20 - Beacon Lights of History - Ancient Achievements by John Lord

In the third installment of the Beacon Lights of History series, Lord delves into the remarkable achievements of the ancient world, exploring pivotal developments in law, the fine arts, and science. He brings to life iconic figures such as Cicero and Cleopatra, revealing their enduring impact on history. Summary by KHand.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section twenty of Beacon Lights of History, Volume three, Ancient
Achievements by John Lord. This LibriVox recording is in the
public domain recording by k Hand Pagan Society, Part one,
Glory and Shame, fifty b c. We have now surveyed
what was most glorious in the states of antiquity. We

(00:21):
have seen a civilization which, in many respects rivals all
that modern nations have to show in art, in literature,
in philosophy, in laws, in the mechanism of government, in
the cultivated face of nature, in military strength, in esthetic culture.
The Greeks and Romans were our equals. And this high

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civilization was reached by the native and unaided strength of man,
by the power of will, by courage, by perseverance, by genius,
by fortunate circumstances. We are filled with admiration by all
these trophies of genius, and cannot but feel that only
superior races could have accomplished such mighty triumphs. Yet all
this splendid exterior was deceptive, for the deeper we penetrate

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the social condition of the people, the more we feel
disgust and pity, supplanting all feelings of admiration. And wonder.
The Roman Empire, especially, which had gathered into its strong
embrace the whole world, and was the natural inheritor of
all the achievements of all the nations, in its shame
and degradation, suggests melancholy feelings in reference to the destiny

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of man, so far as his happiness and welfare depend
upon his own unaided efforts. It is a sad picture
of oppression, injustice, crime, and wretchedness which I have now
to present. Glory is succeeded by shame, strength by weakness,
and virtue by vice. The condition of the mass is deplorable,
and even the great and fortunate shine in a false

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and fictitious light. We see laws theoretically good, practically perverted,
and selfishness and egotism the main springs of life. We
see energies misdirected and art corrupted. All noble aspirations have fled,
and the good and the wise retire from active life
in despair and misanthropy. Poets flatter the tyrants who trample

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on human rights, while sensuality and luxurious pleasure absorbed the
depraved thoughts of a perverse generation. The first thing which
arrests our attention as we survey the civilized countries of
the old world, is the imperial despotism of Rome. The
empire indeed enjoyed quietude, and society was no longer rent
by factions and parties. Demagogues no longer disturbed the public peace,

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nor were the provinces ransacked and devastated to provide for
the means of carrying on war. So long as men
did not oppose the government, they were safe from molestation
and were left to pursue their business and pleasure in
their own way. Imperial cruelty was not often visited on
the humble classes. It was the policy of the emperors
to amuse and flatter the people while depriving them of

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political rights. Hence, social life was free. All were at
liberty to seek their pleasures and gains. All were proud
of their metropolis with its gilded glories and its fascinating pleasures. Outrages, extortions,
and disturbances were punished. Order reigned, and all classes felt secure.
They could sleep without fear of robbery or assassination. In short,

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all the arguments which can be adduced in favor of
despotism in contrast with civil war and violence show that
it was beneficial in its immediate effects. Nevertheless, it was
a most lamentable change from that condition of things which
existed before the Civil Wars. Roman liberties were prostrated forever,
noble sentiments and aspirations were rebuked. Under the emperors, we

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read of no more great orators like Cicero battling for
human rights and defending the public weal eloquence was suppressed,
nor was their liberty of speech. Even in the Senate.
It was treason to find fault with any public acts.
From the Pillars of Hercules to the Caspian Sea, one
stern will ruled all classes and orders. No one could
fly from the agents and ministers of the Emperor. He

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controlled the army, the Senate, the judiciary, the internal administration
of the empire, and the religious worship of the people.
All offices, honors, and emoluments emanated from him. All influences
conspired to elevate the man, whom no one could hope
successfully to rival. Revolt was madness and treason absurdity. Nor

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did the emperor's attempt to check the gigantic social evils
of the Empire. They did not seek to prevent irreligion luxury,
slavery and usury, the encroachments of the rich upon the poor,
the tyranny of foolish fashions, demoralizing sports and pleasures, money making,
and all the follies which lacks principles of morality allowed.

