(Casta pudica decens sapiens Generosa probata.)
Only one discordant note is struck in this chorus of praise. This fierce invective stands upon an altar at Rome:[31] "Here for all time has been set down in writing the shameful record of the freedwoman Acte, of poisoned mind, and treacherous, cunning, and hard-hearted. Oh! for a nail, and a hempen rope to choke her, and flaming pitch to burn up her wicked heart."
A double tribute is paid to a certain Statilia in this naive inscription:[32] "Thou who wert beautiful beyond measure and true to thy husbands, didst twice enter the bonds of wedlock...and he who came first, had he been able to withstand the fates, would have set up this stone to thee, while I, alas! who have been blessed by thy pure heart and love for thee for sixteen years, lo! now I have lost thee." Still greater sticklers for the truth at the expense of convention are two fond husbands who borrowed a pretty couplet composed in memory of some woman "of tender age," and then substituted upon the monuments of their wives the more truthful phrase "of middle age,"[33] and another man warns women, from the fate of his wife, to shun the excessive use of jewels.[34]
It was only natural that when men came to the end of life they should ask themselves its meaning, should speculate upon the state after death, and should turn their thoughts to the powers which controlled their destiny. We have been accustomed to form our conceptions of the religion of the Romans from what their philosophers and moralists and poets have written about it. But a great chasm lies between the teachings of these men and the beliefs of the common people. Only from a study of the epitaphs do we know what the average Roman thought and felt on this subject. A few years ago Professor Harkness, in an admirable article on "The Scepticism and Fatalism of the Common People of Rome," showed that "the common people placed no faith in the gods who occupy so prominent a place in Roman literature, and that their nearest approach to belief in a divinity was their recognition of fate," which "seldom appears as a fixed law of nature...but rather as a blind necessity, depending on chance and not on law." The gods are mentioned by name in the poetic epitaphs only, and for poetic purposes, and even here only one in fifty of the metrical inscriptions contains a direct reference to any supernatural power. For none of these deities, save for Mother Earth, does the writer of an epitaph show any affection. This feeling one may see in the couplet which reads:[35] "Mother Earth, to thee have we committed the bones of Fortunata, to thee who dost come near to thy children as a mother," and Professor Harkness thoughtfully remarks in this connection that "the love of nature and appreciation of its beauties, which form a distinguishing characteristic of Roman literature in contrast to all the other literatures of antiquity, are the outgrowth of this feeling of kinship which the Italians entertained for mother earth."
It is a little surprising, to us on first thought, that the Roman did not interpose some concrete personalities between himself and this vague conception of fate, some personal agencies, at least, to carry out the decrees of destiny. But it will not seem so strange after all when we recall the fact that the deities of the early Italians were without form or substance. The anthropomorphic teachings of Greek literature, art, and religion found an echo in the Jupiter and Juno, the Hercules and Pan of Virgil and Horace, but made no impress on the faith of the common people, who, with that regard for tradition which characterized the Romans, followed the fathers in their way of thinking.
A disbelief in personal gods hardly accords with faith in a life after death, but most of the Romans believed in an existence of some sort in the world beyond. A Dutch scholar has lately established this fact beyond reasonable doubt, by a careful study of the epitaphs in verse.[36] One tombstone reads:[37]
"Into nothing from nothing how quickly we go,"
and another:[38]
"Once we were not, now we are as we were,"
and the sentiment, "I was not, I was, I am not, I care not" (non fui, fui, non sum, non euro) was so freely used that it is indicated now and then merely by the initial letters N.f.f.n.s.n.c., but compared with the great number of inscriptions in which belief in a life after death finds expression such utterances are few. But how and where that life was to be passed the Romans were in doubt. We have noticed above how little the common people accepted the belief of the poets in Jupiter and Pluto and the other gods, or rather how little their theology had been influenced by Greek art and literature. In their conception of the place of abode after death, it is otherwise. Many of them believe with Virgil that it lies below the earth. As one of them says in his epitaph:[39]
"No sorrow to the world below I bring."
Or with other poets the departed are thought of as dwelling in the Elysian fields or the Isles of the Blessed. As one stone cries out to the passer-by:[40] "May you live who shall have said. 'She lives in Elysium,'" and of a little girl it is said:[41] "May thy shade flower in fields Elysian." Sometimes the soul goes to the sky or the stars: "Here lies the body of the bard Laberius, for his spirit has gone to the place from which it came;"[42] "The tomb holds my limbs, my soul shall pass to the stars of heaven."[43] But more frequently the departed dwell in the tomb. As one of them expresses it: "This is my eternal home; here have I been placed; here shall I be for aye." This belief that the shade hovers about the tomb accounts for the salutations addressed to it which we have noticed above, and for the food and flowers which are brought to satisfy its appetites and tastes. These tributes to the dead do not seem to accord with the current Roman belief that the body was dissolved to dust, and that the soul was clothed with some incorporeal form, but the Romans were no more consistent in their eschatology than many of us are.
Perhaps it was this vague conception of the state after death which deprived the Roman of that exultant joy in anticipation of the world beyond which the devout Christian, a hundred years or more ago, expressed in his epitaphs, with the Golden City so clearly pictured to his eye, and by way of compensation the Roman was saved from the dread of death, for no judgment-seat confronted him in the other world. The end of life was awaited with reasonable composure. Sometimes death was welcomed because it brought rest. As a citizen of Lambsesis expresses it:[44] "Here is my home forever; here is a rest from toil;" and upon a woman's stone we read:[45]
"Whither hast thou gone, dear soul, seeking rest from troubles,
For what else than trouble hast thou had throughout thy life?"
But this pessimistic view of life rarely appears on the monuments. Not infrequently the departed expresses a certain satisfaction with his life's record, as does a citizen of Beneventum, who remarks:[46] "No man have I wronged, to many have I rendered services," or he tells us of the pleasure which he has found in the good things of life, and advises us to enjoy them. A Spanish epitaph reads:[47] "Eat, drink, enjoy thyself, follow me" (es bibe lude veni). In a lighter or more garrulous vein another says:[48] "Come, friends, let us enjoy the happy time of life; let us dine merrily, while short life lasts, mellow with wine, in jocund intercourse. All these about us did the same while they were living. They gave, received, and enjoyed good things while they lived. And let us imitate the practices of the fathers. Live while you live, and begrudge nothing to the dear soul which Heaven has given you." This philosophy of life is expressed very succinctly in: "What I have eaten and drunk I have with me; what I have foregone I have lost,"[49] and still more concretely in:
"Wine and amours and baths weaken our bodily health,
Yet life is made up of wine and amours and baths."[50]
Under the statue of a man reclining and holding a cup in his hand, Flavius Agricola writes:[51] "Tibur was my native place; I was called Agricola, Flavius too.... I who lie here as you see me. And in the world above in the years which the fates granted, I cherished my dear soul, nor did the god of wine e'er fail me.... Ye friends who read this, I bid you mix your wine, and before death comes, crown your temples with flowers, and drink.... All the rest the earth and fire consume after death." Probably we should be wrong in tracing to the teachings of Epicurus, even in their vulgarized popular form, the theory that the value of life is to be estimated by the material pleasure it has to offer. A man's theory of life is largely a matter of temperament or constitution. He may find support for it in the teachings of philosophy, but he is apt to choose a philosophy which suits his way of thinking rather than to let his views of life be determined by abstract philosophic teachings. The men whose epitaphs we have just read would probably have been hedonists if Epicurus had never lived. It is interesting to note in passing that holding this conception of life naturally presupposes the acceptance of one of the notions of death which we considered above-that it ends all.