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.