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They fed the rabble with corn, oil and wine, and
thus encouraged idleness and dissipation. The world never saw a
more rapid retrogression in human rights or a greater prostration
of liberties. Taxes were imposed according to the pleasure or
necessities of the government. Principal governors became still more rapacious
and cruel. Judges hesitated to decide against the government. Patriotism

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in its most enlarged sense became an impossibility. All lofty
spirits were crushed. Corruption in all forms of administration fearfully increased,
for there was no safeguard against it. Theoretically, absolutism may
be the best government if rulers are wise and just,
But practically, as men are, despotisms are generally cruel and revengeful.

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Despotism implies slavery, and slavery is the worst condition of mankind.
It cannot be questioned that many virtuous princes reigned at
Rome who would have ornamented any age or country. Titus Hadrian,
Marcus Aurelius, Antoninus Pius, Alexander, Severus, Tacitus, Probus, Keraus, Constantine

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Theodosius were all men of remarkable virtues as well as talents.
They did what they could to promote public prosperity. Marcus
Aurelius was one of the purest and noblest characters of antiquity.
Theodocious for genius and virtue ranks with the most illustrious
sovereigns that ever wore a crown with Charlemagne, with Alfred,

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with William the Third, with Gustavus Adolphus. But it matters
not whether the emperors were good or bad if the
regime to which they consecrated their energies was exerted to
crush the liberties of mankind. The imperial despotism, whether brilliant
or disgraceful, was a mournful retrograde step in civilization. It
implied the extinction of patriotism in the general degradation of

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the people, and would have been impossible in the days
of Cato, Scipio or Metellus. If we turn from the
emperors to the class which before the dictatorship of Julius
Caesar had the ascendancy in the state, and for several
centuries the supreme power. We shall find but little that
is flattering to a nation or to humanity. Under the emperors,
the aristocracy had degenerated in morals as well as influence.

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They still retained their enormous fortunes, originally acquired as governors
of provinces and continually increased by fortunate marriages and speculations. Indeed,
nothing was more marked and melancholy at Rome than the
vast disproportion in fortunes. In the better days of the Republic,
property was more equally divided. The citizens were not ambitious

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for more land than they could conveniently cultivate, but the
lands obtained by conquests gradually fell into the possession of
powerful families. The classes of society widened as great fortunes
were accumulated. Pride of wealth kept pace with pride of ancestry,
and when plebeian families had obtained great estates, they were
amalgamated with the old aristocracy. The equestrian order, founded substantially

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on wealth, grew daily in importance. Knights ultimately rivaled senatorial families,
even freedmen, in an age of commercial speculation, became powerful.
For the riches, the pursuit of money became a passion,
and the rich assumed all the importance and consideration which
had once been bestowed upon those who had rendered great
public services. As the wealth of the world flowed naturally

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to the capital, Rome became a city of princes whose
fortunes were almost incredible. It took eighty thousand dollars a
year to support the ordinary senatorial dignity. Some senators owned
whole provinces. Trimalchio, a rich freedman whom Petronius ridiculed, could
afford to loose thirty millions of sesterces in a single

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voyage without sensibly diminishing his fortune. Pallas, a freedman of
the emperor Claudius, possessed a fortune of three hundred millions
of sesterces. Seneca, the philosopher, amassed an enormous fortune. As
the Romans were a sensual, ostentatious, and luxurious people, they
accordingly wasted their fortunes by an extravagance in their living

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which has had no parallel. The pleasures of the table
and the cares of the kitchen were the most serious
evocation of the aristocracy in the days of the greatest corruption.
They had around them regular courts of parasites and flatterers,
and they employed even persons of high rank as their
chamberlains and stewards. Carving was taught in celebrated schools, and
the masters of this sublime art were held in higher

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estimation than philosophers or poets. Says Juvenal, to such perfection
now as carving brought that different gestures by our curious
men are used for different dishes, hair, or hen Their
entertainments were accompanied with everything which could flatter vanity or
excite the passions. Musicians, male and female dancers, players of

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farce and pantomime gestures, buffoons and gladiators exhibited while the
guests reclined at table. After the fashion of the Orientals,
the tables were made of thujarroot with claws of ivory
or Delian bronze. Even Cicero, and in economical age, paid
six hundred and fifty pounds for his banqueting table. Gluttony

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was carried to such a point that the sea and
earth scarcely sufficed to set off their tables. They ate
as delicacies, water rats and white worms. Fish were the
chief object of the Roman epic cures, of which the mullus,
the rhombus, and the accellus were the most valued. It
is recorded that a mollus sea barbel weighing but eight

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pounds sold for eight thousand sesterces. Oysters from the Lucerne
Lake were in great demand. Snails were fattened in ponds
for cooking, while the villas of the rich had their
piscayne filled with fresh or salt water. Fish, peacocks and
pheasants were the most highly esteemed among poultry, although the
absurdity prevailed of eating singing birds of quadrupeds, The greatest

