Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury: Sumptuary Regulation in the Roman Republic 1472519698, 9781472519696

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction: The Evil of Luxury
1. The Roman Response to Luxury
Aspects of Roman extravagance
Conclusion
2. Previous Measures Against Extravagance
The Twelve Tables’ provisions minuendi sumptus lamentationisque funeris
Notae censoriae
3. Sumptuary Laws
General characteristics
The fight against luxury: social and political implications
Lex Iulia et Papia Poppaea
Conclusion
4. Sumptuary Legislation in Comparative Perspective
English sumptuary legislation
Japanese sumptuary legislation
Italian sumptuary legislation
Dowries in Rome
Conclusion
Conclusion
Appendix: Catalogue of Sumptuary Laws
Notes
Bibliography
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
L
M
P
Q
R
S
T
V
W

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Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury

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Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury Sumptuary Regulation in the Roman Republic

Emanuela Zanda

LON DON • N E W DE L H I • N E W YOR K • SY DN EY

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

www.bloomsbury.com First published in 2011 by Bristol Classical Press Reprinted by Bloomsbury Academic 2013 © 2011 by Emanuela Zanda Emanuela Zanda has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identied as Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-0-7156-3707-4 E-pub: 978-1-4725-1970-2 E-pdf: 978-1-4725-1969-6 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

Contents Acknowledgments Preface

vii ix

Introduction: The Evil of Luxury

1

1. The Roman Response to Luxury Aspects of Roman extravagance Conclusion

7 12 24

2. Previous Measures Against Extravagance The Twelve Tables’ provisions minuendi sumptus lamentationisque funeris Notae censoriae

27

3. Sumptuary Laws General characteristics The fight against luxury: social and political implications Lex Iulia et Papia Poppaea Conclusion

49 50 52 60 69

27 36

4. Sumptuary Legislation in Comparative Perspective English sumptuary legislation Japanese sumptuary legislation Italian sumptuary legislation Dowries in Rome Conclusion

73 75 83 90 99 105

Conclusion

109

Appendix: Catalogue of Sumptuary Laws Notes Bibliography Index

113 129 157 167

v

To Ines and Giulia and Marco who represent the past and the future in my life and to my parents and Paul for always being present.

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Acknowledgments Many thanks are owed to a number of people without whose support I would have been unable to complete this research. This book is based largely on my PhD thesis, and so first and foremost I want to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor Professor Tim Cornell for his guidance, help and encouragement during the course of my research. In addition many thanks are owed to Professor Stephen Todd and Dr Mary Beagon for their suggestions and their constant and invaluable help during the final stages of my studies. I would like to acknowledge the debt that I, and the current work, owe to Professor Emma Dench, not only for her comments and criticisms but also for helping me to develop a critical and analytical approach. Without her encouragement and support I would never have embarked on such a project. I am grateful to Professor Catharine Edwards for her time spent reading and commenting on my work. Her insightful criticisms made me rethink some central issues. I am indebted to Deborah Blake my editor for her precision that has saved me from many errors, those that remain are solely my responsibility. Last but not least, I could not omit Alastair, Peter and John at the department of Classics at Stockport Grammar School, for their good humoured encouragement and help. To conclude, the support, encouragement and help of my husband Paul have been the real incentive that made me work at my desk every day for the last three years and for this I express my deepest gratitude. E.Z.

vii

Unless otherwise stated, all the translations that appear in the book are mine.

viii

Preface Shame on you who loll on beds inlaid with ivory And sprawl over your couches, Feasting on lambs from the flock And fatted calves, You who pluck the strings of the lute And invent musical instruments like David, You who drink wine by the bowlful And lard yourself with the richest of oils But are not grieved at the ruin of Joseph. Now-therefore You shall head the column of exiles; That will be the end of sprawling and revelry.1 As result of riches, luxury and greed, united with insolence, took possession of our young manhood. They pillaged, squandered, set little value on their own, coveted the goods of others; they disregarded modesty, chastity, everything human and divine; in short, they were utterly thoughtless and reckless.2 Of sloth comes pleasure, of pleasure comes riot, of riot comes whoring, of whoring comes spending, of spending comes want, of want comes theft, of theft cometh hanging.3 Lowly townsmen who are so ostentatious are criminals who violate moral principles.4 From the Old Testament to classical Rome, from the strongly religious societies of the Middle Ages to secular Elizabethan England, from the West to the East, luxury has always been morally condemned and judged as one of the main causes of decadence: the enactment of sumptuary laws has been presented as necessary to fight this moral illness. ‘Things had come to such a pass that the pleasures of the table were enough to introduce many youths of good family to sell their virtue and their freedom, and many of the common people of Rome used to go to the Place of Assembly overcome with wine and deliberate on matters which ix

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury concerned the public safety in a state of drunkenness.’5 Ancient sources present sumptuary laws as the only weapon the government had to fight this hydra-like luxury: the terrible monster that was weakening and effeminising even the strongest citizens. This book is an attempt to understand the reasons and purposes behind the enactment of Roman sumptuary legislation and to place it in a wider political and social framework. Given the important social, political and economic changes that occurred in Rome in the last three centuries of the Republic and the fact that this was the period in which sumptuary regulation appears to be a constant element of the policy of the Roman oligarchy, our attention will focus mainly on the laws enacted during this time. Sumptuary legislation is a complex phenomenon that reflects the society that produced it and reveals the purposes of those who, by this particular legislative means, attempt to moderate or prevent modifications within society. At the same time it reveals both economic and social changes; it speaks to us about customs, fashions and even changes in language and attitudes. It has been compared to a mirror, which, as well as being an object in itself, reflects a world apart:6 the world of the elites whose competition needed to be controlled; the world of the citizens and of the new rich against whom the laws were directed so as to prevent the emulation of the upper classes; the world of those whose life depended upon luxury: who produced luxurious clothes or who prepared lavished foods. Such a complex phenomenon raises many issues about the aims that not only the legislators, but also the entire ruling class were trying to achieve, about their real motivation and finally about the significance of the ideological discourse surrounding the legislation. The best way to address these issues is by comparing Roman legislation with later examples of such laws. Sumptuary legislation is a perfect subject for comparative study; it is widespread across time and space and it comes in many varieties. It can be found from antiquity, in Greece, in Rome and in China where a strict set of laws was in place by 618906 AD, to the Middle Ages and pre-modern times, when the enactment of sumptuary legislation was common to many European and Asian societies. ‘Sociological research, in one form or another, is comparative research’,7 says Lieberson, and it seems that this can be applied also to social history. Actually the use of comparative methods by classicists is quite common: ‘For one thing our discipline is to an unusual extent comparative by definition, concerned as it is with the study of two main related but distinct groupings of cultures which we call, by convenient shorthand, Greece and Rome.’8 Comparative studies help classicists to make up for the scarcity of reliable information on many aspects of Greek and Roman social life. That is not to say that information from one society can replace missing data from another, but comparative research can x

Preface help by providing methods of investigation, identifying patterns and in developing hypotheses. Comparative studies, by underlining similarities and increasing awareness of differences between cases, can lead to good historical questions and therefore assist in identifying historical problems that merit further research.9 ‘The field of research in comparative history’, said Marc Bloch, ‘might be either societies that are neighbours and contemporaneous or societies that are remote from each other in time and space.’10 In this study the latter option has been chosen and by doing so our sights are turned to societies that, because they are so divergent from Rome and among themselves, can offer new perspectives in the interpretation of sumptuary laws. However, taking this decision immediately prompts the question: ‘which societies should be examined and which left aside?’ After a brief survey of European laws, those produced by England and Italy stood out, in the European panorama, because of their peculiarities and features. English legislation, unlike any other in Europe, had been for the whole period from 1336 to 1666, and from its very outset an expression of central government; no other European society presents such detailed examples of hierarchical code regulations applied to all strata of society; nowhere else is the interconnection between sumptuary laws and protectionist measures so clear and prominent. Italy, on the other hand, holds the lead where sumptuary laws are concerned: the earliest European sumptuary law was enacted in Italy and her legislation is the most detailed and frequent in Europe. Italian sumptuary laws are unique for being expressions of many different political centres: comuni, the city-states of the north of Italy. Moreover these cities were centres of classical studies and their culture was permeated by classical echoes. The strong influence of the classical world on Italian legislation, and the continual reference to Roman laws, make it an ideal object for a comparative analysis. There can be no doubt, therefore, that English and Italian sumptuary laws offer great possibilities for comparative research, but they cannot provide examples of laws from a completely different social, cultural and political background. To develop a broader perspective, we will leave Europe and turn our attention to the East. Japanese legislation comes immediately to mind; nowhere else is it possible to find more detailed and frequent legislation than in Japan. Japanese legislation reflects a society whose stratification does not have any equal in Europe, and reflects a culture, at least during the Tokugawa period, that for almost three hundred years was isolated from the rest of the world. English, Italian and Japanese legislation will be the subject of the comparative part of this book. In this process I hope to find an answer to some of the many questions and issues raised by sumptuary legislation: why should anyone be interested in controlling the number of guests at a banquet in a rich house in Rome, or what an English duke wore, or even how a Japanese farmer built his house? What was the real significance of the discourses that xi

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury surrounded the enactment of such legislation? And last but not least, what was the significance of such legislation, so widespread through centuries and across the world, whose main preoccupation was how citizens ate, dressed, or enjoyed themselves?

xii

Introduction The Evil of Luxury In every society in which sumptuary regulation appeared, there existed a so-called ‘sumptuary ethic’1 according to which it was the right and the duty of a government to regulate the consumption of its citizens and this right and duty was justified in terms of a moral imperative. This moral imperative is the subject of this chapter. The first necessary step should be to define luxury, but this seems a Herculean task since ‘luxury’ is not a fixed concept,2 being indissolubly linked with the social and historical context in which it is elaborated. Because of the mutability of this context and the ever-changing social, philosophical and religious bases which have underpinned the concept of luxury throughout history, the concept of luxury is an explicitly relative one. For instance, in Roman moralistic usage ‘luxuria’ is what goes against the natural order and is depraved; but what used to be considered depraved for them might be normal for others.3 Friedländer, for instance, notes that the Roman view of iced drinks as an immoral luxury would be considered absolute nonsense today, given the widespread use of refrigerators. To avoid the difficulty connected with the relativism of the idea of luxury, we shall focus not on the concept in itself, but on how it was perceived and opposed in particular contexts. Nowadays luxury is an object of desire. Our daily life is permeated by the idea of luxury: open any newspaper or magazine, or look at advertisements on the roadside, and the word luxury abounds: luxury hotels, luxurious travel, luxurious restaurants, etc. We are used to seeing the word ‘luxury’ used as a selling point and associated with ideas of desirability and exclusiveness. But the fact that luxury has a positive connotation is, from a historical perspective, significant. The association between luxury and desire goes back to antiquity, but until modern times this association was perceived as dangerous and harmful.4 In the eighteenth century we witness a slow and silent transformation of the discourse on luxury. Moral condemnation was so deeply ingrained in any discourse on luxury that at first the simple thesis that luxury could stimulate the national economy provoked outrage and indignation. Mandeville,5 who first presented an alternative to the traditional moralising view, maintains the existence of an indissoluble link between private vices and public prosperity: the 1

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury desire for luxury makes a state richer and creates work for the poor. So luxury, despite still being regarded as a vice, is seen now as a vice that brings prosperity and is therefore essential for the economic development and enrichment of a state. The discourse on luxury shifted from one focused mainly on morality to a new one in which the development of the national economy and trade are central. Mandeville’s theory was followed by the leading philosophers of the century: Voltaire, Hume, Adam Smith and Montesquieu, to cite but a few.6 The far reaching consequences of this transformation have been such that this change in the perception of luxury has been defined as representing the passage to modernity.7 Up to the eighteenth century, however, luxury was regarded as evil; the concept of luxury is one of the oldest and most consistently negative principles history has known.8 The moral condemnation of luxury that surrounded the enactment of sumptuary measures is a common element in antiquity and in pre-modern societies. From the pages of the Old Testament, from Greek philosophical works, from Roman literature and from medieval texts there is a chorus of condemnation of luxury, which is seen as one of the main causes of several social illnesses. Self-indulgence has been considered both a cause and a symptom of an evil that was both personal and social.9 In many societies, even when separated by huge historical and social differences, the moral condemnation of luxury presents common characteristics. I shall now catalogue these briefly and then focus on the specific condemnation of luxury in Rome. First of all, the idea of luxury has always been connected to those of decadence and ruin. Luxury, judged as the first cause of all other moral illnesses, was considered debilitating and responsible for the ruin of societies. Self-indulgence is perceived as a contagious moral illness that creates other vices leading to the ruin first of the individual and then of the State and society. The connection between luxury and ruin is common above all in societies that were often threatened by famine and death. When necessities were not always available, to squander on the unnecessary was judged as a way of inviting economic and moral catastrophe. This idea pre-dates Christianity: Polybius, speaking about Hellenistic cities, identifies a strong relationship of cause and effect between the prosperity of a state, a new love for an extravagant lifestyle and the subsequent competition among citizens that eventually lead to the ruin of the State itself.10 That wealth, prosperity and luxury are causes of decadence is a recurrent topic with Greek authors. For instance, according to Plato ‘When goods and wealth are in excess, they create hostility and disagreement both in the States and privately, while if they are deficient they produce, as a rule, serfdom.’11 And again the same idea is found, centuries later, in Dante, when writing about his beloved Florence he laments that: 2

Introduction: The Evil of Luxury la gente nuova ed i subiti guadagni Orgoglio e dismisura han generata, Fiorenza, in te, si che tu gia ten piagni.12 In these lines Dante points out what led to the decadence of Florence: gente nuova (new people) and subiti guadagni (easy earning). In Dante’s view the new availability of wealth and the consequent creation of new riches are causes of decadence. Dante clearly connects luxury with another anxiety, that of social emulation and therefore challenge to the hierarchy. The Preamble of the laws enacted by Edward III in 1362 clearly demonstrates the same concern ‘for excess of apparel of the people beyond their estates, to the very great destruction and impoverishment of the land, by which cause all the wealth of the kingdom is consumed and destroyed’.13 On one side of the spectrum, the old aristocracy felt threatened by the conspicuous consumption of the new riches; on the other, aspiration to social status lead to the ruin of the lower classes, trapped in competitive consumption. This is closely connected with another common feature to be found above all in western societies: the idealisation of the past and the concept of heroism, linked with ideas of simplicity and austerity. The past is idealised as a golden time characterised by simplicity, hard work, above all in the fields, and freedom from any kind of extravagance and selfindulgence. The concept of luxury as an evil typical of the present implies a condemnation of the present, which is seen as a time characterised by corruption and immorality, and a profound apprehension concerning any form of social change.14 We shall see it exemplified in Roman discourse and in the ideology of the mos maiorum, but at this point it is worth noticing that it remains a common topic even in more recent times. Dante counterpoised the decadence of Florence in his time to the virtues that once governed the city: Fiorenza dentro della cerchia antica, ond’ella toglie ancora e terza e nona, si stava in pace, sobra e pudica. Non avea catenella, non corona, non gonne contigiate, non cintura che fosse a veder piu’ che la persona.15 This perception of the present in contraposition to the past is not alien to modern sensibilities: today some consider the moral principles of modern youth as decadent as compared to a past free from anything other than hard work, courage, faith, loyalty. But this time of moral excellence that each generation views as having existed sometime in the past is clearly idealised and impossible to place in any known historical period. A life of extravagance led to weakness and effeminacy and therefore 3

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury constituted a threat to the very existence of society. ‘Softness’ (mollitia) was a consequence of luxuria; the quintessence of masculinity is strength, but men who live in luxury lose their own strength and become emasculated. For Aristotle, ‘one who is deficient in resistance to pains that most men withstand with success, is soft and luxurious (for luxury is a kind of softness) ...’,16 and Socrates condemns luxury and softness because they make us cowards.17 This association remained strong in Roman thought: for Sallust effeminacy came to Rome from the East:18 ‘Lucius Sulla, in order to make loyal to him the army he had brought into Asia, had allowed his soldiers luxury and excess unfamiliar to the ways of our ancestors (contra morem maiorum), and in their leisure hours, the warlike spirits of those men were easily softened (molliverant) by the charms and pleasures of those places.’19 According to Plutarch, the noble project of Cato during his censorship was to eradicate ‘hydra-like luxury and effeminacy’ from his society.20 This link between luxury and effeminacy can be paralleled in widely divergent societies. The Christian Tertullian argued that they were inextricably linked, an idea that persisted at least until the eighteenth century; in the Fable of the Bees, for example, luxury is characterised by effeminacy. Luxury was thought to corrupt and feminise the moral, military and masculine virtues.21 It follows that the military dimension of society is put at risk by luxury that produces bad soldiers. According to Florus, king Antiochus of Syria was easily defeated by the Romans because of his life spent in luxury.22 The last aspect that is worth taking into consideration is the misogyny that seems to permeate every discourse on extravagance. It is indissolubly linked to the previous aspect: if luxury makes a man effeminate it is because luxury is feminine and a threat to what is proper and masculine: strength and simplicity. ‘From the western bounds23 of the world had come their foe Indulgence, one that had long lost her repute and so cared not to save it; her locks perfumed, her eyes shifting, her voice listless, abandoned in voluptuousness’ says Prudentius,24 who describes luxury as a beautiful and graceful woman; unlike the other vices she enters into battle armed only with flowers and in front of her all virtues seem confused. One might think that Prudentius was influenced by what may be seen by some to be the misogynist discourse of Eve corrupting Adam. However, the same concept is already present with pre-Christian writers who linked luxury and pleasure to what is proper and exclusively feminine. Pliny25 laments the costs incurred by luxuries and women, and the sixth satire of Juvenal is famous for its misogyny. Though the misogynist discourse in the moral condemnation of luxury is of great interest, it does not appear to me to have been a determining issue in the promulgation of sumptuary measures in Republican Rome, and consequently an examination of the different ways in which it developed is outside the main focus of this book. The only law that targeted women’s extravagance was the lex Oppia, 4

Introduction: The Evil of Luxury enacted during the Second Punic War, but this, as we shall see, has to be considered more as a war measure than as a sumptuary law. With the spread of Christianity, the condemnation of luxury was enriched by a new element: luxury as a violation of the divine plan. It introduced the sins of pride and envy which, beyond being personal sins, were also seen as political evils. Evidence of the sin of pride was extravagance in clothes, which led men to ‘wickedness and sinne’.26 Envy, on the other hand, encouraged imitation, and was therefore seen as a threat to the preservation of the social order. These two worries can be found as the underlying principles of many sumptuary measures enacted in European states throughout the centuries, whose main aim was to reestablish class distinctions. The laws enacted in England, examined in the second part of this book, are the best examples of this necessity and imperative. To sum up, the moral condemnation of luxury is based on military (effeminacy) and economic (threat of famine) concerns and involves constant comparison with the past, or at least with a mythical past. The enactment of sumptuary laws is presented as necessary since it is motivated by a double interest, that of the welfare of both the individual and the State. It is significant and it cannot be underestimated that during the late Republic, for contemporary historians, the theme of luxury and moral decline was central to any discourse about the decline of the Roman State. Let us therefore now turn our attention to how these same concerns were perceived and pursued in Rome.

