Part 7 (1/2)

The colleges, of whose inner working we have tried to give a picture, are cla.s.sed as religious corporations in the collections of the inscriptions.

They bear the name of a G.o.d, and they provide a solemn interment for their members. But in these respects they do not differ from many other colleges which are regarded as purely secular. The truth is, that any attempt to make a sharp division of these societies on such lines seems futile.

Sepulture and religion being admitted by the government as legitimate objects for a.s.sociation, any college, however secular in its tone, might, and probably would, screen itself under sacred names. Nor would this be merely a hypocritical pretence. It is clear that many of the purely industrial colleges, composed as they were of poor people who found it impossible to purchase a separate burial-place, and not easy, unaided, to bear the expense of the last rites, at once consulted their convenience, and gratified the sentiment of fraternity, by arranging for a common place of interment. And with regard to religion, it is a commonplace to point out that all Graeco-Roman societies, great or small, rested on religion.

The state, the clan, the family, found their ideal and firmest bond in reverence for divine or heroic ancestors, a reverent piety towards the spirits who had pa.s.sed into the unseen world. The colleges, as we shall see presently, were formed on the lines of the city which they almost slavishly imitated.(1465) It would be strange and anomalous if they should desert their model in that which was its most original and striking characteristic. And just as Cleisthenes found divine and heroic patrons for his new tribes and demes,(1466) so would a Roman college naturally place itself under the protection of one of the great names of the Roman pantheon. Sometimes, no doubt, there may not have been much sincerity in this conformity to ancient pieties. But do we need to remind ourselves how long a life the form of ancient pieties may have, even when the faith which gave birth to them has become dim and faint?

The usual fas.h.i.+on of writing Roman history has concentrated attention on the doings of the emperor, the life of the n.o.ble cla.s.s in the capital, or on the stations of the legions and the political organisation of the provinces. It is a stately and magnificent panorama. But it is apt to throw the life of the ma.s.ses into even deeper shadow than that in which time has generally enwrapped them. We are p.r.o.ne to forget that, behind all this stately life, there was a quiet yet extraordinarily busy industrial activity which was its necessary basis and which catered for all its caprices. In the most cursory way Tacitus tells us that a great part of Italy was gathered for the great fair at Cremona, on the fateful days when the town was stormed by the army of Vespasian.(1467) Yet what a gathering it must have been! There were laid out in the booths the fine woollens of Parma and Mutina, the mantles of Ca.n.u.sium, the purples of Tarentum, the carpets of Patavium. Traders from Ilva brought their iron wares, Pompeii sent its fish sauces, and Lucania its famous sausages. Nor would there be missing in the display the oil of Venafrum, and the famous Setine and Falernian vintages.(1468) The improvement of the great roads in the reign of Trajan must have given a vast stimulus to inland commerce. And we may be sure that many a petty merchant with his pack was to be seen along the Aemilian or Flaminian ways, like the travelling vendor of honey and cheese, whom Lucius, in the tale of Apuleius, meets hurrying to Hypata.(1469) The great roads of Spain, since the days of Augustus, carried an immense traffic, which made even the distant Gades a magnificent emporium and one of the richest places in the Roman world.(1470)

The wandering traders in Germany, Spain, or Syria, by a natural instinct drew together in their exile. In the revolt of Julius Civilis, they are found settled among the Batavians, and a _collegium peregrinorum_ has left its memorial on the lower Rhine.(1471) The _sodalicium urbanum_ at Bracara Augusta is a similar society.(1472) Another mercantile college meets us at Apulum in Dacia.(1473) The Syrians of Berytus had a club at Puteoli, and there were at least two clubs of Syrian traders at Malaga.(1474) The graves of Syrian traders have been found at Sirmium in Pannonia, and, on the other hand, there are memorials of Roman merchants at Apamea and Tralles, at Salamis and Mitylene.(1475) Immense stimulus to this transmarine trade must have been given by the Emperor Claudius, who provided insurance against loss by storms, and a liberal system of bounties and rewards for s.h.i.+pping enterprise.(1476) Apollonius of Tyana once expostulated with a young Spartan, who claimed descent from Callicratidas, for having forsaken the true career of a man of his race, to soil himself with the trade of Carthage and Sicily. It is the sentiment of Juvenal who treats as a lunatic the man who will venture his life with a cargo on the wintry Aegean.(1477) But the antiquarian rhetoric attributed to Apollonius embalms the fact that at the opening of a springtime in the reign of Domitian, a great merchant fleet was lying at Malea, ready to sail to the western seas.(1478) These wandering merchants, wherever they went, banded themselves in colleges for mutual protection and for society. In the same way, old soldiers, on their return from long service on the frontiers, gathered in military brotherhoods at such places as Ostia or Misenum.(1479) The veterans of Augustus seem to have become a distinct and recognised cla.s.s, like the Augustales.(1480) Colleges of youth sprang up everywhere from the days of Nero, at Beneventum, Cremona, and Ameria, or at Moguntiac.u.m, Lauriac.u.m, and Poetovio.(1481) They were formed, like our own sporting clubs, for exercise and healthy rivalry, often under the patronage of the divine hero who, to all the moralists of that age, had become the mythic type of the continent vigour of early manhood. There is one sodality at least devoted to the preservation of chast.i.ty.(1482) But it is balanced by the clubs of the ”late sleepers” and ”late drinkers” of Pompeii.(1483)