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favorite was the wild boar. The chief dish of a
grand choina, coming whole upon the table, and the practiced
gourmand pretended to distinguish by the taste from what part
of Italy it came. Dishes the very names of which
excite disgust were used at fashionable banquets and held in
high esteem. Martial devotes to entire books of his epigrams

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to the various dishes and ornaments of a Roman banquet.
The extravagance of that period it almost surpasses belief. Cicero
and Pompeii one day surprised Lycullus at one of his
ordinary banquets when he expected no guests, and even that
cost fifty thousand drachmas about four thousand dollars. His table
couches were of purple, and his vessels glittered with jewels.

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The halls of Heliogobilis were hung with cloth of gold
enriched with jewels. His table and plate were of pure gold.
His couches were of massive silver, and his mattresses, covered
with carpets of cloth of gold, were stuffed with down
found only under the wings of partridges. His suppers never
cost less than one hundred thousand sesterces. Crassus paid one

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hundred thousand cestreces for a golden cup. Banqueting rooms were
strewed with lilies and roses. Apicius and the time of
Trajan spent one hundred millions of cestreces in debauchery and gluttony.
Having only ten millions left, he ended his life with poison,
thinking he might die of hunger. Things were valued for
their cost and rarity rather than their real value. Enormous

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prices were paid for carp the favorite dish of the
Romans as of the Chinese. Drusillius, a freedmen of Claudius,
caused a dish to be made of five hundred pounds
weight of silver. Vitellius had one made of such prodigious
size that he was obliged to build a furnace on
purpose for it, and at a feast which he gave
in honor of this dish, it was filled with the

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livers of the scarus fish, the brains of peacocks, the
tongues of parrots, and the rows of lampreys caught in
the Carpathian Sea. The noble squandered money equally on their banquets,
their stables, and their dress, and it was to their crimes,
says Juvenal, that they were indebted for their gardens, their palaces,
their tables, and their fine old plate. Unbounded pride, insolent inhumanity, selfishness,

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and scorn marked this noble class. Of course, there were exceptions,
but the historians and satirists give the satisfiction of their
cold hearted depravity. The sole result of friendship with a
great man was a meal at which flattery and sick
of fancy were expected. But the best wine was drunk
by the host instead of by the guests. Provinces were
ransacked for fish and fowl and game for the tables

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of the great, and sensualism was thought to be no reproach.
They violated the laws of chastity and decorum. They scourged
to death their slaves. They degraded their wives and sisters.
They patronized the most demoralizing sports. They enriched themselves by
usury and monopolies. They practiced no generosity, except at their banquets,

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when ostentation balanced their avarice. They measured everything by the
money standard. They had no taste for literature, but they
rewarded sculptors and painters who prostituted art to their vanity
or passions. They had no reverence for religion, and ridiculed
the gods. Their distinguishing vices were meanness and servility, the
pursuit of money by every artifice, the absence of honor,

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and unblushing sensuality. Gibbon has eloquently abridged the remarks of
Emmenaeus Marcellinus respecting these people tend with each other in
the empty vanity of titles and surnames. They affect to
multiply their likenesses in statues of bronze or marble. Nor
are they satisfied unless these statues are covered with plates

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of gold. They boast of the rent rolls of their estates.
They measure the rank and consequence by the loftiness of
their chariots and the weighty magnificence of their dress. Their
long robes of silk and purple float in the wind,
and as they are agitated by art or accident, they
discover the undergarments the rich tunics embroidered with the figures
of various animals. Followed by a train of fifty servants,

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and tearing up the pavement, they move along the streets
as if they traveled with post horses. And the example
of the senators is boldly imitated by the matrons and ladies,
whose covered carriages are continually driving round the immense space
of the city and suburbs. Whenever they condescend to enter
the public baths, they assume on their entrance a tone
of loud and insolent command, and maintain a haughty demeanor,

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which perhaps might have been excused in the Great Marcellus.
After the ca conquest of Syracuse. Sometimes these heroes undertake
more arduous achievements. They visit their estates in Italy and
procure themselves by servile hands the amusements of the chase.
And if at any time, especially on a hot day,
they had the courage to sail in their gilded galleys
from the Lucerne Lake to their elegant villas on the

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sea coast of Petuli and Cargeta, they compare these expeditions
to the marches of Caesar and Alexander. Yet should a
fly presume to settle on the silken folds of their
gilded umbrellas, should a sunbeam penetrate through some unguarded chink,
they deplore their intolerable hardships and lament in affected language
that they were not born in the regions of eternal darkness.

