1. Plautus, Mostellaria, 960, 959 (3rd cent. BCE - 2nd cent. BCE)
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2. Cicero, On The Nature of The Gods, 1.79 (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
| 1.79. Yes, and every ant like an ant! Still, the question is, like what man? How small a percentage of handsome people there are! When I was at Athens, there was scarcely one to be found in each platoon of the training-corps — I see why you smile, but the fact is all the same. Another point: we, who with the sanction of the philosophers of old are fond of the society of young men, often find even their defects agreeable. Alcaeus 'admires a mole upon his favourite's wrist'; of course a mole is a blemish, but Alcaeus thought it a beauty. Quintus Catulus, the father of our colleague and friend to‑day, was warmly attached to your fellow-townsman Roscius, and actually wrote the following verses in his honour: By chance abroad at dawn, I stood to pray To the uprising deity of day; When lo! upon my left — propitious sight — Suddenly Roscius dawned in radiance bright. Forgive me, heavenly pow'rs, if I declare, Meseem'd the mortal than the god more fair. To Catulus, Roscius was fairer than a god. As a matter of fact he had, as he has to‑day, a pronounced squint; but no matter — in the eyes of Catulus this in itself gave him piquancy and charm. |
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3. Cicero, On Duties, 1.144 (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
| 1.144. Talis est igitur ordo actionum adhibendus, ut, quem ad modum in oratione constanti, sic in vita omnia sint apta inter se et convenientia; turpe enimn valdeque vitiosum in re severa convivio digna aut delicatum aliquem inferre sermonem. Bene Pericles, cum haberet collegam in praetura Sophoclem poëtam iique de communi officio convenissent et casu formosus puer praeteriret dixissetque Sophocles: O puerum pulchrum, Pericle! At enim praetorem, Sophocle, decet non solum manus, sed etiam oculos abstinentes habere. Atqui hoc idem Sophocles si in athletarum probatione dixisset, iusta reprehensione caruisset. Tanta vis est et loci et temporis. Ut, si qui, cum causam sit acturus, in itinere aut in ambulatione secum ipse meditetur, aut si quid aliud attentius cogitet, non reprehendatur, at hoc idem si in convivio faciat, inhumanus videatur inscitia temporis. | 1.144. Such orderliness of conduct is, therefore, to be observed, that everything in the conduct of our life shall balance and harmonize, as in a finished speech. For it is unbecoming and highly censurable, when upon a serious theme, to introduce such jests as are proper at a dinner, or any sort of loose talk. When Pericles was associated with the poet Sophocles as his colleague in command and they had met to confer about official business that concerned them both, a handsome boy chanced to pass and Sophocles said: "Look, Pericles; what a pretty boy!" How pertinent was Pericles's reply: "Hush, Sophocles, a general should keep not only his hands but his eyes under control." And yet, if Sophocles had made this same remark at a trial of athletes, he would have incurred no just reprimand. So great is the significance of both place and circumstance. For example, if anyone, while on a journey or on a walk, should rehearse to himself a case which he is preparing to conduct in court, or if he should under similar circumstances apply his closest thought to some other subject, he would not be open to censure: but if he should do that same thing at a dinner, he would be thought ill-bred, because he ignored the proprieties of the occasion. |
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4. Cicero, Letters, 9.1.3, 13.52 (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
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5. Cicero, Letters, 9.1.3, 13.52 (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
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6. Cicero, Letters, 9.1.3, 13.52 (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
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7. Cicero, Epistulae Ad Quintum Fratrem, 9.1.3, 13.52 (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
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8. Cicero, In Verrem, 2.1.33, 2.3.31 (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
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9. Cicero, Philippicae, 2.63, 2.67, 2.105 (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
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10. Cicero, Pro Archia, 5 (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
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11. Ovid, Tristia, 4.10.43 (1st cent. BCE - 1st cent. CE)
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12. Philo of Alexandria, On The Contemplative Life, 48, 40 (1st cent. BCE - 1st cent. CE)
| 40. I wish also to speak of their common assemblies, and their very cheerful meetings at convivial parties, setting them in opposition and contrast to the banquets of others, for others, when they drink strong wine, as if they had been drinking not wine but some agitating and maddening kind of liquor, or even the most formidable thing which can be imagined for driving a man out of his natural reason, rage about and tear things to pieces like so many ferocious dogs, and rise up and attack one another, biting and gnawing each other's noses, and ears, and fingers, and other parts of their body, so as to give an accurate representation of the story related about the Cyclops and the companions of Ulysses, who ate, as the poet says, fragments of human flesh, and that more savagely than even he himself; |
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13. Vergil, Aeneis, 8.710 (1st cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
| 8.710. knew that his mother in the skies redeemed |
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14. Juvenal, Satires, 3.9 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
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15. Martial, Epigrams, 3.50, 4.8.7-4.8.12, 5.16.9, 5.78.25, 10.20, 11.52 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
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16. Martial, Epigrams, 3.50, 4.8.7-4.8.12, 5.16.9, 5.78.25, 10.20, 11.52 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
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17. New Testament, 1 Corinthians, 13.1, 14.7 (1st cent. CE - 1st cent. CE)
