going on apace. It swept into its current almost every social grade, and every trade, handicraft or profession, the pastil-makers, the green-grocers and unguent sellers of Rome, the muleteers of the Alps, the fullers of Pompeii, the doctors at Beneventum, the boatmen of the Seine, the wine merchants of Lyons. Men formed themselves into these groups for the most trivial or whimsical reasons, or for no reason at all, except that they lived in the same quarter, and often met.1501 From the view which the inscriptions give us of the interior of some of these clubs, it is clear that their main purpose was social pleasure. And this is especially true of the clubs of the humblest class. M. Boissier has well remarked that the poor workman, the poor freedman, with the brand of recent slavery upon him, who was often engaged in some mean or disgusting occupation, amidst a society which from tradition regarded any industry soiled by servile touch with distant scorn, must have felt themselves solitary exiles in the desert of a great town, the most awful desert in the world. The remote splendour of the court and aristocratic life must have deepened the gloom of isolation and helplessness. Shut out for ever from that brilliant world of fashion and pleasure and power, whose social life seemed so charming and gay and friendly, the despised and lonely toiler sought a refuge in little gatherings of people as lonely as himself. At some chance meeting, some one, more energetic than the rest, would throw out the suggestion to form a club, on the model of some of the old trade societies which had always been authorised by the State from the days of Numa, or of those newer associations which were now tacitly permitted under the guise of religion. A small entrance fee would meet, for the time, their modest expenses. In that age of generous or ambitious profusion, it was not hard to find some influential patron, a kindly gracious noble, or an aspiring or generous parvenu, to give the infant society his countenance, along with a substantial donation for the building of a club-house, and for simple convivial pleasures on his birthday, and other festivals which could easily be multiplied. Then the [pg 269]brethren met in solemn form to frame their constitution and commemorate their benefactor, on one of those many monuments which illuminate a social life on which the literature of the age is generally silent.
The continuity and repetition of proved political organisation is a notable characteristic of the great races which have left, or are destined to leave, their mark on history. The British settlers on the prairies of Oregon or Manitoba immediately order themselves into communities, which are modelled on a social system as old as the Heptarchy. The Latin race had perhaps an even more stubborn conservatism than the English. Under the most various circumstances, the Roman instinctively clung to forms and institutions of tested strength and elasticity, and consecrated by the immemorial usage of his race. The most distant and most humble municipality was fashioned after the pattern of the great “city which had become a world.”1502 It had its senate, the ordo splendidissimus et amplissimus, and the popular assembly which elected the magistrates. The municipal magistrates, if they do not always bear the ancient names, reproduce in shadowy form the dictators, the praetors, the aediles, quaestors, and censors of the old republic.1503 The same continuity of form is seen in the colleges. As the municipal town was modelled on the constitution of the State, so we may say that the college was modelled on the municipal town. The college, indeed, became a city for the brotherhood, at once a city and a home. They apply to it such terms as respublica collegii.1504 The meetings often took place in a temple, whether of a patron deity or of an emperor, as those of the Roman Senate were held in the temple of Concord or of Bellona. There they elected their administrative officers, generally for a period of one year; in some cases, by way of special distinction, for life. The heads of these little societies bear various names, magistri, curatores, quinquennales, praefecti, or praesides.1505 They have also quaestors,1506 who managed their financial affairs, which, although perhaps on no great scale, still involved the investment of trust moneys to yield the prescribed amounts which had to be distributed either as burial [pg 270]payments, or in food and money on the high festivals. The number of the members was generally limited, either by the government in the interests of public order, or by the will of a benefactor, to prevent the progressive diminution in the value of the divisible shares of the income.1507 A periodical revision of the roll of members was therefore conducted every five years, as it was in the municipality, by the chief officers, exercising for the time censorial powers in miniature. Fortunately the albums of three or four colleges