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The Roman Response to Luxury At this point it comes as no surprise that in late Republican Rome, luxury was perceived as a political issue because of its potential danger to the State.1 It was considered a symptom and a cause of decadence: a symptom of wealth in society and a cause of weakness of character for a society that ran the risk of not being able to defend itself. The theory of moral decline, already seen as a topos in the discourse on extravagance, appears to have been central to Roman historiography. Not only was luxury morally condemned by the Romans, but it was also used by moralists and historians as a key to interpret their own history and the development of Roman society. Roman corruption and political instability were explained and justified as a consequence of a moral decline in which extravagance played a major part. In my attempt to understand sumptuary legislation, it has been tempting to disregard this interpretation as false or unreal and to consider moral and religious aspects as somehow less significant or indeed separable from social-economic aspects. But in recent years it has been clearly demonstrated, above all by Catherine Edwards,2 that our perception of political, social and moral as separated categories did not apply to Romans’ interpretation and reading of their own society. Problems or issues that for our modern sensibility are political or social were in fact seen as moral and always linked to, and considered as, a consequence of a lack of self-control on the part of the individual citizen. Morality was politics and politics was morality. Only by keeping this in mind can we fully appreciate the deep significance of the Roman discourse on luxury as the principal cause of immorality and corruption. Morality is at the core of any self-definition of Roman identity, specifically of what it meant to be Roman and especially a member of the elite; so discourses on morality were deeply political and used on the political stage by the ruling class both to exercise control over its own members and at the same time to justify its privileged position.3 It was the perceived moral superiority of the Roman ruling class that endorsed not only its pre-eminent position within Roman society but also the power of Rome herself over other states (this latter point being an aspect I cannot explore any further); and the role of the censors as the guarantors of the morality of the ruling class is paramount in any discourse on morality, as I shall demonstrate in the following chapter. 7

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury Roman morals were based on the customs of the ancestors: ‘The commonwealth of Rome is founded firm on ancient customs and on men of valour (moribus antiquis res stat Romana virisque)’4 writes Ennius, quoted by Cicero in the opening of the fifth book of De republica. Roman men (viri) and ancient customs (mores) in Cicero’s eyes formed the foundation of the Roman State (Romana res). So in origin Rome was virtuous and uncorrupted, but progressive separation from the mos maiorum led to the degeneration of society, and luxuria played an important part in this process. The eyes of Romans authors are always directed towards this idealised past, free from immorality, both in order to find inspiration for their fight against the immorality of the present day and as a reminder of their own identity. If Roman moralists and historians agreed on the cause of the decline, the starting point of the process and who was to blame for it were matters of dispute. Livy attributes the origin of luxury to the triumph of Cn. Manlius Vulso’s army from Asia in 187 BC. It is not without significance for the later discussion that he also listed the forms of luxury that were brought into the city: rich furniture and, above all, a new and so far unknown extravagance in organising banquets and related entertainment.5 For Pliny too the origin of the decline lies in the contact with the East,6 but he lists successive moments in the decline of morality in Rome: Scipio’s conquest of Asia first introduced luxury into Italy in 189 BC, but even worse was the testament of Attalus which damaged Roman morality because the Romans ‘learnt not merely to admire foreign opulence but also to desire it’.7 According to Polybius, it was in 168, with the importation of riches from Macedonia, that dissoluteness arose;8 while for Sallust the destruction of Carthage caused the rise of corruption.9 Velleius Paterculus states that the elder Scipio had opened to the Romans the way to power and the younger Scipio to luxury.10 Finally, Valerius Maximus11 dates the beginning of ‘decadence’ to the defeat of Philip V of Macedon in 179 BC. A few elements deserve a deeper examination: first of all the theme of the decline as a result of the expansion of the Roman Empire. Sallust gives the best-known account of this decline in the introduction to his monograph on Catiline.12 He represents the history of Rome down to 146 BC as characterised by concordia, virtus and boni mores.13 But in 146, the defeat of Carthage and the consequent lack of an external enemy caused the rise of corruption. It was the fear of the enemy (metus hostilis), which kept Rome in a state of virtue. ‘The fear of the enemy preserved the good morals of the State’, stated Sallust. In wartime, Romans applied their ingenium in the right direction and to reach the right end but in the absence of war the same ingenium was directed towards the wrong targets.14 But ‘when Carthage, Rome’s contender in her quest for empire, had been annihilated ... the lust for money first, then for power, grew upon them; these were the roots of all evils. For avarice destroyed honour, 8

1. The Roman Response to Luxury integrity and all other noble qualities; taught in their place insolence, cruelty, to neglect the gods, to set a price on everything.’15 The concept of the necessity of an external threat is not unique in Sallust but quite common in antiquity. It was well exemplified in the debate that occurred in the Senate between Cato the Elder and Scipio Nasica about whether or not to destroy Carthage.16 According to Q. Caecilius Metellus, the presence of Hannibal in Italy increased the virtue of the Roman people, and so it was with apprehension that he wondered what effect a victory over Carthage could have on Roman morality and strength.17 A common feature of Roman historiography18 is the belief that an external threat, forcing constant vigilance and discipline, produced beneficial effects on social and political behaviour, and that the removal of these and the possibility of enjoying the results of victory could lead to laxness and an undermining of the mos maiorum, the basis of Roman virtus. The need for an enemy to safeguard national integrity and strength is a common feature in all antiquity.19 A second aspect that is worth highlighting is how luxury is not a product of Roman society but imported or brought into Rome from outside; so in Livy: ‘For the beginning of foreign luxury was introduced into the City by the army from Asia (luxuriae enim peregrinae origo)’20 and Cicero: ‘Many things that cause ruin to the State as being incitements to luxury are supplied by the sea, entering either by capture or import (quae vel capiuntur or importantur)’.21 Luxury invaded Rome, and this invasion was described by ancient writers in several ways: the metaphor of the illness that corrupts the body of society is one of the most often used. Self-indulgence invaded Rome, and the vices derived from it spread into the city like a pestilence;22 as a result the civitas was sick from diseases that spread like an infection, wasting the entire body.23 In Pliny the illness is not of the body but of the mind, and luxury is a mental disorder, pure madness.24 Luxury is also compared to a hostile army that invades,25 assails26 and conquers the Roman mores.27 Other metaphors were used from time to time, but all highlighted the corrosive power of luxury and the almost irreversible process of degeneration and decline. Where did the pestilence come from, and who brought it into Rome? We have already seen how authors disagree on the date of the beginning of this process, but what they substantially agree on is its origin: the East. The only divergent voice seems that of Sallust, who, as we have already seen, constantly indicates the destruction of Carthage as the cause of corruption. In reality, Sallust agrees with the others on the origin of luxury; he distinguishes a further level of corruption in the process of moral decline reached in the time of Sulla, when the army from Asia brought luxuria into Rome.28 This is not the place for a full discussion of anti-Hellenism in Rome and its political aspects, or of the various actions taken to limit the influence of Greek culture on Rome. What I want to emphasise is that the idea of luxury as 9

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury imported from outside is a leitmotif throughout the centuries in the moral condemnation of luxury and the consequent legislative battle against it. It presented itself as anti-Hellenism in Rome, anti-French sentiment in England and anti-Chinese sentiment in Japan, and in the City-States in Italy as antipathy towards all that was from without. Another feature of this discussion, as previously mentioned, is the idea that the decadence of the present implies the existence of a virtuous past. If vices were brought into Rome from outside, it followed that there was a time when Roman society did not know luxury and was characterised by virtus. The present is always presented as the lowest point of Roman moral virtue, with the past as its pinnacle; there was a time when Rome was full of every virtue, as in Livy: ‘No State was ever greater, none more righteous or richer in good examples, none ever was where avarice and luxury came into the social order so late or where humble means and frugality were so highly esteemed and so long held in honour.’29 Who were the ‘examples’ Livy speaks about, and why were they considered heroes the Romans should have tried to emulate? What made them models was the complete absence in them of any luxuria, ambitio and avaritia. The hero that left the plough to save Rome, M. Curius, was the perfect model of Roman frugality and bravery (Romanae frugalitatis idemque fortitudinis perfectissimum specimen)30 because he despised any form of wealth, considered cause of the ills of mankind.31 Writers extolled for centuries the incorruptibility of Cincinnatus32 and C. Fabricius Luscinus33 who, despite excelling in the community in office and authority, enjoyed a wealth that was equal to the poorest.34 These are just some of the most well-known names whose fame has reached us, but the number of these exampla virtutis is huge and references to them scattered everywhere in ancient literature.35 Labor, industria, parsimonia, frugalitas, disciplina, contentia and gravitas were the main values of Roman society before luxuria and avaritia transformed them into desidia, socordia, inertia, lubido, avaritia and superbia.36 In contrast to antiqua frugalitas, Romans went soft because their luxurious environment produced weak elements, and a society of weak citizens cannot defend itself from external and internal enemies because of the corrupting power of self-indulgence and the consequent effeminacy of successive generations. Therefore extravagance must be considered a public enemy and fought in the public interest. According to Seneca, every individual should restrain the young from luxury and show them the way to virtue; in doing this he performs a public service.37 It follows that it was considered a political duty for the State to provide a check on the morals of the citizens, and one of the highest magistracies in Rome, the censorship, was also in charge of this, as we shall see later. Finally, a distinction must be made in the Roman perception of luxury. ‘The Roman people hate private luxury but love public magnificence. They do not like extravagant banquets but much less do they like scruffiness 10

1. The Roman Response to Luxury and miserliness: they take into account the variety of obligation and circumstances and recognise the rotation of work and pleasure’, according to Cicero.38 A central concept is, I believe, the fact that while private luxury harmed the interest of the community, public magnificence bestowed honour upon it. This view, largely accepted in Rome, has as its starting point the neat separation of what is public from what is private. Extravagance and pomposity are not only justified but also considered necessary in the public sphere, in public buildings, religious ceremonies, public games,39 etc.; on the other hand, austerity and dignity are highly recommended for everything belonging to the private sphere of life.40 The distinction is made clear in a passage from Cicero’s Pro Flacco,41 and also in Sallust: ‘Lavish in their offering to the gods, they were frugal at home.’42 The same concept is restated by Horace who, idealising the Rome of Cato, says: ‘privatus illis census erat brevis, commune magnum’.43 This approach is not new. In the fourth book of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle defined megaloprepeia (magnificence), as an attribute of honourable expenditures, namely those made to the advantage of the community, such as public buildings, religious ceremonies, equipment of a chorus or trireme, etc.44 The same distinction between public and private opulence can also be found in Demosthenes, who praises famous men such as Aristides and Miltiades for their modesty in private and for their use of opulence in public.45 In fact his approach is very similar to that of Sallust and Cicero, who knew the works of the Greek orator well. That said, it becomes clear how the contradiction between the moral condemnation of luxury on the one hand and admiration of public magnificence on the other was justified or actually just apparent. In fact what we perceive as a contradiction was not considered to be so in antiquity. It would be inappropriate to use the adjective luxurious, in its negative sense, where the Romans spoke of magnificence. I would suggest that a great difference existed in the perception of what was luxurious and what was magnificent; luxury signified the use of personal wealth exclusively for private satisfaction, while the use of wealth for expenditures that were invested in the community or the public sphere was appreciated as magnificent. Luxuria represents a complete loss from an economic point of view and it is also a decisive indication of the relaxation of morals and lasciviousness of the present day; it is morally condemned as connected with decadence and ruin, and for this reason fought against by legislative measures, among other things. Magnificence, on the other hand, is not perceived as an economic waste for two main reasons: first, because it is enjoyed not by a single individual but by the community as a whole; secondly, even when directed towards aspects of private life that we would define and consider private, such as houses, decoration etc., in fact these were perceived differently by the Romans. To make this clear, before turning our attention to legislation and the measures taken to limit the ‘evil’ of luxury, it may be useful to examine briefly those areas 11

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury of private life in which personal wealth was displayed and transformed into a passion for extravagance. Aspects of Roman extravagance How extravagant were the Romans and in which spheres of daily life did their extravagance exceed the limit? It would be extremely interesting to analyse Roman extravagance not only from an ideological perspective, as we have just done, but also with a consideration of its practical applications. A deep examination however would take us too far from the main aim of this book; therefore we have to limit ourselves to the examination of some of the more significant aspects. The decision to examine one aspect of consumption rather than another has been determined by its connection with sumptuary legislation and by its being so prominent that it is impossible to ignore. We shall focus our attention on games, private dwellings and banquets, not because they were the only aspects of Roman extravagance – Roman women were no less luxurious in displaying their jewellery and clothes then their Italian descendants in the Middle Ages, but these aspects of personal self-indulgence did not become specific targets of sumptuary legislation. In this absence lies the main difference between classical and later sumptuary regulation: clothes became the main targets in medieval and pre-modern legislation, as we shall discover.46 This is not to say that luxurious clothes, for example, were accepted in Rome, but perhaps they were not considered worthy of legislative intervention. We cannot forget that in Rome the censors checked on the private life of citizens and punished those who stood out from what was commonly accepted behaviour. In this section we shall see how the distinction between private and public luxury was translated into practice, and why, despite being condemned, extravagance was allowed in certain spheres of private life and restrained in others. I have chosen to examine games, buildings and banquets, all of which involved the expenditure of a huge amount of wealth. We shall examine the first because of the political use of games in Roman society, the second because of the importance of houses as a status symbol, and finally banquets because they became the target of the majority of the laws enacted at Rome. What needs to be underlined about expenditure directed at games and at buildings is that they were not the objects of sumptuary regulation, and I shall try to understand why. First of all, games represented one of the major occasions of large-scale expenditure. Every year and on several occasions, in honour of divinities, to celebrate victories or to inaugurate new public buildings, public games were celebrated in Rome. In charge of their organisation were some of the magistrates of the year, namely the aediles and praetores who received for the purpose from the treasury a fixed sum of money, the amount of 12

1. The Roman Response to Luxury which is unknown. What is known is that the sum was so inadequate that quite often much of the cost of the games fell on the magistrates.47 The games were therefore perceived as a gift given by the magistrate to the people, and for this reason games were used as an instrument for political advancement. In fact it was not the duty of a single magistrate to organise games, but of the college as a whole; on the other hand each magistrate could contribute financially as he wished. The political importance of this lies in the fact that people knew exactly how much each magistrate had contributed and who deserved gratitude for having been more generous. As a consequence, according to Cicero, men of modest means were afraid to hold the magistracy together with rich men.48 Only the names of those magistrates who had offered extravagant games were immortalised; Cicero cited the names of aediles whose fame is related to the magnificence of the games they had organised.49 The pressure on magistrates to organise games was such that sometimes they fell into debt: for instance L. Drusus (tr. pl. 91), as aedile, became indebted when he organised games, although he was considered the richest man in Rome. M. Scaurus (pr. 56), organised such vast games that he needed a loan to pay for them.50 What interests us most are the games organised by private citizens. It is necessary to distinguish between the public games organised periodically by the State, usually in the theatre or in the Circus, and the private games, usually gladiatorial combats, organised by single individuals.51 The latter were often associated with the funeral52 of some important person. In 174 BC, Flamininus, in memory of his father, offered a banquet, theatrical shows and gladiatorial games.53 It became common practice to leave instructions, among other arrangements for one’s own funeral, for the organisation of games in one’s own memory. M. Aemilius Lepidus, consul in 187, in his instructions to his son, put a limit of one million asses on the amount that could to be spent on his funeral.54 And Sulla ordered that gladiatorial games and the dedication of a public building be organised for his funeral.55 The dictator’s orders were obeyed by his son but only twenty years after his death when it was politically more useful for him.56 The use of games for political reasons is straightforward: electors constituted the public of the games and candidates for magistracies gave games or feasts57 to win favour and to become popular with the voters. It was indeed the popularity of the games among electors that made them political acts and therefore a field for strong competition among the aristocrats. For the political use of funeral games many examples can be quoted: Q. Fulvius Flaccus celebrated games in 181 BC and the following year was elected consul, while Q. Aelius Tubero failed to win the praetorship because of the poor feast he gave on the occasion of the death of his uncle Scipio Aemilianus.58 The best example is supplied by the funeral that Caesar gave in 65 BC for his father who had died twenty 13

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury years before, involving 320 pairs of gladiators.59 Again in 46, Caesar offered games in memory of his daughter, introducing fights between detachments of infantry and squadrons of cavalry;60 and Sallust stresses that thanks to these games he acquired great popularity.61 Games were useful devices for obtaining public consent and support, above all when the elections were impending. The competition among senators in organising games to obtain public favour became so strong and the games so luxurious that Livy commented: ‘Amongst the humble origins of other institutions it has been useful to set down the early history of the play, that it might be seen how sober were the beginnings of an art that has nowadays reached a point where opulent kingdoms could hardly support its mad extravagance.’62 Moreover, gladiatorial games were the occasion for popular participation; Cicero clearly shows that ‘in truth, there are three places in which the opinion and inclination of the Roman people may be ascertained in the greatest degree; the assembly, the comitia, and the meetings at the games and at exhibitions of gladiators’, and he offers us a delightful description of the crowd showing its preference by cheering one politician and hissing another.63 Augustus, aware of the political use of games and probably concerned about it, tried to avoid it by granting sponsors, limiting expenditure and restricting competition so that officials could not spend more than their colleagues.64 The cost of the games could vary; we are told by Polybius that a large-scale gladiatorial show for a funeral could cost about 720,000 sesterces.65 The curule aediles P. Cornelius Scipio Nasica and P. Lentulus in 168 BC organised games with wild animals.66 The emperors themselves offered the most sumptuous gladiatorial games. Famous, for example, are those organised by Titus at the dedication of the Colosseum, which lasted 100 days,67 or those that Trajan offered in AD 106 to celebrate his victories in Dacia, which lasted 123 days.68 From what has just been said it is clear that games were perfect occasions for displaying luxury, wealth and power. Therefore one would have expected legislative action to limit this excess, as in other aspects of self-indulgence. But it did not happen: as far as we know games did not become the target of sumptuary laws. In fact, according to Pliny, ‘There was an old resolution of the Senate prohibiting the importation of African wild animals into Italy. Gnaeus Aufidius, when Tribune of the Plebs, carried in the Assembly of the People a law repealing this and allowing them to be imported for shows in the Circus.’ The senatus consultum banned the importation and exhibition of wild animals during the games. It has been claimed that its main aim was to restrict extravagance in organising events of this kind, and it has therefore been interpreted as a kind of sumptuary measure.69 But if this was the case, how can this law abrogating the earlier resolution be explained, when it seems to be going in the opposite direction from the other legislative measures that limited extravagance? If we interpret the ‘old resolution of the Senate’ 14

1. The Roman Response to Luxury as a sumptuary measure, can we conclude that the law that abrogated it was promoting extravagance? I believe that the scarcity of information, both about the old resolution and the law, does not allow us to come to any decisive conclusion. Or better, whether this old resolution existed or not, the fact that no sources speak of sumptuary measures targeting games must be taken as strong evidence that games never became the object of sumptuary measures. However, this conclusion inevitably poses the question ‘Why?’ It seems that the answer lies, to some extent, in the different attitudes that we have already noted towards the use of wealth in private life and in acts of public magnificence. Games may not have been perceived and judged as acts of self-indulgence. This is reflected at the linguistic level by the fact that Roman authors do not seem to apply the term ‘luxuria’ to games; in the various examples previously quoted it is the term ‘magnificentia’ that is more usually used to describe the games, and for Suetonius games were an important part of Augustan publica magnificentia.70 The organisation of magnificent games, despite the undeniable effects on a personal level, may have been considered a way of bringing prestige to the whole of Rome and displaying her power and wealth. In addition they were a form of extravagance enjoyed by the Roman people, and were perhaps considered as acts of generosity offered to the totality of the Roman citizenry who would not have approved of any limitation on such a popular form of entertainment. The second context of extravagant expenditure was private buildings. In every society, in antiquity as in modern times, private houses have been used by members of the ruling class to impose and reinforce the image of themselves as an elite.71 The significance of private dwellings as status symbols is still with us today: the house is still the most important manifestation of the individual wealth. In Rome, the situation was no different; private houses were the favoured means to show wealth and importance. The polemic against luxurious dwellings is a constant feature in the general condemnation of luxurious living and can be found from Cato and throughout the first centuries BC and AD;72 the attack on luxury in private buildings was fought on different levels: on a philosophical level, based on Stoicism, luxurious buildings were considered an offence against nature – luxury in itself is against nature – by violating the order of space fixed by nature herself.73 As Cicero wrote, ‘I scorn luxurious country-places, marble walks and panelled ceilings. Take those artificial streams which some of our friends call “Niles” or “Euripi”– who, after seeing what we have before us, would not laugh at them? And so, just as you a moment ago, in your discussion of law and justice, traced everything back to Nature, in the same way Nature is absolutely supreme in the things that men seek for the recreation and delight of the soul.’74 Those who seek the luxurious things in life are accused of desiring precisely what is unnatural and are desperately looking for unnatural 15

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury arrangements. Seneca, speaking to a builder, says, ‘Whenever the shore curves round into a bay, there you will be at once laying foundations, and dissatisfied with any land unless it is artificial, you will bring the sea within your boundaries.’75 Luxurious villas, competing with nature, violated the boundaries between sea and land: according to Suetonius, Caligula built his villa without consideration of the cost aiming to do what people considered impossible: ‘He built moles out into the deep and stormy sea, tunnelled rocks of the hardest flints, built up plains to the level of mountain peaks and razed mountains flat with the plain – and all with unbelievable speed, for the penalty for delay was death.’76 On a completely different level, luxuria became a matter of condemnation when it was not justified by social status or political position.77 This is extremely important but also complex because it involves, as we shall see, the Roman perception of what was considered public and belonged to the public sphere and what was private and belonged to the private sphere. We can start by saying that the houses of the Roman elite were not only a means of displaying status and wealth but also a stage for political life.78 Cicero in De Officiis clearly stresses the importance and the role of a politician’s house; the house is so important that, if splendid, it might gain extra electoral support, increasing the prestige of its owner. But it does not create prestige: the owner and not the house is the source of nobility.79 Moreover, men with public responsibilities ought to own large houses so that they can properly accommodate clients and friends;80 and for Cicero, even when he complains about not having any privacy in his own house,81 it is a matter of pride that his house was always crowded: a crowded house was the best evidence of political importance within the community; a house not frequented by many people, an empty house, dishonoured its owner.82 On the other hand, if the house could add honour to its owner, it was also a means to claim an undeserved position or importance,83 and for this reason the golden rule seemed to be that the house must reflect the position of its owner. No one exemplifies this principle better then Vitruvius, according to whom not only the house must reflect the social position of the owner, but also its character, dimensions, furniture, etc. So a house which belongs to a landowner must be provided with places to keep the products of the land and must disregard elegance and appearance; on the other hand bankers’ and publicans’ houses must be roomy, pleasant and above all well defended from dangers; those of advocates and men of letters should be elegant and spacious to receive audiences, but only the houses of nobles and public personalities should stand out for magnificence and beauty.84 Clearly these final words are extremely significant for our purpose; the passages evidently demonstrate that luxury in private buildings was not just accepted but also considered a positive, praiseworthy attribute in certain situations. Vitruvius, like other authors, stresses the public function of private houses, whose luxuria is not therefore regarded as private; in 16

