~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From The Inns of Greece & Rome, and a history of Hospitality from the Dawn of Time to the Middle Ages, by W. C. Firebaugh, with an Introduction by Wallace Rice and Illustrations by Norman Lindsay, Chicago: Pascal Covici; 1928; pp. 97-107.
THE INNS OF GREECE AND ROME
97Rome — Wealth brings its attendant ills — Tavern keepers still held in contempt — Not admitted to military service — Hospitality tokens held in high respect — Amusements and festivals wild and brutal — The circus and its bloody games — Heliogabalus — Nero — Claudius, Vitellius and Otho, frequenters of vile inns — Nero the author of the worst enormities.
We come at last to Italy, and the western civilization, for by that, and all it implies, we mean Rome. In Italy, we shall find that publicans and their establishments were held in as great and abiding contempt as in Greece. If anything, the Italians detested such innovations even worse, and the reasons are not hard to discover. First of all, as among the Greeks, was pride of race, the outstanding characteristic of the Roman from the days of Romulus to those of Ammianus Marcellinus. One may, without difficulty, imagine the attitude of Appius Claudius toward hospitality which was bought and paid for; and the rude and virile enemies of Pyrrhus, who scorned to remove a foe that had proved his superiority to valor of the highest type, would have also scorned anything savoring of commercialism in the matter of a tired traveller’s necessities. In a short time, however, we find an increasing internal trade making demands upon conditions unfavorable to increasing travel, and when we reach the age of the most polished of the Latin dramatists, we find Terence, at twenty-seven, unknown, poorly clad, a manumitted slave, in the house of Caecilius, at that time the popular dramatist of Rome, whither he had been sent by the Curile Aedile, that the author of reputation might pass upon the Andrian. So excellent was the work that the poor foreigner was invited at once to share the dinner of his host and to lodge in his house. In the interval 98 between Plautus and Terence the great Roman houses had by degrees assumed more and more of the tone of princely character. The conquests had begun, and the inhabitants of the peninsula were brought more and more into contact with the outside world and with manners and usages foreign to their culture and their way of thinking. Wealth flowed in incalculable profusion, and it brought all the attendant ills in its train. Syrian and Greek, Egyptian, Jew and barbarian migrated to the center of things and each found a fertile field for the exercise of his own particular calling. Although the ancient rigid standards had weakened materially at the beginning of the first century before our era, the tavern keeper and the petty tradesman were held in no less contempt than had been the case in earlier times, and we shall find this true almost without exception for a period of over a thousand years in the history of the greatest of the ancient seats of culture and power. Numerous forceful passages from the works of Roman writers could be cited in proof, but it will suffice to show the position held by such trades in the eyes of the law, and from that evaluation, we can easily estimate their position in the social life of the time. In the eyes of the law, the innkeeper, the pander, and others of like standing were on the same footing, and the wife or concubine of a tavern keeper was so lightly esteemed that she was exempt from the provisions of legislation against adultery and other problems of domestic triangulation: her position was so lowly that the law might have been offended if she failed to break it, or even if she heeded it at all. Innkeepers were not admitted to military service, nor so far as I have been able to ascertain, did they form a gild, as did other tradesmen. This may have been accidental, but I am inclined to doubt it from one or two fugitive passages in Petronius and the Theodosian code. It need not seem strange to 99 us when we find the consensus of classical opinion almost unanimous upon the evil repute and the dastardly character of the publicans generally. Furthermore most of them were probably of foreign extraction; the kind we in the Pacific littoral designate as the “kind that can’t go back”; and down until the very end of the Republic no man having due regard for decency and honour would frequent such a place or even enter it. On the other hand, under the empire, the finest gentlemen could enter with impunity the various schools maintained for the purpose of instructing budding genius gladiatorial, and accumulating a competence sufficient to purchase a cosy little tavern not too far from the arena, even as the sailor’s fondest hope lies in getting a pay-day large enough to enable him to purchase pubic house in Wapping, or Limehouse, Paradise Street, or George Street, and live at his ease the rest of his days. As among the Greeks, shelter and nourishment were provided for among the Romans as a right rather than a necessity from which to wring a profit, and as a general thing a stranger or traveller of importance had hospitable or friendly connections in the city which made him independent of inns and lodging houses. There were also current among the Romans