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After a short light repast at noon ... he would frequently, in the summer, repose in the sun; but during that time some author was read to him, from whom he made extracts and notes ... as was his method with whatever he read. . . . Thereafter he generally went into a cold bath, took a light refreshment, and rested for a while. Then, as if it were a new day, he resumed his studies till dinner, when again a book was read to him, and he made notes. . . .
except when he was actually bathing; all the while he was being rubbed and wiped he was employed in hearing some book read to him, or in dictating.
“While we adore images,” said the kindly Seneca, “we despise those who fashion them.”
Even an artist writes about art in vain.
To provide a privacy not always possible in the atrium, he built behind it a peristylium, a court open to the sky, planted with flowers and shrubs, adorned by statues, surrounded by a portico, and centering about a fountain or a bathing pool. Around this court he raised a new set of rooms: a triclinium or dining room, an oecus (“house”) for the women, a pinacotheca for his art collection, a bibliotheca for his books, and a lararium for his household gods; there might also be extra bedrooms, and little alcoves called exedrae—“sitting-out” nooks.
This Golden House became the passing wonder of Rome. Its buildings alone covered 900,000 square feet,
One of them, Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, wrote a world classic On Architecture
“Nature has not given me stature,” he confessed, “my face is homely with years, and illness has stolen my strength; therefore I hope to win favor by my knowledge and my book.”
As Cicero and Quintilian made philosophy a prerequisite for the orator, so Vitruvius required it of the architect; it would improve his purposes while science improved his means; it would make him “high-minded, urbane, just, loyal, and without greed; for no true work can be done without good faith and clean hands.”
The Romans built like giants; it would have been too much to ask that they should finish like jewelers.
The Romans did not finish like jewelers because conquerors do not become jewelers. They finished like conquerors.
“Nothing,” said Juvenal, “will so endear you to your friends as a barren wife.”
“has only two classes of inhabitants—flatterers and flattered; and the sole crime there is to bring up children to inherit your money. It is like a battlefield at rest: nothing but corpses and the crows that pick them.”
The streets of the capital were now noisy with restless and voluble Greeks; the Greek language was more often heard there than the Latin;
Much breeding overcame good breeding; the fertile conquered became masters in the sterile master’s house.
when children came they were loved not wisely but too well.
we may judge from this the rise of the teacher and the fall of the as.
Petronius complained, as every generation does, that education unfitted youth for the problems of maturity:
Trajan provided scholarships for 5000 boys who had less money than brains.
Fees were adjusted to bring promiscuity within the reach of every pocketbook; we have heard of the “quarter-of-an-as woman.”
“Pure women,” sang the cynical Ovid, “are only those who have not been asked; and a man who is angry at his wife’s amours is a mere rustic.”
Legislation kept women subject, custom made them free.
Old men denounced them longingly.
(tonsores). A youth’s first shave was a holyday in his life; often he piously dedicated his original whiskers to a god.
Like the Japanese, they could bear public better than private smells, and no ancient people but the Egyptians rivaled them in cleanliness.
Juvenal growled that a fisherman cost less than a fish.
vomunt ut edant, edunt ut vomant, said Seneca—“they vomit to eat, and eat to vomit.”
History, like the press, misrepresents life because it loves the exceptional and shuns the newsless career of an honest man or the quiet routine of a normal day.
The Romans loved music only less than power, money, women, and blood.
sham naval battle. The first large naumachia
agapé, or “supper of love.”
They were classified according to their weapons: retiarii, who entangled their opponents with nets and dispatched them with daggers; secutores, skilled in pursuit with shield and sword; laqueatores, slingshooters; dimachae, with a short sword in each hand; essedarii, who fought in chariots; bestiarii, who contended with beasts.
thumbs down (pollice verso)
Man, a sacred thing to man, is killed for sport and merriment.
Augustus and his successors had done everything they could to revitalize the old faith, except to live moral lives;
Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo, reads one—“I was not, I was, I am not, I care not”; and another, Non fueram, non sum, nescio—“I had not been, I am not, I know not”; and another, “What I have eaten and drunk is my own; I have had my life.”
“The elements out of which he was formed take possession of their own again. Life is only lent to man; he cannot keep it forever. By his death he pays his debt to Nature.”
In this way Roman law combined the stability of its basic legislation with the flexibility of praetorian judgments.
In general, however, the power of the father declined as that of the government rose;
Law tends to lag behind moral development, not because law cannot learn, but because experience has shown the wisdom of testing new ways in practice before congealing them into law.
Roman law hesitated to apply the term persona to him and compromised by calling him an “impersonal man.”
Ulpian, proclaimed what only a few philosophers had dared suggest—that “by the law of Nature all men are equal.”
from this partial list we may see that corruption has an ancient pedigree and a probable future.
The making of valid wills was hedged about with hundreds of legal restrictions, and their composition required, as now, a gorgeous and sonorous tautology.
In its final form the law of property was the most perfect part of the Roman code.
The older the civilization, the longer the lawsuits.
There was no lack of legal talent, for every fond parent yearned to see his son an advocate, and the law, then as now, was the vestibule to public office.
Ammianus complains of their high fees, saying that they charged even for their yawns and made matricide venial if the client paid enough.
“However fast the words may run, their hands are quicker still.”
The Twelve Tables exacted a fine of twenty-five asses (originally twenty-five pounds of copper) for striking a freeman; when rising prices had lowered the as to six cents Lucius Veratius went about striking freemen in the face,
