the elevation of the houses was defined, with an open area before the doors, and porticos to secure and adorn the front. The expense of the porticos Nero undertook to defray out of his own revenue. He promised, besides, as soon as the work was finished, to clear the ground, and leave a clear space to every house, without any charge to the occupant. In order to excite a spirit of industry and emulation, he offered rewards proportioned to the rank of each individual, provided the buildings were finished in a limited time. The rubbish was removed by his order to the marshes of Ostia, and the ships that brought corn up the river were to return loaded with the refuse of the workmen. Besides all this the houses, built on a new principle, were to be raised to a certain elevation, without beams or woodwork, on arches of stone from the quarries of Alba or Gabii, those materials being impervious, and of a nature to resist the force of fire. The springs of water, which had been before that time intercepted by individuals for their separate use, were no longer suffered to be diverted from their channel, but left to the care of commissioners, that the public might be properly supplied, and in case of fire have a reservoir at hand to stop the progress of the mischief. It was also settled that the houses should no longer be contiguous, with slight party-walls to divide them, but that every house should stand detached, surrounded and insulated by its own inclosure. These regulations, it must be admitted, were of public utility, and added much to the embellishment of the new city. But still the old plan of Rome was not without its advocates. It was thought more conducive to the health of the inhabitants. The narrowness of the streets and the elevation of the buildings served to exclude the rays of the sun, whereas the more open space, having neither shade nor shelter, left men exposed to the intense heat of the day. These several regulations were, no doubt, the best that human wisdom could suggest. The next care was to propitiate the gods. The Sibylline Books1 were consulted, and the consequence was that supplications were decreed to Vulcan, to Ceres, and to Proserpine. A band of matrons offered their prayers and sacrifices to Juno, first in the Capitol, and next on the nearest margin of the sea, where they supplied themselves with water to sprinkle the temple and the statue of the goddess. A select number of women, who had husbands actually living, laid the deities on their sacred beds,2 and kept midnight vigils with the usual solemnity. But neither these religious ceremonies nor the liberal donations of the prince could efface from the minds of men the prevailing opinion that Rome was set on fire by his own orders. The infamy of that horrible transaction still adhered to him. In order if possible to remove the imputation, he determined to transfer the guilt to others. For this purpose he punished with exquisite cruelty a race of men detested for their evil practices, by vulgar appellation commonly called Christians. The name was derived from Christ, who in the reign of Tiberius suffered under Pontius Pilate, the procurator of Judea. By that event the sect of which he was the founder received a blow which for a time 1 A collection of oracles in Greek hexameters that had been brought to Rome in the reign of Tarquinius Superbus. 2 This was the ceremony of the lectisternium, in which images of gods were laid upon couches, a table with food being placed beside them. checked the growth of a dangerous superstition; but it revived soon after, and spread with recruited vigor, not only in Judea, the soil that gave it birth, but even in the city of Rome, the common sink into which everything infamous and abominable flows like a torrent from all quarters of the world. Nero proceeded with his usual artifice. He found a set of profligate and abandoned wretches, who were induced to confess themselves guilty, and on the evidence of such men a number of Christians were convicted, not indeed on clear evidence of their having set the city on fire, but rather on account of their sullen hatred of the whole human race. They were put to death, and to their sufferings Nero added mockery and derision. Some were covered with the skins of wild beasts, and left to be devoured by dogs; others were nailed to the cross; numbers were burnt alive; and many, covered over with inflammable matter, were lighted, when the day declined, to serve as torches during the night. For the convenience of seeing this tragic spectacle the emperor lent his own gardens. He added the sports of the circus, and assisted in person, sometimes driving a chariot, and occasionally mixing with the rabble in his charioteer's dress. At length the cruelty of these proceedings filled every breast with compassion. Humanity relented in favor of the Christians. The manners of that people were, no doubt, of a pernicious tendency, and their crimes called for the hand of justice, but it was evident that they fell a sacrifice, not for the public good, but to glut the rage and cruelty of one man only. JUVENAL BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH THE paucity and meagreness of the traditions that have come down to us about the life of Juvenal preclude the possibility of anything but an extremely flimsy reconstruction of it. He lived during the last half of the first century of our era and the first part of the second, various activities, if we are to believe the ancient accounts, filling up his long life. He is said to have seen some military service, to have held certain municipal offices in Aquinum in Latium, presumably his native town, to have turned to the writing of satire only after spending many years in the practice of declamation, and finally in his eightieth year to have been banished to Egypt, under the pretext of a military command, as a penalty for having in one of his satires reflected upon an actor who was a favorite at court. He has left us sixteen satires, some of them on general oral themes, but the majority satirizing conditions or tendencies in society at Rome. In some cases he handles the same topics as Martial, but instead of Martial's flippant light-heartedness we find bitterness and indignation, expressed with a rush of rhetoric and a mordancy of phrase that make them unique even in this kind of writing. His sincerity has often been impeached; but, while conceding that many passages are marred by exaggeration, and that in the heat of declamation the feeling is not infrequently forced, it seems probable that his work was for the most part based on genuine convictions. However this may be, there can be no question as to the brilliancy of his rhetoric, the effectiveness of his sententiae, and his powers of vivid portrayal and word painting. His canvas is crowded with realistic pictures of Roman life: as, for example, the swarm of toga-clad clients besieging the door of a rich patron at dawn, some of them not having even the excuse of poverty, others looking to the dole as their only means of subsistence, and to procure it resorting freely to lying and impersonation, and all the devices of shifty poverty; the scenes in the streets at Rome on the downfall of Sejanus; the crowded tenements whose shoddy construction offered to their occupants at best an option between collapse and conflagration; the legacy hunters, forgers, rioters, highwaymen, debauchees, adulterers, all characters old to satire, it is true, but never placed before in so fierce a light. ROME1 (III.) GRIEVED though I am to see the man depart, I praise his purpose to retire from Rome, Full on the road to Baiae, Cumae lies, 5 1 This satire contains an account of the evils and discomforts of life in Rome. The speaker (vv. 37 to end) is one Umbricius, who is leaving the capital in disgust. Juvenal represents himself (vv. 1-36) as having accompanied him to the valley of Egeria, just beyond one of the city gates, to say good-by. 2 On the coast of Campania, the dwelling-place of the famous Sibyl, priestess of Apollo. 8 A small island off the coast of Campania. |