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In the exercise of domestic jurisdiction, they express an exquisite
sensibility for any personal injury and a contemptuous indifference for
the rest of mankind. When they have called for warm water,
should a slave be tardy in his obedience, he is
chastised with a hundred lashes. Should he commit a wilful murder,
his master will observe that he is a worthless fellow,

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and shall be punished if he repeat the offense. If
a foreigner of no contemptible rank be introduced to these senators,
he is welcomed with such warm professions that he retires
charmed with their affability. But when he repeats his visit,
he is surprised and mortified to find that his name,
his person, and his country are forgotten. The modest, the sober,
and the learned are rarely invited to their sumptuous banquets.

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Only the most worthless of mankind parasite to applaud every
look and gesture, who gaze with rapture on marble columns
and variegated pavements, and strenuously praise the pomp and elegance
which he has taught to consider as a part of
his personal merit. At the Roman table, the birds, the squirrels,
the fish, which appear of uncommon size are contemplated with

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curious attention, and notaries are summoned to a test by
authentic record their real weight. Another method of introduction into
the houses of the great is skilling games, which is
a sure road to wealth and reputation. A master of
this sublime art, if played at a super below a
magistrate displays in his countenance a surprise and indignation which
Cato might be supposed to feel when refused the pratership.

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The acquisition of knowledge seldom engages the attention of the nobles,
who abhor the fatigue and disdain the advantages of study,
and the only books they peruse are the satires of
Juvenal or the fabulous histories of Marius Maximus. The libraries
they have inherited from their fathers are secluded, like dreary
suppulchers from the light of day, but the costly instruments

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of the theater, flute and hydraulic organs are constructed for
their use in their palaces. Sound is preferred to sense,
and the care of the body to that of the mind.
The suspicion of a malady is of sufficient weight to
excuse the visits of the most intimate friends. The prospect
of gain will urge a rich and gouty senator. As
far as Spoletta, every sentiment of arrogance and dignity is

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suppressed in the hope of an inheritance or legacy, and
a wealthy, childless Citicid is the most powerful of the Romans.
The distress which follows and chastises extravagant luxury, often reduces
the great to use the most humiliating expedients. When they
wish to borrow, they employ the base and supplicating style
of the slaves in the comedy. But when they are

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called upon to pay, they assume the royal and tragic
declamations of the grandsons of Hercules. If the demand is repeated,
they readily procure some trusty sycophant to maintain a charge
of poison or magic against the insolent creditor, who is
seldom released from prison until he assigned a discharge of
the whole debt. And these vices are mixed with a

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puerile superstition which disgraces their understanding. They elisten with confidence
to the productions of hers spices, who pretend to read
in the entrails of victims the signs of future greatness
and prosperity. And this superstition is observed among those very
skeptics who impiously deny or doubt the existence of a
celestial power. Such in the latter days of the Empire,

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was the leading class at Rome, and probably also in
the cities which aped the fashions of the capital for
volity and luxury loosened all the ties of society. They
were bound up in themselves and had no care for
the people, except as they might extract more money from them.
As for the miserable class, whom the patricians oppressed, their
condition became worse every day from the accession of the emperors.

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The plebeians had never disdained to those arts which now
occupied the middle classes. Those were entrusted to slaves. Originally,
they employed themselves upon the lands which had been obtained
by conquest, but these lands were gradually absorbed or usurped
by the large proprietors. The small farmers, oppressed with debt
and usury, parted with their lands to their wealthy creditors.

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Even in the time of Cicero, it was computed that
there were only about two thousand citizens possessed of independent property.
These two thousand persons owned the world. The rest were
dependent and powerless, and would have perished but for large jesses.
Monthly distributions of corn were converted into daily allowance for bread.
The people were amused with games and festivals, fed like slaves,

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and of course lost At last, even the semblance of
manliness and independence. They loitered in the public streets and
dissipated in gaming their miserable pittance. They spent the hours
of the night in the lowest resorts of crime and misery.
They expired in wretched apartments without attracting the attention of
the government. Pestilids, famine, and squalid misery thinned their ranks,

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and they would have been annihilated but for constant accession
to their numbers from the provinces. In the busy streets
of Rome might be seen adventurers from all parts of
the world, disgraced by all the various vices of their
respective countries. They had no education and but small religious advantages.
They were held in terror by both priests and nobles,
the priests terrifying them with Egyptian sorceries, the nobles crushing

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them by iron weight like Lazaroni. They lived in the
streets or were crowded into filthy tenements. A gladiatorial show
delighted them, but the circus was their peculiar joy. Here
they sought to drown the consciousness of their squalid degradation.
They were sold into slavery for trifling debts. They had
no homes. The poor man had no ambition or hope.

