THREE

BREAD AND CIRCUSES

‘Rome has been restored to herself,’ wrote the Spanish poet Martial when the ‘far-seen amphitheatre’ was nearing completion. ‘What was formerly a tyrant's delight is now the delight of the people.’ The tyrant's colossal column, the figure on the summit replaced by that of the sun-god, still stood nearby and it was possibly this, rather than the vast size of the Colosseum itself, that gave the amphitheatre its name. The measurements were daunting. Its oval ground area, 617 feet long by 513 feet wide, enclosed an arena 282 feet by 177 feet. The surrounding walls rose in four storeys to a height of 187 feet. The top floor, an enclosed, colonnaded gallery, was reserved for women and the poor, who sat on wooden seats; the floor immediately below this, also enclosed, was reserved for slaves and foreigners; beneath this were tiers of exposed marble seats, the higher for the middle class, the lower for more distinguished citizens. Just above the level of the ringside were the boxes of the Senators, magistrates, priests, Vestal Virgins and members of the Emperor's family. High overhead on the roof of the topmost gallery, were sailors expert in the handling of canvas whose duty it was to pull across a coloured awning to protect the spectators from rain or the heat of the sun.

In all about fifty thousand spectators could be accommodated. They approached the amphitheatre across a precinct cobbled with lava and then a smooth pavement bounded by stones. Above them loomed the plain exterior of the building, faced with the local limestone known as travertine and relieved by statues standing in the arches between the columns of the arcades. They entered through seventy-six entrances, each of which was numbered to correspond with the admittance tickets which also bore the number of a seat. There were four other unnumbered entrances, two for the Emperor's entourage, and two for the gladiators, through one of which, the Porta Sanivivaria, the survivors returned to their barracks and through the other, named after Libitina, goddess of death, the corpses of the defeated were taken out.¹

The gladiatorial combats, adopted by the Romans from the Etruscans, had lost most of their religious, sacrificial significance and had become part of that system by which the authorities placated the people of Rome, a large proportion of whom were always unemployed, by providing them with regular entertainment as well as with free distributions of food. Relics of their religious past lingered on, however: the games, for instance, were also known as munera, offerings; and the

11. ‘The Colosseum’ by Piranesi, who executed more than two thousand engravings of Rome and its monuments.

attendant who made sure that a fallen gladiator was dead by delivering a coup de grâce to the head was usually dressed as Charon, ferryman of the souls of the dead across the river Styx from the upper world into Hades. Yet these were mere trappings. Great men vied with each other in the presentation of more and more spectacular games, not so much as sacrifices to the spirits of the dead as for their own glory and to gain the gratitude of the people, while the imperial court valued them as a vital social bond bringing the Emperor closer to the populace.

The games usually began early in the morning with a parade of gladiators, dressed in purple and gold cloaks, driving round the arena in chariots. The gladiators then marched around on foot, followed by slaves carrying their weapons, shields and plumed helmets, and ended in front of the Emperor's box where they thrust their right arms forward from their naked chests, shouting, ‘Hail Emperor! We men who are about to die salute thee!’ They then marched off to await their turn to fight, for the spectacle was generally opened not by them but by comic turns in which clowns and cripples, dwarfs and obese women pretended to fight each other with wooden swords and threw themselves to the ground in extravagant representations of paroxysmal death.

The gladiators reappeared to the cheers of the crowd and the blast of trumpets. Some carried heavy swords or lances and wore armour on their arms and legs; others, with little protection apart from a shoulder piece, had nets in which they hoped to be able to entangle their opponents before dispatching them with the thrust of a spear. When the fighting began the shouts of the crowd grew louder and more excited: ‘Habet, he's got him!’ ‘Lash him!’ ‘trike him!’ ‘Burn!’ ‘Kill!’ ‘Whip him to fight harder!’ ‘Why does he meet the sword so timidly?’ ‘Why doesn't he die like a man?’ But soon individual voices and cries were lost in the wild and deafening uproar. A wounded gladiator who fell to the ground could appeal for mercy by casting aside his shield and raising his left hand. His opponent could, in the absence of the Emperor, kill or spare him as he chose. If the Emperor were present, the choice was his. As the spectators screamed their preference he made his decision known, either by raising his thumb as a sign of reprieve or by turning it down as a verdict of death.

Successful gladiators were the heroes of the day; and there were those, unlike the impressed criminals and prisoners of war, who chose the precarious existence in the hope of achieving fame and the admiration of women. It was a hard life, though, as well as a dangerous one. The training was long and exacting; and, if the medical attention and the meals supplied in the gladiatorial schools were adequate, the quarters in which the men were lodged were usually cramped and foul.