1. The Roman Response to Luxury order to understand this, one must keep in mind that the house was not perceived as a private space by Romans but as a locus of public life, a place where private and public overlapped. The house was the politician’s head-quarters and office: as Cicero wrote, ‘I can barely protect myself by the walls of my house without a garrison of my friends. So I stay in the city; I will stay if I am allowed. This is my dwelling, watch, guardduty, and permanent station.’85 Inside the house as much as outside an individual was always under observation.86 Exemplifying this attitude is an episode reported by Velleius Paterculus: when Livius Drusus was building his house the architect offered to build it in such a way that he would be free from the public gaze, and that no one could look down into it. Livius replied: ‘If you possess the skill you must build my house in such a way that whatever I do shall be seen by all.’87 Cicero says proudly: ‘My house stands in full view of virtually all the city.’88 All the quoted passages illustrate the same point: the house of a Roman aristocrat was not perceived as a ‘private’ place but as the most appropriate medium to display public honours.89 The splendour of the houses of the Roman ruling classes was therefore justified by their public role. Is it then appropriate to speak of luxuria in private buildings? Before trying to answer this question, it could be interesting to consider briefly how extravagant private dwellings were. Unfortunately we do not have much evidence for the second century BC apart from the house of M. Octavius on the Palatine, whose beauty and magnificence were, according to Cicero,90 exceptional. As early as 184 BC, the date of Cato’s censorship, domestic architecture must have been elaborate and to some extent luxurious since Cato, in his speech De Sumptu Suo, dated to 164, condemned buildings’ luxury. In this speech, stating that his country places were unornamented and rough and that none of his dwellings was costly,91 he implies that the houses of others were different and that they did not follow the same standard of frugality as his own. But it was from the end of the second century that the standard of the houses of the Roman senatorial class rose. The house of Licinius Crassus, cos. 95, had a value of 6 million sesterces92 and that of Lutatius Catulus, cos. 102, was, according to the sources, even more expensive.93 According to Pliny, Catulus’ house was the most beautiful in Rome: ‘Our most conscientious authorities are agreed that in the consulship of Marcus Lepidus and Quintus Catulus as fine a house as any in Rome was that of Lepidus himself; but I swear, within 35 years the same house was not among the first hundred.’94 Without going into too much detail, what it is important to underline is that to possess a house worth a few million sesterces became almost commonplace in Rome during the first century BC.95 The sources give us precise details: in 62 BC, the house of Cicero on the Palatine cost 3.5 million sesterces;96 at the beginning of 61 BC P. Autronius Paetus sold his house for about 3.3 million sesterces;97 in 58 BC Scaurus sold his house to Clodius for 14.8 million sesterces.98 Moreover, we should 17

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury not forget to mention the fact that rich Roman senators loved displaying their wealth not only in Rome but also in their villas in the countryside or at the seaside. The villas built on the Campanian coast in the middle of the second century BC were famous,99 as they were no less extravagant than the houses in Rome; in fact Roman aristocrats demanded the same comforts in their country villas as they enjoyed in Rome. Columella100 notes that Romans and their wives would not have left Rome for their country villas if they were not up to the same standards as their Roman houses. To own extravagant houses was of course an elite phenomenon, and there was strong competition among the nobles to display the most expensive houses, but what seems to concern the moralist most is the domino effect that this had on the lower classes who tried to imitate the behaviour of the upper classes.101 That said, a question arises: why did sumptuary legislation not target these forms of expenditure? Ancient writers do not seem to have considered this issue, but it cannot be ignored. According to Gabba, sumptuary regulations did not target aedificatio because, despite the huge sums spent on it, it did not represent a diminution of patrimonies or a danger to families’ fortunes. Extravagant sums spent on buildings were not considered unproductive since they added value to them; for the same reason, expensive decorations, equally condemned as luxurious, never became the target of sumptuary laws.102 Without doubt the fact that luxurious spending on dwellings was not a senseless waste must be one of the reasons why it never became a target of specific legislation, but I would also argue that the perception of the house as a public space modified also the perception of its luxury. The private houses of the members of the Roman elite are a place between private and public, where the affairs of the State itself are often dealt with, when political alliances are created, the headquarters of any Roman politician, to use Cicero’s own words, and therefore their extravagance is a manifestation of magnificence and elegance, not of luxury, as long as it is a reflection of the importance of the owner. It is interesting to note that extravagance in dwellings did not become the object of sumptuary regulations in other countries such as England and Italy, while it was the target of detailed regulation in Japan, as we shall see. Perhaps considerations of an economic nature, such as the defence of the patrimony of the ruling class, played an important role, but it is certainly in the public function of private dwellings in these societies that the reason for such lack of regulation must be sought. Finally, luxus mensae. In this section we limit ourselves to a consideration of the moral discourse that surrounded extravagant expenditure on banquets and the enactment of laws which targeted it. The link between convivial and political life and their central importance in Roman social life will be the object of our attention later in this book. It is interesting to consider briefly how the phenomenon of self18

1. The Roman Response to Luxury indulgence in food and banquets was perceived and judged by the ancients. In doing so, we shall examine some examples of Latin gastronomic literature and, since there is a huge variety and quantity of ancient works dealing with food or banquets, we must confine ourselves to just a few examples, the most interesting and significant for us.103 Let us start with Ennius, who in his Hedyphagetica dealt with delicious foods. The subject of the eleven verses, as quoted by Apuleius,104 is delicious fish dishes and a list of fish and molluscs, of which the provenance is indicated. The work, modelled on the Hedypatheia of Archestartus of Gela, clearly aims to divulge a system of knowledge, shared by Greece and Italy, that goes beyond the interest of specialised readers to reach the level and the circulation of other forms of literature.105 The interest of these verses lies in the fact that they reveal the existence, already during the early second century, of a strong interest in special food and gastronomy; the poems must have complemented the needs of their readers. This should not surprise us as it was during this time that cuisine became an art for specialists and the profession of cook became praiseworthy; Cato deplored the erection of statues to two cooks.106 Ennius’ few verses detail only the beginning of a long process of enrichment and refinement of Roman cuisine that, according to Tacitus, reached the most unrestrained levels of luxury between the victory of Actium and the death of Nero.107 The second author worth examining briefly is Plautus, who makes much of excess in eating and drinking. He presents the topic from various perspectives, of which the most important for us is the economic one. To be able to indulge to excess in drinking and eating is, first of all, a sign of a healthy economic condition, but on the other hand it is often associated with the destruction of patrimonies. In Plautus, edere (to eat), bibere (to drink from thirst) and potare (to drink from passion) are assimilated with disperdere rem (to waste patrimony), in strong antithesis to parsimonia.108 This idea is made explicit in the sarcastic exhortation, in Casina, of Cleustrata, the wife of the senex lepidus: ‘Never mind, go on, do as you please – drink, eat, consume your substance’,109 and in Mostellaria, where a rustic slave says to a spendthrift citizen: ‘So you have got the chance, and choose to do it, drink away, destroy your property, and demoralise that fine young son of the master.’110 In Trinummus the acquaintances accuse Lesbonicus of eating everything he had and even more.111 The association between gluttony or drunkenness and maladministration of property is quite common; comedere rem assumes the meaning of squandering money; many authors used the verb comedere in its literal meaning, to eat, and in its figurative meaning, to squander a patrimony,112 and a person who destroyed his patrimony is called ‘decoctor’, from the verb decoquo which means to cook down/reduce.113 Moreover, Plautus declares that a dissolute life-style, dedicated to eating and drinking excessively and to frequenting baths and brothels, is not just extravagant but dictated by a passion for Greek customs. Plautus 19

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury coined new verbs to describe this dissolute life-style: pergraecari and congraecare.114 It is beyond the scope of this book to determine if these passages reveal an anti-Hellenic attitude in Plautus;115 what is interesting to note, however, is that even in a more popular form of literature such as comedy, one can find reflected the common opinion of dissoluteness and luxury as products imported from the East. Among all the luxuries, love for delicacies and for drinking was particularly perceived as linked to the Greek love for dinner parties, or symposia, and therefore spread into Italy as a consequence of its encounter with the Greek world. The next author worth examining is Horace, who, in three poems of the eight that make up Book 2 of his Satires, deals with banquets or gastronomic topics.116 What most concerns us here is that in these three satires the approach to the subject differs deeply: in 2.2 the protagonist, Ofellus, extols the simple life, vivere parvo, above all in the matter of eating; 2.4 is dedicated to a list of precepts, advice for making beautiful and tasty dishes and preparing magnificent banquets; and finally the subject of 2.8 is a description of an extravagant banquet offered by the rich Nasidienus. As suggested by La Penna,117 these divergences could help us in understanding the fluctuating attitude of the Roman ruling class toward luxus mensae, an attitude that varies from a strict moralist condemnation to open acceptance and to the view of self-indulgence as a form of display of wealth. The strict traditional view is embodied in Ofellus in 2.2, who refuses any expensive and refined foods in favour of the simple life. ‘The greatest pleasure lies, not in the costly taste, but in yourself. So seek an appetite by exercise. The man who is swollen and pale from excess will find no comfort in oysters or sea fish or grouse.’118 On the other hand, the tenuis victus must be distinguished from the sordidus victus. ‘A mean style (sordidus) of living will differ, so Ofellus thinks, from a simple one (tenuis victus); for in vain you avoid one fault, if you turn aside into another crooked path.’119 Moreover, the poet mocks the fashion of providing exotic foods at banquets just because of their cost and rarity: ‘You are led astray by the appearance of things, because the rare bird costs gold and makes a brave show with the picture of its outstretched tail, as though that had anything to do with the case! Do you eat the feathers you so admire? Does the bird look as fine when cooked?’120 The tone of Satires 2.4 and 2.8 is completely different: the protagonists are connoisseurs who like to speak about delicacies and enjoy them. The opposite of Ofellus’ life-style is the dinner organised by the rich Nasidienus, who wants his guests to be struck by the abundance and quality of courses. To an immense and elaborate menu121 one must add the culinary discourses of Nasidienus, who tries to appear a refined guest by giving details of the best recipes for every single food.122 It is against this ostentatious use of fashionable cuisine and luxury that the biting satire of Horace is directed. In fact in 2.4, where a list of gastronomic advice is provided by an expert connoisseur, the satirical tone seems to be muted; the satire is a list of 20

1. The Roman Response to Luxury good food appropriate for elegant tables.123 What must be emphasised about the delicacies listed in this satire is that, with just a few exceptions, all the food and wine comes from Italy. The practice of offering exotic food, drink and scents was morally condemned as an extreme luxury, but it also became the target of legislative measures: many sumptuary laws prohibited the consumption of wine and food not from Italy.124 The morality expressed in this satire is very different from that in Satire 2.2; I would suggest that it reflects the morality of wealthy Romans: keen on good food and wine but without ostentation. The time of the strictness of Cato is really very distant; the line that separates extravagance and moderation has moved and changed through the centuries and Horace seems to testify to this change. Between the two extremes represented by Ofellus on the one hand, with his strictness and simple customs, and by Nasidienus in the other, with his riot of extravagant and exotic foods, Horace introduces this satire, in which what in the past could have been condemned as luxurious seems to be have been accepted as decorous and temperate.125 When marked by decorous good taste, extravagance seems to be more acceptable, as in the famous accusation of Cicero against Piso not just for being extravagant but above all for not having good taste: ‘Though all luxury is vicious and degrading, there is a form of it that is not all unworthy of a gentlemen and a free man. You will find in Piso no good taste, no sophistication, no elegance; you will find in him nothing exceptionally extravagant, save his licentiousness.’126 We may now pass on from poetry to examine briefly another mine of information: Varro. His contribution is incomparable, containing as it does a huge amount of detail about the products consumed during banquets and their prices. His attitude to luxury is not different from that of the strictest moralists, but moral considerations have only a minor influence on his work, the aim of which is to advise on the best way to run a farm to make a profit. What is most fascinating about Varro is the fact that he clearly detects in the demand for luxury products a real possibility of enrichment for farmers; an economic dimension and economic considerations seem to prevail over the moralistic condemnation of luxuries and the possibility of enrichment is linked to the desire of luxuries. With the rise in the demand for certain products, particularly extravagant items, their price also increased; therefore if the production of the farm is directed to the satisfaction of these new demands the profit is secured. So which foods were considered luxurious and which products were worth cultivating or rearing? Varro indicates, as the most profitable investments, aviaries, fish ponds and farms for rearing hares (leporaria).127 These kinds of activity were extremely profitable, even more than large farms, as he demonstrates with the example of a small allotment that belonged to his aunt, on which poultry and extravagant birds were reared, which made an annual profit of 60,000 sesterces, double the profit of a farm of 200 iugera of land. To the incredulity of 21

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury his friend who asks: ‘Sixty? Sixty? You are joking.’ Varro replies: ‘Sixty, I repeated. But to reach such a haul you will need a public banquet or somebody’s triumph, such as that of Metellus Scipio at that time, or the club dinners which are so countless that they make the price for provision go soaring. If you can’t look for this sum, in all other years, your aviary, I hope, will not go bankrupt on you; if fashions continue as they now are, it will happen only rarely that you miss your reckoning. For how rarely is there a year in which you do not see a banquet or a triumph, or the clubs do not feast?’ ‘Why’, said he ‘in this time of luxury it may fairly be said that there is a banquet every day within the gate of Rome.’128 Beyond the possible exaggeration in the last few sentences, it seems possible that expensive and luxurious banquets in Rome were common events. Indeed it seems that they were so common as to need legislation to regulate them; the number of laws and their detailed provisions could be explained just by hypothesising that banquets or formal dinners were not rare events, but a common practice among the rich Roman upper classes. In the light of this, it is possible also to understand Varro’s advice about breeding particular species of birds and animals. It was possible to obtain huge profits by selling birds for banquets: for a single public banquet 5,000 thrushes could be sold for the price of 60,000 sesterces.129 The peacock was considered the most refined fowl. They were served for the first time by Hortensius, who paid not less than 200 sesterces each.130 But he informs us about the prices of other extremely expensive birds: a couple of pigeons cost 200 sesterces and exceptional ones might have reached the price of 1,000 sesterces. The demand for other animals for banquets was extreme: bees, whose honey was the only sweetener known in antiquity, snails, dormice, peacocks and, finally, fish.131 What we can conclude is that rich Romans were ready to spend whatever was necessary to be able to offer their guests these kinds of expensive foods. From these few examples we may draw some initial conclusions. The lines of Ennius testify to the presence, at the beginning of the second century, of a strong interest in gastronomic matters. In Plautus, selfindulgence in food is criticised not just on moral grounds but because gluttony is considered a complete waste from an economic point of view and is often connected with the ruin of patrimonies. Horace, however, assumes a different perspective. He is ironic about the pretentious display of extravagant foods and the related gastronomic disquisitions of Nasidienus in Satire 2.8, but in 2.4 the criticism is moted and the enjoyment of good food is presented as normal. The rage of moralists was directed against this form of self-indulgence. Cato’s invective against extravagance of the table is known from a fragment of a speech delivered against the repeal of the lex Orchia, in which he complained about the huge increase in expenditure on meals132 with the dictum ‘Great concern about food, great unconcern about virtue.’133 Moreover Plutarch reports, ‘He (Cato) could not live in 22

1. The Roman Response to Luxury company with a man whose palate was more sensitive than his heart.’134 The complaints of moralists were directed against the sums spent on luxury foods,135 and the fashion to choose certain delicacies not for their taste but more for their exotic or expensive qualities.136 Food was not the only target of complaints; other practices connected with banquets too were under attack. Food was just one aspect of the opulence of Roman banquets, and for this reason sumptuary laws reflected an attempt to regulate banquets in their many aspects, not just the food. Self-indulgence manifested itself also in objets d’art, in the settings of the dinners, in the number of guests and slaves, and finally in entertainment. For instance, in a speech to the people Cato pointed out that ‘it was the surest sign of decline in the Republic when pretty boys fetched more than fields and jars of caviare more than a ploughman’.137 The association between selfindulgence, luxurious banquets and effeminacy and sexual deviancy was a common topos in moralist discourses.138 Because of the central role played by banquets in Roman social life they were frequently chosen to symbolise the life-style of an individual, usually to underline negative rather than positive aspects. For instance Cicero used the dissoluteness of the banquets offered in Sicily by Verres to provoke the disdain of the public.139 History has passed on the memory of the most famous banquets offered by Roman citizens. One example was that offered by Cornelius Lentulus Niger to the Pontifices and the Vestales on the occasion of his consecration as Flamen. Macrobius supplies us with the menu: more than thirty different dishes were served.140 The person whose sumptuous banquets became legendary is Lucullus; his fame has reached us more for the extravagance of his dinners than for his ability as a general or a strategist. Today, in various languages, ‘Lucullan’ is synonymous with lavish or overindulgent, especially with regard to food. Varro tells us about the most famous of his dinners, which he staged inside a huge aviary so that his guests could enjoy the taste of delicious birds and at the same time as listening to them singing and seeing them flying.141 Varro is not the only one to supply us with anecdotes on Lucullus; so does Plutarch. In chapters XL and XLI of the Life of Lucullus142 we find a series of anecdotes that describe Lucullus’ banquets and his life-style. Here we are concerned not with the historical truth of these passages but with the fact that, in spite of Lucullus’ unlimited wealth, his customs would not have been unique among the rich men in Rome. Even Cicero himself, while admonishing his readers against excessive extravagance, says that in Rome many imitated Lucullus’ sumptuousness.143 Why were upper-class Romans ready to spend so much on entertainment? The importance of these public and private events in Roman life cannot be overestimated. In ancient society, as in modern ones, alliances were made and political decisions taken during banquets. Cicero attributes particular significance to the Roman word for dinner23

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury party: convivium, ‘living together’. ‘It is then that we really live together’, he says, considering the convivium the central occasion of Roman communal life. When a powerful man invited others, the convivium inevitably assumed a political dimension and the meals became an instrument to create social alliances but also a mechanism of social control over subordinates. To this end it is worth quoting in full a letter of the younger Pliny to the Emperor Trajan in which he worried about the fact that the ius invitationis could be exceeded and become a threat to the social order: ‘It is general practice for people at their birthday or marriage, and on entering upon office or dedicating a public building, to invite all the local senators and even quite a number of common people in order to distribute presents of one or two denarii. I pray you to let me know how far you think this should be allowed, if at all. My own feeling is that invitations of this kind may sometimes be permissible, especially on ceremonial occasions, but the practice of issuing thousands or even more seems to go beyond all reasonable limits, and could be regarded as a form of corrupt practice.’144 Banquets were used to obtain electoral support, as shown by Cicero’s common accusation against those who tried to obtain the public’s favour by offering them.145 The enactment of sumptuary measures is indissolubly related to the social and political importance of banquets in Roman society; we shall therefore return to it in the following chapter. Conclusion From antiquity to modern times, luxury has excited the reaction of moralists who have condemned it as a cause of decadence. This condemnation has always been presented as a necessary premise for the enactment of sumptuary measures and for this reason is worthy of examination in this book. In this chapter it has been shown how every social illness has been, from time to time, attributed to luxury, and also how this negative concept has assumed common characteristics, despite the differences of the societies who produced it. First of all, luxury has been related to the idea of ruin and decadence; ruin of the individual and consequently of the society, bringing economic and moral catastrophe. Men, whose lives are lived in softness and luxury, become weak and effeminate. Selfindulgence corrupts and effeminises masculine and military virtues. The fruit of a society dedicated to extravagance is a society of bad soldiers that is unable to defend itself. In this sense luxury constitutes a threat to the existence of the group and society. With regret one looks to those times when wealth and extravagance were unknown and simplicity and austerity dominated the morality of society. The idealisation of the past is a topos and one that we focused on in the discourse on luxury. The same topoi are present in the Roman moralistic discourse against luxuria, considered a political issue, the cause and symptom of decadence. 24

1. The Roman Response to Luxury The introduction into Rome of wealth and luxury provoked the departure from the very foundations of the Roman State, the mos maiorum, and the corruption of Roman customs and values. The model of ‘corruption’ was applied to Rome’s own history to explain her decadence, and historians and moralists tried to date the beginning of this process. Despite their disagreement on the dating, all of them agreed on one aspect: the ‘evil’ was brought into the city from outside, specifically from the East. Before that moment Rome stood out for her purity, strength and incorruptibly, with her heroes, dedicated to agriculture and to war, disdaining any form of wealth and luxury. Though we cannot enter here into the historicity of this view, the idealised past and the myth of its heroes discloses the perceived decadence of the present, whose products were individuals such as Catiline and Verres, very real dangers for the safety of the State. We have seen that moral condemnation did not touch every kind of luxury; in Rome, private self-indulgence was abhorred and fought against, while public magnificence was admired, welcomed and considered necessary. So the apparent contradiction between, on the one hand, the moral condemnation of luxury in the sphere of private life, and, on the other, the absence of condemnation of huge sums spent on public buildings or in the public sphere in general, can be explained. Finally, in order to build up a complete picture of Roman luxury, we have examined three aspects of Roman life in which their extravagance was shown: games, buildings and banquets. The popularity of games among the Roman people made them political acts; they were used to achieve popularity and to buy the favour of the electors. These public events became perfect occasions for showing wealth and power, so there existed strong competition among aristocrats in organising them in the most spectacular ways. Despite that, it does not seem that any sumptuary laws targeted them. The same can be said for extravagance in private dwellings. In Roman society, as in today’s, the private house was a symbol of the owner’s power and importance. But in Roman society the house of a politician was not a private but a public space. Therefore extravagance in this particular aspect was condemned only when it could not be justified by social status or political position. Because of the importance of the house extremely strong competition existed among the nobles to display the most expensive houses, a competition that also affected their social inferiors who tried to imitate their behaviour. Finally, we focused on banquets and luxus mensae. Gluttony and drunkenness were condemned as the worst products of decadence and effeminacy. But a brief examination of some Latin authors has shown, beyond the simple condemnation of extravagant foods, something else: widespread economic concern connected with luxury. In Plautus, people in Rome ate their patrimony, but in Horace, there was bitter irony towards cheap extravagance, but also acceptance, or better enjoyment, of delicious food and the ‘elegant table’. Banquets and dinners were important events 25

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury in Roman social and political life, and were used to create alliances, to obtain electoral support or just to affirm the importance and power of individuals and social groups, but this aspect will be examined when dealing with the laws themselves. In our attempt to understand sumptuary legislation, the significance of moralistic discourses behind the enactment of the legislation and of morality in defining Romanitas cannot be overemphasised. Our modern reading of history and society would push us to disregard these moralistic reasons as less real; as a fog behind which real motivations hide. But in the eyes of a Roman historian or intellectual in general, what we would define as socio-political reasons or interpretations do not differ from moralistic ones. Only if we keep this in mind does the real significance of the fight against luxury, presented by the sources in moralistic terms, become clear. Morality is what defines a true Roman and above all a member of the ruling class of the most powerful city in the world. It is the adherence to the mos maiorum that legitimises the prominent position of the senatorial class in its role of guardian and defender of what is deeply and uniquely Roman, virtus.

