Story of the Greek and the Roman People

SLAVE MARKET AT ROME.

A Roman was no longer satisfied to live on a little farm and till it with his own hands like Cincinnatus; he must own a wide estate and have it cultivated for him. So many wanted these large estates that land became dear, and a poor man could not buy even a small farm. He could not easily get work to do on one of these large places, because most of them were now cared for by slaves. It was a common custom to sell as slaves the people of a conquered city; and the Romans had taken so many cities that slaves had become exceedingly cheap. It was far less expensive to buy them than to pay wages to free men. But how did the poor men live? Some went to the towns and hung upon some wealthy men for their support. Some became soldiers and fought, not to save their country or to strengthen her power, but merely to get their wages and the plunder of conquered cities.

There was little hope of any one's becoming a senator unless he was rich. The Romans were divided into two classes: the rich, who cared for little but display and amusements, and the poor, who were becoming more and more anxious to be idle and luxurious, and who did not care who supported them if they could only get rid of work. The rich were growing richer, and the poor were growing poorer, and both cared chiefly for living idly and comfortably and being amused.

In their amusements the Romans were as stern and cruel as in their warfare. Their entertainments were chiefly the theatre and the gladiatorial combats. Their first knowledge of the theatre came from an educated Greek of Tarentum named Livius Andronicus. When the Romans captured Tarentum, they brought him to Rome as a slave. He learned Latin and translated some Greek plays. This was a new diversion for the Romans. They gave him a building on the Aventine Hill and went in crowds to see him act. From his 111) ?> times, the Romans had liked the drama; that is, they liked comedy, and they wanted plays that were amusing and full of jests, often the coarser the better. Tragedy seemed to them dull and stupid; and, indeed, it is no wonder that a man who had seen the destruction of Carthage or Corinth should think a tragedy as acted on the stage a rather tame proceeding.

AN ACTOR (FROM A STATUE IN THE VATICAN)

The Romans had always been stern, and now they had become cruel and often brutal. In the athletic contests they were no longer satisfied with racing and wrestling; they demanded to see real fights and the spilling of real blood. At first they were entertained by watching battles between wild beasts, lions, leopards, panthers, and elephants, sometimes hundreds of them fighting together in the same arena; but this soon ceased to be interesting. Those who are cruel to animals always become cruel to people; and the Romans soon wanted the excitement of seeing men fight and die. It was an old custom among the Etruscans to have combats between prisoners at the grave of a warrior. This was introduced into Rome, and the Romans found it so entertaining that they soon ceased to limit it to funerals or to single pairs of combatants. These fighters were called gladiators, from gladius, the Latin word for sword. At first the gladiators were all slaves and criminals. Sometimes they were promised freedom if they fought for a certain number of years and were not slain. These men fought savagely, but not always skillfully, and the Romans were soon a little bored by seeing fighting done in a clumsy fashion. Schools were established where gladiators were trained to fight, and from which they could be obtained at any moment. Not only slaves, but some of the wild, reckless men of Rome went to these schools.

THUMBS DOWN.

At the close of a gladiatorial combat, the victor stood proudly beside the vanquished and waited for the spectators to say what should be done with him. If the man had made a brave fight, they stretched out their hands with the thumbs up; but if he had shown himself awkward or cowardly, the thumbs were pointed down, and he was put to death on the instant. The citizens who watched the gladiatorial shows year after year became more and more brutal. Toward one another they had to keep up some appearance of courtesy, but they had no feeling whatever for their slaves. These slaves were often of much finer breeding and education than their masters and had been used to living more luxuriously; but when a shipload of them arrived at Rome, their purchaser drove them off in chains to his farm, branded them with his name or mark with red-hot irons, and set them at hard labor. If the work of a slave was not satisfactory, or if his master became angry with him, he was flogged or tortured or even crucified. If he was sick, no one paid any attention to him, for it was cheaper to buy another slave than to care for a sick man. Even the good Cato, who tried so hard to lead the people back to the simple ways of their forefathers, looked upon his slaves as little more than machines, and when they could work no longer, he either sold them or turned them off to live or die as they might.

GLADIATORS GOING TO CIRCUS.

There was also much misery among the freemen of Italy. This was increased by the change from tilling the soil to raising sheep. Sheep-raising needs much land and few workmen. For a long while it had been hard for a poor man to find employment, and it was becoming doubly hard, now that so few workmen were needed. Rome had grown wealthy and powerful, but her citizens were fast becoming idle, extravagant, and dissolute.

Many people were troubled and anxious about this state of affairs, but one man believed that he knew what ought to be done to better matters. This was one of the nobles, Tiberius Gracchus, grandson of Scipio Africanus. His father had died when he and his brother Caius were children, but he had a wise mother, Cornelia, who brought up her sons with the greatest care. The story is told that a friend who was visiting her displayed some beautiful jewels and asked to see hers. Cornelia put her off for a little until the children came in from school. Then she said to her friend, "These are my jewels."

Tiberius Gracchus had seen for himself how the poor were suffering because the great landowners held so much land and worked it with slaves. There was an old law that no one should have more than two hundred and fifty acres of the public land; but the poor could not see to it that the law was enforced and the rich would not. Tiberius proposed a new law, which was in reality almost the same as the old one; but there was little hope of its being passed.

The rich men who held vast estates of this public land were indignant. Often the land which they held had been in their families for many years, and they had come to feel that it must be their own. They did not care to remember that if it was not just to take the land in the first place, holding it a long while had not made the act any more just.

Tiberius was an eloquent speaker, and he pleaded most earnestly for the poor. He said: "The wild beasts of Italy have their caves to retire to; but the brave men who spill their blood in her cause have nothing left but air and light. . . . The private soldiers fight and die to advance the wealth and luxury of the great; and they are called masters of the world, while they have not a foot of ground in their possession."