Fights between gladiators were but one of the spectacles that the Colosseum had to offer. There were boxing matches, archery contests, women swordsmen, fights between charioteers, all of them often accompanied by the music of bands and hydraulic organs. Above all, there were wild beast shows in which thousands of animals were slashed to death. For these, the arena would be planted with trees and scattered with rocks, and from the labyrinth of cells beneath would emerge hundreds of roaring, bellowing, howling animals – leopards and bears, lions, tigers, camels, giraffes, ostriches, crocodiles, deer and chamois. As they came out and ran confused and frightened about the arena, they were engaged and baited, wounded and finally slaughtered with expertcrudelitas by the skilled venatores, professional beast slayers who knew by constant practice how best to taunt an animal to fury without much danger to themselves, and how to satisfy the passions of the bloodthirsty crowd. The experiences of Alypius, a young law student, well illustrate how even the squeamish and kind-hearted could be affected by the general hysteria. Alypius was dragged unwillingly into the amphitheatre by some fellow-students on their way home from a dinner party. At first he shut his eyes but the wild excitement of all around him, their shouts of encouragement and furious imprecations, induced him to look upon the bloodshed from which he then found it impossible to take his fascinated eyes. He began to experience a savage thrill of

12 and 12a. A fourth-century mosaic of gladiators and venatores.

pleasure, to shout and jump like the rest; and thereafter he never missed a venatio if he could help it and dragged in others initially as reluctant to witness the cruelty as he himself had been.

A few condemned these spectacles. Nero's tutor Seneca, visiting the amphitheatre one day at noon when the shows were exceptionally savage, afterwards voiced his disgust. He had expected ‘some fun and wit’ but discovered ‘just the reverse’:

It is pure murder. The men have no protective clothing. Their entire bodies are exposed to the blows, and no blow is ever struck in vain. The spectators call for the slayer to be thrown to those who in turn will slay him, and they demand that the victor should be kept for another butchering. The outcome for the combatants is death; the fight is waged with sword and fire… And when the show stops for an interval, they shout, ‘Let's have men killed meanwhile! Let's have something going on.’

But protests such as Seneca's were rare. Neither Horace nor Pliny expressed disapproval of the amphitheatre. Indeed, most leading Romans commended the gladiatorial games as exemplifying the qualities which were traditionally most admired in the Roman character, courage in the face of death, endurance, respect for ancient customs. Even Cicero, who condemned the cruelty of the wild beast hunts, saw virtue in the gladiators' fights which were object-lessons in discipline and self-sacrifice. ‘See how men who have been well trained prefer to receive a blow rather than basely avoid it,’ he wrote. ‘How frequently it is shown that there is nothing they more highly estimate than giving satisfaction to their owner or to the people!… What gladiator of ordinary merit has ever uttered a groan or changed countenance?’

As revered as successful gladiators were the charioteers of the circus, where performances were staged before audiences as enthusiastic if not as large as those in the Colosseum. There were several circuses in Rome, the Circus Flaminius which had been built in the days of the Republic,² the Circus Gaius inagurated by Caligula,³ and, most splendid of all, the Circus Maximus which, in use perhaps since the time of the kings, had been improved and enlarged by Julius Caesar and could accommodate well over 150,000 spectators.⁴ Here, in the immense arena eventually measuring 1,800 feet by 600 feet and surrounded by shops and eating places, by taverns and the booths of prostitutes and fortune-tellers, horse races and chariot races took place in an atmosphere of noisy excitement, betting frenzy and amorous intrigue.

Many are the opportunities that await you in the circus [Ovid advised in his Art of Love]. No one will prevent you sitting next to a girl. Get as close to her as you can. That's easy enough, for the seating is cramped anyway. Find an excuse to talk to her… Ask her what horses are entering the ring and which ones she fancies. Approve her choices… If, as is likely, a speck of dust falls into her lap, brush it gently away; and, even if no dust falls, pretend it has done and brush her lap just the same. If her cloak trails on the ground gather up the hem and lift it from the dirt. She will certainly let you have a glimpse of her legs… The deft arrangement of a cushion has often helped a lover… Such are the advantages which a circus offers to a man looking for an affair.

The sport was opened by a purple-robed state official wearing a heavy wreath of gilded laurels and holding an ivory baton surmounted by an eagle. He raised up a white napkin to the crowd and dropped it on to the freshly raked yellow sand that covered the arena. At first there might be displays of equestrian skill, the performers always riding without stirrups or standing on their heads or lying upon the horses, jumping from one mount to the next, engaging in mock sword fights with each other, or leaning down to snatch a trophy from the sand. Next came the horse races; then the chariots thundered round the track, as many as twelve emerging at once from the stables as soon as the rope, which was extended between the twin statues of Mercury, was pulled away. Sometimes the chariots were drawn by two horses, more often by four (quadrigae), occasionally by as many as ten. They raced round the circuit for seven laps, enveloped in clouds of sand thrown up by the wheels and the horses' hooves, the completion of each lap being signalled to the crowd by the movement of large wooden eggs and later of dolphins on the high embankment in the centre of the course. The chariots bore the colours – red, white, blue and green – of the factiones or stables from which they came; the horses were bedecked with pearls in their manes; their breastplates were studded with charms and medallions; the coloured ribbons of their factio were tied round their necks and in their knotted tails. The charioteers, leaning back against the reins, whips in their hands, helmets on their heads, their legs bound with leather straps, daggers sheathed by their thighs in case they had to cut themselves loose, also proclaimed the identity of their factio by the colour of their tunics. As the chariots hurtled towards the posts where they had to turn, consummate skill was needed to guide the horses into just the right position, for horses that turned too close to the post might swing the chariot crashing into it, while those that gave it too wide a berth lost positions that might never be regained.