26

2

Previous Measures Against Extravagance Before we concentrate exclusively on sumptuary laws in a strict sense in Chapter 3, it will be useful to consider those measures that foreshadowed or in some way inaugurated sumptuary legislation: the provisions minuendi sumptus lamentationisque funeris contained in the Twelve Tables, and the notae censoriae. The former, examined in the first section of this chapter, dealt with funeral rites and are generally considered to be the first government intervention in matters of extravagance. The latter are dealt with in the second section of the chapter, where particular emphasis will be placed on the involvement of the censors with the mores of the citizens, and specifically the censors’ battle against extravagance. The main interest of this chapter is to determine whether it is legitimate to consider these interventions as sumptuary measures, and what they shared with later sumptuary regulations. We may hope that they can reveal to us something more about sumptuary regulation because of what they reveal about socio-political structures. The Twelve Tables’ provisions minuendi sumptus lamentationisque funeris In Rome the first government intervention in matters of extravagance goes back to the enactment of the Twelve Tables, traditionally dated to the middle of the fifth century BC. The interest of the legislators was directed exclusively at the display of wealth in aristocratic funerals. The rules minuendi sumptus lamentationisque funeris, contained in the Tenth Table, were according to Cicero ‘fere translata’ from Solonian legislation.1 The importance of this statement is such that it cannot be ignored. We need to consider not only whether Cicero’s statement can be trusted, but also, and above all, why he came to such a conclusion. The issue of funerary measures in Greece deserves careful examination, and it is important to remember that measures dealing with funerals were not exclusively a feature of Athenian society but were widespread across all Greece. But, since our interest lies mainly in their supposed influence on Roman measures, we must limit ourselves to a brief analysis 27

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury of the various laws enacted in the Greek poleis or city-states and of their common features that may reveal something of their aims and purposes. It is within the structure of the polis that laws concerning funerals were first enacted in Greece; they tend to appear early and to be ascribed to the activity of various lawgivers of the archaic period whose legislation was constitutive of the city-states. The best attested tradition of funerary legislation comes from Athens, where it was enacted from the early sixth century down to the governorship of Demetrius of Phaleron (317-307 BC). Our knowledge of Solonian legislation is heavily reliant on the information provided by three quite late sources, namely Plutarch, Demosthenes and Cicero; although none of them is an unproblematic source,2 their text represents the best possibility for us to grasp a good idea of what issues the Solonian laws addressed and how. According to Plutarch, Solon ‘passed a law to do with the public look of the women, their mourning and their festivals, forbidding turmoil and licence’.3 It is uncertain whether the details that followed, namely the prohibition on going out wearing more than three garments or carrying more than an obol’s worth of food or drink, or a basket larger than a cubit, and of travelling by night unless in a wagon with a lamp, concern funerals or the other activities mentioned above. He continues, ‘He forbade self-laceration, set lamentations and the bewailing of any one at the funeral ceremonies of another. Moreover, he did not allow sacrificing an ox, nor the burial with the dead of more than three garments nor the visiting of tombs of non kin except at the time of interment.’4 Demosthenes is more generous with information; he attributes5 to Solon regulations regarding the prothesis, the laying out of the body, which had to be taken inside, and the ekphora, the transportation of the dead, that must be on the day after the prothesis and before the sun rises.6 Moreover, one of the prescriptions established that during the funeral procession men would walk in front and the women behind, and no women under the age of sixty would be permitted to enter the chamber of the deceased, or to follow the procession to the tomb or to be present when the body was brought out of the tomb, except those who are ‘within the degree of children of cousins’. Finally, Cicero, who, as already mentioned, deals with the Solonian legislation on his discussion on the funerary restrictions contained in the Twelve Tables, adds only that Solon prohibited violation of the tombs, and that ‘after some time’ (post aliquanto) the size and decoration of tombs and burial monuments were curbed by legislation. The date of this last law has been the object of intense debate among scholars; many nowadays accept that Cicero is probably referring here to the funerary restrictions imposed by Demetrius of Phaleron, who imposed limitations not only on funerals but also on tombs. Funerary laws are to be found not just in Athens but in several other Greek cities. In Sparta such laws are, according to tradition, part of the 28

2. Previous Measures Against Extravagance earliest laws given by the legendary lawgiver Lycurgus, whose attention seems to have been directed mainly to the tomb and the period of mourning. He allowed Spartans to bury their bodies within the city, with the aim, according to Plutarch,7 of cutting all superstitions. Moreover, he prohibited placing anything in the tomb other than a few olive leaves and the scarlet cloth the dead body was wrapped in; he forbade the inscription of the names of the deceased, the only exception being for men who fell in battle, or women who died in a sacred office; he restricted the period of mourning to eleven days, to be concluded with a sacrifice to Ceres on the twelfth. It is very interesting to notice that whereas private funerals in Sparta are characterised by simplicity and austerity, the rites reserved for the kings, as described by Herodotus,8 were remarkable for their lavishness and in opposition to every aspect of funerary regulation. A fifth-century inscription from Ceos, enacted by the community of Ioulis, preserves a much earlier piece of legislation which addresses concerns similar to those found in the Solonian legislation.9 The corpse is to be covered by only three or fewer clothes whose value does not exceed one hundred drachmae; the corpse is to be carried with only the head uncovered in a plain bier and in complete silence. Only three measures of wine and oil can be offered and the vessels, after the offering, have to be taken back home. Preliminary sacrifice has to be conducted according to tradition and the bier and coverlets have to be brought back from the tomb; the women have to leave the tomb before the men.10 Finally, prescriptions for purification rites are given. More funerary regulation is found in an inscription dated to c. 400 BC from Delphi by the phratry of Labyadai. The law established that objects of no more than 35 drachmae in value, whether bought or made at home, could be placed in the tomb; the upper piece of clothing (probably the one which covered the body) had to be grey; only one cloth could be placed under the body and one pillow for the head; the body had to be carried completely covered and in silence; the bier was not to be put down at any turn and no lamentations were allowed outside the house. Lamentations and weeping were not allowed the day after or on the anniversary. Whoever transgressed these regulations was to be punished with a fine of 50 drachmae. From Gambreion in Asia, a probable earlier funerary law, found on a third-century inscription, imposed that only clothes of a certain colour could be worn during the funeral, set a time limit for mourning and limited the participation of women in the procession. Charondas, the sixth-century lawgiver of Catana, declared that the dead should be honoured not with tears and lamentation but with memory and yearly offerings. According to Cicero,11 Pittacus of Mytilene legislated that only kin should attend funerals, and Diodorus Siculus12 says that at the time Gelon died, extravagant funerals were already 29

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury outlawed at Syracuse; the text seems to suggest that the law was enacted not by Gelon but before his time.13 This brief survey of early funerary legislation is far from exhaustive, but it clearly shows not only that such regulations were widespread in Greece, which is in itself a proof of the significance they had acquired, but also, and above all, the remarkable consistency and uniformity that characterised these laws. First, the majority of them are part of the earliest codes ascribed to lawgivers or tyrants of the archaic period or to the State, the only exception being the one enacted in Delphi by a phratry. Secondly, the laws are more restrictive than prescriptive, assuming the character of negative regulations; they established what must not be done rather than imposing positive instructions. Thirdly, it is the public aspects of funerals that seem to have attracted much of the attention of the legislators. If we consider Greek funerals as a performance in three acts, the laying out of the body (prothesis), its transportation (ekphora) and, finally, the deposition of its cremated or inhumed remains, it is significant that the majority of restrictions address the ekphora or those specific aspects of the two other moments that were publicly performed. For example, Solon’s regulation that the prothesis should last only one day and that it should take place indoors; the numerous regulations on women’s behaviour during the ekphora, and in Delphi the regulations concerning the way to cover the body, or the peculiar prohibition on putting down the bier at any turn and on lamenting outside the house, are, in my view, a clear attempt to tone down the public aspect of the funeral and to soothe the feelings provoked by it. These striking similarities encourage us to think that these laws were not simply the product of local circumstances but a widespread archaic phenomenon. I agree with Toher14 that it is necessary to look for an explanation that, transcending the local communities and their provincial problems, can be applied to archaic society as a whole. The main issue here is to understand whether this phenomenon must be related to some sort of political and social urgency or to the religious necessity to avoid pollution. Recently, funerary legislation has been the object of intense debate among scholars, and although it is beyond the purpose of this book to offer a detailed account of this, we cannot avoid addressing the matters connected to the purposes of such legislation. In order to achieve a better understanding of the issue at hand, it is necessary to step back and reconsider a few very indicative and central points. First, early funerary laws were mainly concerned with the public aspects of funerals: the procession, the lamentation, the number of people who could attend and the number and age of women; surprisingly, only a very small number of laws dealt with tombs or monuments. It seems clear to me that the ultimate aim of this kind of regulation is to transform a very public act such as a funeral into something more private, hence the 30

2. Previous Measures Against Extravagance limitation on the number of people allowed, with the exception of family members, the various restrictions on places and time where and when prothesis and ekphora must take place. But this does not explain the imperative to regulate women’s behaviour, nor does it explain why or in whose interest it became necessary to regulate funerals. A purely economic explanation does not stand up to scrutiny; an economic significance can be detected for only a very small number of restrictions, and in these cases the main aim is to curb ostentation more than to limit expenditure. Moreover, it is significant that the display they tried to control does not necessarily involve extravagance: the laws are not exclusively aimed at curbing the flaunting of luxury by limiting the number or the cost of objects to be put in the grave; when present at all, this aspect appears rather secondary, whereas it seems to be the behaviour of the mourners and the ways in which the funerals were performed that attracted most of the the attention of the legislators. Sourvinou-Inwood argues for a culturally and ritually oriented interpretation, interpreting funerary laws as a manifestation of the ‘desire to restrict death’s invasion of life and to push death away’.15 According to her, the legislation reflects a change in cultural attitude towards death, from a more familiar and accepting attitude, to a new anxiety and growing revulsion. Funerary legislation should not be interpreted exclusively in socio-political terms or as having only socio-political or economic consequences, but as motivated by the necessity to remove the physical reality of death in order to avoid pollution and remove the consequences of miasma. This theory, which has the merit of having revived the debate by stressing the need to consider other possible readings of the phenomenon than an exclusively political one, has a crucial shortcoming: it does not account for the prescriptions regarding public funerals. In fact, the same poleis, which were so interested in controlling the funeral of private citizens, instituted elaborate public death rituals during which funerary restrictions were systematically reversed.16 During these public funerals in Athens, the prothesis took place outside and in public spaces, and as stressed by Thucydides, ‘anyone who wishes, both citizens and foreigners, can participate at the ekphora’.17 We cannot concern ourselves here with an examination of other significant examples such as the kings’ funeral in Sparta, but Thucydides’ passage in itself is a clear testimony that in reality during these public events, mass contact with death was not only accepted but even prescribed. The cultural explanation of funeral laws fails to cohere with the institution of public funerals; if a change in attitude towards death and the consequent necessity of avoiding pollution were the main reasons for enacting funeral restrictions, then this would have been visible also in public funerals. Funerary laws have often been considered as sumptuary legislation and the sumptuary character of funerary legislation has been considered a given by many scholars.18 Funerary laws are often regarded as a 31

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury subcategory of sumptuary legislation, interpreted as restrictions on aristocratic display in order to promote isonomy and prevent social unrest. According to Mazzarino,19 archaic sumptuary laws including funerary laws were one aspect of the crisis of the aristocracies in Greece; a crisis that ultimately lead to their loss of power and the rise of autonomous lawgivers or tyrants. More recently Garland has seen funerary laws as one of the ‘chief weapons by which democracy sought to establish itself as an effective means of government and to encourage the growth of democratic sentiments’.20 This political analysis connects the enactment of funerary legislation with the rise of democratic feeling and considers its primary purpose to be that of creating homonoia, unity within the city-state, by restraining any display of wealth, power and influence.21 Plutarch does not seem to have had any doubt about the reasons which led to the promulgation of funerary legislation. Solonian legislation was a consequence of the political fight that inflamed Athens following the killing of Kylon by Megakles. The Athenians, in 593/4, called Epimenides for help. He made the citizens ‘well-behaved in regard to religious devotion and milder in their demonstration of grief by adjoining certain sacrifices immediately to the funeral ceremonies’.22 Is Plutarch here suggesting that funerals were used to stir up jealousy and rivalries between groups within the City? Alexiou,23 in her study of Greek practices, does not have any doubt: in an already tense atmosphere due to the blood feud between the descendants of two families in incessant strife, ‘what best way to inflame even more the feeling of revenge than the continuous lamentation at the tomb by a large number of women for those long dead’.24 Alexiou interprets the Solonian measures as a curb on noble families and on their ritual lamentations which, with women wailing and lacerating their faces, could lead to a ‘social menace not only indecent but dangerous’. She suggests the existence of a close connection between clan rituals and vendettas in several ancient societies.25 What is important for us is the possibility that these measures, those enacted both in Greece and in Rome, aimed to limit the influence of noble families by restraining the display of their power and wealth. The death of a member of a clan could have been exploited by the living members to demonstrate the power, influence and prestige of the group. Women’s lamentations became a tangible proof of the importance of the dead man and his family within the community. This can be demonstrated by comparison with other cultures. As we shall see, during the Middle Ages, measures were enacted in many Italian centres that limited the display of grief by women during public funerals for similar social reasons. Until recently, in southern Italy and in many other centres around the Mediterranean, it was a common practice during funerals to employ women, often elderly, called prefiche, who during the funeral honoured the dead person by weeping, lamenting, singing traditional songs and often remembering the life of the individual and his achievements. The 32

2. Previous Measures Against Extravagance roots of this tradition are to be found in the Greek and Roman world, as demonstrated by the fact that rarely are the formulae or songs related to Christianity. In a study of popular funeral songs from Salento, Montinaro underlines the strict relationship between funeral lamentations and rites and the influence on them of ancient Greek practices.26 What is important to underline here is the social significance of this custom in small communities, where it is not only an important way to commemorate and honour the dead but also an assertion of the importance of the individual and his family within the community; the more people seen to be crying for you, the more important you were. This interpretation could equally be applied to similar funeral practices in the ancient world. The legislative measures did not therefore try to prevent all demonstrations of grief, but to limit the social distress that this custom could provoke, since funeral rites had became a matter of competition amongst aristocratic families. To conclude, I would maintain that since funerals had become the main occasion for the display of power, during which the dead leader was celebrated and at the same time the new one was legitimised, the laws were an attempt to curb this display of power and the consequent increase in influence that it brought about. This short and far from comprehensive examination of early Greek laws provides us with a context for the funerary laws enacted in Rome and contained in the Twelve Tables. The overriding issue, when dealing with Roman laws, is to establish whether it is legitimate to consider the regulations of the Twelve Tables as measures of a sumptuary nature. However, before doing this let us begin with a brief exposition of the provisions of the Tenth Table and, where possible, an explanation. In doing so, I shall refer to Crawford’s edition of the Twelve Tables in Roman Statutes and to a few chapters from the second book of Cicero’s De Legibus. The provisions will be catalogued according to their content and target: laws which dealt with funeral practice and tombs, laws whose targets were luxurious objects, and finally laws related to funeral ceremonies. First, we will examine the provision regarding funeral practice. It was established by law that ‘He is not to bury or burn a man in the city’.27 According to Cicero, reasons of security lie behind this prohibition, since cremation was such a common practice that danger of fire was a real threat to the city.28 Cicero does not explain why inhumation was banned from the city but seems to imply that inhumation inside the city was reserved for those who stood out for their merits. This allows us to conclude that the provision might have been against the aristocratic practice of having family tombs inside the city and using this to increase their prestige and fame.29 In the late Republic it was still a matter of honour to have one’s family tomb inside the pomerium (city boundary), since to be buried in the city was considered a privilege granted for merit and virtue, as in the following passage from Cicero: ‘I suppose that there were men to whom this privilege had been granted on account of their 33

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury merit before this law was enacted, such as Poplicola and Tubertus, and that this privilege was legally retained by their descendants, or there were those who, like Gaius Fabricius, were made exempt from the operation of the law on account of their merit.’30 According to Cicero, two other laws in the Tenth Table dealt with inhumation and cremation in Rome, laws 9 and 10 of Crawford’s edition.31 The laws forbade the erection of a tomb near a private building and the usucapio of the tombs.32 It is important to underline, as we shall see, that the provisions related to the position and possession of the graves but not to their dimensions or to the goods allowed inside. Secondly, we find provisions whose target is the use of lavish objects during the funeral. ‘He is not to do more than this: he is not to smooth the pyre with a trowel’,33 and the expenses were limited by law to‘ ... a little purple tunic ... ten ’34 Cicero sees these dispositions as both an attempt to limit expenditure and mourning at funerals35 and a translation from Solonian legislation. The similarity between the two measures is indeed striking: the Solonian law, for example, also stated that not more than three pieces of dress were to be buried with the body.36 In fact, it is not clear whether the Roman provision related to the items permitted to be placed in the tomb or the dress of women attending the funeral. Colonna argues that the law forbade the burial in the tombs of more than three ricinia and just one tunicula;37 But a close reading of the text does not justify this conclusion, and the two possibilities are in my view equally valid. Moreover the law forbade or limited libations that were too expensive, dedications of crowns, the use of incense, and finally the use of gold.38 The last group of measures in our classification dealt with funeral ceremonies and attempted to control mourning, above all that of women. The law stated that ‘Women are not to mutilate their cheeks or hold a wake for the purpose of holding a funeral’,39 a proscription already contained in the Solonian legislation.40 The behaviour of women was not the only aspect of burial rites to be controlled in the Tenth Table. The laws stated that ‘He is not to collect the bones of a dead man, in order to hold a funeral afterwards.’41 The aim of the law was to avoid a further ceremony, separated from that involving the cremation or inhumation, no doubt because of the social and political uses of a second burial. These are the dispositions of the Tenth Table as revealed by the sources; how can they be interpreted and what significance can be given to them? Archaeological evidence has demonstrated that a radical change in funeral practices occurred at the beginning of the sixth century, when tombs were sealed without any grave furnishings or with only very poor items. After having dismissed economic reasons for this change,42 Colonna argues that it was a direct consequence of legislative measures that, following Cicero, he believed had been borrowed from the Solonian legislation. According to tradition, in 454 BC the Romans sent a diplomatic mission43 34

