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BOOK
VI.

the plague had been artificially produced by poisoners. A vague apprehension of poison at all times filled the minds of the Romans, and brought about at a later period the establishment of special tribunals for the trial of poisoners (quæstio perpetua de veneficiis), which may be looked upon as forerunners of the trials of witches in modern times. As early as the year 184 B.C.,1 prosecutions of poisoners had been set on foot, and Quintus Nævius, the prætor charged with the duty of conducting these prosecutions, according to the report of Valerius Antias, condemned nearly two thousand persons. The plague had probably been an epidemic for some years; no wonder that in the year 180 B.C. the belief once more became established that it had been produced by poison. But it must cause great astonishment that suspicion fell upon one of the noblest women of the aristocracy. Hostilia, the wife of the consul Piso, was the widow of Cneius Fulvius and mother of Quintus Fulvius Flaccus. This Flaccus had ten years previously held the prætorship, and had twice endeavoured in vain to obtain the consulship. For a third time he became a candidate in the year 180 B.C., together with his stepfather, Piso. He again failed, and Piso was elected, but died soon after, whereupon Flaccus was elected to the vacant place. These circumstances, though perfectly natural and comprehensible, sufficed to cast on his mother Hostilia the suspicion of having poisoned the consul, her husband, in order to obtain the consulship for her son. A Roman matron was thought capable not only of this most atrocious crime, but of the madness of committing it merely to transfer the consular honours which her family enjoyed already from her husband to her son, who had previously held the

1 Liv. xxxix. 41, 5. As if these trials had been a trifling and secondary affair, Quintus Nævius finished them off in four months before his departure for his province, Sardinia. One might have fancied that trials in which the number of persons accused was counted by thousands ought to have called for the appointment of a special and extraordinary commissioner. But as the information is derived from the notorious liar Valerius Antias, the number 2,000 may be one of his favourite exaggerations.

XII.

second post in the state, and was sure of scon obtaining CHAP. the first, unless his prospects were jeopardised by a crime such as that of which his mother was charged, and of which he would have been held an accomplice. The charge is in itself so absurd that we should be inclined to think it was never seriously preferred, if it were not to a certain extent characteristic of the credulity and malignant scandalmongering in which the Roman people at all times. delighted. It has a striking parallel in the calumnies of which Livia, the wife of Augustus, was the object, and which even such an historian as Tacitus did not disdain to report in his disingenuous and insidious way without accepting or rejecting them emphatically.' In one respect the crime attributed to Hostilia was even more unreasonable than that of which Livia was accused. The latter could almost be sure that after the natural death of Augustus, her son Tiberius would inherit his power; but Hostilia could neither determine nor foresee the result of a popular election, upon which, after all, her son's prospects depended.

story

Hostilia.

It is not quite clear from Livy's report whether Hos- Difficulties tilia was actually prosecuted and condemned for the in the murder of her husband.2 Possibly accusation and con- respecting demnation were only talked of. If she had really been found guilty, her son-the consul Flaccus-would assuredly have been suspected as implicated in her guilt, and would have been obliged to clear himself from this suspicion. However that may be, it is impossible for us to regard the wife of the consul as a murderess; and we can consequently draw no inference from a crime so incredible concerning the moral state of the age. It is not even

1 Tacit. Annal. i. 5: Et quidam scelus uxoris suspectabant.

* See the passage of Livy, xl. 37, on p. 231, n. 2. Livy uses vague expressions (necatus consul dicebatur '-'mors Pisonis magis infamis cœpit esse'), but not one from which it can be inferred that an actual accusation was made and a trial took place. Even the last words (hæc vox valuit cur Hostilia damnaretur') seem purposely chosen to leave it uncertain whether Hostilia was condemned. Not a word is added of the implication of Q. Flaccus in the alleged guilt of his mother, or of a charge raised against him.

3 The general opinion at present seems to be to accept the charge against Hostilia as proved.

BOOK
VI.

Alleged

of poisoning.

probable that in the time of Cato a serious suspicion could rest upon Hostilia, and we believe that the vague and scandalous story related by Livy is a mere invention of some family annalist who owed the Fulvian house a grudge, and concocted out of the ordinary town-gossip the story of a capital charge and a great public trial.