The excitement of the displays in the Circus Maximus and the Colosseum attracted far larger audiences than did the theatres of Rome, even though the plays which were presented frequently offered scenes as violent and far more lubricious than those to be seen in the more popular places of entertainment. There were three principal theatres in Rome at this time, none of them offering anything like the accommodation afforded by either the Colosseum or the Circus Maximus, yet all of them enormous when compared with the largest theatres which have succeeded them. The Theatre of Pompey had about 27,000 seats, the Theatre of Marcellus some 10,000 and the smaller Theatre of Balbus which had been built in 13 B.C. had 8,000.⁵ But long gone were the days when such theatres could be filled by dramatists like Livius Andronicus, one of the founders of Roman drama, or Plautus and Terence who had adapted the content and style of the Greek masters for the stages of Rome. Plays were now written not so much for public performance as for private declamation; and the theatres presented productions more notable for the impressiveness of their effects than for the beauty of their language, the interest of their plots or the delineation of character. Playing to huge auditoria, actors wore easily identifiable masks and brightly coloured costumes, often merely making stylized gestures or dancing while a chorus spoke or loudly sang the accompanying words. Audiences, coarsened and degraded by the spectacles in the amphitheatre, demanded as much violence and sensationalism, rape, incest, pillage and cannibalism as the plot could be made to support. Women appeared naked on the stage, Leda making love to the swan, Pasiphae with the white bull of Minos; and when blows were exchanged real blood was shed and wounds inflicted. Before the end of the first century, convicted criminals were substituted for actors in the final scene and actually executed; bandits died on crosses; and a convict forced to take over the part of Hercules was wrapped in a poisoned cloak and burned on a funeral pyre.

Although the worst excesses were enacted in the times of the less humane emperors, even in those of the more kind-hearted the savageries continued apace. In the reign of Titus, when the Colosseum was inaugurated, no less than 5,000 animals, so it was calculated by Suetonius, were slaughtered there in a single day.

Titus had become Emperor in 79 when his father Vespasian, before suffering a fatal stroke, alluded to the customary apotheosis of an emperor in the last of his famous jokes: ‘Goodness me! I think I am about to become a god.’

Titus had proved a vengeful conqueror of the Jews whose rebellion he had suppressed, slaughtering prisoners wholesale after the sack of Jerusalem, throwing them to wild animals, setting up the Roman eagle in the Holy of Holies and carrying off to Rome the sacred treasures of Herod's temple. These included the silver trumpets and the seven-branched candelabrum, the menorah, which are shown being carried through Rome in a relief on the Arch of Titus erected across the end of the Via Sacra in 81.⁶ Titus had also been renowned for his profligate ways, his riotous parties, his fondness for young homosexuals and his lust for the Jewish princess, Berenice. Once established in power in Rome, however, he sent Berenice back to her people; he saw no more of his pretty boys, and he proved himself a generous, affable and charming ruler who displayed a sincere concern for the welfare of the city when first it was attacked by plague and then by yet another fire. His reign, though, was short. He died in 81, to be succeeded by his brother, Domitian, a lonely, introverted man of twenty-nine who had always been jealous of Titus's success and who had affected to be more interested in poetry and music than in politics. According to Suetonius, Domitian spent much of his time at the beginning of his reign by himself, catching flies and impaling them with deadly accuracy on the point of his pen. When his wife fell in love with an actor and had to be dismissed from the imperial household, he was more lonely than ever and before long found an excuse to call her back to him. The older he grew the more isolated and suspicious he became. And, since he had deeply offended the Senate by appointing himself Censor for life so that he had permanent control over its membership, by adopting titles of unprecedented grandeur such asDominus et Deus, and by seeming bent upon a course leading to complete absolutism, he had good cause to fear the dagger of an assassin. It was said that in his palace on the Palatine he paced up and down the principal courtyard glancing apprehensively at the images of the gardens reflected in the polished Cappadocian marble surfaces, in dread of catching sight of a lurking enemy.

This immense palace, largely financed by confiscations of property from Senators accused of treachery, rivalled in splendour Nero's Domus Aurea. Designed for Domitian by Caius Rabirius, it comprised his official residence the Domus Flavia, his private palace the Domus Augustana, and a vast stadium, surrounded by double porticoes, where horse races were probably held. To clear the site for this extensive development, rows of houses were demolished and tons of earth were carted away to level the ground. Fifteen years passed before the new complex of cloisters and peristyles, fountains and pools, sunken gardens and colonnades, temples and decorated apartments was completed. The remains of the dining-hall still bear witness to the place's vanished magnificence, to the pleasures enjoyed by the Emperor's guests who, reclining on cushioned couches beneath pink marble walls, could see through windows overlooking gardens in which brightly plumaged birds fluttered in cages beside sparkling fountains.⁷ But the obsessively paranoiac Domitian seems to have derived little pleasure himself from the luxury of his palace. And in 96, the year of its completion, the death he had long expected overtook him. He was stabbed to death by several assailants encouraged by his wife Domitia, various palace officials and the commanders of the Praetorian Guard.

