Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero

Social life at Rome in the Age of
Cicero
by W. Warde Fowler

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Cicero
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Title: Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero
Author: W. Warde Fowler
Release Date: February 24, 2004 [EBook #11256]
Language: English
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SOCIAL LIFE AT ROME IN THE AGE OF CICERO

BY W. WARDE FOWLER, M.A.
'Ad illa mihi pro se quisque acriter intendat animum, quae vita, quae
mores fuerint.'--LIVY, Praefatio.

AMICO VETERRIMO
I.A. STEWART
ROMAE PRIMUM VISAE
COMES MEMOR
D.D.D.

PREFATORY NOTE
This book was originally intended to be a companion to Professor
Tucker's Life in Ancient Athens, published in Messrs. Macmillan's
series of Handbooks of Archaeology and Art; but the plan was
abandoned for reasons on which I need not dwell, and before the book
was quite finished I was called to other and more specialised work. As
it stands, it is merely an attempt to supply an educational want. At our
schools and universities we read the great writers of the last age of the
Republic, and learn something of its political and constitutional history;
but there is no book in our language which supplies a picture of life and
manners, of education, morals, and religion in that intensely interesting
period. The society of the Augustan age, which in many ways was very
different, is known much better; and of late my friend Professor Dill's
fascinating volumes have familiarised us with the social life of two
several periods of the Roman Empire. But the age of Cicero is in some
ways at least as important as any period of the Empire; it is a critical
moment in the history of Graeco-Roman civilisation. And in the
Ciceronian correspondence, of more than nine hundred contemporary
letters, we have the richest treasure-house of social life that has

survived from any period of classical antiquity.
Apart from this correspondence and the other literature of the time, my
mainstay throughout has been the Privatleben der Römer of Marquardt,
which forms the last portion of the great Handbuch der Römischen
Altertümer of Mommsen and Marquardt. My debt is great also to
Professors Tyrrell and Purser, whose labours have provided us with a
text of Cicero's letters which we can use with confidence; the citations
from these letters have all been verified in the new Oxford text edited
by Professor Purser. One other name I must mention with gratitude. I
firmly believe that the one great hope for classical learning and
education lies in the interest which the unlearned public may be
brought to feel in ancient life and thought. We have just lost the veteran
French scholar who did more perhaps to create and maintain such an
interest than any man of his time; and I gladly here acknowledge that it
was Boissier's Cicéron et ses amis that in my younger days made me
first feel the reality of life and character in an age of which I then
hardly knew anything but the perplexing political history.
I have to thank my old pupils, Mr. H.E. Mann and Mr. Gilbert Watson,
for kind help in revising the proofs.
W.W.F.

CONTENTS
* CHAPTER I
TOPOGRAPHICAL
Virgil's hero arrives at Rome by the Tiber: we follow his example;
justification of this; view from Janiculum and its lessons; advantages of
the position of Rome, for defence and advance; disadvantages as to
commerce and salubrity; views of Roman writers; a walk through the
city in 50 B.C.; Forum Boarium and Circus maximus; Porta Capena;
via Sacra; summa sacra via and view of Forum; religious buildings at
eastern end of Forum; Forum and its buildings in Cicero's time; ascent

to the Capitol; temple of Jupiter and the view from it.
* CHAPTER II
THE LOWER POPULATION
Spread of the city outside original centre; the plebs dwelt mainly in the
lower ground; little known about its life: indifference of literary men;
housing: the insulae; no sign of home life; bad condition of these
houses; how the plebs subsisted; vegetarian diet; the corn supply and its
problems; the corn law of Gaius Gracchus; results, and later laws; the
water-supply; history of aqueducts; employment of the lower grade
population; aristocratic contempt for retail trading; the trade gilds;
relation of free to slave labour; bakers; supply of vegetables; of
clothing; of leather; of iron, etc.; gave employment to