Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius. Dill Samuel
these tablets the honourable title of conjunx is taking the place of the old servile contubernalis. The inscriptions which testify to the mutual love of master and servant are hardly less numerous. In one a master speaks of a slave-child of four years as being dear to him as a son.704 Another contains the memorial of a learned lady erected by her slave librarian.705 Another records the love of a young noble for his nurse,706 while another is the pathetic tribute of the nurse to her young charge, who died at five years of age. The whole city household of another great family subscribe from their humble savings for an affectionate memorial of their young mistress.707 Seneca, in his humanitarian tone about slavery, represents a great moral movement, which was destined to express itself in legislation under the Antonines. And the energy with which Seneca denounced harsh or contemptuous conduct to these humble dependents had evidently behind it the force of a steadily growing sentiment. The master who abused his power was already beginning to be a marked man.708
Frequent manumissions were swelling the freedman class to enormous dimensions. The emancipation of slaves by dying bequest was not then, indeed, inspired by the same religious motive as in the Middle Ages. But it was often dictated by the natural, human wish to make some return to faithful servants, and to leave a memory of kindness behind. But without the voluntary generosity of the master, the slave could easily purchase his own freedom. The price of slaves varied enormously, according to their special aptitude and grade of service. It might range from £1700, in rare cases, to £10, or even less, in our money.709 But taking the average price of [pg 118]ordinary slaves, one careful and frugal might sometimes save the cost of his freedom in a few years. The slave, especially if he had any special gift, or if he occupied a prominent position in the household, had many chances of adding to his peculium. But the commonest drudge might spare something from the daily allowance of food.710 Others, like the cooks in Apuleius, might sell their perquisites from the remains of a banquet.711 The door-keepers, a class notorious for their insolence in Martial’s day,712 often levied heavy tolls for admission to their master’s presence. And good-natured visitors would not depart without leaving a gift to those who had done them service. It must also be remembered that the slave system of antiquity covered much of the ground of our modern industrial organisation. A great household, or a great estate, was a society almost complete in itself. And intelligent slaves were often entrusted with the entire management of certain departments.713 The great rural properties had their quarries, brickworks, and mines; and manufactures of all kinds were carried on by servile industry, with slaves or freedmen as managers. The merchant, the banker, the contractor, the publisher, had to use, not only slave labour, but slave skill and superintendence.714 The great household needed to be organised under chiefs. And on rural estates, down to the end of the Western Empire, the villicus or procurator was nearly always a man of servile origin.715 In these various capacities, the trusted slave was often practically a partner, with a share of the profits, or he had a commission on the returns. Such a fortunate servant, by hoarding his peculium, might soon become a capitalist on his own account, and well able, if he chose, to purchase his freedom. His peculium, like that of the son in manu patris, was of course by law the property of his master. But the security of the peculium was the security for good service.716 Thus a useful and favourite slave often easily became a freedman, sometimes by purchase, or, as often happened in the case of servants of the imperial house, by the free gift of [pg 119]the lord. There are even cases on record where a slave was left heir of his master’s property. Trimalchio boasted that he had been made by his master joint heir with the Emperor.717
The tie between patron and freedman was very close. The emancipated slave had often been a trusted favourite, and even a friend of the family, and his lord was under an obligation to provide for his future. The freedman frequently remained in the household, with probably little real change in his position. His patron owed him at least support and shelter. But he often gave him, besides, the means of an independent life, a farm, a shop, or capital to start in some trade.718 In the time of Ovid, a freedman of M. Aurelius Cotta had more than once received from his patron the fortune of a knight, besides ample provision for his children.719 A similar act of generosity, which was recklessly abused, is recorded by Martial.720 By ancient law, as well as by sentiment, senators were forbidden to soil