The elderly and pliable lawyer, Marcus Cocceius Nerva, undoubtedly one of the conspirators, was chosen to succeed him. But the fury of the army, whose pay Domitian had considerably increased, and of the rank and file of the Praetorian Guard, forced Nerva to adopt a son and heir from outside his own family. And so, in 98, a gifted provincial official, well liked by both the army and the Senate, Marcus Ulpius Traianus, became Emperor upon Nerva's death.

Trajan had been born near Seville in 53. His mother was Spanish, his father a descendant of Roman settlers. He himself had served with distinction as Governor in Upper Germany and after two highly successful campaigns in the Kingdom of Dacia (in what is now Romania), the immense sums seized from this rich land enabled Trajan to undertake a programme of public works in Rome on a scale of unparalleled grandeur. On the site of Nero's Golden House he built the city's finest baths.⁸ He constructed a new Forum, the last of its kind, to the designs of the great architect from Damascus, Apollodorus, whose marble colonnades, temples, libraries and grand Basilica Ulpia, surrounding an open space with marble statues and bronze reliefs, were long considered amongst the most wonderful marvels of the ancient world.⁹ He built commodious markets, the Mercati Traianei, whose shops, originally built in three tiers, can still be seen off the Via IV Novembre.¹⁰ And most remarkable of all, to the west of the markets, Trajan erected in 113 the monumental column whose summit about 140 feet above the ground marks the height of the ridge that once separated the Forum from the Campus Martius. Designed by Apollodorus and constructed of eighteen blocks of marble four feet high and eleven and a half feet in diameter, it is decorated with exquisitely executed reliefs which spiral up around it, containing 2,500 figures and constituting

13. Roman Senators on their way to the Forum. A painting by Jean Lemaire (1598–1659).

a detailed and uniquely informative narrative of Trajan's Dacian campaigns. At the top of the column stood a statue of the victorious Emperor, and a spiral stone staircase inside led to a platform from which extensive views could be enjoyed over the rooftops of the city.¹¹

The population of Rome at this time was probably about a million, their buildings covering an area of almost eight square miles. But there were so many large public basilicas, temples, circuses, baths and theatres, so many acres of imperial gardens, so much land that could not be inhabited for fear of offending the gods that most people were compelled to live in tall apartment blocks, insulae, which towered, as many as six storeys high, over the narrow lanes.¹²

In the more solid and pleasant of these insulae the whole of the ground floor was occupied by a single tenant and the accommodation was nearly as spacious as that in a house; but the apartments over it were small and cramped and became increasingly less desirable on each successive floor, the highest and cheapest floors being overcrowded with tenants and sub-tenants, their families and dependants. From the outside, the insula might well present an attractive appearance, its façade decorated with tiles and mosaics, with balconies of wood or brick projecting from each storey and with potted plants and flowers to be seen behind their railings. Inside, however, the apartments were for the most part dark and comfortless, lit by windows covered with parchment or sheets of cloth, or by wooden shutters which might keep out the rain or the glaring sun but which plunged rooms into a darkness that a candle or smoky lamp did little to alleviate. Furniture was sparse, limited to a few stools and beds, though the beds were frequently part of the structure, shelves or bunks fitted against the wall. Heat was commonly provided by movable braziers and cooking done on open stoves, so that the flimsily built structures were as likely to catch fire as they were to collapse.

Water supply and sanitation were almost as primitive as they had been in the time of the kings. By Trajan's day more than 200 million gallons of water were brought into Rome every day by eight aqueducts; but while the occupants of some of the ground floors of the insulae benefited from this, those who lived above them did not. Water had to be fetched in buckets from fountains in the streets or brought up the stairs by notoriously lazy and ill-natured water-carriers. Similarly, while the drainage system of the city, started seven centuries before, had since been regularly extended and improved, the upper floors of the insulae were not connected to it. Their occupants had to take their receptacles downstairs to empty them into a pit in the basement or into nearby cess trenches. Those who could not or would not do this hurled their contents from the windows into the street.

Despite Nero's reconstruction of the city on a more regular plan after the fire of 64, many of the streets of Rome were as narrow, tortuous and dark as they had ever been, the widest being scarcely more than twenty feet and, in the centre of the city, the Via Sacra and the Via Nova were not even as wide as this. Not all of them were paved or had sidewalks and, although a decree had been passed in the time of Domitian prohibiting shopkeepers from displaying their wares in the streets, the decree seems not to have been too strictly observed. The lower floors of many insulae were divided into shops and booths, taverns and warehouses; and, since the traders' families lived in poky little lofts approached by ladders, it was natural that they should wish to spend their lives in the streets when the weather allowed and to bring out their goods to catch the attention of the passers-by. As well as shopkeepers, barbers carried on their business in the street, cutting hair with iron scissors in the fashion favoured by the reigning Emperor or some idolized charioteer, curling the locks of the young, dyeing those of the old, shaving chins with iron razors which were often painfully blunt despite frequent recourse to the whetstone, and, when their arms were jogged by the crowd, staunching the consequent flow of blood with spiders' webs soaked in oil and vinegar.