The colleges in which the artisans and traders of the Antonine age grouped themselves are almost innumerable, even in the records which time has spared. They represent almost every conceivable branch of industry or special skill or social service, from the men who laid the fine sand in the arena, to the rich wine merchants of Lyons or Ostia.(1484) The mere catalogue of these a.s.sociations in an index will give an enlarged conception of the immense range and minute specialisation of Roman industry. It may be doubted whether a similar enumeration of our English crafts would be longer or more varied. The great trades, which minister to the first necessities of human life, occupy of course the largest s.p.a.ce, the bakers, the cloth-makers, the smiths, carpenters, and wood-merchants, trades often grouped together, the shoemakers and fullers and carders of wool. The mechanics, who made the arms and engines for the legions, naturally hold a prominent place. Nor less prominent are the boatmen of Ostia, and of the Rhone and the Saone.(1485) The sailors of these great rivers had several powerful corporations at Lyons, and, on many an inscription,(1486) claim the wealthiest citizens, men who have gained the whole series of munic.i.p.al honours, as their chiefs and patrons. Arles, which was then a great sea-port, had its five corporations of sailor-folk, and Ostia an equal number, charged with the momentous task of taking up the cargoes of the African corn-s.h.i.+ps for the bakeries of Rome.(1487) Transport by land is represented by colleges of muleteers and a.s.s drivers in the Alps and Apennines.(1488) All the many trades and services which ministered to the wants or pleasures of the capital were similarly banded together, the actors and horn-blowers, the porters and paviors, down to the humble dealers in pastils and salt fish.(1489) We have seen that even the gladiators, in their barrack-prisons, were allowed to form their clubs. Although traces of these combinations are found in remote and obscure places all over the Roman world, it is at great commercial centres, at Ostia, Puteoli, Lyons, and Rome itself, that they have left the most numerous remains. They had probably for one of their objects the protection of their members against encroachments or fiscal oppression.

Strabo once came across a deputation of fishermen on their way to plead with the Emperor for a reduction of their dues.(1490) Yet it would be a mistake to suppose that these trades unions were always organised for trade objects, or that the separate colleges were composed of people engaged in the same occupation. They had many honorary members from among the richer cla.s.ses, and, even in the lower ranks, in defiance of the law,(1491) a dealer in salt might be enrolled among the boatmen of the Rhone, and member of a college of builders.(1492) In truth, the great object of a.s.sociation among these humble people appears to have been not so much the protection of their trade, as the cheerfulness of intercourse, the promotion of fellows.h.i.+p and good-will, the relief of the dulness of humdrum lives.

Probably no age, not even our own, ever felt a greater craving for some form of social life, wider than the family, and narrower than the State.

It was a movement at which, as we have seen, even the greatest and strongest of the emperors had to connive. It penetrated society down to its lowest layers. Even the slaves and freedmen of great houses organised themselves in colleges. There were colleges in the imperial household.(1493) T. Aelius Primitivus, chief of the imperial kitchen, being a man of great posthumous ambition, left the care of his own and his wife's monument to the college of the palatine cooks.(1494) In the inscriptions of Moesia there is the alb.u.m of a Bacchic club of household slaves containing 80 names, with apparently different grades among them, designated by such t.i.tles as _archimysta_, _bouleuta_, _frater_ and _filius_.(1495) A similar club of the servile cla.s.s, devoted to the wors.h.i.+p of Isis, existed at Tarraco.(1496) The officers of another bear the pompous t.i.tles of tribune, quaestor, and triumvir, and the slab records the thanks of one Hilara, that her ashes have been allowed to mingle in the same urn with those of Mida the chamberlain.(1497) A provincial treasurer at Ephesus, who was a _verna Augusti_, commits the custody of his wife's monument to five colleges of slaves and freedmen in the emperor's household. One of the colleges bears the name of Faustina.