2. Previous Measures Against Extravagance to Greece to study Solon’s laws;44 but, as rightly observed by Momigliano, if Roman ambassadors went to Greece then, they would have received from Pericles something less outdated then the laws of Solon.45 This led Colonna to the conclusion that what needs to be reconsidered is not the relationship between Rome and the Greek world in funerary matters, but its chronology. He claims that this influence ought to be dated at the time of Servius Tullius, and that therefore the Roman funerary legislation can be dated to the early sixth century, when Solon was active. Later on, during the fifth century, these measures and customs were codified in the Twelve Tables.46 The Tenth Table contains undeniable evidence of Greek influence, which already in antiquity was a matter of interest: while some sources report of a diplomatic mission sent to Athens to copy the laws of Solon,47 others speak in general of travel to Greek cities which in many cases could have meant Greek cities in Magna Graecia. Finally, a completely different tradition claimed that the decemviri who compiled the Tables were advised by a Greek philosopher, Hermodorus of Ephesus, in exile in Rome.48 A key point, worth stressing, is the awareness from antiquity of the presence of Greek elements within the Twelve Tables. But is this still an issue worth debating, or even a matter for surprise, when modern scholarship, above all thanks to archaeology, has clearly demonstrated the strongly Hellenised character of Roman culture from an early period? As Cornell notes,49 in view of the evidence available, it would have been more astonishing not to have found traces of the Greek tradition in the Twelve Tables. Colonna’s theory has the merit of pointing out that the legislation included in the Tenth Table reflected an already existing practice related in some way to the changes in funeral rituals that had occurred from the beginning of the sixth century. On the other hand, the theory is problematic in some areas, its least convincing aspect being the idea that the changes themselves were caused by the legislative action. Very rarely does legislation produce the result for which it is enacted, above all when, as in the case of all social laws, its aim is to change social behaviour.50 Moreover, as we have seen, none of the known provisions of the Tenth Table limited the wealth of funeral furnishings, and Cicero himself does not mention any concern about luxurious items in tombs. The laws are concerned with funeral rites, not with the building of monumental graves or with an excess of extravagant burial furnishings. This could mean one of two things: either that the Tenth Table was not meant to limit the display of wealth at aristocratic funerals,51 or that the changes which occurred from the beginning of the sixth century reflected a different attitude towards funeral rites. From being private commemorations, aristocratic funerals became public events, which consisted of banquets, celebrations and large crowds. Archaeological evidence pushes us towards the second hypothesis and the conclusion that the Tenth Table did not deal with goods placed in graves because by the middle of the 35

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury fifth century they had already become frugal or even non-existent.52 On the other hand, we have to admit that, despite our knowledge of the text and the helpful information from Cicero, our conclusions about the reasons behind the provisions of the Tenth Table are just hypotheses. But it seems safe to infer that the laws limiting the numbers of those attending, the use of gold, purple, incense and special libations, tried to prohibit the use of the funeral as an opportunity for the display of private power and wealth. I must disagree with Toher’s consideration that, because of their similarities with Greek legislation, the measures contained in the Tenth Table had little if any political significance and that they were measures grounded in religious abhorrence for extravagance in religious rites.53 First, as previously demonstrated, early Greek laws revealed a socio-political character in their attempt to curb those aspects of funerals that could inflame social instability; secondly, despite the striking similarities between Greek and Roman funerary legislation, it could be argued that the provisions contained in the Tenth Table reflected a social and political reality that was fully Roman.54 The enactment of the Twelve Tables in Rome was a response to discontent and an attempt to soothe intense social conflict; in this context the purpose of the laws dealing with funerals appears clear: the laws were intended to contain rivalry and competition among nobles by placing restrictions on funerary practices that were one of their main opportunities to display private power.55 It is in this attempt to limit expenditure and the competitive display of wealth, and in being a piece of self-regulation by the aristocratic elite, that the laws of the Tenth Table, if they cannot be considered an example of sumptuary law in a strict sense, can be said to have foreshadowed the political and social concerns of sumptuary legislation.56 Notae censoriae In this section we turn our attention to the involvement of the censors with the mores of the citizens, and specifically the censors’ battle against extravagance. What better way to introduce censorship than by borrowing Plutarch’s words: This office was the crown of all other civic honours, and was, in a way, the culmination of a political career. The variety of its powers was great, including that of examining the lives and morals of the citizens. The Romans believed that no one should be left to his own ways and desires, without inspection and review, either in choosing a wife, or in the begetting of his children, or in the ordering of his daily life, or in the entertainment of his friends. Rather, thinking that these things revealed a man’s real character more than did his public and political career, they set men in office to watch, admonish, 36

2. Previous Measures Against Extravagance and punish, in order that no one should turn aside to self-indulgence and forsake his native and customary mode of life.57 This passage supplies us with a brief outline of the nature and powers of the censors, the most prestigious of the Roman magistracies, but also expresses the astonishment of a non-Roman in face of the most peculiar and most Roman of the Roman magistracies. Censorship has thus fascinated not only modern scholars but also ancient Greek authors who sometimes looked with disbelief and astonishment at this peculiar Roman institution. I intend to demonstrate the symbolic importance of censorship in defining and reinforcing the identity of the Roman ruling class and to analyse how this was linked with the censors’ intervention in matters of luxury. Moreover, the main issue this chapter raises concerns the reasons behind the coexistence of two different kinds of intervention in matters of luxury during the Republic – namely censorial intervention and sumptuary laws – and the significance of the censors’ involvement in matters of extravagance. Censors shall make a list of the citizens, recording their ages, families, and slaves and other property. They shall be in charge of the temples, streets, and aqueducts within the city and of the public treasury and the revenues. They shall divide the citizens into tribes, and make other divisions according to wealth, age and rank. They shall enrol the recruit for the cavalry and infantry; they shall prohibit celibacy; they shall regulate the morals of the people; they shall allow no one guilty of dishonourable conduct to remain in the Senate.58 In this way Cicero, in his laws for an ideal state, presented the powers and duties of the censors. But although he is talking about an ideal law, it can be claimed that his model was closely based on the actual practice of the censorship. From the passage above it is worth emphasising the importance attributed by Cicero to the responsibility of the censors in regulating the mores of Roman citizens: ‘mores populi regunto, probrum in senatu ne relinquonto’. It is not only in this passage that Cicero mentions the supervision of mores as one of the most prominent among the censors’ duties; Astin states that ‘roughly one-third of all Cicero’s references to the censorship allude to the concern with mores’.59 Moreover, the connection between censorship and mos maiorum is mentioned by many other sources;60 Plutarch clearly put the cura morum at the centre of censorial activities and Livy defines censorship as ‘an office which, starting from small beginnings, grew to be of such importance that had the regulation of the conduct and morals of Rome, the control of the Senate and the equestrian order’.61 The importance of the censors in Roman society62 deserves a more 37

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury detailed examination, but that is beyond the scope of this book.63 However, the involvement of the censors with the mores of Roman citizens concerns us greatly because it was translated into action and led to the continuous interference of the State in the private lives of citizens. No source clearly defines the task of mores regere, due probably to the fact that it was not a defined responsibility, but rather something that was left to the censors to apply. The use of the very slippery term mores, which refers to both morality and customs, points to the same conclusion. The regimen morum was expressed mainly in the lectio senatus and the recognitio equitum (the revision of the list of the senators and of the equites respectively), which, together with the completion of the census, were the main tasks of the censors.64 Censors had the power to judge a posteriori the private and public, and the civil and moral, behaviour of the citizens in the period of the past lustrum. Those considered to have done something immoral and to be unworthy of their ordo were punished by a written statement (nota censoria),65 affixed opposite their names in the list of citizens, explaining the reasons for the censors’ decision. According to Cicero,66 consequence of the nota was ignominia and not infamia which was the result of conviction in a civil suit, while the censorial verdict was not a judicium or res judicata and its effects were not lasting but might be removed by following censors.67 The significance of the nota censoria can be understood only in the context of a society like early Republican Rome, in which the dignitas of the members of the small aristocracy was very highly valued, and where its loss could constitute a punishment. In fact through the nota censoria and the censors, it was perceived that the entire aristocracy was expressing its disapproval towards individuals who transgressed those moral canons whose acceptance was an integral part of the identity of the Roman ruling class; but we shall come back to this point later in our discussion. Sometimes the nota censoria involved the expulsion from his class of the person who transgressed, and relegation from a higher to a lower class: expulsion from the Senate for a senator, withdrawal of the public horse for an eques. A scholiast on Cicero supplies us with information about the way censors operated in the matter of mores: ‘Censors were customarily appointed every fifth year to regulate the mores of the State. The censors penalised the citizens in the following manner: somebody who was a senator could be expelled from the Senate; somebody who was an eques could be deprived of his public horse; somebody who was a plebeian could be transferred to the list of Caerites and was made an aerarius, and in consequence was not in the register of his own century but remained a citizen only in the sense that in accordance with his personal liability he made payment termed tributum.’68 As we shall see, that was not the only sanction applied by censors but without doubt it was the most common and important. Which strata of society were subject to the censors’ supervision? 38

2. Previous Measures Against Extravagance The passage from the scholiast seems to indicate that all citizens were subject to censorial supervision; everyone was under the authority of the censors and liable to differing punishments according to their status. Unfortunately, the sources do not transmit many examples of censorial intervention towards citizens of lower status, while references to persons of senatorial and equestrian class are numerous and continuous. This lack of information could be explained by a lack of interest on the part of ancient authors in individuals of the lower orders; alternatively the disparity in the number of interventions between the two groups could reflect the reality of the activity and fields of interest of the censors.69 The latter hypothesis seems more reasonable because of the continual references to an almost exclusive interest of the two magistrates in members of the two upper classes. It is mainly in the lectio senatus that, according to Cicero, the power and concern of the censors on mores is applied, because ‘the senatorial order shall be free from dishonour and shall be a model for the rest of the citizens’, and, to achieve this, the supervision of the censors is necessary.70 In order to fully understand the significance of this, we need to keep in mind the centrality of moral discourse in Roman thought and identity, as discussed in Chapter 1: not only did wealth and morality define the Roman upper class (wealth and virtue were used as the criteria of a man’s worth), but Roman national identity itself was linked to the strong conviction of Roman moral superiority: ‘The commonwealth of Rome is founded firm on ancient customs and on men of might (moribus antiquis res stat Romana virisque)’.71 Moreover, the moral conduct of the senatorial class must be impeccable because of its role as a social model for the rest of the citizenry. Cicero clearly illustrates this point with the following example: ‘The answer made by our mutual friend, the wellknown Lucius Lucullus, to a criticism of the luxury of his villa at Tusculum was considered a very neat one. He said that he had two neighbours, a Roman knight living uphill, and a freedman downhill. Since their villas were very luxurious, he thought that he ought to be allowed the same privilege permitted to members of lower classes. But, Lucullus, do you not see that even their aspiration to luxury is your own fault? If you had not indulged in it, it would not have been permissible for them to do so. ... Who would not put an end to their inordinate desires, if those very men whose duty it was to put an end to them were not guilty of the same passion? That men of high position do evil is bad enough in itself but is even worse that these men have so many imitators. Whenever change took place in the morals and manners of prominent men, it has also taken place among the people.’72 The censors’ activity was directed mainly towards members of the upper classes and was mainly concerned with their moral conduct. The Romans did not perceive economics, politics and morality as separate spheres as we do; rather they were read by Roman writers as simply mores. So to try to classify the censors’ responsibilities into these, for us 39

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury distinctive, categories, is misleading, and this is why it is difficult for us to define precisely their sphere of action. Generally speaking, censors’ actions targeted two different groups of offences: to the first belonged those offences that can be defined as acts against the welfare of the State,73 acts of military indiscipline, religious offences and abuses of power. The offences of the second group are more heterogeneous and connected with aspects of private life: luxurious life-style, bad management of personal property and misconduct in domestic life. This is a modern classification useful for modern research, but in antiquity censors did not have any well-defined areas of intervention or any formally assigned task in the matter of mores. Every censor acted on discretion, being concerned only to act in the best interests of the State, and this included strict supervision and control of the personal life of senators and equites. It seems that the censors had to take an oath to act in the interests of the State and not for their personal interest.74 In the exercise of their powers they were regulated solely by their own views of duty, and were not responsible to any other power in the State.75 In his actions a censor was not bound by any law, but exclusively by the veto of his colleague.76 That is to say, they did not act on the basis of any code, but their conduct was based on personal discretion. Moreover, in their activity there was no clear demarcation between private and public spheres; there were no areas in the life of the citizenry which the State did not claim the right to examine. This is alien to our modern sensibilities, but it is significant that this was an exceptional feature of the Roman system also for ancient authors. For instance in Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ comparison of Sparta and Athens, where citizens could do as they pleased within their own homes, with Rome, the astonishment and disbelief of the Greek author in front of the strong interference of the censors in every aspect of Roman life speaks for itself: The Romans throwing open every house and extending the authority of the censors even in the bedroom, made that office the supervisor and guardian of everything that took place in the home; for they believed that a master should not be cruel in the punishments meted out to his slaves, nor a father overly harsh or lenient in the training of his children, nor a husband unjust in his partnership with his lawfully wedded wife, nor children disobedient towards their aged parents, nor should brothers strive for more than their equal share; and they thought there should be no banquets and celebrations lasting all night long, no immorality and corrupting of youthful comrades, no neglect of the ancestral honours of sacrifice and funerals, nor any other things done contrary to property and the advantage of the State.77 40

2. Previous Measures Against Extravagance The role and duties of the censors are the best examples of how the categories of private and public were easily conflated in Roman thought and are an additional confirmation of the fact that, as already discussed, the dichotomy between public and private is a modern construct whose assignment to the ancient world needs to be reconsidered. What most concerns me here is the interference of censors in matters of personal life and in the administration of citizens’ private wealth. According to Pliny, ‘Bad husbandry was judged an offence within the jurisdiction of the censors, and as Cato tells us, to praise a man by saying he was a good farmer and a good husbandman was thought to be the highest form of commendation’;78 and according to Gellius, ‘If anyone had allowed his land to run waste and was not giving it sufficient attention, if he had neither ploughed nor weeded it, or had neglected his orchard or vineyard, such conduct did not go unpunished, but was taken up by the censors, who reduced such a man to the lowest class of citizens. So too, any Roman knight, if his horse seemed to be skinny or not well groomed, was charged with impolitia, a word which means the same thing as negligence.’79 The passages clearly illustrate how, according to tradition, in Cato’s view bad management of property was worthy of censorial action. How far can we trust two late authors such as Pliny and Gellius as sources on Republican morals? Are they referring to actual events or even unconsciously to what they perceived to be morality in a past by now idealised as uncorrupted? I would claim that, in this particular instance, we might trust their testimony because the importance attributed to the administration of private property is revealed by other sources and from the archaic period. The idea that it is necessary for the State to prevent people from wasting and destroying their property goes back to the Twelve Tables. The Fifth Table established that a prodigus, one who was wasting his inherited patrimony, was interdicted from dealing with his own property:80 ‘If there be a madman or spendthrift, power in respect of him and his familia and goods is to belong to his agnates and gentiles.’81 It is even possible that we know the words pronounced by the magistrate for the interdiction: ‘Since by your prodigality you are squandering your paternal and ancestral property and are leading your children to poverty, on that account I prohibit you from buying and selling and from commercial interchange.’82 It is worth citing these words because they testify to the reason why it was considered necessary to prevent people from squandering their wealth, above all when inherited: what needed to be preserved was continuity and trust in the ownership of property.83 The guilt of the prodigus was to interrupt the passage of property between generations, and it was therefore provided by law that the property of a prodigus was placed in the charge of curators.84 It is important to notice that, according to the Roman legal tradition, this interdictio existed before the compilation of the Twelve Tables and was introduced by custom.85 41

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury Considering that very few laws were attributed by ancient jurists to custom,86 this seems significant and plausible; however, to examine this question is beyond the scope of this book. The clause of the Twelve Tables is evidence on its own of the fact that protecting one’s family’s property and the interests of family members was felt to be a duty of the highest order. As underlined by Astin,87 in societies where land is not only the main source of wealth but also the basis of the social standing of the family, the maladministration of estates and even bad farming, above all of property acquired by inheritance, was judged as a threat to the social position of the family itself, and a form of immoral conduct toward past generations who had created the wealth and future generations who would not be able to enjoy it. But we might push this even further by saying that the consequence of, and motivation behind, the necessity to protect family property and therefore the social position of the family, might also have been the political need to preserve continuity in the composition of the ruling class and social hierarchy. In the light of this tradition it is possible to understand several actions taken by the censors in this field. In 179, when the censor M. Aemilius Lepidus deprived the eques M. Antistius of Pyrgi of his horse, a friend defended him by saying that he was ‘the best farmer, the most frugal, honest and temperate’.88 What is striking is that the quality of the eques as a farmer was considered conclusive in the final decision. The interest in good administration goes even further, to the point that the patrimony must not only be protected but also increased; that is a concern expressed several times by Cato. To increase the patrimony received by will is not a choice but a duty, and to allow an inheritance to be diminished was inexcusable in Cato’s eyes.89 Cato is not an exception; the same concern was expressed by other censors throughout the centuries. In 142 BC, among the arguments put forward by Scipio Aemilianus against T. Claudius Asellus,90 was that he had squandered more than a third of the property inherited from his father.91 The censors of 70, Cn. Cornelius Lentulus Clodianus and L. Gellius Poplicola, famous for exercising their office with great strictness, removed 64 members from the Senate. They accused Antonius Hybrida of having sold part of his property and of having lost control of it because of the extent of his debts.92 Maladministration of property was judged as evidence that the person was unworthy of being a member of the senatorial or equestrian class. Nicolet rightly indicates that the interest of the State in property was not just moral; the reduction of a senator or an eques who had lost his patrimony to a lower status was not just a moral punishment but was due to the fact that the person, by the very fact of losing his property, also lost the sufficient and necessary wealth to continue to belong to his status.93 But this conclusion should not lead to an undervaluing of the moral aspect that undoubtedly played an extremely important role in the final decisions taken by the censors and in the ideological framework to which the censors in their 42

2. Previous Measures Against Extravagance action referred. The existence of moral considerations is proved by the fact that the censors in their judgment also took into consideration the circumstances in which the person lost his fortune, and if the loss was not his fault, he was allowed to retain his rank. Cicero, for instance, wrote a letter on behalf of C. Curtius, whose lands were threatened by confiscation: ‘Now it is very tough for him that, though he had been raised higher as regards rank, he should be in a lower position as regard wealth; and it is shockingly inconsistent that the very man who is senator by Caesar’s favour should be expelled from land that is being distributed by Caesar’s order.’94 Augustus himself helped the equites impoverished by the civil war, by allowing them to maintain the external mark of honours, although they were not permitted to stay in the equestrian order.95 The second field of action of the censors to examine here is that which relates to the use of wealth, as well as their hostility towards luxury and extravagance. It goes without saying that, above all in this field, their attention was directed exclusively towards the wealthier strata of society. We have much information about the war declared on extravagance by the censors, but the majority of it belongs to the last century and a half of the Republic. Just one episode is known from the earlier period: that concerning P. Cornelius Rufinus in 275 BC, which we shall examine later. It was with the censorship of Cato, in 184, that inordinate and luxurious modes of living became a common target of censorial attention, but the episode of 275 demonstrated that the concern with extravagance was not a new phenomenon developed in the second century. Nor is it plausible to claim that the case of Rufinus was the first or the only one in the third century. We may limit ourselves to the observation that ancient sources probably recorded this one episode precisely because it stood out for its severity. On the other hand it must be said that the second century witnessed a huge increase in interventions by the censors in matters of luxury, probably proportional to the influx of wealth and extravagant items as a consequence of victories overseas. In matters of luxury, as in every other field of their activity, the censors did not follow a well-defined policy and their interest was not well defined; their actions were determined by personal opinions and by their attitudes. It is not possible therefore to trace a single type of intervention and level of action, and it is difficult to trace coherent lines of conduct or to examine the several interventions according to their targets. For this reason I have selected a number of examples of different kinds of intervention that will be examined in chronological order. As already mentioned the first recorded censorial action against extravagance is dated to 275 BC, when the censors C. Fabricius Luscinus and Q. Aemilius Papus expelled Publius Cornelius Rufinus from the Senate96 for ‘having acquired ten pounds’ weight of silver goblets’.97 The episode was recorded by numerous sources98 for its severity, but above all because of its value as an exemplum. An exemplum that was not 43