Craftsmen, too, worked in the street; itinerant vendors shouted their wares; jugglers, snake charmers and acrobats collected audiences; beggars thrust forward their bowls and cans; and even schoolmasters attempted to teach their pupils in the persistent din. The passage of carts and baggage animals in the streets during the hours of daylight had been forbidden by law by Julius Caesar, and the prohibition had remained in force; but horsemen were allowed, and so were the wagons of demolition and building contractors, litters and chairs borne by slaves; on the frequent days when public games were held, so were chariots bound for the amphitheatre, and, on the days of religious festivals, the carriages of priests and Vestal Virgins. The embargo on other vehicles did little, therefore, to lessen the confused congestion of the daytime streets, while the nights were disturbed by the shouts of wagoners and drovers, and the cries of night watchmen in the unlit alleys. ‘Most sick men die here from insomnia,’ Juvenal who was living in Rome at the end of the first century wrote in one of his satires:

Rest is impossible. It costs money to sleep in Rome.

There is the root of the sickness. The movement of heavy wagons

through narrow streets, the oaths of stalled cattle drovers

would break the sleep of a deaf man or a lazy walrus.

On a morning call the crowd gives way before the passage

of a millionaire carried above their heads in a litter,

reading the while he goes, or writing, or sleeping unseen:

for a man becomes sleepy with closed windows and comfort.

Yet he'll arrive before us. We have to fight our way

through a wave in front, and behind we are pressed by a huge mob

shoving our hips; an elbow hits us here and a pole

there, now we are smashed by a beam, now biffed by a barrel.

Our legs are thick with mud, our feet are crushed by large

ubiquitous shoes, a soldier's hobnail rests on our toe…

Newly mended shirts are torn again. A fir-tree

flickers from the advancing dray, a following wagon

carries a long pine: they swing and threaten the public.

Suppose the axle should collapse, that axle carrying

Ligurian stone, and pour a mountain out over the people –

what would be left of the bodies? The arms and legs, the bones,

where are they? The ordinary man's simple corpse

perishes like his soul.

The life of the rich was in sharp contrast to that of the poor whose life was passed in these dark, noisy and noisome alleys. The houses of the classes from which the Senators were chosen were not elaborately furnished, but the furniture they did contain was of the most exquisite quality and made in a variety of beautifully fashioned materials, bronze and maple wood, ivory and tortoiseshell, terebinth and porphyry with inlays of silver and gold. Statues, busts, water-clocks and curios, strange and valuable objects collected during tours of duty in the Empire's far-flung provinces were all carefully arranged in the small rooms which led one into another around courtyards shaded by trees, bright with flowers and filled with the sounds of singing birds and splashing fountains.

In the bedroom the master of the house would wake early, usually at dawn, and, while slaves with brushes and sponges, buckets of sand and water set about their daily tasks, he would throw aside the covers of his bed and begin to dress. The operation was not a lengthy one, for he wore no special clothes at night, content to sleep in the undergarments he had worn by day. Over his loincloth he wore a belted tunic of linen or wool, in cold weather two or even three of these, and then the synthesis or, for more formal occasions, the white toga whose folds could not be arranged without much practice or the help of an experienced slave. On his feet he wore sandals or boots of soft leather reaching half-way up the calves like those worn by soldiers.

The toilet of his wife was necessarily a more lengthy process. It did not take long for her to dress, since, like her husband, she wore her underclothes in bed and over her shift she had only to don her stola which reached to the ground, covering her feet, and herpalla, or shawl, which she could if she wished pull over her head. But the dressing of her hair, which was combed up and twisted into elaborate shapes by her ornatrix, or the arrangement of her wig, which was usually blonde, took quite as long as the application of her make-up: the whitening of her forehead, the reddening of her lips, the outlining of her eyes with antimony and the painting of her eyebrows with dampened ash. For the conditioning of her skin she would have used some kind of unguent, such as that described by Ovid which consisted of barley-meal and wheat-flour, ground pulse and ground antlers, beaten eggs, narcissus bulbs, gum and honey. Sprayed with scent, with jewels fixed in her braided hair, glittering studs in her ears, a necklace round her throat, rings on her fingers and bracelets on her arms, she was now ready to be helped on with her brightly coloured cloak and to go forth into the morning sun carrying perhaps a feathered fan and followed by a servant with a parasol.

In earlier times women had been at the mercy of their husbands, who had been selected for them by their parents and to whom they had usually been married at a very early age, sometimes as young as twelve years old, often at fourteen. As the fifth of the Twelve Tables of 449 B.C. had decreed, ‘Females shall remain in guardianship even when they have reached their majority.’ In those days a woman had no right in law to divorce her husband, though he could, without undue difficulty, get rid of her on the slenderest pretext, and even though himself an acknowledged adulterer, could kill his wife for her own unfaithfulness. But since then women, although very rarely to be found practising a profession, had gradually liberated themselves and had come to have interests and influence in what had formerly been considered male preserves. This was much to the consternation of many old-fashioned conservatives who expressed their disapproval of modern wives, strongly condemning them for practising birth-control, for attempting to rival men in learning and seeking to share in their games and sports. ‘What modesty can you expect of a woman who wears a helmet, abjures her own sex, and delights in feats of strength?’ Juvenal asked indignantly. ‘Who… with spear in hand and breasts exposed takes to pig-sticking?’ Juvenal was equally appalled by women who, instead of eating by themselves as in the past, or demurely sitting at their husbands' feet, now reclined beside them, drinking, eating and joining the male conversation on those couches for three people from which the triclinium, the dining-room, derived its name.