themselves by trade or usury.721 But so inconvenient a prohibition was sure to be evaded. And probably the most frequent means of evasion was by entrusting senatorial capital to freedmen or clients, or even to the higher class of slaves.722 When Trimalchio began to rise in the social scale, he gave up trade, and employed his capital in financing men of the freedman class.723 These people, generally of Levantine origin, had the aptitude for commerce which has at all times been a characteristic of their race. And, in the time of the Empire, almost all trade and industry was in their hands. The tale of Petronius reveals the secret of their success. They value money beyond anything else; it is the one object of their lives. They frankly estimate a man’s worth and character in terms of cash.724 Keen, energetic, and unscrupulous, they will “pick a farthing out of a dung-heap with their teeth”; “lead turns to gold in their hands.”725 They are entirely of Vespasian’s opinion that gold from any quarter, however unsavoury, “never smells.” Taking the world as it was, in many respects they deserved to succeed. They were not, indeed, encumbered with dignity or self-respect. They [pg 120]had one goal, and they worked towards it with infinite industry and unfailing courage and self-confidence. Nothing daunts or dismays them. If a fleet of merchantmen, worth a large fortune, is lost in a storm, the freedman speculator will at once sell his wife’s clothes and jewels, and start cheerfully on a fresh venture.726 When his great ambition has been achieved, he enjoys its fruits after his kind in all ages. Excluded from the great world of hereditary culture, these people caricature its tastes, and imitate all its vices, without catching even a reflection of its charm and refinement. The selfish egotism of the dissipated noble might be bad enough, but it was sometimes veiled by a careless grace, or an occasional deference to lofty tradition. The selfishness and grossness of the upstart is naked and not ashamed, or we might almost say, it glories in its shame. Its luxury is a tasteless attempt to vie with the splendour of aristocratic banquets. The carver and the waiter perform their tasks to the beat of a deafening music. Art and literature are prostituted to the service of this vulgar parade of new wealth, and the divine Homer is profaned by a man who thinks that Hannibal fought in the Trojan War.727 The conversation is of the true bourgeois tone, with all its emphasis on the obvious, its unctuous moralising, its platitudes consecrated by their antiquity.
It is this society which is drawn for us with such a sure, masterly hand, and with such graceful ease, by Petronius. The Satiricon is well known to be one of the great puzzles and mysteries in Roman literature. Scholars have held the most widely different opinions as to its date, its author, and its purpose. The scene has been laid in the reign of Augustus or of Tiberius, and, on the strength of a misinterpreted inscription, even as late as the reign of Alexander Severus.728 Those who have attributed it to the friend and victim of Nero have been confronted with the silence of Quintilian, Juvenal, and Martial, with the silence of Tacitus as to any literary work by Petronius, whose character and end he has described with a curious sympathy and care.729 It is only late critics of the lower empire, such as Macrobius,730 and a dilettante aristocrat like Sidonius Apollinaris,731 who pay any attention to this re[pg 121]markable work of genius. And Sidonius seems to make its author a citizen of Marseilles.732 Yet silence in such cases may be very deceptive. Martial and Statius never mention one another, and both might seem unknown to Tacitus. And Tacitus, after the fashion of the Roman aristocrat, in painting the character of Petronius, may not have thought it relevant or important to notice a light work such as the Satiricon, even if he had ever seen it. He does not think it worth while to mention the histories of the Emperor Claudius, the tragedies of Seneca, or the Punica of Silius Italicus.733 Tacitus, like Thucydides, is too much absorbed in the social tragedy of his time to have any thought to spare for its artistic efforts. The rather shallow, easy-going Pliny has told us far more of social life in the reigns of Domitian and Trajan, its rural pleasures and its futile literary ambitions, than the great, gloomy historian who was absorbed in the vicissitudes of the deadly duel between the Senate and the Emperors. One thing is certain about the author of this famous piece—he was not a plebeian man about town, although it may be doubted whether M. Boissier is safe in maintaining that such a writer would not have chosen his own environment of the Suburra as the field for his imagination.734 It is safer to seek for light on the social status of the author in the tone of his work. The Satiricon is emphatically the production