| 13.1. If I speak with the languages of men and of angels, but don'thave love, I have become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal. 14.7. Even things without life, giving a voice, whether pipe or harp,if they didn't give a distinction in the sounds, how would it be knownwhat is piped or harped? |
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18. Persius, Satires, 1.32-1.43 (1st cent. CE - 1st cent. CE)
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19. Persius, Saturae, 1.32-1.43 (1st cent. CE - 1st cent. CE)
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20. Petronius Arbiter, Satyricon, 55 (1st cent. CE - 1st cent. CE)
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21. Petronius Arbiter, Satyricon, 55 (1st cent. CE - 1st cent. CE)
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22. Pliny The Elder, Natural History, 14.141-14.142 (1st cent. CE - 1st cent. CE)
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23. Plutarch, Sulla, 36.1-36.2 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
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24. Suetonius, Augustus, 76-77, 74 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
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25. Suetonius, Nero, 26.1 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
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26. Tacitus, Annals, 14.14-14.18, 14.20 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
| 14.14. It was an old desire of his to drive a chariot and team of four, and an equally repulsive ambition to sing to the lyre in the stage manner. "Racing with horses," he used to observe, "was a royal accomplishment, and had been practised by the commanders of antiquity: the sport had been celebrated in the praises of poets and devoted to the worship of Heaven. As to song, it was sacred to Apollo; and it was in the garb appropriate to it that, both in Greek cities and in Roman temples, that great and prescient deity was seen standing." He could no longer be checked, when Seneca and Burrus decided to concede one of his points rather than allow him to carry both; and an enclosure was made in the Vatican valley, where he could manoeuvre his horses without the spectacle being public. Before long, the Roman people received an invitation in form, and began to hymn his praises, as is the way of the crowd, hungry for amusements, and delighted if the sovereign draws in the same direction. However, the publication of his shame brought with it, not the satiety expected, but a stimulus; and, in the belief that he was attenuating his disgrace by polluting others, he brought on the stage those scions of the great houses whom poverty had rendered venal. They have passed away, and I regard it as a debt due to their ancestors not to record them by name. For the disgrace, in part, is his who gave money for the reward of infamy and not for its prevention. Even well-known Roman knights he induced to promise their services in the arena by what might be called enormous bounties, were it not that gratuities from him who is able to command carry with them the compelling quality of necessity. 14.15. Reluctant, however, as yet to expose his dishonour on a public stage, he instituted the soâcalled Juvenile Games, for which a crowd of volunteers enrolled themselves. Neither rank, nor age, nor an official career debarred a man from practising the art of a Greek or a Latin mummer, down to attitudes and melodies never meant for the male sex. Even women of distinction studied indecent parts; and in the grove with which Augustus fringed his Naval Lagoon, little trysting-places and drinking-dens sprang up, and every incentive to voluptuousness was exposed for sale. Distributions of coin, too, were made, for the respectable man to expend under compulsion and the prodigal from vainglory. Hence debauchery and scandal throve; nor to our morals, corrupted long before, has anything contributed more of uncleanness than that herd of reprobates. Even in the decent walks of life, purity is hard to keep: far less could chastity or modesty or any vestige of integrity survive in that competition of the vices. â Last of all to tread the stage was the sovereign himself, scrupulously testing his lyre and striking a few preliminary notes to the trainers at his side. A cohort of the guards had been added to the audience â centurions and tribunes; Burrus, also, with his sigh and his word of praise. Now, too, for the first time was enrolled the company of Roman knights known as the Augustiani; conspicuously youthful and robust; wanton in some cases by nature; in others, through dreams of power. Days and nights they thundered applause, bestowed the epithets reserved for deity upon the imperial form and voice, and lived in a repute and honour, which might have been earned by virtue. 14.16. And yet, lest it should be only the histrionic skill of the emperor which won publicity, he affected also a zeal for poetry and gathered a group of associates with some faculty for versification but not such as to have yet attracted remark. These, after dining, sat with him, devising a connection for the lines they had brought from home or invented on the spot, and eking out the phrases suggested, for better or worse, by their master; the method being obvious even from the general cast of the poems, which run without energy or inspiration and lack unity of style. Even to the teachers of philosophy he accorded a little time â but after dinner, and in order to amuse himself by the wrangling which attended the exposition of their conflicting dogmas. Nor was there any dearth of gloomy-browed and sad-eyed sages eager to figure among the diversions of majesty. 14.17. About the same date, a trivial incident led to a serious affray between the inhabitants of the colonies of Nuceria and Pompeii, at a gladiatorial show presented by Livineius Regulus, whose removal from the senate has been noticed. During an exchange of raillery, typical of the petulance of country towns, they resorted to abuse, then to stones, and finally to steel; the superiority lying with the populace of Pompeii, where the show was being exhibited. As a result, many of the Nucerians were carried maimed and wounded to the capital, while a very large number mourned the deaths of children or of parents. The trial of the affair was delegated by the emperor to the senate; by the senate to the consuls. On the case being again laid before the members, the Pompeians as a community were debarred from holding any similar assembly for ten years, and the associations which they had formed illegally were dissolved. Livineius and the other fomenters of the outbreak were punished with exile. 