University of Virginia Library

PREFACE.

The cities of Herculaneum, Pompeii, Retina, and Stabiæ, with many beautiful villages, were destroyed by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius, during the first year of the reign of Titus, on the 24th of August, in the year of our Lord, seventy-nine. Buried during more than seventeen hundred years, even their very names were almost forgotten, when the plough of a peasant struck upon the roof of the loftiest and most magnificent mansion in Pompeii; and the excavations of the last fifty years have furnished the tourist, the antiquarian, the novelist, and the poet, with many a subject of picturesque and glowing description. The cities of the dead have not wanted frequent and often faithful historians; every disinterred temple, amphitheatre, statue, pillar, tomb, and painting has found admirers. It was expedient, therefore, to throw action into a picture at all times impressive, and to delineate, without flattery, those existing manners, customs, and morals, which, sanctioned as they were, not only by usage, but by legislators and the priesthood, can leave little regret and less astonishment at the terrible overthrow of cities as excessive and not so venial in their crimes as Gomorrah.

The founders of Rome, like the Pelasgi of Greece, were outlawed fugitives from almost every nation—the very seminoles of the world. Their earliest laws, discipline, science, and literature were all created by habitual war. Political ascendancy, acquired by remorseless military skill, was with each the highest good; and hence, though less capricious and somewhat more grateful than the Athenians, there never was a period in Rome when the people, after long suffering, exacted their rights, without incurring the vengeance of the patricians. The aristocracy held the supreme power; in their esteem the commonalty were vassals of the soil. To resist these arrogated privileges, the tribunes instigated factions, and the venerable Forum became the arena of revolt, conspiracy, and blood. The very senators ascended the rostrum spotted with gore. Liberty was defined by

philosophers, developed by rhetorical declaimers, and adored in the fictions of poesy, but it was never enjoyed. There were grandeur, vast dominions, empires in bondage, triumphal processions, unrivalled wealth, magnificent prodigality and profligacy, but no just freedom. Roman citizenship was national pride, not individual prerogative.— The ignorant cannot govern, though they may tyrannize; and ancient sages and priests were too wise to instruct the multitude, though they valued uninitiated sectaries; for communicated knowledge would supersede the lucrative occupations and mysterious powers of their successors.

Cæsar rose upon the ruins of the consulship as that had risen upon the decemvirate. Authority now became personal, concentrated and unappealable, but otherwise there was little change. The Senate had long been the mere market of ambition; the people were mercenaries or serfs; the consuls were colluders of some faction, perpetually renewed, or its obedient slaves; and the victorious commander of the legions, long the arbiter of the Roman destinies, on the field of Pharsalia, merely decorated imperial power with a diadem.

Titus was the tenth emperor, and doubtless a just man; but the epithets of exaggerated praise bestowed upon him sufficiently indicate the character of, at least, seven of his predecessors; and his own brief reign, which was terminated by the poison of his inhuman brother Domitian, demonstrates the morals, humanity, and courage of the age. Therefore, in the picture I have attempted to draw, I have not been intimidated by the victories, arts, literature or mythology of the Romans, but have desired to paint with fidelity the universal licentiousness, which, having infected every heart, left the battlements of the Eternal City ready to fall before the barbarian avenger.

Every province of the vast empire rivalled the imperial capital, and almost every proconsul imitated—sometimes even exceeded— the despotism and debaucheries of Caligula and Heliogabalus. The union of civil and military power, while it concentrated the energies of government, conferred upon the provincial commander an irresponsible authority, against which it was folly to remonstrate, and madness to rebel. The fathers of Rome were too corrupt to investigate the sources of their revenue or the characters of its gatherers; and too indolent in patrician profligacy to execute any edicts, except such as suited their own haughty yet grovelling passions. The fountain being thus contaminated, its thousand streams distributed corruption over the whole empire; and all, who drank its waters, partook the character of them who watched beside the wellspring. Few of those, who

wore the Roman crown, died by the ordinance of nature; the Prætorians, like the modern Janizaries and Strelitzes, obeyed the decisions of their turbulent prefects; and what a Sejanus failed to accomplish for himself, a more politic Macro effected for another, through whom he ruled everything but that imperial folly which ended in assassination. Yet sanguinary as was the ascent, unhappy the possession, and quick the downfall of power, the governors of the provinces were less implicated in the royal revolutions than almost any men in Rome. While the Quæstor of the Palatine discovered no defalcation of the revenue, and no rumour of sedition reached the Senate, the proconsul remained in his lucrative government during pleasure; and none of all the Conscript Fathers deemed it expedient to examine the condition of the country over which he swayed his iron rod.