have been preserved. The lists throw a vivid light on their constitution and social tone. We have drawn attention in a former chapter to the strict gradation of social rank in the city polity. The same characteristic is repeated in the collegiate organisation. In these humble plebeian coteries, composed of “men without a grandfather,” of men, perhaps, whose father was a slave, or of men who were slaves themselves, there emerges, to our astonishment, a punctilious observance of shadowy social distinctions, which is an inheritance from the exclusive aristocratic pride of the old republic. This characteristic has excited in some French critics and historians a certain admiration,1508 in which it is not altogether easy to join. Gradation of rank to ensure devotion and order in public service is a precious and admirable thing. But artificial and unreal distinctions, invented and conferred to flatter wealth, to stimulate or reward the largesses of the rich patron, to gratify the vulgar self-complacency of the parvenu, are only a degrading form of mendicancy. Some indulgence is no doubt due to men who were still under the yoke of slavery, or only just released from it; the iron had entered into their souls. But both the college and the municipality of the Antonine age cannot be relieved of the charge of purchased or expectant deference to mere wealth. Hence we cannot altogether share the pleasure of M. Boissier in these pale and vulgar reproductions of the hierarchy of a real aristocracy. But the image of the hierarchy is there, and it is very instructive. In a college of smiths in Tarraconensis, there were fifteen patrons at the head of the roll, followed by twelve decurions, including two doctors and a soothsayer, one [pg 271]man isolated by the honours of the bisellium, two honorary members, twenty-eight plain plebeians. There were also several “mothers” and “daughters” of the society.1509 The album of another club at Ostia shows a list of nine patrons, two holders of quinquennial rank, and one hundred and twenty-three plebeians.1510 The plebs of many colleges included slaves, and in more than one inscription the men of ingenuous and those of servile birth are carefully distinguished, the slaves being sometimes placed at the bottom of the roll.1511 Yet it was surely a great advance when slaves and freemen could meet together for the time, on a certain footing of equality, for business or convivial intercourse. The rigid lines of old pagan society are indeed still marked on the face of these clubs. And yet many an inscription leaves the impression that these little societies of the old pagan world are nurseries, in an imperfect way, of the gentle charities and brotherliness which, in shy retirement, the young Church was cultivating in her disciples to be the ideal of the world.
These colleges became homes for the homeless, a little fatherland, or patria, for those without a country. Sometimes they may have met in low taverns, which were on that account jealously watched by some of the emperors.1512 But they generally attained to the possession of a club-room or schola, a name which had been previously given to the lounging-room of the public baths. Sometimes the schola was erected at their own cost, the site being perhaps granted by some rich patron, or by the town council, on a vacant spot close to the basilica or the theatre.1513 But frequently a hall was built for them by some generous friend. A like generosity often provided for them a little chapel of their patron deity, with a shaded court, or a balcony open to the air and sun, where the brethren took their common meals.1514 Or a rich patron, anxious to secure some care and religious observance of his last resting-place, would bequeath to a college a pleasant garden adjoining the tomb, with a house in which to hold their meetings.1515 And, as a further security [pg 272]against neglect and oblivion, a sum of 10,000 or 15,000 sesterces would be invested to provide a dinner for the college on their benefactor’s birthday.1516 As years went on, the scene of many a pleasant gathering became a centre round which clustered a great deal of sentiment, and even pride. We may imagine that, allowing for differences of time and faith, the little school or shrine would, in the course of years, attract something of the feeling which consecrates an ancient village church in England, or a little Bethel which was built in the year of the visit of John Wesley. It became a point of honour to make gifts to the schola, to add to its comfort or beauty. One benefactor would redeem a right of ancient lights, or build a boundary wall.1517 Another would make a present of bronze candelabra on a marble stand, with the device of a Cupid holding baskets in his hands.1518 Or a college would receive from its curator a gift of some silver statues of the gods, on the dedication of the schola, with a brass tablet, no doubt recording the event.1519 The gift of a place where the brethren of