14.18. Pedius Blaesus also was removed from the senate: he was charged by the Cyrenaeans with profaning the treasury of Aesculapius and falsifying the military levy by venality and favouritism. An indictment was brought, again by Cyrene, against Acilius Strabo, who had held praetorian office and been sent by Claudius to adjudicate on the estates, once the patrimony of King Apion, which he had bequeathed along with his kingdom to the Roman nation. They had been annexed by the neighbouring proprietors, who relied on their long-licensed usurpation as a legal and fair title. Hence, when the adjudication went against them, there was an outbreak of ill-will against the adjudicator; and the senate could only answer that it was ignorant of Claudius' instructions and the emperor would have to be consulted. Nero, while upholding Strabo's verdict, wrote that none the less he supported the provincials and made over to them the property occupied. 14.20. In the consulate of Nero â his fourth term â and of Cornelius Cossus, a quinquennial competition on the stage, in the style of a Greek contest, was introduced at Rome. Like almost all innovations it was variously canvassed. Some insisted that "even Pompey had been censured by his elders for establishing the theatre in a permanent home. Before, the games had usually been exhibited with the help of improvised tiers of benches and a stage thrown up for the occasion; or, to go further into the past, the people stood to watch: seats in the theatre, it was feared, might tempt them to pass whole days in indolence. By all means let the spectacles be retained in their old form, whenever the praetor presided, and so long as no citizen lay under any obligation to compete. But the national morality, which had gradually fallen into oblivion, was being overthrown from the foundations by this imported licentiousness; the aim of which was that every production of every land, capable of either undergoing or engendering corruption, should be on view in the capital, and that our youth, under the influence of foreign tastes, should degenerate into votaries of the gymnasia, of indolence, and of dishonourable amours, â and this at the instigation of the emperor and senate, who, not content with conferring immunity upon vice, were applying compulsion, in order that Roman nobles should pollute themselves on the stage under pretext of delivering an oration or a poem. What remained but to strip to the skin as well, put on the gloves, and practise that mode of conflict instead of the profession of arms? Would justice be promoted, would the equestrian decuries better fulfil their great judicial functions, if they had lent an expert ear to emasculated music and dulcet voices? Even night had been requisitioned for scandal, so that virtue should not be left with a breathing-space, but that amid a promiscuous crowd every vilest profligate might venture in the dark the act for which he had lusted in the light. |
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27. Cassius Dio, Roman History, 62.15.6 (2nd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE)
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28. Lucian, A True Story, 2.15 (2nd cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
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29. Pliny The Younger, Letters, 1.15.2, 3.1.9, 9.17.3 (2nd cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
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30. Pliny The Younger, Letters, 1.15.2, 3.1.9, 9.17.3 (2nd cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
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31. Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History, 5.18 (4th cent. CE - 5th cent. CE)
| 5.18. The emperor Theodosius during his short stay in Italy, conferred the greatest benefit on the city of Rome, by grants on the one hand, and abrogations on the other. His largesses were indeed very munificent; and he removed two most infamous abuses which existed in the city. One of them was the following: there were buildings of immense magnitude, erected in ancient Rome in former times, in which bread was made for distribution among the people. Those who had the charge of these edifices, who Mancipes were called in the Latin language, in process of time converted them into receptacles for thieves. Now as the bake-houses in these structures were placed underneath, they build taverns at the side of each, where they kept prostitutes; by which means they entrapped many of those who went there either for the sake of refreshment, or to gratify their lusts, for by a certain mechanical contrivance they precipitated them from the tavern into the bake-house below. This was practiced chiefly upon strangers; and such as were in this way kidnapped were compelled to work in the bake-houses, where many of them were immured until old age, not being allowed to go out, and giving the impression to their friends that they were dead. It happened that one of the soldiers of the emperor Theodosius fell into this snare; who being shut up in the bake-house, and hindered from going out, drew a dagger which he wore and killed those who stood in his way: the rest being terrified, suffered him to escape. When the emperor was made acquainted with the circumstance he punished the Mancipes, and ordered these haunts of lawless and abandoned characters to be pulled down. This was one of the disgraceful nuisances of which the emperor purged the imperial city: the other was of this nature. When a woman was detected in adultery, they punished the delinquent not in the way of correction but rather of aggravation of her crime. For shutting her up in a narrow brothel, they obliged her to prostitute herself in a most disgusting manner; causing little bells to be rung at the time of the unclean deed that those who passed might not be ignorant of what was doing within. This was doubtless intended to brand the crime with greater ignominy in public opinion. As soon as the emperor was apprised of this indecent usage, he would by no means tolerate it; but having ordered the Sistra - for so these places of penal prostitution were denominated - to be pulled down, he appointed other laws for the punishment of adulteresses. Thus did the emperor Theodosius free the city from two of its most discreditable abuses: and when he had arranged all other affairs to his satisfaction, he left the emperor Valentinian at Rome, and returned himself with his son Honorius to Constantinople, and entered that city of the 10th of November, in the consulate of Tatian and Symmachus. |
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