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury immediately repeated by the following censors; all the other episodes of censorial intervention in matters of luxury belong to the second and first centuries. The series is opened by the censorship of Cato, who was considered the one who started off the fight against extravagance that would last almost two centuries. The sources emphasise Cato’s treatment and hatred of luxury and consider his severity in acting against lavishness as a predominant characteristic of his censorship.99 ‘He thought he could cut and sear to some purpose the hydra-like luxury and effeminacy of the time’,100 and he conducted this fight in a distinctive way, imposing taxes on particular items that he considered to be luxuries. But it would be a mistake to consider Cato’s hostility toward luxury exclusively as a feature of his censorship or as something deeply connected with his duty as a censor; in reality the examples of Cato’s words against luxury throughout his political career show that the actions taken in 184 were deeply rooted in his ideals and in genuine conviction.101 This is proved by Cato’s opposition, a few years after his censorship, to the repeal of the sumptuary law known as the lex Orchia. According to Livy, in the speech he delivered on this occasion Cato complained against the great increase in expenditure on meals and compared it with the simpler living of antiquity; even if the authenticity of the speech is dubious, there is no reason to doubt the historicity of Cato’s opposition to the repeal of a sumptuary law. The clearest manifestation of his attitude is without doubt to be found in his censorship in 184. The two censors of the year, Cato and Valerius Flaccus, acted in agreement and with great severity in every field of their intervention; where extravagance was concerned they imposed punishment in fines, a sort of tax, on certain extravagant items such as women’s ornaments and clothing, vehicles and slaves.102 Moreover Cato attacked luxury in his speeches: he delivered a censorial speech concerning clothes and vehicles, ‘De vestitu et vehiculis’, probably self-explanatory; and one concerning statues and pictures, ‘De signis et tabulis’, though that we cannot say what it dealt with, with any degree of certainty.103 According to Pliny, he spoke against the serving of wild boar meat: ‘But also wild boar has been a popular luxury, as far back as Cato the Censor we find his speeches denouncing boar’s meat bacon.’104 The censors of 169, C. Claudius Pulcher and T. Sempronius Gracchus,105 continued in the same vein as Cato with regard to extravagant living. Sempronius Gracchus, father of the tribunes Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, was remembered for his severity, above all towards late-night banqueters. Plutarch tells us that Q. Metellus Macedonicus reproached Tiberius Gracchus, reminding him of the severity of his father, which was so great that people put out their lights for fear that they might be thought to be indulging immoderately in entertainments late at night.106 In 142, the censor Scipio Aemilianus punished an eques by the removal of his horse, because during a banquet he had put in front of a guest a confection in the shape of Carthage.107 The censors of 125, Cn. Servilius 44

2. Previous Measures Against Extravagance Caepio and L. Cassius Longinus, punished M. Aemilius Porcina,108 consul of 183, with a nota censoria for having rented a house at six thousand sesterces.109 P. Licinius Crassus and L. Iulius Caesar, censors in 89, prohibited the sale of unguenta exotica110 and fixed a tax on Greek and high quality Italian wine.111 Finally, in 50 the censor Appius Claudius Pulcher acted against the unlawful acquisition of works of art.112 The few examples of censorial interventions examined above allow us to draw some conclusions on the censorial involvement in matters of luxury. Clearly a lack of continuity and consistency characterised censorial dispositions: the targets of their actions changed from time to time or better from censor to censor, having been throughout the period under examination respectively clothing, vehicles, perfumes, cakes, etc. Moreover, censors’ activities appear to have been directed mainly toward individual cases and individuals, rather than prescribing codes or creating general rules, the only exception being Cato’s imposition of taxes on luxurious goods. After having briefly examined a series of censorial interventions in matters of luxury, we may ask what were the reasons behind the censorial hostility to extravagance. We know that censors who dealt with luxury considered it dangerous for the welfare of the State since it ran contrary to the interests of the State; what is less straightforward how self-indulgence could have been perceived as a threat to the State. No one single answer can be found, and in fact a compound of several different motives played an important role in the censors’ battle against luxury.113 These reasons and motives are worth examining because they themselves or a further development of them could have also been behind the enactment of legislative measures. The first reason was closely linked with the administration of properties, discussed above. This connection is understandable if we remember the deep-rooted principle that it was considered a shameful thing to allow a property to diminish and a duty to increase its value.114 Starting from this principle, it becomes clear how expenditure on non-essential items was considered a waste and a dissipation of wealth and property. As I have demonstrated above, this was judged to be a matter worthy of the intervention of the State. Secondly, luxury was attacked because of its terrible consequences. In Cato’s speeches, the observation that extravagance led to avarice and consequently to corruption in public office is a recurring theme.115 The third element is illustrated by Plutarch’s sentence about Cato’s desire to ‘cut and sear to some purpose the hydra-like luxury and effeminacy of the time’;116 luxury and effeminacy appear inextricably linked. Luxurious living represented, in the eyes of Cato and people like him, a real threat to the military qualities of Roman citizens; selfindulgence had the power to damage and soften the physical and moral strength of Roman soldiers. It cannot be forgotten that, according to 45

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury Cato, the difficulty and simplicity of country life made the bravest and strongest soldiers.117 These elements, examined in detail in Chapter 1, may in part explain the reasons behind censorial interventions and also why extravagance was considered detrimental to the State. However, we must keep in mind that other personal reasons could have influenced the action of censors who, as has already been underlined, acted independently from their predecessors and with complete freedom. At this point it is natural to wonder whether censorial interventions had any long-term impact and significance, and, if they did, to what extent? As we have seen, the censors operated through the nota censoria and the expulsion of a person from his class. This is not the place for a full examination of the lectio senatus and the recognitio equitum over time; for our purpose it will be enough to draw on the conclusions reached by Astin. He clearly demonstrated that the expulsions did not have any great effect in numerical terms; or at least not enough to determine substantial changes in the composition of the two orders. But Cicero and others, as mentioned above, attributed great importance to the activity and power of the censors, and the censors did not in any way consider their actions to be futile. This might be explained by the fact that what we quantify in numerical terms was perceived and felt in a different way by Romans. What the senators saw were members of their own class, with whom they more than likely had social, political or economic relationships, being expelled ignominiously.118 The interrelationships and social obligations between Senate members cannot be overvalued; those expelled, despite their number appearing to us to be insignificant, were known members of this institution; moreover their expulsion was not a private but a public matter and a public humiliation. Every five years, before the entire citizenry, the censors staged the ceremonious humiliation of their fellows; it would be hard to name a match in any century or country for the censoria nota which, according to Valerius Maximus, encouraged virtue by ignominy.119 This institutional dishonouring must have worked as a deterrent, and in this, I think, lay the power of the censors’ activities. That is applicable above all to the censors’ interest in the private conduct of the citizenry. As has been shown, the two upper classes were the main targets of censorial control; but, as the censors were appointed by members of their own class, it was the same ruling class that, through the persons of the censors, imposed restraints and controls upon itself. Why? The first obvious answer seems to be to limit corruption. But the main aim was not just that; the power given to the censors has a deeper social meaning. In his book on sumptuary laws, Baltrusch120 sees the control of society as the most important function of the censors, and behind this he detects the stance of the ruling class which was seeking to maintain its cohesion by expelling non-conformists. I find this an interesting view, but it does not seem to me to consider fully the centrality of the role played 46

2. Previous Measures Against Extravagance by morality in Roman self-identity and definition, as analysed in the previous chapter. Roman senators strongly believed that their right to govern was due to their moral superiority. So by discouraging violations of what had been accepted and recognised as aristocratic values, and by excluding those who, by their behaviour, showed themselves unfit, the upper class reinforced its own sense of identity and its perceived value to the outside world. Roman censors with their actions helped to define and construct Roman morality and therefore to define the Roman elite itself. In brief, we can conclude by saying that the censorship, by exercising a strong control on members of the upper class, reinforced internally and externally the social values and coherence of the Roman aristocracy. But these same conclusions urge us to ask a different question. Why, if the censors’ activity worked as a deterrent and a mechanism of social control by the aristocracy on the aristocracy, was there felt to be a need for legislation? Why were censorial edicts considered to be insufficient in matters of extravagance, and why did the same aristocracy turn to a more powerful means of control, the law? I would maintain that the reason lies in the weakness of the censorial mechanism and in the necessity for a stronger weapon in the fight against luxury. First of all, we have seen, censorial intervention lacked continuity – the censors not being in any way bound by precedent. Their intervention was therefore erratic, discontinuous and determined by the particular attitude and ideology of the individual censors. Alongside the examples of severity quoted above, we can also cite examples of censors noted for their indulgence; famous, for instance, is the example of L. Licinius Crassus and Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus, censors in 92, who quarrelled and accused each other in public speeches of luxurious living.121 Closely linked with this discontinuity is the variety in the targets of censorial interventions. As censorial action was not based on a welldefined system, but on the personal and sometimes irrational reaction of the individual censors, the types, targets and levels of intervention varied greatly and continually: from the interest of Cato in ornaments, women’s clothes and vehicles, to the interest of Tiberius Gracchus in late banqueters, and that of the censors in 89 in exotic scents and expensive wines, and so on. Moreover, whereas any kind of censorial action represented essentially the will of the censors, legislative measures were expressions of all citizens who passed the laws and above all of the ruling class as a whole which, expressed in this way, had political significance and an ideological background.122 Despite the enactment of sumptuary measures from the beginning of the second century BC, the censors continued to act on matters of luxury, as demonstrated by the examples quoted above. The coexistence of these two different kinds of intervention in matters of luxury requires an explanation; unfortunately no ancient sources help with this, and surprisingly it does not seem to have been noticed at all by 47

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury modern scholars. Against this background of uncertainty, however, it is possible to put forward some hypothetical suggestions. First, it might be suggested that the major strength of censorial actions in comparison with legislative measures lay in their irreplaceable value as exempla. The episode of Cornelius Rufinus illustrates this point. Although from an historical point of view it is of little significance, it was known far and wide because it set an exemplum and as such was recorded by a large number of sources. By targeting the sins of single individuals, the censors on the one hand highlighted the weaknesses of some members of the senatorial class, but on the other hand reinforced the institution as a whole; purified of its weak and unworthy elements, it could present itself to outsiders as an impeccable role model and therefore fit to govern and guide. Secondly, the frequent enactment of sumptuary laws, often very similar to each other, might reveal their ineffectiveness or the difficulty in enforcing them; the censorial intervention might therefore still be felt to be necessary. Moreover, it might have been that since sumptuary laws, as we shall see, targeted mainly extravagance in banquets, the other forms of luxury, probably less socially disruptive, had been left to the censors. Censors intervened when someone stood out from ‘good taste’ and from what was considered to be ‘appropriate’. However that might be, it is important to raise the question and be aware of this coexistence and above all of the difference between the two modes of intervention. It seems that censorial actions cannot be considered as a form of sumptuary law but exclusively as measures of a sumptuary nature. To conclude, while the censors’ concern with luxury and with mores in general touched upon a remarkable variety of matters, one of the main effects and reasons for its persistence was that in a society founded firmly on ancient customs and on men of might (moribus antiquis res stat Romana virisque123 writes Ennius, quoted by Cicero in the opening of the fifth book of de Republica), censorship helped to reinforce the identity, social value and coherence of the Roman aristocracy.

48

3

Sumptuary Laws During the second century, when in the eyes of Roman intellectuals luxury became the main cause of social and political decadence, a series of laws targeting extravagant consumption was enacted. These two aspects, moral condemnation followed by legislation, have been seen by some modern scholars as interconnected, the second being a result of the first. The moralists proclaimed concerns about the decline of Roman customs conceal other concerns of a social, political and economic nature that played a decisive role in the promulgation of sumptuary laws. In this chapter we shall analyse the legislative measures and the reasons behind their enactment. It is not easy to interpret the phenomenon of Roman sumptuary regulation; the scarcity of available documentation and its narrow perspective allows only a hypothetical evaluation of the political aspects of this phenomenon. The connection between the moral discourse on luxury and the enactment of sumptuary measures is stressed in ancient sources which view the issue exclusively in moral terms. But, as Clemente points out,1 the decision to use legislative measures in spheres that had always been under the jurisdiction of the censors, the interest of the ruling class in controlling luxury, and the existence of other similar measures, are all clear signs that the enactment of sumptuary legislation was a political decision with political and social implications. On the other hand, the state of the sources and their one-sided interpretation of the phenomenon in purely moralistic terms make it very difficult for us to analyse and evaluate it. It is worth noting that the moral condemnation of luxury, which is presupposed in the laws, was elaborated at the same time as the enactment of the laws themselves. How and in what way ideology influenced the legislative process is not easy to say. But what I intend to show, among other things, is that it was not the only determining force in the enactment of sumptuary laws. If it was not ideology that pushed the ruling class to promote such legislative policy, what did? Why did the senators sponsor sumptuary laws that limited their own freedom? To find an answer to these questions is the main purpose of this chapter, which is divided into three main sections: the object of the first, ‘General characteristics’, is to provide a brief historical account of the measures taken during the last three 49

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury centuries BC and the related polemic against extravagance in banquets. The second section, ‘The fight against luxury’, considers the political functions of private banquets and the enactment of sumptuary measures. Finally, the third section looks at the Augustan marriage legislation, which may at first sight appear a peculiar topic for inclusion in this book until one considers that its main aim, as we shall demonstrate, was to ensure the stable transmission of both property and political status; it can therefore be associated with measures of a sumptuary nature. A detailed catalogue of the main sumptuary legislative measures examined here can be found in the appendix. General characteristics During the third, second and first centuries BC, numerous laws against luxury, whose main target was extravagance, and mainly that of the table, were enacted. The principal difficulty a modern historian has to face in trying to reconstruct and interpret such interesting phenomena is connected with the scarcity of information supplied by ancient sources and by their perspective on the matter. The main sources on sumptuary legislation are far from contemporaneous: Aulus Gellius (second century AD) and Macrobius (fourth century AD). The information supplied by the two authors is generally similar; lists of sumptuary laws are included in both the second book of the Noctes Atticae and in the third book of the Saturnalia. These two lists have much in common; the laws are listed in chronological order and the quotations from the laws are sometimes the same. Macrobius knew Gellius’ list; talking about the dating of the Fannian law, he cites him explicitly,2 but his account does not depend exclusively on Gellius since there are enough differences to rule this out. Macrobius supplies information on laws (Orchia and Didia) and an edict (that of Antony) that are not mentioned by Gellius; but on the other hand he omits measures that are in Gellius, for example the senatus consultum enacted before the lex Fannia. Moreover, while Gellius often names the rogator of various laws, Macrobius dates each law by giving the number of years that separate it from its predecessor. They did not depend on the same source: while Gellius,3 at the beginning of the chapter on sumptuary laws, indicates as his main source the coniectanea of Ateius Capito (a Roman jurist of the early Empire), Macrobius refers to Sammonicus Severus, (an erudite antiquarian whose Libri Rerum Recondiatarum are dated at the end of the second century AD).4 It is beyond the scope of this book to examine their respective works in more detail, but it is worth stressing that in dealing with sumptuary laws their main aim was to show the decadence of customs and the failure and impotence of the legislation. The enactment of such laws is seen as motivated simply by an increase in luxury and therefore by the decline of moral standards. Our sources do not help us to see the phenomenon in its political and social 50

3. Sumptuary Laws dimension since their references to and interpretation of the legislation never stray from the moralistic condemnation of extravagance. Their point of view is limited; their main interest lies in demonstrating the decline of Roman morality due to extravagance and above all the failure of every sumptuary attempt to limit it. In their reconstruction, the laws have been prompted simply by the desire of the senatorial class to preserve and encourage a traditional way of life; meaning by traditional what they, writing respectively two and four centuries later, perceived as being traditional behaviour in the second century BC. The historical context of the promulgation of sumptuary laws is the period that followed the end of the Second Punic War. We need not concern ourselves here with an analysis of the impact of the victory on Roman economic and political life, but it must be said that sumptuary legislation was part of a series of initiatives taken by the Senate to deal with the considerable social and economic changes that the victory over Carthage had brought to pass. Now let us examine briefly the laws, their general characteristics, and the connections between the laws and political and social issues.5 The first two laws usually considered sumptuary measures are the law enacted in 217 by the tribune Metilius, who seems to have tried to regulate the textile industry, and the Oppian law, passed in 215, whose target was the luxuries of women (the possession of vehicles, gold, extravagant clothes and dresses of various colours). These were war measures, their interest lying in their being a sort of precedent to the enactment of sumptuary laws in a strict sense. That they were considered war measures is proved by the fact that the lex Oppia was abrogated in 195, following the victory over Carthage. From then on the majority of sumptuary laws dealt with luxurious banquets; the first lex de cenis, to borrow the expression from Macrobius,6 was the lex Orchia, enacted in 182 BC, whose main provision concerned the number of guests. Its importance is proved by the strong position taken by Cato against an attempt to abrogate it. It is worth stressing that the first law in matters of luxury on the table seems to focus not on the amount spent on extravagant delicacies but, perhaps exclusively, on the number of the guests. Shortly afterwards, in 161, another law was passed by the consul Gaius Fannius. It contained similar provisions on the number of guests but also dispositions regarding the maximum expenditure allowed and a list of forbidden delicacies. After an interval of less than twenty years another law, the lex Didia, extended the lex Fannia to the whole of Italy. Moreover, it imposed the fines specified by the lex Fannia not just on the hosts but also on the guests. A few years later, probably in 140, another law was passed to complement the previous measures. The content of the so-called Licinian law was not dissimilar to that of the Fannian but was more concerned with increasing controls on imported products. The laws reveal the interest of the Roman ruling class in intervening in 51

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury a particular field of private life: banquets and dinners. It was essentially the luxus mensae that became the object of Roman sumptuary legislation while other aspects of extravagance were untouched by legislative measures and left to the jurisdictions of the censors, as we saw in the previous chapter. Moreover, the ancient sources stress on at least three occasions that the Senate was the principal promoter of the enactment of sumptuary measures: the lex Orchia was enacted de senatus sententia;7 the lex Fannia was proposed by a consul8 and the lex Licinia was passed after a senatus consultum that strictly speaking did not have the value of a law. This, in my opinion, is a strong indication of how important the matter was to the ruling class, which usually expressed its ‘advice’ only in matters of great importance such as foreign policy. Sumptuary legislation was a matter of self-regulation by the senatorial class. What we need to understand are the reasons for this self-regulation. But before trying to answer this we need to complete our examination of the laws. In 115 an Aemilian law was enacted concerning the type of food consumed at banquets. The problem of extravagance of the table also attracted the attention of Sulla, who enacted a lex Cornelia sumptuaria, which limited the sum allowed for banquets and brought down the price of foodstuffs. It is worth noting that Sulla essentially targeted the economic consequences of extravagance. There followed a lex Antia, whose date is uncertain. Its importance lies in the fact that, besides limiting the outlay for dinners, it provided that no magistrate should dine out anywhere. Sumptuary laws were enacted also by the consuls of 55 BC, Pompeius and Crassus, by Caesar in 46, and by Augustus; all focused on limiting luxury in banquets. The above laws were part of the political programmes of strong personalities who dominated the political stage in the first century BC, and in this respect they differ from the earlier laws. The widespread acceptance of the moral condemnation of extravagance, and its cohesive force among different social groups, explain the persistence of sumptuary measures throughout the first century BC,9 and the interests of the dominant characters on the political scene in enacting them. The fight against luxury: social and political implications In order to understand the importance of sumptuary legislation, it is necessary to consider it in the context of a bigger picture: the overall policy of the Roman ruling class. Although the sources convey the idea that each law was enacted as a consequence of an increase in extravagance, or because of the failure of previous laws, it seems that their enactment was not the result of chance but rather one way among many for the ruling class to intervene in the private lives of citizens for political reasons. Sumptuary laws were part of a series of measures taken by the Roman senatorial class to defend its own power. The problem, as stated earlier, was born at the end of the Punic wars when new personal economic 52

3. Sumptuary Laws opportunities and wealth assumed worrying proportions.10 The problem was both socio-political and economic. The Roman senatorial class needed to defend and protect its wealth as the base of its own power and at the same time to face a new problem: the use of wealth for personal political reasons. Competition is the key word in understanding the issue. First of all, the senatorial class needed to put a brake on the expenditure of its own members in order to limit competition in both expenditure and the display of wealth and power. The lavish spending of one senator could have pushed the other members of the ruling class to do the same, putting their economic power at serious risk. Daube’s theory, nowadays well known, is that the aim of sumptuary laws was the ‘protection of the non-tipper’ which apparently restrained a man from ruining himself by an excess of generosity, but in reality served to free those who could not afford or did not want to be overgenerous from the social pressure to be so. So instead of running the risk of either being pointed out as ungenerous or, in the attempt to compete with others, collapsing economically, members of the ruling class preferred to enact laws forbidding extravagance, thus liberating them from the social obligation to spend.11 The purpose of the laws was then to protect the senatorial class from the danger of internal competition and at the same time to protect the composition of the highest property class. Other measures demonstrate the same concern with the composition of the ruling class and its patrimony; some are clearly concerned with the economic aspects of this and others more with the social. That is to say, the protection of patrimony for political reasons manifested itself also in determining the economic activities of the ruling class. This concern was the compelling force in the enactment of a law which determined the economic activity of the senatorial class: the Claudian plebiscite. But before continuing our examination we need to digress briefly and make a distinction between luxury and wealth. Keeping in mind that the idealisation of a past free from greed, wealth and luxury was constructed at the same time as the enactment of the sumptuary laws, one should not be surprised by the fact that from the third century the sources testify to a new desire for enrichment by the ruling class. To acquire wealth, or to increase one’s wealth, became praiseworthy and was included among traditional values. For instance in the laudatio funebris12 pronounced in 221 by Q. Caecilius Metellus in honour of his father, L. Caecilius Metellus (cos. 251, 247), the ability to create wealth is enumerated, perhaps for the first time, among more traditional political and social values. Livy, talking about P. Licinius Crassus (cos. 205), says ‘Nobilis idem ac dives erat’, where the word dives has a positive connotation. And how can we not mention Cato, whose praefatio of the De Agricultura is the most explicit expression of the new desire for enrichment of the senatorial class? The spirit of the period is embodied in the dictum of Cato, referred 53