the club might be buried beside their wives or concubines, was probably, to these poor people, not the least valued benefaction.1520 Many a humble donation was probably made, which was too slight for a memorial. But it happens that we have one record of gifts evidently offered by poor, insignificant people. It is contained in a very interesting inscription found upon a rock near the theatre at Philippi in Macedonia.1521 It records that P. Hostilius Philadelphus, in recognition of the aedileship of the college, which had been conferred upon him, bore the expense of polishing the rock, and inscribing upon it the names of the members of a college of Silvanus, sixty-nine in number, together with a list of those who had presented gifts to their temple. The college was a religious one, with a priest who is named in the first place. It is also a funerary society, and seems to be composed of freedmen and of slaves, either belonging to the colony or private masters. They had just erected a temple of their patron god, to which some had given subscriptions in money, while others made various offerings for its adornment. One [pg 273]brother presents an image of the god in a little shrine, another statuettes of Hercules and Mercury. There is another donation of some stone-work in front of the temple, and Hostilius, at his own expense, cut away the rock to smooth the approach to the shrine. Most of the gifts are of trifling value, a poor little picture worth 15 denarii, a marble image of Bacchus costing not much more. But they were the offerings of an enthusiastic brotherhood, and the good Hostilius has given them an immortality of which they never dreamed.
The contributions of the members would generally have been but a sorry provision for the social and religious life of a college. Reproducing, as it did, the constitution and the tone of the city in so many traits, the college in nothing follows its model so closely as in its reliance on the generosity of patronage. At the head of the album of the society there is a list, sometimes disproportionately long, of its patroni. Countless inscriptions leave us in no doubt as to the reason why the patron was elected. His raison d’Être in the club is the same as in the city; it is to provide luxuries or amusements for the society, which the society could not generally obtain for itself. The relation of patron and client is, of all the features of ancient life, the one which, being so remote from the spirit of our democratic society, is perhaps most difficult for us to understand. The mutual obligations, enforced by a powerful traditional sentiment, were of the most binding, and sometimes burdensome character. And in that form of relation, between former master and freedman, which became so common in the first age of the Empire, the old master was bound to continue his support and protection to the emancipated slave.1522 Although there was much that was sordid and repulsive in the position of the client in Juvenal’s and Martial’s days, we must still recognise the fact that the fortune of the rich patron had to pay a heavy price for social deference. Not less heavy was the demand made on the patrons of municipalities and colleges.
There must have been wide distinctions of dignity and importance among the industrial colleges of the Empire. The centonarii, the fabri, and dendrophori of the more important centres, such as Aquileia, Lyons and Milan, the [pg 274]boatmen of Arles or Ostia, would probably have looked down with scorn on the flute-players of the Via Sacra, the hunters of Corfinium, or the muleteers of the Porta Gallica.1523 And there was a corresponding variety in the rank of the patrons. Some are high officials of the Empire, procurators of provinces, curators of great public works, or distinguished officers of the legions. Or they are men evidently of high position and commanding influence in their province, priests of the altar of Augustus, augurs of the colony, magistrates or decurions of two or three cities.1524 Sometimes the patron is a great merchant, with warehouses of oil or wine at Lyons or Tarragona or Ostia.1525 Yet in spite of his wealth, the patron’s social position in those days might be rather uncertain, and we may without difficulty, from modern analogies, believe that a new man might find his vanity soothed, or his position made less obscure, by being known as the titular head of an ancient corporation of the clothworkers, or dendrophori, or of the boatmen on the SaÔne. Probably in obscure country towns, remote from the seat of Empire, these bourgeois dignities were even more valued.1526 The humbler colleges would have to be content with one of the new freedmen, such as the vulgar friends of Trimalchio, who, after a youth of shameful servitude, had leapt into fortune by some happy chance or stroke of shrewdness, and who sought a compensation for the contempt of the great world in the deference and adulation of those who waited for their largesses.