Another college is devoted to the cult of the Lares and images of Antoninus Pius.(1498) Private masters seem to have encouraged the formation of such a.s.sociations among their dependents, and sometimes to have endowed them with a perpetual foundation.(1499) It was probably politic, as well as kind, to provide for slaves social pleasures within the circle of the household, and thus to forestall the attractions of the numerous clubs outside, which freely offered their hospitality.(1500) We may be sure that the college ”which was in the house of Sergia Paulina”

was not encouraged by the mistress without good reason.

Thus it appears that in every part of the Roman world, in the decaying little country town, and in the great trading centres, the same great movement of a.s.sociation, is going on apace. It swept into its current almost every social grade, and every trade, handicraft or profession, the pastil-makers, the green-grocers and unguent sellers of Rome, the muleteers of the Alps, the fullers of Pompeii, the doctors at Beneventum, the boatmen of the Seine, the wine merchants of Lyons. Men formed themselves into these groups for the most trivial or whimsical reasons, or for no reason at all, except that they lived in the same quarter, and often met.(1501) From the view which the inscriptions give us of the interior of some of these clubs, it is clear that their main purpose was social pleasure. And this is especially true of the clubs of the humblest cla.s.s. M. Boissier has well remarked that the poor workman, the poor freedman, with the brand of recent slavery upon him, who was often engaged in some mean or disgusting occupation, amidst a society which from tradition regarded any industry soiled by servile touch with distant scorn, must have felt themselves solitary exiles in the desert of a great town, the most awful desert in the world. The remote splendour of the court and aristocratic life must have deepened the gloom of isolation and helplessness. Shut out for ever from that brilliant world of fas.h.i.+on and pleasure and power, whose social life seemed so charming and gay and friendly, the despised and lonely toiler sought a refuge in little gatherings of people as lonely as himself. At some chance meeting, some one, more energetic than the rest, would throw out the suggestion to form a club, on the model of some of the old trade societies which had always been authorised by the State from the days of Numa, or of those newer a.s.sociations which were now tacitly permitted under the guise of religion.

A small entrance fee would meet, for the time, their modest expenses. In that age of generous or ambitious profusion, it was not hard to find some influential patron, a kindly gracious n.o.ble, or an aspiring or generous _parvenu_, to give the infant society his countenance, along with a substantial donation for the building of a club-house, and for simple convivial pleasures on his birthday, and other festivals which could easily be multiplied. Then the brethren met in solemn form to frame their const.i.tution and commemorate their benefactor, on one of those many monuments which illuminate a social life on which the literature of the age is generally silent.