In most families the main meal was eaten in the evening, breakfast and the midday meal being little more than snacks. The triclinia, arranged around low tables, were furnished with cushions upon which the bare-footed diners rested their elbows. When children were present, they sat on stools. The table was usually covered with a cloth and on this were placed knives and spoons and toothpicks. Forks were unknown. Anything which could not be carried conveniently to the mouth in a spoon was picked up in the fingers. Servants were consequently in attendance with bowls of warm, scented water and napkins. Slaves carried the food to the table, the dishes for a banquet filled with such delicacies as had long been enjoyed and would still be relished for centuries to come, oysters, lobsters and mullet, goose's liver and capons, sucking-pigs and roasted veal, asparagus, truffles, mushrooms, fruits and cakes. Wine, in labelled amphorae with wooden or cork stoppers, was decanted through strainers into mixing-bowls and then cooled with snow or mixed with warm water before being poured into drinking-bowls.

The meal was a leisurely one. Seven courses were common, and between them the guests might be entertained with music or with dancers and acrobats. In houses renowned for gluttony and vice, dinner might last for as long as ten hours, the guests gorging themselves while watching the dancing of naked Spanish girls or staggering out from time to time to be sick in a room set aside for this purpose. Sometimes they drank so much that they could not stand and had, like the rich and vulgar host described by Martial, to summon a slave with an amphora into which they could ‘remeasure the wine [they] had drunk from it, relying upon the slave to guide the stream’. But such crapulous behaviour was far from common. At the dinner tables of most well-to-do families in Trajan's Rome, a modern observer might consider the appetites of the guests healthy rather than Gargantuan and the behaviour decorous, even though spitting on the floor was commonplace and belching a polite indication of enjoyment.

Before his meal the Roman would have had his bath. The rich had bathing-rooms in their own houses where slaves scraped, washed and massaged them, but all citizens had access to the public baths. Just as the latrines were recognized places to meet, gossip and exchange the news of the day, so were the thermae with which successive Consuls and Emperors had provided the people in every quarter of the city. Most of them offered the full range of halls and chambers – apodyteria where the people undressed;sudatoriawhere they sat and sweated; calidaria where, in an atmosphere slightly less hot, they could splash themselves with water from tubs or fountains and cleanse their skins with scrapers; tepidaria where they could cool themselves before diving into the cold baths of thefrigidaria. In some less reputable establishments men and women bathed naked together; but most baths had either staggered opening hours or separate chambers, generally adjoining, so that the same heating system could be used for both, and the sexes segregated. The men sometimes wore leather trunks, more often nothing at all; most women wore a loincloth.

In many baths there were promenades lined with works of art, reading-rooms and libraries, exhibition halls and gymnasia. All manner of ball games were played in the baths and all sorts of sports were practised, particularly wrestling matches in which both men and women took part. The women's baths had beauty parlours, and outside both men's and women's were cafés and small shops.

The baths closed at sunset. Thereafter, however, there were many other places in which the Roman could enjoy himself when the circus and the amphitheatres were silent. There were, for instance, the brothels outside which prostitutes displayed themselves on benches. Many, if not most, of them were foreigners, often Egyptian or Syrian. They wore far more startlingly bright clothes than respectable women would choose, short tunics and togas and bangles round their ankles. Taxed by the authorities on the basis of the fees they charged their customers, they were allowed to parade the streets and were a common sight on the Via Sacra and in the Subura, the noisy, crowded area of the city which Juvenal called the ‘boiling Subura’. To be seen with these prostitutes occasionally was not considered reprehensible in a young man of good family. Venereal disease seems to have been known but was far from widespread.

The authorities regulated the opening hours of brothels, but tavern-keepers were not so circumscribed and a cooling drink was always available. So, too, was a game of chance; for, despite the prohibitions regularly imposed, gambling was a common pastime with most Roman citizens and an obsession with many. Bets were placed on games of backgammon, chess and draughts as well as on those simpler games played with marbles and dice, nuts and knuckle-bones. Stakes were high and passions ran hot. ‘When was gambling so reckless?’ Juvenal wondered. ‘Men now come to the gaming tables not with purses but with a treasure chest.’ For those with a taste for less risky and less exciting pursuits there were the lovely walks beyond the city walls, amidst the temples and porticoes, the statues and frescoes of the Saepta Julia,¹³ the shady cypress groves and olive trees of the Campus Martius.

By the time of Trajan's death the Roman people, whose city he had so enriched, had learned to address him as Optimus Princeps, the best of all rulers. They had even more cause to be grateful to his adopted son who succeeded him in 117, the restless, homosexual and complex Hadrian. Of Spanish extraction, Hadrian seems to have spent most of his early life in Rome where he became known as a young man of highly cultivated tastes and strong, if often irrational, opinions. As Emperor he did not care to have his artistic opinions questioned and he quarrelled so violently with Apollodorus over the designs for the Temple of Venus and Rome that he had him banished from the city and possibly had him executed too. This temple, designed by Hadrian himself and dedicated by him in 135, was but one of several buildings, original in conception and skilful in execution, for which the

14. An early-nineteenth-century view of the Pantheon, which was described by William Thomas in 1549 as ‘the perfectest of all the antiquities’.