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His wife was a slave. His children were precocious demons,
whose prattle was the cry for bread, whose laughter was
the howl of pandemonium, whose sports were the tricks of
premature iniquity, whose beauty was the squalor of disease and filth.
He fled from a wife in whom he had no trust,
from children in whom he had no hope, From brothers
for whom he felt no sympathy, from parents for whom

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he felt no reverence. The circus was his home. The
fights of wild beasts were his consolation. The future was
a blank Death was the release from suffering. There were
no hospitals for the sick in the old, except one
on an island in the Tiber. The old and helpless
were left to die, unpitied and unconsoled. Suicide was so

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common that it attracted no attention. Superstition culminated at Rome,
for there were, seeing the priests and devotees of all
the countries that it governed the dark skinned daughter's vices
with drum and timbrel and wanton mien. Devotees of the
Persian mythrs, emasculated Asiatics, priests of Sabelle with their wild
dances and discordant cries, worshippers of the great goddess Diana,

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Barbarian captives with the rites of Teuton priests, Syrians, Jews,
Chaldean astrologers, and Thessalian sorcerers. The crowds which flocked through
Rome from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean brought with
them practices extremely demoralizing. The awful rights of initiation, the
tricks of magicians, the pretended virtues of amulants and charms.

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The riddles of emblematical idolatry with which the superstition of
the East abounded, amused the languid voluptuaries, who had neither
the energy for a moral belief nor the boldness requisite
for logical skepticism. We cannot pass by in this enumeration
of the different classes of Roman society the number and
condition of slaves. A large part of the population belonged

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to this servile class. Originally brought in by foreign conquest,
it was increased by those who could not pay their debt.
The single campaign of Regulus introduced as many captives as
made up a fifth part of the whole population. Four
hundred were maintained in a single palace at a comparatively
early period. A freedman in the time of Augustus left

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behind him forty one hundred and sixteen. Horace regarded two
hundred as the suitable establishment for a gentleman. Some senators
owned twenty thousand. Gibbon estimates the number of slaves at
about sixty millions, one half of the whole population. One
hundred thousand captives were taken in a Jewish war, who
was sold as slaves and sold as cheap as horses.

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William Bars supposes that there were three slaves to one freedman.
From the conquest of Greece to the reign of Alexander,
severus slaves often cost two hundred thousand cestreces, Yet everybody
was eager to possess a slave. At one time. The
slave's life was at the absolute control of his master.
He could be treated at all times with brutal severity,
fettered and branded. He toiled to cultivate the lands of

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an imperious master, and at night was shut up in
a subterranean and sell The laws hardly recognized his claim
to be considered a moral agent. He was secundum omnome genus.
He could acquire no rights, social or political. He was
incapable of inheriting property, or making a will, or contracting
a legal marriage. His value was estimated like that of

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a brute. He was a thing and not a person,
a piece of furniture, possessed of life. He was his
master's property, to be scourged or tortured or crucified. If
a wealthy proprietor died under circumstances which excited suspicion of
foul play, his whole household was put to torture. It
is recorded that on the murder of a man of
conscial or dignity by a slave, every slave in his

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possession was commanded to death. Slaves swelled the useless rabbles
of the cities and devoured the revenues of the state.
All manual labor was done by slaves in towns as
well as the country. They were used in the navy
to propel the galleys. Even the mechanical arts were cultivated
by the slaves. Nay More, slaves were schoolmasters, secretaries, actors, musicians,

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and physicians. For in intelligence, they were often on inequality
with their masters. Slaves were procured from Greece and Asia
minor in Syria as well as from Gaul and the
African deserts. They were white as well as black. All
captives in war were made slaves, also unfortunate debtors. Sometimes
they could regain their freedom, but generally their condition became

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more and more deplorable. What a state of society when
a refined and cultivated Greek could be made to obey
the most offensive orders of a capricious and sensual Roman,
without remuneration, without thanks, without favor, without redress. What was
to be expected of a class who had no object
to live for? They became the most degraded of mortals,
ready for pillage, and justly to be feared in the

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hour of danger. End of Section twenty