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died by his own hand; and Cleopatra, soon after, discovering that all her arts were lost upon Octavius, who had determined to treat her as a captive, now executed in reality what she had before feigned, and put herself to death by the poison of an asp.

Octavius returned to Italy, sole master of the Roman Empire. He owed his elevation to no manly virtue or heroism of character. A concurrence of happy circumstances, the adoption of the great Julius, the weakness of Lepidus, the folly and infatuation of Antony, the treachery of Cleopatra, and, above all, his own address and artifice, were the instruments of his fortune.

At this remarkable period, the end of the Commonwealth of Rome, it may be well to suspend for a while our historical narrative, and interpose some brief observations on the general character of Roman education; the state of literature at this period; the predominant tastes and passions of this remarkable people; and the system of their military art.

CHAPTER III.

On the Genius and National Character of the Romans-System of Roman Education-Progress of Literature-The Drama-Historians-Poets.

In the present chapter, we are to attend to those particular circumstances which appear most peculiarly to mark the genius, and to have formed the national character of the Romans.

A virtuous but rigid severity of manners was the characteristic of the Romans under their kings, and during the first ages of the republic. The private life of the citizens was frugal, temperate, and laborious,

and it reflected its influence on their public character. The children imbibed from their infancy the highest veneration for their parents, who, from the extent of the paternal power among the Romans, had an unlimited authority over their wives, their offspring, and their slaves. It is far from natural to the human mind that the possession of power and authority should form a rannical disposition. Where that authority, indeed, has been usurped by violence, its possessor may perhaps, be tempted to maintain it by tyranny; but where it is either a right dictated by nature, or the easy effect of circumstances and situation, the very consciousness of authority is apt to inspire a beneficence and humanity in the manner of exercising it. Thus we find the ancient Romans, although absolute sovereigns in their families, with the jus vitæ et necis, the right of life and death, over their children, and their slaves, were yet excellent husbands, kind and affectionate parents, humane and indulgent masters. Nor was it until luxury had corrupted the virtuous simplicity of the ancient manners, that this paternal authority, degenerating into tyrannical abuses, required to be abridged in its power, and restrained in its exercise, by the enactment of laws.

By an apparent contradiction, so long as the paternal authority was absolute, the slaves and children were happy when it became weakened and abridg. ed, then it was that its terrors were, from the exces sive corruption of manners, most severely felt. Even, however, under the first emperors, the Patria Potestas, the paternal power, remained in its full force, and the custom of the patres-familias, fathers of families, sitting at meals with their slaves and children, showed that there still remained some venerable traces of that ancient and virtuous simplicity.*

* "O noctes cœnæque Deúm, quibus ipse, meique

Ante Larem proprium vescor, vernasque procaces Pasco libatis dapibus prout cuique libido est."-HOR. "Oh nights and feasts divine, when I and mine sup in the

II.-A &

Plutarch, in his comparison between Numa and Lycurgus, has bestowed a severe censure on the Roman lawgiver, for his neglecting to establish a system, or to institute any fixed rules for the education of the Roman youth. But the truth is, that although the laws prescribed no such system, or general plan of discipline, like those of Sparta, yet there never existed a people who bestowed more attention on the education of their youth. In the dialogue, De Oratoribus,* attributed by some authors to Tacitus, by others to Quintilian, there is a fine passage which shows in a remarkable manner that extreme care bestowed, even in the earliest infancy, to form the manners and disposition of the Roman children. From this passage we learn, that in the earlier ages of the Roman commonwealth, such was that anxious care bestowed on their children by the Roman matronssuch that jealousy of their receiving any of their earliest impressions from slaves or domestics-that they not only educated their own children, but accounted it an honourable employment to superintend and assist in educating the children of their relations.

Nor was this task of the mother confined only to the years of infancy and boyhood: it extended its influence to the more advanced periods of youth. At a much later period of the Roman history, we are informed by Tacitus, in his Life of Agricola, that this remarkable man had begun in his youth to pursue too ardently the study of philosophy, but that he was checked by the prudent remonstrances of his mother.†

presence of our own household god; and regale our merry slaves on as much as each one desires of the tasted viands.'

Dialogus de Oratoribus, cap. xxviii. "Jampridem suus cuique filius," &c.

+"Memoria teneo solitum ipsum narrare, se in primâ juventâ studium philosophiæ ac juris ultra quam concessum Romano ac Senatori haussisse, ni prudentia matris incensum ac flagrantem animum coercuisset."- Tacitus Agric. Vit., c. iv.

To inspire that severe and rigid virtue which can alone support a democratic form of government, and to inculcate that exclusive love of our country, before which, in their early ages, every private or personal feeling was constrained to bow, was the first and most sacred duty of these noble matrons. The circumstances in which the commonwealth was situated in its earlier ages made this absolute necessary. It possessed none of those artificial modes of defence so generally employed by modern nations. The improvements of modern warfare, which substitute skill so often in the place of valour-the fortifications of our modern cities, which render them, in some measure, independent of the personal exertions of those who defend them-had not been introduced among this virtuous people. Those refinements, also, in the arts and manufactures which exchange the little enjoyments of private comfort for the higher feelings of public happiness, and even that progress in the sciences, which, however excellent in its general consequences, encourages certainly a spirit of exclusion most uncongenial to public exertion-all these were either unknown or despised in the severer ages of the Roman republic.

Next to this care of the mother, or the female tutor, in instilling the rigid principle of patriotic virtue, a very remarkable degree of attention appears to have been bestowed by the Romans in accustoming their children to correctness of language and purity of expression. Cicero informs us that the Gracchi were brought up non tam in gremio quam in sermone matris-not so much by the nursing as by the instruction of their mother. And in speaking of Curio, who was one of the best orators of his time, he adds, that without possessing the rules of his art, and without any knowledge of the laws, he had attained to eminence* merely from the elegance and purity of his diction.

* In Libro de Claris Oratoribus. Al. edit., folio, vol. ii.

p. 257.

This attention to the language of children may ap pear, in these modern days, an absurd and useless refinement. Among the Romans it was not thought so. They were well aware how much the man is influenced by the earliest impressions and habits of infancy. They suspected, and not without just grounds, that they who became familiar with the language and expressions of their slaves, were likely to be initiated also in their vices, and to become reconciled to their ideas of servility and dependance. That urbanity upon which this people so much prided themselves in the more advanced periods of the commonwealth, was nothing else than a certain manly elegance which distinguished the Roman citizens from those nations whom they accounted barbarous. This elegance was particularly evinced in their speech and gestures, and it was one of their first objects to form their youth in those qualities in which they most piqued themselves in excelling. To accustom a child to speak in a manly manner is, in fact, no unlikely method of teaching him to act so. But this attention to the language of their youth had another source among the Romans. It was by the art of eloquence, by the power which that talent gave them over the minds of the people, and the influence which it possessed in the open deliberations of the popular assemblies, that the young Romans could alone rise to eminence, to office, and to dignity. History is full of examples of men who, by their excellence in this talent alone, had risen from the lowest condition among the plebeians, to the highest ranks in the state. To instil, therefore, at an early age, the elements of elocution, and to habituate the youth to those studies properly called forensic, was one great object of the Roman education. As an exercise of memory, the children were taught to repeat the laws of the XII Tables, and they were accus

* "Talis hominibus oratio qualis vita." Seneca, Epist. 114. "As a man's manner of speaking is, so is his life."

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