those tokens of hospitality such as we have seen amongst the Greeks, and they were as scrupulously honored until the time of Marcellinus. Nor did their virtue expire with the death of the original holders of the parts; they could be bequeathed as a valued inheritance from generation to generation. The circulation of such tokens was of course greatly increased after Rome had begun her march of conquest; the conditions governing hospitality were then transferred more and more to foreigners; and sometimes to entire cities and even states, and almost without exception, the powerful patrician families at Rome belonged to the municipal council or 100 was in some manner associated with governmental affairs, and had in their clientele whole provinces which had the right to look to them for necessities. Naturally, when such individuals came to Rome they were never thrown upon the tender mercies of an innkeeper, and it is probable that such travellers formed a large percentage of the number of transients visiting the city. Foreign ambassadors, unless the intention was to neglect them, were never dependent upon inns and taverns; it was customary to welcome and entertain them either in the house of some prominent Roman, or to lodge them in some mansion which was the property of the state itself. The reception and entertainment of the Rhodian ambassadors were examples of the former, that accorded the Carthaginian envoys, of the latter. We shall have occasion to speak of both a little later.
The free Roman citizen was under no such necessity to go to a tavern for recreation, festive enjoyment or even variety, as was, until a short time ago, the case with us. His everyday life was not so largely occupied as ours with his struggle for a living, and he consequently had more leisure on his hands. The authorities met such a dangerous condition as this in the same manner that their preceptors the Greeks did: by festivities, entertainments, and military service. The more prominent among the Roman citizenry, if they were not in camp, and as a rule practically everyone spent many of his younger years there, were continually active in their political interests, as magistrates, senators, consuls, aediles, and the like. The demands made upon such officials were frequently crucial, but, unlike the exactions of modern business, wearied but at the same time stimulated; it rarely caused the individual to “break,” as we today understand the term. Neurasthenia was not common at Rome. The sum and total of the philosophy of political activity was 101 the oral treatment of problems, public participation and discussion; and a play of the emotions, perhaps sometimes too free, but more frequently restrained and constructive, and, by their very nature, they did not dull the mind because they compelled the individual to exert all his faculties, while the demands of the military service compelled him to keep in excellent physical trim. Whenever a Roman of the class described above had time to get away from his political fence building, he generally lavished it upon agriculture, at least during the republican period and the early empire, but as culture became more general, he divided his spare time between agriculture and literature. Such was the noble otium of the Roman statesman. I regret that I know of no word in our language which can define the term I have been compelled to use, but John Morley’s life is the best example among the moderns.
Great patricians and men of wealth who had more predilection to sensuality than to agriculture or literature had in their villas and country places every means for the gratification of their inclinations whatever they might be and, until a very late age, there is little to be said in such circles of inns and taverns.
The pubic and civic interests of the masses were in their way almost as rich as that which fell to the lot of the patricians, and the amusements and pleasures lavished upon them were on a scale not to be found in any capital in the modern world, with the possible exception of Spain. The Roman commoner annually elected his magistrate, often amid scenes of factional warfare; he could listen to the pleaders such as Hortensius or Cicero or Papinian; his tribunes, who were well versed in mob psychology, played upon the emotions and passions of the proletariat, by biting sarcasms and stinging repartee. He was an interested witness to all that passed before his eyes, and 102 Rome was the maelstrom of the civilized world; infinite variety; an ever changing panorama for its citizens to examine, criticize or praise: he was nothing if not hypercritical, cynically so, and captious. This magnificent city that ruled the world held many beautiful things in its powerful grasp; the varied throngs from every province, barbarian or semi-barbarous, furnished an unending pageant of living and gorgeous color as inexhaustible as the combinations of a kaleidoscope; and no matter where her nationals might be, it was sufficient for them to proclaim their nationality and fealty; these were their protection and their refuge. “I am a Roman citizen,” said Paul, in the hands of his enemies; “I appeal unto Caesar.” Many of the spectacles were at times too wild and brutal for modern standards, but they were probably never dull, and they were always full of life and movement.