In the year 179 B.C. the prætor Mucius Scævola was frequency commissioned to make an investigation into poisonings alleged to have taken place in and near the town.' We are not informed to what result his investigations led. It was before his tribunal that Hostilia should have been tried. If she was thus tried and condemned, we should no doubt have heard of the condemnation of many more victims. But it may not have been so easy to proceed summarily against Roman citizens and to condemn them on vague rumours or false evidence. We hear of no convictions in Rome; but the prætor, Q. Mænius, who had been appointed in the previous year to conduct similar investigations in various parts of Italy 2 before he proceeded to Sardinia,3 was in a position to report to Rome that he had condemned three thousand persons, and that the investigations were assuming larger proportions, in consequence of new evidence pouring in as fast as he went on. He added that he must either give up his investigations in Italy, or the hope of proceeding to his province of Sardinia. This sad testimony of the wretchedness of Roman criminal jurisdiction is indirectly a proof that public morality could not have sunk so low as we should be obliged to infer from the condemnation of so many

Liv. xl. 44, 6: P. Mucius Scævola urbanam sortitus provinciam est, et ut idem quæreret de veneficiis in urbe et propius urbem decem millia passuum. 2 Liv. xl. 43, 2.

It is curious that both in 184 B.C. and 180 B.C. a prætor destined for Sardinia was detained in Italy with investigations into wholesale poisonings. In the first case it was Q. Nævius (Liv. xxxix. 41, 5); in the second, C. Mænius (Liv. xl. 37, 4; 43, 2). The former condemned about 2,000 persons, the latter 3,000. The two stories are so like each other that one is tempted to conjecture that they are two versions of the same original.

thousands for one single class of crimes in so short a space of time.

CHAP.
XII.

Roman

family.

In order to obtain an insight into the interior of The Roman households, and to comprehend the real character of family life, we should require more minute and accurate information than the ordinary sources of political history supply; we should want details which concern, not the course of great political events, but the doings and transactions of everyday life. Such details would perhaps be furnished by writers of the drama, especially of a truly national comedy. The Roman comedy, however, of which specimens have been preserved, is an imitation of Greek models; and though a considerable proportion of national material was necessarily mixed up by the writers with their foreign originals, these plays do not reflect in its purity the spirit that animated the Roman family. The fathers, mothers, and sons, the freedmen and slaves who are the dramatis persona in the plays of Plautus and Terence, are not altogether true Romans. If a few of the class of Atellan plays had been preserved, or some specimens of the comœdia togata, we should probably be able to judge far more correctly of the spirit of private and family life in Rome than we are at present. It was in all probability more earnest and pure than we generally suppose, but, compared with the families of modern times, less affectionate and tender. Even Cato agreed with the general view of the Greeks in considering marriage to be an inevitable evil, and in despising women with all his heart. No wonder that by most people marriage was regarded chiefly from a political and economical point of view. A wife was chosen for the young Roman by his father; the betrothal was a bargain. The first object of marriage was the birth of children and the propagation of the family for the good of the community and for the maintenance of the family sanctuaries. The second object was the preservation and increase of material wealth. Whatever lay beyond this, such as true, warm-hearted

BOOK
VI.

Corrupting effects of slavery.

Unnatural vices.

affection;1 sympathy in spiritual aspirations shared by man and wife; the cultivation of noble sentiments and ideas by mutual influence; high aims pursued in common; interchange of thoughts on matters divine and human-all of this could not take root in the cold and heavy soil of Roman family life.

The existence of slavery alone maintenance of conjugal fidelity.

sufficed to prevent the

How could even the most dignified of Roman matrons preserve her place in her husband's heart and in the esteem of her children, if female slaves and freedwomen, liberal of their charms, succeeded in fascinating the men? If such a champion of virtue as Cato could vex his grown-up son by his intercourse with a slave girl; 2 if the wife of Scipio Africanus 3 thought it advisable, or was obliged to think it advisable, discreetly to overlook the amours of her husband, what must have been the moral atmosphere in those families. which neither philosophy nor public spirit directed to higher aims? The experience of all peoples and all times in which slavery has existed proves that it destroys the purity and dignity of family life. And thus this canker of the ancient world, which by dishonouring labour checked the healthy growth of industry, appears also with regard to the moral condition of the nation as the gerni of decay.

And yet the most repulsive extravagance of sensuality was neither originally Roman nor was it approved of by the Roman feeling for what was dignified and honourable. Although the shameful practice of pæderasty had come over to Italy with other Greek sins, and could easily gain ground here, on account of the existence of slavery, it was nevertheless always considered unworthy of a Roman. To compel, or only to per

1 Seneca, Fragm. 84: Origo quidem amoris honesta est, sed magnitudo deformis; nihil autem interest quam ex honesta causa quis insaniat. In aliena uxore omnis amor turpis est, in sua nimius. Ib. 85 : Sapiens vir iudicio debet amare coniugem, non affectu. Nihil est fœdius quam uxorem amare quasi adulteram. 2 Plutarch, Cato maior, 24.

3 Valer. Max. vi. 7, 1.

Polyb. xxxii. 11, 4.

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