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury to by Plutarch, that it was proper for an old woman to leave at her death a smaller patrimony than she had received, but that a praiseworthy man is he who has increased the patrimony left to him by his ancestors.13 This is the same Cato who railed against luxury and the decadence of his community. But the contradiction is only apparent: actually the battle was not against wealth; it was against luxury. It was not wealth in itself that was under scrutiny but its use: wealth properly used, to increase patrimony, must not jeopardise the social and political status quo. That said, the significance of a legislative act such as the Claudian plebiscite and its connection with the matter in hand must be understood. The Claudian Plebiscite, passed in 219 or 218 BC, forbade senators and their sons from engaging in maritime trade except for the produce of their own lands.14 The law can be understood only in relation to the new desire for enrichment by the senatorial class, and also to the concept of periculum connected with maritime trade. Cato himself is not against mercatura and describes the mercator as an energetic man (strenuus civis), but at the same time he warns against the dangers connected with maritime trade.15 Gabba interprets the plebiscite as an attempt to safeguard the patrimony of the senatorial class from the risks connected with maritime trade.16 In the light of what has just been said, the provisions of the lex Fannia and the lex Licinia that allowed the free consumption of local agricultural products seem less obscure: the lex Fannia forbade only imported wine and the lex Licinia granted indiscriminate and unlimited use of the products of the land. It is clear that the aim of the authorities was to prevent the use of those products imported by trade.17 Modern scholarship has amply demonstrated that, despite the law, senators were involved in lucrative activities and specifically in maritime trade; in fact the very existence of the law implies their involvement.18 Maritime trade, even if very lucrative, could, as already shown, have endangered the patrimony of the senatorial class and so contributed to the creation of political instability. In addition trade, bringing forth new and exotic products, was perceived as contributing to the creation of a new lifestyle that the ruling class could have felt the social pressure to imitate without having the economic capacity to do so. The need to maintain the composition of the highest class and to preserve its wealth seems to have been a major concern during the second century BC. It was the reason for the enactment of another legislative measure, the lex Voconia of 169 BC, which prevented women from inheriting from a member of the first property class.19 Several laws, targeting different aspects of life, were enacted around the same period with the clear intent of maintaining intact, and protecting from any threat, the property of the upper class. What remains unclear is what the senators were competing for. It is difficult to believe that the competition was just for prestige: they were ambitiosi, ambitious for offices. But, if this is the case, why did banquets become the main targets of sumptuary laws? It seems that this particular 54

3. Sumptuary Laws choice is not without political significance. It has already been stressed how in Rome the fight against luxury was directed towards manifestations of private wealth which were perceived as a total loss and which involved aspects of the private life of citizens. Manifestations of extravagance that involved the people, i.e. public banquets, gladiatorial performances, etc., were in effect not perceived as such. On the other hand, this principle does not explain why legislative action was focused almost exclusively on private banquets and mainly on food. The only way to explain this interest in banquets is by considering their role in the social and political life of Rome. We have already seen in Chapter 1 how extravagance in eating and drinking was considered the worst sign of moral decadence. But the moral condemnation of this form of extravagance did not limit its importance in Roman life, as is proved by the continual enactment of laws regulating it. A quick glance through history reveals how sumptuary laws targeting banquets are a rarity when compared with laws regulating clothes and that, whenever and wherever enacted, a strong link between banquets and politics is present. In Rome, banquets were semi-public events, a way of displaying wealth, an opportunity to create important relationships, and also the favourite arena for the competitive games of Roman senators; at banquets new wealth and power could be displayed together with generosity. The desire to display is the main reason behind the huge sums spent on banquets; Plutarch, describing the dinner parties of rich and powerful Romans, uses the significant words ‘procession and show’,20 as an occasion to be enjoyed as much as with the sense of sight as with all the other senses. The association of the Roman banquet with a performance is not just used by the Greek author but by others too and, as clearly shown by D’Arms,21 the language of viewing, of performance and of marvellous display dominated Roman discourse on, and descriptions of, sophisticated banquets. Every single aspect of the dinner party was designed to impress and aimed at the display of power, wealth and sophistication. The ingredients that transform a banquet into a performance are the decorations and architectural features of the dining spaces, the dining apparatus and the entertainment, as one would expect, but also, and I would say above all, the succession of foods and drinks thought and planned as a parade intended to satisfy the eyes as much as the mouths of the guests. The luxury of Roman banquets is not to be considered simply as a literary topos, a rhetorical exercise, but as a quite faithful mirror of reality. Archaeology has amply demonstrated the centrality, importance and wealth of dining spaces and their decoration, and the preciousness of dinner services, so that now it can truly be said that ‘we are better informed about the physical environment of dining in Rome than any other activity’.22 Unfortunately we must rely solely on our literary sources as far as food and drink are concerned, leaving us to speculate on what constituted luxurious items and what made a certain food a luxury. As today, it 55

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury is the rarity, difficulty of access and the consequent cost of a product that makes it a luxury; if we accept the idea of banquets planned as performances, in the same way as actors display their skill in a theatre, so in the triclinia the host by offering rare, exotic complex dishes, displays wealth and luxury as a symbol of power. However, at the same time and as a consequence, banquets worked as poles of attraction and means for increasing political influence and winning political support. This was the principal concern of the legislator when proposing sumptuary measures, together with the possibility that personal patrimony would be used to increase the number of personal clients. The close association of banquets with patronage and politics is, according to Dauster,23 the most reasonable explanation for such legislation. I strongly agree that this could partly explain the concern about numbers of guests, central to the early sumptuary laws. The detailed provisions of the lex Fannia that fixed numbers of guests, above all on certain days, and the necessity to extend it to all of Italy, testified by the enactment of a new law, reveal the great importance attached to the matter. On certain days, when there was a large influx of citizens into Rome, it was perceived as a threat to the balance of influence within the ruling class that someone could have used his economic power to attract people and buy them to his side. It is worth noting that other measures were taken in the same period with the same purpose, for example the Publician and Cincian laws, examined in the catalogue, that prohibited clients from giving expensive presents in the hope of favour and similarly prevented patrons from demanding expensive gifts. At first these laws may seem more sumptuary than electoral, but whatever title is given to them, it appears clear that they were used, if not enacted, to combat electoral bribery. Moreover, modern scholars have rightly seen a connection between sumptuary laws, in a strict sense, and the attempt to limit electoral corruption by the use of legislation.24 How can we ignore the close chronological connection, pointed out by Clemente,25 between the enactment of sumptuary laws and the appearance of laws which regulated the offence of ambitus? The first of a series of leges de ambitu, the lex Cornelia Baebia, is dated in 181, just one year after the enactment of the lex Orchia, and the second law de ambitu, the lex Cornelia Fulvia, was passed just two years after the enactment of the lex Fannia. The offence de ambitu refers to obtaining electoral support by offering or promising gifts and favours. During the first century BC laws against electoral bribery were brought in with increasing frequency and severity: in 81 by Sulla; in 67 a lex Acinia-Calpurnia was passed; in 63 by Cicero; in 52 by Pompey who introduced exile for life for those condemned for ambitus. Having said that, it is plausible to conclude that, although the offence de ambitu was being tackled by the enactment of legislative measures of increasing severity, the high number of laws promulgated exposes, as in the case of sumptuary legislation, the lack of impact of each individual law. What 56

3. Sumptuary Laws concerns us most is not the efficacy or otherwise of the laws but the fact that elector bribery was perceived to have become enough of a problem that legislation was required to curb it. The laws can be seen as a result of strong competition for office and they demonstrate the same concern as expressed in sumptuary measures: the use of personal wealth in the political field for assuring votes and support. Moreover, we cannot ignore the fact that banquets were used to solicit electoral support, as evidenced by Cicero, who in Pro Murena defends the accused from the charge of frequenting banquets in order to help his candidature.26 But Cicero is also aware of the importance of giving banquets as a means of acquiring electoral support, and in De Republica, ten years after the trial of Murena, he inveighs against this practice, and against those who won public benevolence through banquets.27 We might conclude by saying that sumptuary legislation targeted banquets in an attempt to regulate an aspect of private life loaded with social and political importance, so as to avoid the morally accepted display of munificence, normal in the relationship between peers and in the patronclient relationship in the spirit of liberalitas and benignitas, becoming a threat with serious political and social consequences. Dauster, in his most recent article on sumptuary laws, demonstrates how legislators aimed to maintain control of the highest political offices through such legislation and supervision of the subsequent creation or expansion of clientele. The laws, according to his reading, did not target the elite ‘who lived on the produce and income of their estates, actually they favoured the landed elite with access to a large and varied network of traditional friends and clients’. The laws’ main aim was to restrict the buying power of those with money and regulate any increase in networks of friends and clients. He concludes his article: ‘the laws were a defense of the elite political hegemony against unmediated encroachment by outsiders’.28 I detect some weaknesses in this theory: first of all, the very existence itself of an elite whose wealth was based only on land and whose consumption was based only on the products of its estates is not historically convincing, above all for the second century after the victories over Carthage when a huge amount of wealth poured into Rome. Moreover, in the light of what was said before, I wonder if local products from one’s own estate would have been perceived as exotic and luxurious enough and therefore worth offering by a member of the elite to his guests. If we accept the centrality of banquets and their social and political significance within Roman society, we cannot believe that the very top families would not have been active players in this competitive game by offering the most exotic products and expensive meals. It is appealing to interpret sumptuary laws as a way of controlling the system of patronage, and without doubt the interest of the legislators in the number of guests allowed in private banquets reveals concern about personal influence over friends and clients. But what I hope to 57

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury demonstrate is that we cannot limit ourselves to a single reading and interpretation of such a complex phenomenon, and that one interpretation does not necessarily exclude another. Sumptuary laws and their provisions can also be examined from another point of view that does not seem to have been considered in the context of the attacks on luxus mensae. It has been said that the strict regulation of the number of guests reveals mainly a political concern, but it can also be seen as a manifestation of a general Roman attitude of suspicion towards any form of non-religious gathering. Groupings of many kinds, called collegia or corpora, were known in Rome.29 Under these names one can find associations whose activities and roles varied hugely, from religious to convivial and from political to commercial. The nature and importance of these clubs attracted the interest of the State from an early stage; the first attempt by the State to regulate associations of private citizens goes back to the Twelve Tables, which guaranteed freedom of association for such bodies as long as their governing rules did not contain dispositions in opposition to the interests of the State, but banned nocturnal gatherings.30 But it was during the last century of the Republic that clubs, and the political importance they had begun to assume, necessitated the strong intervention of the State. Because of their organisation and strength in numbers, clubs were used as a means of propaganda and electoral corruption by rich politicians who could buy their favours. In 64 BC they were abolished, but later re-instituted by Publius Clodius in 58.31 It is beyond the scope of this book to examine in detail the legislation concerning collegia. But what is interesting is that in Rome gatherings of people were considered a danger to the State, and that this attitude was present throughout Roman history and not just in the turbulent last century of the Republic. Roman policy towards social clubs in the provinces as well as in the city is clarified by the exchange of letters between Pliny, governor in Bithynia, and Trajan. To Pliny’s query about the possibility, following a huge fire which destroyed part of the city, of constituting a guild of firemen of not more than 150 members,32 Trajan’s answer is significant: ‘We must remember that these sort of societies have greatly troubled the peace of your province in general and of those cities in particular. Whatever label we give them, and whatever our object in giving it, men who are linked together for a common end will become a political organisation before long.’33 The substance is clear: every gathering of people sooner or later became politically active and therefore dangerous. A few questions arise: could this also be applied to the people who gathered together as guests at a banquet? Can we interpret Roman sumptuary restrictions as another way of preventing people from coming together because it was felt to be intrinsically dangerous? It seems that the widespread dislike of the idea of clubs and associations in Roman society could have exercised some influence in limiting the number of guests at banquets. This possible interpretation of the sumptuary 58

3. Sumptuary Laws phenomenon deserves a deeper examination and could be a subject for further research. Whatever view is taken of this matter, I strongly believe that a compound of several reasons lies behind sumptuary legislation. The two concerns so far examined – economic and political – are different sides of the same coin. The senatorial class, in promoting the enactment of sumptuary measures, found itself having to face the dreadful possibility of change in order to protect its own power. The intense competition among members of the ruling class was becoming a danger in different ways: it was a threat to the patrimonies of those members of the class who, in spite of modest resources, nevertheless felt the social pressure to spend at the same level as their peers; moreover, the competition was for political power, and wealth became an instrument to obtain ever greater political influence. By limiting opportunities to compete, the senatorial class hoped to obtain a double benefit: on the one hand it sought to protect the patrimonies from economic collapse; on the other hand it hoped to restrict the opportunities for using personal wealth to create groups of clients that could upset the balance of power within the ruling class. It has already been stressed that the senatorial class was the promoter of such legislation, but it is worth remembering that it was the Populus Romanus gathered together in the forum that was the only political body with the power to legislate, as proved by Millar.34 It would therefore be a mistake to claim that the Senate passed sumptuary legislation since the Senate, strictly speaking, never had the power to legislate. What is the significance of this? The moral condemnation of luxury that surrounded the enactment of sumptuary measures is the final piece of this intricate mosaic. As demonstrated in the first chapter, what we understand as strictly moralistic matters were not perceived by the Romans as being different from political and social matters. Politics is morality. The central role played by the ideology of the mos maiorum in the ruling class’s selfdefinition and its force for cohesion should not be underestimated. As demonstrated by Edwards,35 the right of the nobility to guide and lead was the result of its adherence and loyalty to the mos maiorum. Morality defines the Roman elite in its own perception of itself but also in the eyes of the Roman people who have the last word on who is worthy of guiding the State. Luxuria, as shown above, was considered the most significant sign of a lack of virtue so, by promoting sumptuary legislation at a time when new and unheard of wealth was pouring into Rome and when its use was becoming a moral issue, the ruling class was reaffirming its loyalty to those moral precepts of self-restraint that defined the identity of a true Roman, and at the same time distancing itself from an inappropriate use of personal wealth. To propose laws to restrict luxury in one of its more apparent manifestations was a way to convince the Populus Romanus by means of legislation of the morality of its leaders or of those who aspired to be such. Sumptuary legislation was a statement by the ruling 59

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury class to the people concerning its stand against luxury and its loyalty to tradition. A final aspect that needs to be taken into consideration is the opposition to sumptuary measures. We may deduce the existence of strong opposition from the fact that there were several attempts to abrogate the laws. Leaving aside the Oppian law, whose abrogation must be connected with the end of the war, we know that attempts were made to abrogate the Orchian law, which was defended by Cato, the Fannian law and the Licinian law. The last was abrogated in about 97 BC by the tribune M. Duronius Duronius. 36 According to Valerius Maximus, as a consequence of this Duronius was dismissed from the Senate by the censors M. Antonius and L. Valerius Flaccus.37 However, the fact that Duronius was expelled but the law not re-enacted seems to prove that the censors’ action was a personal attack against Duronius himself and not against his abrogation of the law.38 There was opposition to sumptuary legislation in the Senate but unfortunately we know nothing about those who opposed it. The only thing that can be said without hesitation is that opposition could not have been directed against the ideological framework that lay behind the enactment of the laws; it was untouchable because of its appeal to the mos maiorum which was universally respected. No one would have raised his voice against the moral reasons put forward to justify the enactment of sumptuary measures, but only to argue for more freedom in the use of personal wealth. The weakness of the opposition, which was in favour not only of greater freedom, but also of all those economic activities which could bring wealth to wider groups within the population, lay in the fact that it could not counter the ideology behind the enactment of sumptuary measures. The same use of ideology is to be found in Augustus’ appeal to the mos maiorum in the enactment of the lex Iulia et Papia Poppaea. Aspects of the laws enacted by Augustus on marriage can be related to the sumptuary discourse. Lex Iulia et Papia Poppaea Augustus enacted a marriage law, the lex Iulia de maritandibus ordinibus, in 18 BC,39 followed by another law, the lex Papia Poppaea, enacted in AD 9 during the consulship of M. Papius Mutilus and Q. Poppaeus Secundus. It is extremely difficult to distinguish between the two laws; the only distinction that scholars have proposed is that the first encouraged marriage and the second the bearing of children. But even this distinction is not so sharp, since the lex Iulia itself promoted parenthood and the lex Papia Poppaea was based on the lex Iulia, from which it differed in only minor detail. Therefore it is considered legitimate to refer to the two different measures as one, the lex Iulia et Papia.40 It is in the time allowed to a widow or a divorcee to remarry that the main difference lies 60

3. Sumptuary Laws between the lex Iulia and the lex Papia Poppaea.41 The former allowed widows a term of one year from the death of a husband, and divorced women a term of six months, within which periods they were not subject to the penalties of the lex. The lex Papia Poppaea extended these periods to two years and a year and six months respectively.42 Before trying to understand what the main purpose of the law was, we need to examine briefly its main provisions.43 The law dealt first of all with marriage: it forbade the marriage of members of the senatorial order with freedmen, freedwomen, women whose fathers or mothers had followed an ars ludicra, and prostitutes.44 Senators and all other freeborn persons were forbidden to marry prostitutes, pimps and people condemned for adultery.45 Freedmen and freedwomen were allowed to marry anyone but a member of the senatorial class. People who disobeyed the law were liable to its penalties; in fact they were considered caelibes (celibate) even if the marriage was valid under the ius civile. The law is one of the few examples of a lex imperfecta; it set penalties and rewards but did not invalidate the acts it forbade.46 In order to promote marriage, various penalties were imposed on those who lived in a state of celibacy (caelibatus) after a certain age, the most important of which concerned the law of succession. The law of succession did not change but it was fixed that unmarried people, or people whose marriage did not follow the law’s dictates, could not receive a hereditas or a legacy (legatum) unless they were linked by blood relationship within the sixth degree with the testator.47 If a man was unmarried at the time of the testator’s death, and was not otherwise disqualified, he had one hundred days to marry and be able to inherit.48 Widows and divorcees had two years or eighteen months to remarry respectively. Men younger than twenty-five or older than sixty, and women younger than twenty or older than fifty, were not included within certain penalties of the law.49 Under the law, a husband or a wife could inherit property from a deceased partner only if they were related within the sixth degree or if they had a child together who was still alive or had lost a child above the age of puberty, or two children above the age of three, or three after their name date.50 In the absence of these qualifications each spouse could take just a tenth of the other’s property, plus another tenth for each child they had from different relationships.51 By the law, orbi (the childless) could take only one half of a hereditas or legatum that was left to them.52 It seems that an attempt had been made to evade this part of the lex by adoptions, which a SC Neronianum declared to be ineffectual for the purpose of relieving a person from the penalties of the law.53 The testamentary provisions affected only rich people. According to the Gnomon of the Idios Logos,54 the law concerned itself exclusively with people possessing a patrimony of over 100,000 sesterces for men and 50,000 for women. No other source records the same data.55 The rewards and penalties were not exclusively connected with inheritance. 61

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury Political candidates who had several children were preferred to those who had fewer. One year for each child was removed from the minimum age required for political office.56 A consul with a wife and children had precedence in assuming the fasces.57 Freedmen who had two children ‘in potestate’ were freed ‘operarum obligatione’58 and freedwomen who had four children were released from the tutela of their patrons.59 Moreover, those who had three children enjoyed all the privileges fixed by the law (ius trium liberorum). The most important of the privileges was, for women, the freedom from tutela, and for men and women, the full capacitas.60 Moreover the restriction of the lex Voconia was abolished for mothers of three children.61 The law dealt with aspects of private life that had never before been the object of legislation, such as the patria potestas, the freedom to make bequests and to inherit in the relationship between patronus and freedman. Moreover, it established who could marry whom. The law seems to be in clear contrast with tradition; the ambiguity of the relationship between the law and tradition is clear. What seems above all a contradiction62 is that the law attempted to restore family life and values, but in doing so weakened the roots of patria potestas on which family life was based. The power of the pater familias over all members of his family and his property was considered untouchable. The Twelve Tables had stated that ‘As he has disposed by will concerning his familia or goods, or guardianship, so is there to be a source of rights’,63 granting full rights over his own property to the pater familias. Augustus’ legislation limited this power. He enforced family values, promoting marriage and procreation, but at the same time he weakened the authority and the power of the pater familias, whose decisions concerning his own property were limited by regulation. In addition, the law allowed children to go against the father’s authority, appealing to the magistrate,64 in the event that he did not allow them to marry. Briefly, Augustus interfered in spheres previously always left to the freedom of the individual. We can perceive the same interference in other aspects of the emperor’s policy, such as the laws on manumission: the lex Fufia Caninia of 2 BC and the lex Aelia Sentia of AD 4 also weakened patria potestas by limiting the master’s freedom of manumission. The lex Iulia de Adulteriis is another clear example of a law which interferes in spheres previously left to the family. The simple fact that the State interfered in relations that before had always been private, those between fathers and sons, husband and wives, masters and slaves, patroni and freed men, is worth underlining. It is these aspects of interference in the use of private wealth that I believe deserve deeper examination. Therefore, in trying to understand the motivations and targets of Augustan marriage legislation, though aware that there are other aspects to consider, we shall take into consideration only those aspects connected with the use of personal wealth. During the Republic there is no evidence for such interference and 62