The continuity and repet.i.tion of proved political organisation is a notable characteristic of the great races which have left, or are destined to leave, their mark on history. The British settlers on the prairies of Oregon or Manitoba immediately order themselves into communities, which are modelled on a social system as old as the Heptarchy. The Latin race had perhaps an even more stubborn conservatism than the English. Under the most various circ.u.mstances, the Roman instinctively clung to forms and inst.i.tutions of tested strength and elasticity, and consecrated by the immemorial usage of his race. The most distant and most humble munic.i.p.ality was fas.h.i.+oned after the pattern of the great ”city which had become a world.”(1502) It had its senate, the _ordo splendidissimus et amplissimus_, and the popular a.s.sembly which elected the magistrates. The munic.i.p.al magistrates, if they do not always bear the ancient names, reproduce in shadowy form the dictators, the praetors, the aediles, quaestors, and censors of the old republic.(1503) The same continuity of form is seen in the colleges. As the munic.i.p.al town was modelled on the const.i.tution of the State, so we may say that the college was modelled on the munic.i.p.al town. The college, indeed, became a city for the brotherhood, at once a city and a home. They apply to it such terms as _respublica collegii_.(1504) The meetings often took place in a temple, whether of a patron deity or of an emperor, as those of the Roman Senate were held in the temple of Concord or of Bellona. There they elected their administrative officers, generally for a period of one year; in some cases, by way of special distinction, for life. The heads of these little societies bear various names, _magistri_, _curatores_, _quinquennales_, _praefecti_, or _praesides_.(1505) They have also quaestors,(1506) who managed their financial affairs, which, although perhaps on no great scale, still involved the investment of trust moneys to yield the prescribed amounts which had to be distributed either as burial payments, or in food and money on the high festivals. The number of the members was generally limited, either by the government in the interests of public order, or by the will of a benefactor, to prevent the progressive diminution in the value of the divisible shares of the income.(1507) A periodical revision of the roll of members was therefore conducted every five years, as it was in the munic.i.p.ality, by the chief officers, exercising for the time censorial powers in miniature. Fortunately the alb.u.ms of three or four colleges have been preserved. The lists throw a vivid light on their const.i.tution and social tone. We have drawn attention in a former chapter to the strict gradation of social rank in the city polity. The same characteristic is repeated in the collegiate organisation. In these humble plebeian coteries, composed of ”men without a grandfather,” of men, perhaps, whose father was a slave, or of men who were slaves themselves, there emerges, to our astonishment, a punctilious observance of shadowy social distinctions, which is an inheritance from the exclusive aristocratic pride of the old republic. This characteristic has excited in some French critics and historians a certain admiration,(1508) in which it is not altogether easy to join. Gradation of rank to ensure devotion and order in public service is a precious and admirable thing. But artificial and unreal distinctions, invented and conferred to flatter wealth, to stimulate or reward the largesses of the rich patron, to gratify the vulgar self-complacency of the _parvenu_, are only a degrading form of mendicancy. Some indulgence is no doubt due to men who were still under the yoke of slavery, or only just released from it; the iron had entered into their souls. But both the college and the munic.i.p.ality of the Antonine age cannot be relieved of the charge of purchased or expectant deference to mere wealth. Hence we cannot altogether share the pleasure of M. Boissier in these pale and vulgar reproductions of the hierarchy of a real aristocracy. But the image of the hierarchy is there, and it is very instructive. In a college of smiths in Tarraconensis, there were fifteen patrons at the head of the roll, followed by twelve decurions, including two doctors and a soothsayer, one man isolated by the honours of the _bisellium_, two honorary members, twenty-eight plain plebeians. There were also several ”mothers” and ”daughters” of the society.(1509) The alb.u.m of another club at Ostia shows a list of nine patrons, two holders of quinquennial rank, and one hundred and twenty-three plebeians.(1510) The plebs of many colleges included slaves, and in more than one inscription the men of ingenuous and those of servile birth are carefully distinguished, the slaves being sometimes placed at the bottom of the roll.(1511) Yet it was surely a great advance when slaves and freemen could meet together for the time, on a certain footing of equality, for business or convivial intercourse. The rigid lines of old pagan society are indeed still marked on the face of these clubs. And yet many an inscription leaves the impression that these little societies of the old pagan world are nurseries, in an imperfect way, of the gentle charities and brotherliness which, in shy retirement, the young Church was cultivating in her disciples to be the ideal of the world.

These colleges became homes for the homeless, a little fatherland, or _patria_, for those without a country. Sometimes they may have met in low taverns, which were on that account jealously watched by some of the emperors.(1512) But they generally attained to the possession of a club-room or _schola_, a name which had been previously given to the lounging-room of the public baths. Sometimes the _schola_ was erected at their own cost, the site being perhaps granted by some rich patron, or by the town council, on a vacant spot close to the basilica or the theatre.(1513) But frequently a hall was built for them by some generous friend. A like generosity often provided for them a little chapel of their patron deity, with a shaded court, or a balcony open to the air and sun, where the brethren took their common meals.(1514) Or a rich patron, anxious to secure some care and religious observance of his last resting-place, would bequeath to a college a pleasant garden adjoining the tomb, with a house in which to hold their meetings.(1515) And, as a further security against neglect and oblivion, a sum of 10,000 or 15,000 sesterces would be invested to provide a dinner for the college on their benefactor's birthday.(1516) As years went on, the scene of many a pleasant gathering became a centre round which cl.u.s.tered a great deal of sentiment, and even pride. We may imagine that, allowing for differences of time and faith, the little school or shrine would, in the course of years, attract something of the feeling which consecrates an ancient village church in England, or a little Bethel which was built in the year of the visit of John Wesley. It became a point of honour to make gifts to the schola, to add to its comfort or beauty. One benefactor would redeem a right of ancient lights, or build a boundary wall.(1517) Another would make a present of bronze candelabra on a marble stand, with the device of a Cupid holding baskets in his hands.(1518) Or a college would receive from its curator a gift of some silver statues of the G.o.ds, on the dedication of the _schola_, with a bra.s.s tablet, no doubt recording the event.(1519) The gift of a place where the brethren of the club might be buried beside their wives or concubines, was probably, to these poor people, not the least valued benefaction.(1520) Many a humble donation was probably made, which was too slight for a memorial. But it happens that we have one record of gifts evidently offered by poor, insignificant people.