Emperor was responsible in Rome.¹⁴ His love of Greece, apparent in his beautiful villa at Tivoli,¹⁵ is also evident in the Pantheon, that wonderfully well-preserved Roman monument which, even in Hadrian's day, was the admiration of the civilized world.

The original Pantheon had been built between 27 and 25 B.C. by Agrippa to whom credit is still given in the inscription above the portico. But whereas Agrippa's building was renowned for its exterior, Hadrian's is remarkable for the huge circular hall behind the grey and red granite columns of the pedimented porch. Inside this hall, beneath the vast dome which, covered with sheets of gilded bronze, remained the largest in the world until modern times, stood statues of the gods covered with jewels, that of Venus, so Pliny said, wearing in the ears the two halves of the pearl which Mark Antony took from Cleopatra after she had drunk its twin dissolved in vinegar to win a bet.¹⁶

Having rebuilt the Pantheon as a suitably magnificent temple for all the gods, Hadrian began to construct his own memorial, the mausoleum which in the later history of Rome became that awesome state fortress and prison known as Castel Sant’ Angelo.¹⁷ The mausoleum was not finished at the time of Hadrian's death in 138 and was completed by his adopted heir, Antoninus, who, because of his devotion to his country, his gods and his father, became known as Antoninus Pius.

For over twenty years Antoninus ruled over a largely peaceful Empire; but the long frontiers of this Empire were coming under ever more persistent attack and, after his time, emperors intent upon survival were increasingly preoccupied with its defence. Antoninus Pius's successor, the conscientious and idealistic Marcus Aurelius, spent most of his reign fighting the German tribes of the north, and the column which towers above the Piazza Colonna commemorates his triumphs.¹⁸ Yet Marcus Aurelius, who seems still to ride with noble purpose across the Capitol in the equestrian bronze statue which so impressed Michelangelo, was the last of the four good emperors of Rome's triumphant age.¹⁹ His cruel and arrogant son Commodus was possessed by so wildly consuming a passion for gladiatorial contests that he took part himself in almost a thousand combats, arriving in the amphitheatre wearing a gold crown studded with jewels and preceded by an attendant bearing the club and lion skin of Hercules with whom he had identified himself. In Hercules's honour he slaughtered animals in the arena with insensate relish before appearing in his role as gladiator. The Senators dutifully watched his performances, shouting their approval of his bloodlust, although as one of them, Dio Cassius, recorded, their overriding emotion was one of fear, since it was rumoured that Commodus, in celebration of Hercules's killing of the Stymphalian birds, had made up his mind to round off an invigorating display of his prowess by massacring a few spectators.

On one occasion, Dio Cassius said, ‘having killed an ostrich and decapitated it, he came up to where we Senators were sitting, holding the head in his left hand and raising aloft his bloody sword; and, without uttering a word, he wagged his head with a grin as though to threaten he would treat us in the same way.’ Frightened as they were, the Senators could scarcely restrain their laughter at the antics of their crazy master, yet knowing that any sign of amusement would have resulted in their being killed on the spot, they stuffed their mouths with the laurel leaves from their garlands.

The strangulation of the megalomaniacal Commodus on the orders of a commander of the Praetorian Guard inaugurated a period of intermittent civil war in which a succession of imperial reigns were brought to a violent end, usually at the instigation or with the cooperation of these powerful household troops. Commodus's successor, Pertinax, the son of a freed slave who after distinguished military service had become Prefect of the City of Rome, was murdered within three months. Then the rich Senator, Didius Julianus, who had bought the throne at an auction organized by the Praetorian Guard, was killed after nine weeks on the orders of the resolute and forceful north African, Septimius Severus, who had been proclaimed Emperor by his legions on the Danube. Severus died a natural death in Britain, reputedly bequeathing to his sons the advice to get on well with each other, to be generous to their armies and not to bother with anyone else. But Caracalla, the violent and emotional son who followed him, having had his brother murdered, was himself assassinated by Macrinus, the Praetorian Prefect, in 217. Macrinus himself became Emperor for a short time until he, too, was killed in a rebellion planned by the Syrian sister-in-law of Septimius Severus, Julia Maesa, who replaced him with her grandson. This new 14-year-old Emperor was a devotee and high priest of the Syrian sun-god, El-Gabal, who was worshipped in the town of his birth in the form of a conical black stone which was said to have fallen there from heaven. The boy was known as Elagabalus after this deity whose cult he brought to Rome without any attempt to assimilate it into Roman institutions.

