CHAPTER IV
Stoic Rome
508-202 B.C.

WHAT kind of human beings were these irresistible Romans? What institutions had formed them to such ruthless strength in character and policy?—what homes and schools, what religion and moral code? How did they take from the soil, and by what economic organization and skill did they mold to their uses, the wealth required to equip their growing cities and those ever new armies that never knew rest? What were they like in their streets and shops, their temples and theaters, their science and philosophy, their old age and death? Unless we visualize, scene by scene, this Rome of the early Republic, we shall never understand that vast evolution of customs, morals, and ideas which produced in one age the stoic Cato, in a later age the epicurean Nero, and at last transformed the Roman Empire into the Roman Church.

I. THE FAMILY

Birth itself was an adventure in Rome. If the child was deformed or female, the father was permitted by custom to expose it to death.¹ Otherwise it was welcomed; for though the Romans even of this period practiced some measure of family limitation, they were eager to have sons. Rural life made children assets, public opinion condemned childlessness, and religion promoted fertility by persuading the Roman that if he left no son to tend his grave his spirit would suffer endless misery. After eight days the child was formally accepted into the family and the clan by a solemn ceremony at the domestic hearth. A clan (gens) was a group of freeborn families tracing themselves to a common ancestor, bearing his name, united in a common worship, and bound to mutual aid in peace and war. The male child was designated by an individual first name (praenomen), such as Publius, Marcus, Caius; by his clan name (nomen), such as Cornelius, Tullius, Julius; and by his family name (cognomen), such as Scipio, Cicero, Caesar. Women were most often designated simply by the clan name-Cornelia, Tullia, Claudia, Julia. Since in classical days there were onlysome fifteen first names for males, and these tended to be repeated confusingly in many generations of the same family, they were usually reduced to an initial, and a fourth—or even a fifth—name was added for distinctiveness. So P. Cornelius Scipio Africanus Maior, the conqueror of Hannibal, was differentiated from P. Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus Africanus Minor, the destroyer of Carthage.

The child found itself absorbed into the most basic and characteristic of Roman institutions—the patriarchal family. The power of the father was nearly absolute, as if the family had been organized as a unit of an army always at war. He alone of the family had any rights before the law in the early Republic; he alone could buy, hold, or sell property, or make contracts; even his wife’s dowry, in this period, belonged to him. If his wife was accused of a crime she was committed to him for judgment and punishment; he could condemn her to death for infidelity or for stealing the keys to his wine. Over his children he had the power of life, death, and sale into slavery. All that the son acquired became legally his father’s property; nor could he marry without his father’s consent. A married daughter remained under her father’s power, unless he allowed her to marry cum manu—gave her into the hand or power of her husband. Over his slaves he had unlimited authority. These, and his wife and children, were mancipia to him—literally, “taken in hand”; and no matter what their age or status, they remained in his power until he chose to emancipate them—to let them “out of hand.” These rights of the paterfamilias were checked to some degree by custom, public opinion, the clan council, and praetorian law; otherwise they lasted to his death, and could not be ended by his insanity or even by his own choice. Their effect was to cement the unity of the family as the basis of Roman morals and government and to establish a discipline that hardened the Roman character into stoic strength. They were harsher in the letter than in practice; the most extreme of them were seldom used, the rest seldom abused. They did not bar a deep and naturalpietas, or reverential affection, between parents and children. The tomb stelae of Rome are as tender as those of Greece or our own.

Since the greater urgency of the male supplies woman with charms more potent than any law, her status in Rome must not be judged from her legal disabilities. She was not allowed to appear in court, even as a witness. Widowed, she could not claim any dower right in her husband’s estate; he might, if he wished, leave her nothing. At every age of her life she was under the tutelage of a man—her father, her brother, her husband, her son, or a guardian—without whose consent she could not marry or dispose of property. On the other hand, she could inherit, though not beyond 100,000 sesterces ($15,000), and she could own without limit. In many instances, as the earlier passed into the later Republic, she became wealthy because her husband put his property in her name to escape bankruptcy obligations, damage suits, inheritance taxes, and other everlasting jeopardies. She played a role in religion as priestess; nearly every priest had to have a wife and lost his office when she died. Within the home (domus) she was honored mistress, mea domina, madame. She was not, like the Greek wife, confined to a gynaeceum, or woman’s quarters; she took her meals with her mate, though she sat while he reclined. She did a minimum of servile work, for nearly every citizen had a slave. She might spin, as a sign of gentility, but her chief economic function was to superintend the servants; she made it a point, however, to nurse her children herself. They rewarded her patient motherhood with profound love and respect; and her husband seldom allowed his legal mastery to cloud his devotion.

The father and the mother, their house and land and property, their children, their married sons, their grandchildren by these sons, their daughters-in-law, their slaves and clients—all these constituted the Roman familia: not so much a family as a household; not a kinship group but an assembly of owned persons and things subject to the oldest male ascendant. It was within this miniature society, containing in itself the functions of family, church, school, industry, and government, that the Roman child grew up, in piety and obedience, to form the sturdy citizen of an invincible state.