of
masters against their slaves, the unbridled frivolity of women. The
evil did not arise with the imperial regime, but resulted from the
excessive accumulation of the riches of the world in the hands of some
thousands of nobles or upstarts, under whom lived some hundreds of
free men in poverty, and slaves by millions subjected to an
unrestrained oppression. Each of these great proprietors lived in the
midst of his slaves like a petty prince, indolent and capricious. His
house at Rome was like a palace; every morning the hall of honor (the
atrium) was filled with clients, citizens who came for a meagre salary
to salute the master[151] and escort him in the street. For fashion
required that a rich man should never appear in public unless
surrounded by a crowd; Horace ridicules a praetor who traversed the
streets of Tibur with only five slaves in his following. Outside Rome
the great possessed magnificent villas at the sea-shore or in the
mountains; they went from one to the other, idle and bored.

These great families were rapidly extinguished. Alarmed at the
diminishing number of free men, Augustus had made laws to encourage
marriage and to punish celibacy. As one might expect, his laws did not
remedy the evil. There were so many rich men who had not married that
it had become a lucrative trade to flatter them in order to be
mentioned in their will; by having no children one could surround
himself with a crowd of flatterers. "In the city," says a Roman
story-teller, "all men divide themselves into two classes, those who
fish, and those who are angled for." "Losing his children augments the
influence of a man."

=The Shows.=--In the life of this idle people of Rome the spectacles
held a place that we are now hardly able to conceive. They were, as
in Greece, games, that is to say, religious ceremonies. The games
proceeded throughout the day and again on the following day, and this
for a week at least. The amphitheatre was, as it were, the rendezvous
of the whole free population; it was there that they manifested
themselves. Thus in 196, during the civil wars, all the spectators
cried with one voice, "Peace!" The spectacle was the passion of the
time. Three emperors appeared in public, Caligula as a driver, Nero as
an actor, Commodus as a gladiator.

=The Theatre.=--There were three sorts of spectacles: the theatre, the
circus, and the amphitheatre.

The theatre was organized on Greek models. The actors were masked an