As the attention of the new emperor was diverted by the most trifling amusements [wrote Edward Gibbon in a characteristic passage], he wasted many months in his progress from Syria… and deferred till the ensuing summer his triumphal entry into the capital. A faithful picture, however, which preceded his arrival, and was placed by his immediate order over the altar of victory in the senate-house, conveyed to the Romans the just but unworthy resemblance of his person and manners. He was drawn in his sacerdotal robes of silk and gold… his head was covered with gems of an inestimable value. His eyebrows were tinged with black, and his cheeks painted with an artificial red and white. The grave Senators confessed with a sigh, that, after having long experienced the stern tyranny of their own countrymen, Rome was at length humbled beneath the effeminate luxury of Oriental despotism…

In a solemn procession through the streets of Rome the way was strewed with gold dust; the black stone, set in precious gems, was placed on a chariot drawn by six milk-white horses richly caparisoned. The pious emperor held the reins, and, supported by his ministers, moved slowly backwards, that he might perpetually enjoy the felicity of the divine presence. In a magnificent temple raised on the Palatine Mount, the sacrifices of the god Elagabalus were celebrated with every circumstance of cost and solemnity. The richest wines, the most extraordinary victims and the rarest aromatics were profusely consumed on his altar. Around the altar a chorus of Syrian damsels performed their lascivious dances to the sound of barbarian music, whilst the gravest personages of the state and army, clothed in long Phoenician tunics, officiated in the meanest functions with affected zeal and secret indignation.

To the temple of his deity, for his greater honour, Elagabalus transported all the most holy objects in Rome, including the Palladium, a small figure of Pallas Athene which had been brought from Troy by Aeneas. Shocked as they were by this blasphemous impiety, the Senators were even more horrified by the orgies which now took place in the imperial palace where the most exotic and extravagant meals were served at all hours of the day and night, where concubines and catamites disported themselves upon cushions stuffed with crocus petals and where the Emperor himself, dressed as a woman, made mockery of high Roman offices by bestowing them upon his various lovers and offended against the most sacred laws of Rome by violating a Vestal Virgin.

For fear lest his outrageous behaviour might result in her own ruin, his grandmother disowned him. Experiencing no difficulty in persuading the Praetorian Guard to assassinate both him and his mother, she had another grandson, Severus Alexander, declared emperor in his place. For thirteen years he and his mother ruled the Empire between them until in 235 both were killed in a mutiny of their troops.

Thereafter emperor followed emperor with bewildering frequency, there being six different rulers in Rome in the one year 238. Many were usurpers; most were army officers; nearly all died violent deaths, usually at the hands of soldiers supporting the claims of a rival. One of them, Philip the Arab, son of a desert chief, who reigned for five years from 244, celebrated the thousandth anniversary of the foundation of Rome with exceptionally savage wild beast hunts in the Colosseum, with shows and entertainments which ‘dazzled the eye of the multitude’, with mystic sacrifices and with music and dancing on the Campus Martius which was ‘illuminated with innumerable lamps and torches’. But such celebrations could not divert attention from the sad plight of Rome, the decline of the Senate much of whose authority was being assumed by the army, the slow disintegration of the Empire's frontiers and the recurrent financial crises within the city.

Little building of note had taken place in Rome since the time of Septimius Severus who restored the Portico d'Ottavia²⁰ and the Temple of Vesta, who made the fine terrace known as the Belvedere on the Palatine²¹ and in whose honour were erected both the Arco degli Argentari²² near the Circus Maximus and the grand Arch of Septimius Severus in the Forum.²³ Septimius Severus also began the huge and splendid baths which bear the name of his son Caracalla who inaugurated them in 217. They were the most luxurious in Rome, as the remains of them to be seen in the fountains of the Piazza Farnese, in the Salon d'Hercule of the Palazzo Farnese and in the baptistery of S. Giovanni in Laterano still testify.²⁴ They were also the largest baths in the city, being able to accommodate 1,600 people at a time. Not until the reign of Diocletian were larger baths to be built.²⁵

Diocletian, a man of humble origins from Dalmatia, came to the throne in 284. Before his accession there had been a brief recovery in Rome's fortunes. Valerian, who had become emperor in 253 and his co-emperor and successor, his son Gallienus, had led strong forces against the Persians and Germans. Gallienus, after reorganizing the army, had inflicted a decisive defeat upon the Goths in what is now Yugoslavia in a battle that cost them no less than fifty thousand lives. And Aurelian, who succeeded Gallienus's successor, Claudius Gothicus, had been equally successful against Rome's enemies in northern Italy, and had built the defensive walls round the city which enclosed those parts of it that had spread far beyond the walls of the Republic.²⁶ So, as the fourth century approached, the Empire, although still in financial chaos, was no longer on the verge of disintegration; and Diocletian, an administrator of exceptional ability, gave it the firm government it now needed. He enlarged the army; he overhauled the system of collecting taxes from the greatly increased number of Roman citizens who had become liable to pay them by the Constitutio Antoniniana of 212–13; and he increased the number of imperial provinces, removed their governors from military commands and, under his ultimate authority, created three other rulers whose capitals were established at Milan, Trier and in Salonica. His own capital was at Izmir on the Aegean coast, though the Senate remained in Rome, which was still the inspiration of the Empire, an ideal to be worshipped as a god.

Diocletian's reforms answered their purpose: the Empire was more orderly and united than it had been for generations. But the Emperor saw a threat to its unity and to the cult of the worship of Rome in that spreading, foreign, unpatriotic cult, Christianity. And he determined to stamp it out once and for all.