[Introduction (adapted from Davis)]:
The following was written only about a generation before Alaric plundered Rome
in 410 CE. Ammianus Marcellinus, who observed Rome on a visit, saw the city as
full of emptiness, shallowness, and as lacking of all real culture.
Rome is still looked upon as the queen of the earth, and the name of the Roman people
is respected and venerated. But the magnificence of Rome is defaced by the inconsiderate
levity of a few, who never recollect where they are born, but fall away into error and
licentiousness as if a perfect immunity were granted to vice. Of these men, some, thinking
that they can be handed down to immortality by means of statues, are eager after them, as
if they would obtain a higher reward from brazen figures unendowed with sense than from a
consciousness of upright and honorable actions; and they are even anxious to have them
plated over with gold!
Others place the summit of glory in having a couch higher than usual, or splendid
apparel; and so toil and sweat under a vast burden of cloaks which are fastened to their
necks by many clasps, and blow about by the excessive fineness of the material, showing a
desire by the continual wriggling of their bodies, and especially by the waving of the
left hand, to make more conspicuous their long fringes and tunics, which are embroidered
in multiform figures of animals with threads of divers colors.
Others again, put on a feigned severity of countenance, and extol their patrimonial
estates in a boundless degree, exaggerating the yearly produce of their fruitful fields,
which they boast of possessing in numbers, from east and west, being forsooth ignorant
that their ancestors, who won greatness for Rome, were not eminent in riches; but through
many a direful war overpowered their foes by valor, though little above the common
privates in riches, or luxury, or costliness of garments.
If now you, as an honorable stranger, should enter the house of any passing rich man,
you will be hospitably received, as though you were very welcome; and after having had
many questions put to you, and having been forced to tell a number of lies, you will
wonder---since the gentleman has never seen you before---that a person of high rank should
pay such attention to a humble individual like yourself, so that you become exceeding
happy, and begin to repent not having come to Rome ten years before. When, however,
relying on this affability you do the same thing the next day, you will stand waiting as
one utterly unknown and unexpected, while he who yesterday urged you to "come
again," counts upon his fingers who you can be, marveling for a long time whence you
came, and what you can want. But when at last you are recognized and admitted to his
acquaintance, if you should devote yourself to him for three years running, and after that
cease with your visits for the same stretch of time, then at last begin them again, you
will never be asked about your absence any more than if you had been dead, and you will
waste your whole life trying to court the humors of this blockhead.
But when those long and unwholesome banquets, which are indulged in at periodic
intervals, begin to be prepared, or the distribution of the usual dole baskets takes
place, then it is discussed with anxious care, whether, when those to whom a return is due
are to be entertained, it is also proper to ask in a stranger; and if after the question
has been duly sifted, it is determined that this may be done, the person preferred is one
who hangs around all night before the houses of charioteers, or one who claims to be an
expert with dice, or affects to possess some peculiar secrets. For hosts of this stamp
avoid all learned and sober men as unprofitable and useless---with this addition, that the
nomenclators also, who usually make a market of these invitations and such favors, selling
them for bribes, often for a fee thrust into these dinners mean and obscure creatures
indeed.
The whirlpool of banquets, and divers other allurements of luxury I omit, lest I grow
too prolix. Many people drive on their horses recklessly, as if they were post horses,
with a legal right of way, straight down the boulevards of the city, and over the
flint-paved streets, dragging behind them huge bodies of slaves, like bands of robbers.
And many matrons, imitating these men, gallop over every quarter of the city, with their
heads covered, and in closed carriages. And so the stewards of these city households make
careful arrangement of the cortege; the stewards themselves being conspicuous by the wands
in their right hands. First of all before the master's carriage march all his slaves
concerned with spinning and working; next come the blackened crew employed in the kitchen;
then the whole body of slaves promiscuously mixed with a gang of idle plebeians; and last
of all, the multitude of eunuchs, beginning with the old men and ending with the boys,
pale and unsightly from the deformity of their features.
Those few mansions which were once celebrated for the serious cultivation of liberal
studies, now are filled with ridiculous amusements of torpid indolence, reechoing with the
sound of singing, and the tinkle of flutes and lyres. You find a singer instead of a
philosopher; a teacher of silly arts is summoned in place of an orator, the libraries are
shut up like tombs, organs played by waterpower are built, and lyres so big that they look
like wagons! and flutes, and huge machines suitable for the theater. The Romans have even
sunk so far, that not long ago, when a dearth was apprehended, and the foreigners were
driven from the city, those who practiced liberal accomplishments were expelled instantly,
yet the followers of actresses and all their ilk were suffered to stay; and three thousand
dancing girls were not even questioned, but remained unmolested along with the members of
their choruses, and a corresponding number of dancing masters.
On account of the frequency of epidemics in Rome, rich men take absurd precautions to
avoid contagion, but even when these rules are observed thus stringently, some persons, if
they be invited to a wedding, though the vigor of their limbs be vastly diminished, yet
when gold is pressed in their palm they will go with all activity as far as Spoletum! So
much for the nobles. As for the lower and poorer classes some spend the whole night in the
wine shops, some lie concealed in the shady arcades of the theaters. They play at dice so
eagerly as to quarrel over them, snuffing up their nostrils, and making unseemly noises by
drawing back their breath into their noses:---or (and this is their favorite amusement by
far) from sunrise till evening, through sunshine or rain, they stay gaping and examining
the charioteers and their horses; and their good and bad qualities. Wonderful indeed it is
to see an innumerable multitude of people, with prodigious eagerness, intent upon the
events of the chariot race!