It is contained in a very interesting inscription found upon a rock near the theatre at Philippi in Macedonia.(1521) It records that P. Hostilius Philadelphus, in recognition of the aediles.h.i.+p of the college, which had been conferred upon him, bore the expense of polis.h.i.+ng the rock, and inscribing upon it the names of the members of a college of Silva.n.u.s, sixty-nine in number, together with a list of those who had presented gifts to their temple. The college was a religious one, with a priest who is named in the first place. It is also a funerary society, and seems to be composed of freedmen and of slaves, either belonging to the colony or private masters. They had just erected a temple of their patron G.o.d, to which some had given subscriptions in money, while others made various offerings for its adornment. One brother presents an image of the G.o.d in a little shrine, another statuettes of Hercules and Mercury. There is another donation of some stone-work in front of the temple, and Hostilius, at his own expense, cut away the rock to smooth the approach to the shrine. Most of the gifts are of trifling value, a poor little picture worth 15 _denarii_, a marble image of Bacchus costing not much more. But they were the offerings of an enthusiastic brotherhood, and the good Hostilius has given them an immortality of which they never dreamed.

The contributions of the members would generally have been but a sorry provision for the social and religious life of a college. Reproducing, as it did, the const.i.tution and the tone of the city in so many traits, the college in nothing follows its model so closely as in its reliance on the generosity of patronage. At the head of the alb.u.m of the society there is a list, sometimes disproportionately long, of its _patroni_. Countless inscriptions leave us in no doubt as to the reason why the patron was elected. His _raison d'etre_ in the club is the same as in the city; it is to provide luxuries or amus.e.m.e.nts for the society, which the society could not generally obtain for itself. The relation of patron and client is, of all the features of ancient life, the one which, being so remote from the spirit of our democratic society, is perhaps most difficult for us to understand. The mutual obligations, enforced by a powerful traditional sentiment, were of the most binding, and sometimes burdensome character.

And in that form of relation, between former master and freedman, which became so common in the first age of the Empire, the old master was bound to continue his support and protection to the emanc.i.p.ated slave.(1522) Although there was much that was sordid and repulsive in the position of the client in Juvenal's and Martial's days, we must still recognise the fact that the fortune of the rich patron had to pay a heavy price for social deference. Not less heavy was the demand made on the patrons of munic.i.p.alities and colleges.

There must have been wide distinctions of dignity and importance among the industrial colleges of the Empire. The _centonarii_, the _fabri_, and _dendrophori_ of the more important centres, such as Aquileia, Lyons and Milan, the boatmen of Arles or Ostia, would probably have looked down with scorn on the flute-players of the Via Sacra, the hunters of Corfinium, or the muleteers of the Porta Gallica.(1523) And there was a corresponding variety in the rank of the patrons. Some are high officials of the Empire, procurators of provinces, curators of great public works, or distinguished officers of the legions. Or they are men evidently of high position and commanding influence in their province, priests of the altar of Augustus, augurs of the colony, magistrates or decurions of two or three cities.(1524) Sometimes the patron is a great merchant, with warehouses of oil or wine at Lyons or Tarragona or Ostia.(1525) Yet in spite of his wealth, the patron's social position in those days might be rather uncertain, and we may without difficulty, from modern a.n.a.logies, believe that a new man might find his vanity soothed, or his position made less obscure, by being known as the t.i.tular head of an ancient corporation of the clothworkers, or _dendrophori_, or of the boatmen on the Saone.