An elastic religion, a cycle of festivities and holidays that extended through the entire year, processions and festivals of every sort, some for all the populace, some for special sects and cults organized for liturgical purposes — there were many of these latter in ancient Rome. The circus offered its pageants and games for their amusement; the chariot races, so much a part of the national character that the various political factions came to take their names from the colors of the drivers: riots and street battles often had their origin in the differences in course of settlement between the various factions and their adherents: well might the Roman commoner cry “Bread and Games” as the sum of the blessings to be extracted from life itself. In the theatre he could enjoy the attempts of his dramatists and poets to confine the fluid ease and airy elegance of Greek fantasy in a Roman setting; an attempt doomed at the very beginning to failure; even as French and Italian opera will always fail in English because of the impossibility of reproducing the psychology of the 103 Italian and Gaul along with their meaning. Among the Romans, however, the theatre was never so highly esteemed as was the circus and its bloody games. Huge carnivora fighting to the death, the net thrower pitted against the heavily armed gladiator, duels à outrance between heavily armed antagonists of equal skill; such spectacles served to amuse the leisure and cultivate the lusts of a populace cruel by nature; a populace that in later ages was better qualified to view such spectacles than to take an active part in them; a truism graphically illustrated in the bull fights of Spanish speaking countries, and among our own captious baseball writers and fans, who boo at the so-called age for hitting a homer, but who, alas do not write like one.
The games of the circus were of frequent occurrence but they were not held daily, and the Romans sought the Campus Martius to while away a little of each day’s leisure. On this wide plain on the bank of the Tiber the young engaged in athletic games while the elders talked of affairs which ruled the destinies of all the world between Britain and Parthia. As with the Greeks, so also were the Romans favored in the matter of public baths, which served the people as places of assembly and amusement.
Some of these institutions, called thermae, were splendid establishments, erected by the wealthy to prevent the consequences of serious thought and concerted action on the part of a populace no longer capable of either. Booths, shaded arcades, promenades, even libraries were found here; and the miserable ministers to appetite were specialists in their callings. They had need to be; then as now it was survival of the fittest, and a Commodus would not have hesitated for an instant to order a bath attendant to be thrown into the furnace if the water was not hot enough, nor would a Heliogabalus have refrained 104 from ordering an unfortunate caterer, whose new fangled sauce was not piquant enough to titillate the jaded taste buds of the parvenu, to eat nothing but that sauce until he had compounded another which met the requirements of the imperial taste. Under conditions such as these one may assume that the standards were at least as lofty as the capacity for enjoyment. Why, then, should the Roman have desired to confine himself within the four walls of a pot-house or a cabaret?
The everyday life of Republican Rome was characterized, until the last century of its existence, by an austere and provident simplicity which regarded extreme wealth with contempt and suspicion, and which relieved poverty in just moderation. There are many inns and taverns mentioned in Plautus and there were probably many such places in Rome and Magna Graeca, but after all, Plautus was writing from Greek originals, and may have overstated the facts slightly.
It is worthy of note that in the reigns of the succeeding emperors public activities gradually ceased, and the populace, having no longer important and more worthy occupations to fill their days, began to frequent inns and taverns; and, as the city declines and public character decays, we shall find that these places will become more and more the haunts of the quasi-respectable, and even of the patricians, and no longer, as was formerly the case, be patronized largely by the slaves and vagabonds. Notwithstanding the degradation of national character, the standing of the publicans was not improved; on the contrary, it was even rendered more contemptible by direct legislation and by action of the courts. Claudius and Nero were frequent visitors in the taverns, Vitellius and Otho were also guilty of the same indiscretions. Let us cite for our purposes the favorite author of Mark Twain; I mean Suetonius: “Often,” says mine author, in speaking of Claudius, “often he showed such heedlessness in 105 word and deed that one would suppose that he did not know or care to whom, with whom, or when or where he was speaking. When a debate was going on about the butchers and vintners, he cried out in the House: ‘who can live without a snack, I ask you,’ and then went on to describe the abundance of the old taverns to which he used to go for wine in earlier days.” (Chap. XL.)
