Johnston's The Private Life of the Romans

The Private Life of the Romans
by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston
Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932) |Contents |
|INTRODUCTION |
| |
|CHAPTER |
| 1. The Family 9. |
|Amusements |
| 2. Roman Names 10. Travel |
|and Correspondence |
| 3. Marriage and Women 11. Sources of |
|Income |
| 4. Children and Education 12. Farming and|
|Country Life |
| 5. Slaves and Dependents 13. Town Life |
| 6. The House and Furniture 14. Funeral |
|Customs |
| 7. Dress and Ornaments 15. The Roman |
|Religion |
| 8. Food and Meals 16. The |
|Water Supply of Rome |
| |
|BIBLIOGRAPHY | INTRODUCTION
|Introduction (§1) |Reference Books (§16) |
|Public and Private Antiquities (§2-3) | Systematic Treatises |
|Antiquities and History (§4-6) | Encyclopedic Works |
|Antiquities and Philology (§7-10) | Other Works |
|Sources (§11-15) | |
1. The topics that are discussed in this book have to do with the
everyday life of the Roman people. Such things will be considered as the
family, the Roman name, marriage and the position of women, children and
education, slaves, clients, the house and its furniture, clothing, food and
meals, amusements, travel and correspondence, religion, funeral ceremonies
and burial customs. These things are of interest to us in the case of any
ancient or foreign people; in the case of the Romans they are of especial
importance, because they help to explain the powerful influence which that
nation exerted over the old world, and make it easier to understand why
that influence is still felt in some degree today. 2. Public and Private Antiquities. The subjects that have been named
above belong to what is called Classical Antiquities, taking their place in
the subdivision of Roman Antiquities as opposed to Greek Antiquities. They
are grouped loosely together as Private Antiquities, in opposition to what
we call Public Antiquities.1 Under the latter head we consider the Roman as
a citizen, and we examine the several classes of citizens, their
obligations, and their privileges; we study the form of their government,
its officers and machinery, its legislative, judicial, and executive
procedure, its revenues and expenditures, etc. It is evident that no hard
and fast line can be drawn between the two branches of the subject; they
cross each other at every turn. One scarcely knows, for example, under
which head to put the religion of the Romans, or their games in the circus.
[pic]
FIG. 1
A ROMAN MAN AND WIFE
From a tombstone now in the Vatican Museum, Rome.
3. In the same way, the daily employment of a slave, his keep, his
punishments, his rewards are properly considered under the head of Private
Antiquities. But the State undertook sometimes to regulate by law the
number of slaves that a master might have, and the State regulated the
manumission of the slave and gave him certain rights as a freedman. All
such matters belong to Public Antiquities. So, too, a man might or might
not be eligible to certain priestly offices, according to the particular
ceremony used at the marriage of his parents. It will be found, therefore,
that the study of Private Antiquities cannot be completely separated from
its complement, though in this book the dividing line will be crossed as
seldom as possible.2 4. Antiquities and History. It is just as impossible to draw the
boundary between the subjects of Antiquities and History. Formerly, it is
true, histories were concerned little with the private life of the people,
but dealt almost solely with the rise and fall of dynasties. They told us
of kings and generals, of the wars they waged, the victories they won, and
the conquests they made. Then, in course of time, institutions took the
place of dynasties and parties the place of heroes, and history traced the
growth of great political ideas; such masterpieces as Thirlwall's and
Grote's histories of Greece are largely constitutional histories. But
changes in international relations affect the private life of the people as
surely, if not as speedily, as they affect the machinery of government. 5. You cannot bring into contact, friendly or unfriendly, two different
civilizations without affecting the peoples concerned, without altering
their occupations, their ways of living, their very ideas of life and its
purposes. These changes react in turn upon the temper and character of a
people; they affect its capacity for self-government and the government of
others, and in the course of time they bring about the movements of which
even the older histories took notice. Hence our more recent histories give
more and more space to the life of the common people, to the very matters
that were mentioned as belonging to Private Antiquities (§§ 1-2). 6. On the other hand, it is equally true that a knowledge of political
history is necessary for the study of Private Antiquities. We shall find
the Romans giving up certain ways of living and habits of thinking that
seemed to have become fixed and characteristic. These changes we could not
explain at all if political history did not inform us that just before they
took place the Romans had come into contact with the widely different ideas
and different civilizations of other nations. The most important event of
this sort was the spread of Greek cultures after the First Punic War, and
to this we shall have to refer again and again. It follows from all this
that students who have had even the most elementary course in Roman history
have already some knowledge of Private Antiquities, and that those who have
not studied the history of Rome at all will find very helpful the reading
of even the briefest of our school histories of Rome.3 7. Antiquities and Philology. The subject of Classical Antiquities has
always been regarded as a branch ("discipline" is the technical word) of
Classical Philology since Friedrich August Wolf (1759-1824) made Philology
a science. It is quite true that Philology, in the common acceptation of
the word, is merely the science of language, but even here Antiquities has
an important part to play. It is impossible to read understandingly an ode
of Horace or an oration of Cicero if one is ignorant of the social life and
the political institutions of Rome. But Classical Philology is much more
than the science of understanding and interpreting the classical languages.
It claims for itself the investigation of Greek and Roman life in all its
aspects, social, intellectual, and political, so far as it has become known
to us from the surviving literary, monumental, and epigraphic records.
Whitney puts it thus: "Philology deals with human speech and with all that
speech discloses as to the nature and history of man." If it is hard to
remember the definitions, one can hardly forget the epigram of Benoist:
"Philology is the geology of the intellectual world." Under this, the only
scientific conception of Philology the study of Antiquities takes at once a
higher place. It becomes the end, with linguistics the means, and that is
the true relation between them. [pic]
FIG. 3
A ROMAN TEMPLE IN FRANCE
This building is now used as a Museum of Numismatics in Nîmes (Nemausus),
France.
8. But it happens that the study of the languages in which the records
of classical antiquity are preserved must first occupy the investigator,
and that the study of language as mere language-of its origin, its growth,
its decay-is in itself very interesting and profitable. It happens that the
languages of Greece and Rome cannot be studied apart from literatures of
singular richness, beauty, and power, and the study of literature has
always been one of the most attractive and absorbing to cultivated men. It
is not hard to understand, therefore, why the study of Antiquities has not
been more prominent in connection with philological training. Such study
was the end to which only the few pressed on. It was reserved, at least in
systematic form, for the trained scholar in the university. From the
courses in Greek and Latin conducted in our colleges it was crowded out by
the more obvious, but not more essential or interesting, subjects of
linguistics and literary criticism, or it was presented in those co