Probably in obscure country towns, remote from the seat of Empire, these bourgeois dignities were even more valued.(1526) The humbler colleges would have to be content with one of the new freedmen, such as the vulgar friends of Trimalchio, who, after a youth of shameful servitude, had leapt into fortune by some happy chance or stroke of shrewdness, and who sought a compensation for the contempt of the great world in the deference and adulation of those who waited for their largesses.

The election of a patron was an event of great moment, especially to a poor college. And it was conducted with a formal preciseness, and an a.s.sumption of dignity, which, at this distance of time, are sometimes rather ludicrous. In a little town of Cisalpine Gaul in the year 190, the college of smiths and clothworkers met in solemn session in their temple.

Their quaestors, who may have had the financial condition of the college in view, made a formal proposal that the college should set an example of the judicious reward of merit, by electing one Tutilius Julia.n.u.s, a man distinguished by his modesty and liberality, as the patron of their society. The meeting commended the sage proposal of the quaestors, and formally resolved that the honourable Julia.n.u.s should be requested to accept the distinction, with an apology for so tardy a recognition of his merits, and that a bra.s.s plate, containing a copy of this decree, should be placed above his door.(1527)

It is significant that the patrons were, in very many cases, Seviri and Augustales, a body which in the provinces, as we have seen, was generally composed of new men of the freedman cla.s.s. Although they were steadily rising in importance and in strength of organisation, the provincial Augustales always ranked after the decurions of a town. They often displayed boundless liberality to their city and to their own order.(1528) But the leading Augustales seem to have been quite as generous to the other corporations who placed themselves under their patronage. And they were not unfrequently patrons of several colleges.(1529) It is no long task to find men who were the t.i.tular protectors of two or three, of eight, or even of as many as twelve or fifteen colleges. One inscription to Cn. Sentius of Ostia would seem to include among his dependents almost every industrial college in that busy port.(1530) Sentius must have been a very wealthy and a very generous man to accept the patronage of so many societies, which in those days expected or demanded that their honours should be paid for in solid cash. The crowning distinction of a statue, or a durable inscription, was often solemnly decreed with all seemly forms of deference or unstinted flattery in a full meeting of the society. But in a great majority of cases we are amused or disgusted to read that, after all his other liberalities, the benefactor or his heir is permitted to pay for the record of popular grat.i.tude.(1531) This fact may explain the extraordinary abundance of these honours, if it somewhat lowers their value in the eyes of posterity.

But, besides the benefactions which sprang either from ambition or real generosity, a vast number were inspired by the Roman pa.s.sion for long remembrance, and for the continuity of funerary ritual. The very position of so many tombs by the side of the great roads beyond the city gates, was a silent appeal to the pa.s.sing traveller not to forget the departed. The appeal is also often expressly made on the stone by those who had no other means of prolonging their own memory or that of some one they loved. It is impossible to read without some emotion the prayer of an old Spanish soldier, that his brethren of the college may never suffer grief like his, if they will only keep the lamp burning for ever over the tomb of his child.(1532) The more opulent took more elaborate measures to provide for the guardians.h.i.+p of their ”last home.”(1533) They often attached to the tomb a field or gardens of considerable extent, to be cultivated for profit, or to bear the roses for the annual offering. The whole area, the dimensions of which, in many inscriptions, are defined with mathematical precision, would be surrounded by a wall. Within the enclosure there would be a little shrine containing statues of the dead, an arbour and a well, and a hall in which the kindred of coming generations might hold their annual banquet, till the tie was dissolved by the cruel oblivion of time.(1534) There will be a cottage (_taberna_) in which a freedman or dependent of the house may be lodged, to watch over the repose of the dead.(1535) But all these precautions, as the testator feels, were likely to be defeated in the end by the vicissitudes of human fortunes.(1536) He had, indeed, before his eyes the fate of many a forsaken and forgotten tomb of old worthies of the Republic. Families die out; faithful freedmen and their children cannot keep their watch for ever. The garden will grow wild, a time may come when no kindly hand will pour the libation or scatter the roses on the natal day. Families will die out, but a college may go on for ever by the perpetual renewal of its members. Inspired with this idea, a worthy of Nimes created a funerary college to dine regularly in his honour.(1537) It was to consist of thirty persons, and the number was to be maintained by co-optation into the places of deceased members.