Both Claudius and Nero were wild, and Nero was more dissolute and abandoned than his father-in-law, but as both were base at heart, Nero, being the younger, had better opportunities. Claudius was a dullard and his welcome would be in proportion to his ability to spend, and in direct ratio to the terror with which his name inspired those in the tavern. Nero had a personality which could be very pleasing, and his character has been something of an enigma to writers of history. In him was combined an artistic sense of some discrimination, an ability to appreciate good literature, and latent tendencies toward ferocity that had, in some cases, the added stigma of refinement. A character which had been restrained and guided by Seneca and Burrhus, suddenly threw off all restraint and went the limit in gratifying the ferocious appetites that drove it on until, as was the case with other and better tyrants such as Aurelian, and still more dissolute despots, such as Commodus and Phocas, the unknown designs of the emperor became a menace to his familiars, and led them to take such measures as should prevent the consequences of satiety, or of that morning after feeling which has so often led to the downfall of the most trusted ministers and officers. Tacitus has left us an admirable sketch of the times of that odious tyrant Nero:
“The consulship of Quintus Volusius and Publius Scipio was remarkable for the tranquillity that prevailed in all parts of the empire, and the corruption of manners that disgraced the city of Rome. Nero was the author 106 of all the worst enormities. In the garb of a slave, he roved through the streets, visited the brothels, and rambled through all by-places, attended by a band of rioters, who seized the wares and merchandise exposed to sale, and offered violence to all that fell in their way. In these frolics, Nero was so little suspected to be a party, that he was roughly handled in several frays. He received wounds on some occasions, and his face was disfigured with a scar. It was not long, however, before it transpired that the emperor was become a night-brawler.”
Yet, dissolute as Nero was, such as he would scarcely have frequented such places in earlier times, and we base this contention upon a passage in Cicero in which he denounces another Roman no less dissolute than Nero, but much more courageous, and abler. I refer to Marcus Antonius.
“Judge then of the nature of this fellow,” says the orator, in speaking of Antony’s arrival in Italy. “When he arrived at Red Rocks at about the tenth hour of the day, he skulked into a petty little wine-shop, hid there, and kept on drinking until evening. From thence, getting into a gig, he was driven rapidly into the city and came to his own house with his head veiled.”
In another passage the great orator speaks of the humiliation which he suffered at the hands of Piso, and excoriates the latter for his love for such places.
“Infamous fellow,” says the sage of Arpinum, “do you remember that when I came to you with Caius Piso, about the fifth hour of the day, you came out of some hovel or other with your head wrapped up? And you were wearing slippers, too, were you not? and when you had suffocated us with the vile stench of that cook-shop, with which your foetid breath was loaded, you made the excuse of your health because you said that 107 you were compelled to have recourse to some vinous remedies? and when we had admitted the pretense, (for what else could we do?), we stood a little while amid the fumes and stench of your gluttony till you drove us away by filthy language and still more filthy behaviour?”
In concluding this introduction to everyday life in Rome I wish to state that it was disgraceful for a family of even moderate means to be without its own cellar, bakery, and elaborate cuisine. In support of this I quote again from Cicero’s speech against Piso.
“In his house there were no dishes of silver, only very large cups, and these are in fact all from Placentia, due to his desire to avoid the appearance of scorning his countrymen. On his table one sees no oysters, no fish, only large chunks of meat which is almost tainted. Dirty slaves wait on the table, and among them even old men. With him the cook and serving man are combined into one person; he has not his own baker, and no cellar. Bread and wine he buys from the dealer and from the inn.
Thus we see the attitude of the upper class citizen toward petty dealers and especially towards inns and taverns. And there is also a lesson to be learned; not that we have ever shown much ability to learn from the past and thus forecast the future; the lesson is this: in ancient times it was not necessary for the citizenry of character and ability to frequent roof-gardens or taverns in order to exchange social obligations and discuss questions of the day. On this account, the Greeks and Romans could leave such dens to their proper denizens, the slaves, the rabble, and that general class which neither toils nor spins but which, like the lily and the green bay-tree, flourished then, but fared never so sumptuously as now.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~