Members of the college who were obliged to be absent might send one of their friends to join in the repast. Thus the dead man, who had taken such care to prolong his memory, would at no distant date be festively celebrated by people who barely knew his name. Many another left a bequest to a college to be spent in a feast on the testator's memorial day.(1538) A freedman of Mevania leaves a tiny legacy of HS.1000 to the guild of clothworkers, of whom he is patron, with the condition that not less than twelve of their number shall feast once a year in memory of him.(1539) A more liberal provision for convivial enjoyment was left to a college of Silva.n.u.s in honour of Domitian. It consisted of the rents of four estates, with their appurtenances, which were to be spent on the birthdays of the emperor and his wife, ”for all time to come,” with the sacrifices proper to such a holy season.(1540) Due provision is often made for the seemly and impressive performance of a rite which was at once a religious duty and a convivial pleasure. There is a curious letter of the time of Antoninus Pius containing a deed of gift to the college of the _fabri_ at Narbo, in return for their constant favours to the donor. One s.e.xtus Fadius presents them with the sum of 16,000 sesterces, the interest of which is to be divided every year at the end of April for ever, at a banquet on his birthday; the guests on this festive occasion are to be habited in their handsomest attire.(1541)

But the fullest and minutest arrangements for these modest meals are to be found in the doc.u.ment relating to the foundation of the poor college of Diana and Antinous, to which reference has already been made. The master of the feast was taken in regular order from the roll of the society. Each brother had to accept this office in his turn, or pay a fine of five s.h.i.+llings of our money. The regular festivals of the club were six in the year, on the natal days of Diana and Antinous, and those of the founder and some of his relatives. There is some obscurity in the regulations for these common feasts, and at first sight they are a ludicrous contrast to the pontiff's famous banquet in the days of Julius Caesar, described by Macrobius.(1542) M. Boissier naturally refuses to imagine that even the poor brethren of the club of Diana and Antinous would be contented with bread, four sardines, a bottle of good wine, with hot water and the proper table service. The slave steward of Horace probably found much better fare in his _popina_.(1543) Dr. Mommsen has resolved the mystery. It is evident, from several inscriptions, that _sportulae_ were sharply distinguished from distributions of bread and wine.(1544) The _sportula_ was a gift of richer food or dainties, which in public distributions might be carried home; it was sometimes an equivalent in money. If those who received the _sportula_ preferred to enjoy it at a common table, an appointed member of the college would have the food prepared, or convert the money into dishes for the feast. The bread and wine he might add from his own pocket, if they were not provided by the foundation. How much for these meals came from the club funds, and how much out of the pocket of the _magister coenae_, is not always clearly stated. But we may be sure, from the tone of the times, that additions to a modest _menu_ were often made by the generosity of patrons and officers of the club.

It would be futile and uninteresting to pursue into all its minute details throughout the inscriptions, the system of _sportulae_ founded by so many patrons and benefactors. Any one who wishes can temperately regale himself for hours at these shadowy club-feasts of the second century. Perhaps the clearest example of such distributions is the donation of Marcellina and Aelius Zeno to the little college of Aesculapius, to which reference has been made for another purpose.(1545) On seven different anniversaries and festivals, sums of money, with bread and wine, were distributed to the brethren of the college in due proportions, according to their official dignity and social rank. Thus, in the division on the 4th of November, the fete-day of the society, the shares in money, according to the various grades, from the father of the college downwards, are six, four, and two.

The division of the wine, according to social rank, follows the proportion of nine, six, and three. A slightly different scale is followed on the birthday of the Emperor Antoninus Pius in September, and on the day for New Year's gifts in January. But in these benefactions the difference of grade is always observed, the patron and the chief magistrates and magnates of the society always receiving a larger share than the obscure brethren at the bottom of the list. In the college of Aesculapius, Marcellina herself, and Aelius Zeno, the two great benefactors of the society, along with the highest of its dignitaries, are allotted three times as much as the plebeian brother. The excellent Marcellina, who, in the fourth century might perhaps have followed S. Jerome and Paula to Bethlehem, was the widow of a good and tender husband, who had been curator of the imperial picture galleries.(1546) Had she been drawn into the ranks of that hidden society, who were beginning to lay their dead in the winding vaults beneath the Appian Way, she would certainly have dealt out her bounty on a different scale and on different principles. Her bequest to the college of Aesculapius reveals how deep in the soul of a charitable pagan woman, who was probably sprung from servile stock, lay that aristocratic instinct of the Roman world which survived the advent of the Divine Peasant and the preaching of the fishermen of Galilee, for far more than four hundred years.