3. Sumptuary Laws intrusion in testamentary practice, but testamentary legislation had been known. Augustus himself claimed to have restored many practices of the past and to have created new ones for posterity. In his Res Gestae he states, ‘By new laws passed with my sponsorship, I restored many traditions of the ancestors, which were falling into disuse in our age, and myself I handed on precedents of many things to be imitated in later generations.’65 Suetonius confirms, ‘He revised existing laws and enacted some new ones, for example, on extravagance, on adultery and chastity, on bribery, and on the encouragement of marriage among the various classes of citizens’,66 and the existence of previous measures of the same kind is confirmed by Cassio Dio.67 On a few occasions Augustus read in front of the Senate – ‘to convince them that he was not the first to give attention to such matters, but that they had aroused the interest even of their forefathers’68 – a speech delivered by Metellus Macedonicus, censor in 131, who urged all citizens to get married ‘liberorum creandorum causa’.69 Clearly Cicero, in his laws for an ideal state,70 attributed to the censors among their most important duties that of forbidding celibacy and of inquiring into citizens’ conduct in marrying and of begetting children.71 Cicero in this passage took note of an already existent situation; interventions of censors in this field are recorded by the sources. Gellius reports that ‘Carvilius Ruga (cos. 240) dearly loved the wife whom he divorced, and held her in strong affection because of her character, but that above his devotion and his love he set his regard for the oath72 which the censors had compelled him to take, that he would marry a wife for the purpose of begetting children.’73 According to Plutarch, the censors M. Furius Camillus and M. Postumius were the first, in 403 BC, to impose a tax on men who reached old age without having married.74 The examples of measures taken against celibacy, quoted by sources for the early Republic, are numerous. Dionysius of Halicarnassus speaks of an ancient law that ‘not only did oblige all of the proper age to marry, but they were forced also to rear all their children’.75 There was thus a long tradition of Roman customs that compelled citizens to marry, and Augustus wanted to create an ideological link between this and his legislation. But, as underlined by Brunt,76 Augustan legislation differs considerably from all previous measures in its system of penalties and rewards. It was this system that dissatisfied the propertied class, at whom, as we shall see, the law was mainly directed. The discontent provoked a demonstration of opposition of the equites against the lex Iulia in AD 9. As a consequence of the demonstration Augustus found himself almost forced to modify the content of the law, increasing the rewards.77 As a result a new law was enacted, the lex Papia Poppaea, which, as already said, did not differ much from the previous one. What is extremely interesting to note is the strong reaction to the law – the demonstration was the only example of its kind throughout Augustus’ reign – which suggests 63

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury that celibacy and childlessness must have been common among rich Romans. Before we examine celibacy in Roman society, we need to explain why the law, which officially targeted the whole population, was in fact directed at only the rich ruling class, people who sought magistracies, and at freed-men and freed-women and their patroni. Horace78 and Dio79 transmit the idea that Augustus was concerned with increasing the size of the whole population and the number of all citizens. Moreover the following words of Propertius seem to imply that the main aim of the law was to increase the size of the population in order to provide the State with soldiers. Is it for me to supply sons for our country’s triumphs? There’ll be no soldiers from my line.80 But the provisions of the law, its rewards and penalties concerning testaments, affected only rich citizens:81 ‘Vast rewards and corresponding penalties encourage the propertied to rear children, but for the poor, a generous princeps is the sole reason for bringing them up’,82 according to Pliny. The penalties and rewards did not have any effect on ordinary people, the only exception being that which banned bachelors from certain theatrical shows and assigned them separate seats. If Augustus’ measures were designed to increase the population for military reasons, it appears strange that he did not target the peasantry from whom the legions were recruited.83 The military theme, the official motivation put forward, was mainly ideological. Beyond it there must have been other hidden reasons. The first observation that needs to be made is that, among the huge number of provisions of the law, the ones directed at the practices of inheritance were central. And in order to understand their centrality and importance, we need to relate them to testamentary practice in the late Republic.84 According to Sir Henry Maine, the Romans had ‘a singular horror of intestacy’,85 whereas according to Daube,86 leaving a testament was a practice confined to nobles and rich people, while the majority of Roman citizens did not do it. Daube’s theory has been undermined by Crook, quoting a few examples of less well off people who did leave a will.87 Leaving aside this problematic matter, it is reasonable to say that the lack of evidence and the small number of wills that survive do not allow us to know exactly what proportion of Romans made wills and why some people made wills and others did not. What we do know is that Romans preferred to die testate and included in their wills not only relatives but also friends.88 From the late Republic it had become a social duty to leave part of an inheritance to friends and it was considered shameful not to be named among the heirs of a friend. For example, Cicero emphasises as a matter of pride how, though he was in exile, he was not excluded 64

3. Sumptuary Laws from any will of any of his friends.89 In fact it seems that a series of obligations had to be respected in making a will: first towards the family and secondly towards anyone else linked to the testator by ties of officium. In a testament the friends were usually named together in the third and second grade; they would have inherited in the case of the death of a first and second grade relative. Caesar named as heirs of the second grade some of his murderers90 and Augustus ‘in the third grade mentioned many of his relatives and friends’.91 Above all clients had to remember their patroni in their testaments. Valerius Maximus remembers, much to his indignation, examples of people who did not leave part of their wealth to their patroni.92 Legacies became a source of income;93 inheritances brought Cicero much of his wealth.94 Holders of magistracies, advocates and in general men of power, in Rome as in the provinces, benefited from the wills left by clients and friends. It was a social duty to benefit with legacies all those to whom one was in debt. In the light of what has just been said, it becomes less difficult to understand the need for Romans to avoid dying intestate; the will was a way to pay back many different kinds of obligation. It is extremely difficult to quantify to what extent rich Romans left sums to friends and to understand why. But the theme of considerable wealth being left to friends instead of to members of the family is recurrent in the sources. Cicero, defending himself from the accusation of not having received any inheritance from friends, admitted that he had received twenty million sesterces and accused Antony, as a matter of dishonour, of having received inheritances that should have gone to the relatives of the testators.95 This passage not only demonstrates how common it must have been to nominate friends among one’s heirs but also that it was a matter of pride to inherit from outsiders and of shame to be excluded from friends’ wills. Despite that, Cicero strongly claims that the direct heirs had the first right to inheritance and that to deprive them of it was unforgivable. I do not think it stretches the meaning of the passage to say that it proves the existence of competition between members of the upper class also in matters of inheritance. And it could be claimed that such competition was not just for the economic benefit of receiving the revenues that a designated heir inevitably receives, but a competition for power and fame. Being named as an heir in friends’ or in clients’ testaments is a clear and open demonstration of the social importance and power of the person. The social and economic importance of testaments is also demonstrated by the fact that, despite his own legislation, Augustus himself was often designated heir in friends’ testaments. Suetonius reports that the Emperor received the huge amount of fourteen hundred million sesterces during the last twenty years of his reign.96 Although the sum reported is probably too large,97 this passage proves how common a practice it was among Romans to leave legacies to friends. The horror of dying intestate 65

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury can be understood in the light of what has been said so far; it arises from the imperative to express obligation. Was Augustus against that? The answer is no, because, as Suetonius says, ‘he was highly sensitive in weighing the death-bed utterances of his friends’,98 but ‘whenever legacies or shares in inheritances were left him by men of any station who had offspring, he either turned them over to the children at once, or if the latter were in their minority, paid the money back with interest on the day when they assumed the gown of manhood or married’.99 There is no doubt that Augustus’ legislation must have limited the possibilities of making economic profits from ties of friendship, above all for caelibes and orbi. What he did was to cut bachelors out of the system of inheritance. In doing so, his targets were those who, according to the Roman moralists, were the cause of moral decline. In Augustus’ legislation the role played by moralistic issues cannot be denied. It is not a coincidence that he also enacted laws against adultery whose motivations were clearly moral. Augustus wanted to put a brake on the practice, considered immoral, of leaving part of the patrimony to extranei, and he did it by promoting marriage as a vehicle for the transmission of property.100 Augustus’ main aim was to stabilise the transmission of property and consequently of status, enforcing the transmission inside the family. The law established that people not married could not receive a bequest unless they were linked by a blood relationship within the sixth degree with the testator. Relatives could inherit despite their marital or parental state. So the law’s aim was to ensure the family as direct heir, and in doing so it reflected a common feeling toward this matter. The same purpose seems to lie behind the vicesima hereditatum, a tax of 5% imposed by Augustus on inheritance. Close members of the family were excluded from the payment of this tax, and Pliny clearly states that such a tax was intolerable for members of the family since the family has the first and only right of inheritance.101 The right of the family to inherit is absolute; the right of a son is taken for granted ‘the bond of procreation, the most binding between human beings, overbore a father’s wishes and a great man’s authority at the same time’.102 In this passage of his panegyric, Pliny made a fundamental distinction between domestici and extranei. The State cannot have any claim on the property inherited within the family, only on that inherited by extranei. The recognition of the rights of the family in the matters of wills is not exceptional at all; but as Wallace-Hadrill rightly underlines, ‘what most societies take for granted, the Romans regarded as a duty’.103 The exceptionality lies in the fact that what most societies generally accepted as custom, in Rome was fixed in the form of law. It is necessary to promulgate laws to establish and enforce a certain custom when the tendency is for people to do differently. Augustus’ law finds its explanation in the fact that well-off Romans tended to nominate as heirs people outside the family. The practice was so widespread that 66

3. Sumptuary Laws it caused the development of a special category of legacy-hunters, the captatores. The existence in Latin of a word for legacy-hunters clearly demonstrates that their activity was established and part of everyday Roman life. The captatores were relegated to the margins, hated and considered one of the main causes of society’s moral decline, for two main reasons.104 First of all, they undermined the feelings of friendship and gratitude that pushed people to leave bequests outside the family.105 Secondly, because as a result of their activity they obtained huge amounts of property from nonrelatives, they were considered social adventurers. Operating in a society in which competitive expenditure determined the social status of the single person, they used this competition to their advantage. But because in the same society and at the same time, the possibilities of making money were small, the testators felt trapped between the need to be ostentatious and their financial situation. It seems that this struggle between the social pressure of ostentatious expenditure and economic concerns was a common feeling among members of the elite in other aspects of social life. The social need to avoid being considered ungrateful or lacking in friends and clients pushed rich people to leave property outside the family. To use a testament to express gratitude was a traditional custom in Rome, but with the increase in wealth this traditional exchange of service was transformed more and more into a series of transactions of patrimony and wealth.106 Moreover I would claim that another factor, less rational but no less strong, played an extremely important role. Rich Romans wanted to show off their gratitude but also their generosity, and in doing so competed against each other. Competition, as we have seen, was an essential part of the relationship between members of the Roman ruling class; they consciously competed in political matters but probably less rationally in private matters. In this context generosity also became a battlefield; generosity that manifested itself in the leaving of wealth to outsiders no matter what the loss would be for members of the family. But as a consequence the transmission of wealth from one generation to another was interrupted. Very often even people with direct heirs left huge portions of their property to extranei.107 The first attempt to limit this practice was made in 169 BC with the enactment of the lex Furia testamentaria, a law which restricted the size of legacies allowed to be left to distant relatives and non-family members to the small sum of one thousand asses. But a way to evade the laws was found by giving each friend several bequests each worth less than the sum imposed by the law.108 In 40 BC it was established by the lex Falcidia that the principal heir should inherit at least one quarter of the total patrimony.109 We cannot concern ourselves with a detailed examination of these and other measures of this kind, but it is interesting and useful to look at why people left part of their patrimony to legacy-hunters or even to their friends. The childless and unmarried were those most tempted 67

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury to designate extranei in their wills, and of course they were the first and easy ‘prey’ of the captatores. But it was a kind of exchange of services; the captatores courted the rich man by offering services in order to obtain his favour but, on the other hand, their services helped him to acquire wealth and power. According to Hopkins, one of the consequences of this kind of relationship was that upper-class Romans remained unmarried and childless in order to attract legacy-hunters.110 I doubt that the desire to have a court of ‘courtesans’ could have played such a strong role in determining life-style, but without any doubt caelibes and orbi were quite common among rich Romans, as proved by sources which strongly condemned them111 and also by the provisions of the lex Iulia et Papia Poppaea that dealt with legacies outside the family, implying that it was a common practice that needed regulation. What Augustus did was to exclude the childless from the process of inheritance, so they could no longer enjoy the benefits of the services offered to their patroni. Moreover, by limiting the possibility of leaving property to outsiders, Augustus put a brake on competition among rich Romans. In this aspect and in the way in which the laws interfered in the use of personal wealth, such legislation has a point in common with sumptuary measures. Finally, Augustan legislation shared with sumptuary laws the same moral ideology and background; they were presented as regulations whose target was the moral conduct of citizens in private life and whose legitimacy lay in their moral and ideological context. What was the main aim of the law? The sources clearly state that Augustus wanted to encourage reproduction with his legislation, but his motives may have been less straightforward. The first observation that needs to be made is that it is very unlikely that Augustus expected to affect the birth rate by his legislation, for the simple reason that it did not target the majority of the population. We have seen that the principal effect of the law was on the practice of inheritance; it was the effect of reproduction on the transmission of property among the upper classes that concerned Augustus most. With this legislation he wanted to target those who, without having a family of their own, were undermining the traditional testamentary practice for monetary gain. Augustus’ main aim was to assure a stable transmission of property and, as a consequence, of political status. That is not to say that other reasons did not play an important part too; for example, the significance of the ideological context of the laws cannot be undervalued.112 The lex Iulia de maritandibus ordinibus and the lex Papia Poppaea were enacted together with the lex Iulia de adulteriis, which dealt with relationships outside marriage. The primary aim of this last law was a moral one, but, as Wallace-Hadrill notes, adultery also had an effect on the transmission of property, since the legitimacy of children is a fundamental matter in inheritance and the passage of status. 68

3. Sumptuary Laws With Augustus’ legislation, for the first time, the State itself became an active subject in the inheritance process. Those inheritances whose heirs were not capaces, according to the law, fell to the aerarium, the public treasury. For this reason Tacitus113 claimed that financial reasons lay behind the enactment of these measures; sometimes the monies collected were used to help the indigent aristocracy, as in the case of Hortensius’ grandson, Hortalus, who under Tiberius benefited to the sum of 200,000 sesterces for each of his sons.114 Tacitus is very critical of the law. He says: It was next proposed to relax the Papian-Poppaean law, which Augustus in his old age had passed subsequently to the Julian statutes, for yet further enforcing the penalties on celibacy and for enriching the exchequer. And yet, marriages and the rearing of children did not become more frequent, so powerful were the attractions of a childless state. Meanwhile there was an increase in the number of persons imperilled, for every household was undermined by the insinuations of informers; and now the country suffered from its laws, as it had hitherto suffered from its vices. Despite the fact that the law did not have the intended effects,115 it was not abrogated because its importance lay more in its ideological significance than in its actual consequences. Augustus’ laws were not strictly speaking sumptuary laws. But, as we have seen, they have in common with sumptuary measures interference in the disposal of personal wealth; they were also a means to control competition. In addition, the use of ideological language to hide, consciously or not, other less noble reasons, and their survival despite their lack of practical effect, together make Augustus’ laws fit into a sumptuary discourse. Conclusion Since the end of the Second Punic War a series of laws was enacted in Rome in order to limit extravagance and above all the most despised form of luxury: the luxus mensae. We have seen that the two laws dated before that time, the lex Metilia and the lex Oppia, are both to be considered war measures. The majority of Roman sumptuary laws were leges cibariae whose target was luxus mensae. It is legitimate to say that Roman sumptuary legislation ignored almost all other extravagant aspects of Roman life. Their detailed provisions dealing with banquets and the kind of food, the maximum expenditure and the number of guests allowed surprise us and raise questions about their targets and motivation. Macrobius says, introducing sumptuary laws: 69

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury to try to make a list of the many means ingeniously planned or industriously prepared to satisfy the gluttony of the men of those earlier days would be boring, but such practices undoubtedly account for the numerous laws brought before the People to regulate dinners and their cost. And by way of a beginning it was ordered that luncheons and dinners be eaten with open doors, to the end that observation by one’s fellow citizens might, as evidence, set bounds to extravagance.116 Can we trust him and other ancient writers’ views when they present these laws as motivated by moral concerns? Our examination of the laws and of their content has demonstrated that, without a shadow of doubt, moral concerns were far from being the only compelling forces in the enactment of these measures. Actually it seems that every attempt to detect a single cause to explain a phenomenon so complex as sumptuary regulation, whether it be moral, economic or social, is limited and therefore doomed. In this chapter we have shown how sumptuary legislation must be read and interpreted in connection with other measures, and how it must be inserted into the larger picture of the policy of the Roman ruling class. We have seen that only a combination of reasons can explain such legislation: economic, in the desire to protect the patrimonies of the ruling class; and political, in the attempt to prevent the use of personal wealth for political purposes. The danger connected with this view is that we underestimate the significance of the moral discourse; the extremely important role played by it as an unshakable and untouchable ideology in which the ruling class reflected and identified itself cannot be stressed enough. By enacting laws whose purpose was to limit the worst form of immorality – luxury – the Roman ruling class, especially the senatorial class, intended to manifest their loyalty to the mos maiorum and thus reinforce their legitimacy to rule in the eyes of those who held the power of choosing by election. Sumptuary laws are the weapons of self-defence used by the Roman ruling class to protect the base of its own power. From what or whom? The simplest answer is from the strong competition that existed between the members of the ruling class in every aspect of life and that was putting at risk their patrimonies and their class stability. Moreover new economic conditions were proving detrimental from a political point of view. The use of personal wealth to foster political and electoral support may explain the laws’ continual interest in banquets, whose political use has been stressed. In this chapter the idea has been put forward that the laws’ persistent targeting of banquets may be explained by the common dislike in Rome for groups, clubs and in general any meeting of people who came together for whatever reason. This idea, which is still only a hypothesis, and 70

3. Sumptuary Laws which deserves further research, is not in conflict with what has been said so far; on the contrary it seems to prove the political significance of sumptuary legislation. Coitiones were feared because of their potential political use, and in the same way banquets were limited in number to avoid a political threat. In the last section of this chapter we have looked briefly at Augustan marriage legislation, which appeared to be worthy of examination here because of his concern with the transmission of property. After discussing the various dispositions of the laws, we concluded that Augustus aimed to limit what was considered the immoral practice of leaving part of one’s patrimony outside the family, by promoting marriage as a vehicle for the transmission of property. We have seen why Romans tended to leave part of their property to extranei, and it is worth repeating that this practice created strong competition between members of the ruling class. Concern with transmission of property and the attempt to limit competition are aspects that the Augustan legislation shared with sumptuary legislation. To conclude, we may say that sumptuary legislation, explained by the ancients as determined by the need to combat immorality and to restore ancient customs, is in reality a more complex phenomenon. It can be explained by the economic concern to protect patrimonies from wasteful competition, by the need to avoid competition in the use of personal wealth to acquire political power and electoral support, and by the desire to reaffirm the moral superiority of the ruling class and therefore its right to rule. These explanations may seem attractive and compelling. But their apparent validity can be most easily tested against the background of a comparative study of sumptuary legislation in other times and places. In the next chapter we shall turn our attention away from Rome and the ancient world, to examine the phenomenon of sumptuary restraint in a number of other historical contexts.

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4

Sumptuary Legislation in Comparative Perspective The enactment of laws targeting conspicuous consumption by private citizens has been a widespread phenomenon across the world. The right of the government to interfere in the private life of citizens, controlling the use of their own wealth, modern taxation apart, might appear to us to be unacceptable, but it was not only tolerated, it was even considered the proper duty of government in earlier periods. It is tempting to believe that this ‘interference and acceptance’ was a feature of antiquity or the ‘dark ages’ of our history. In reality during the Early Middle Ages the enactment of sumptuary laws was irregular and rare; from the early ninth century there is evidence of attempts to regulate only dress, and in the eleventh century to impose regulations in the colour of clothes on certain strata of society. However, from the end of the twelfth century sumptuary legislation appeared regularly in European statute law; the first example appeared in Italy (Genoa 1157) followed by a law in France (1188). During the thirteenth century, sumptuary laws became more frequent as expressions of both Church and State. Thereafter the majority of the laws were expressions of the government, even though, as we shall see for Italy, the influence of the Church was always very strong. By the middle of the fourteenth century, sumptuary legislation was quite common in Europe, becoming widespread during the following century. Figure 1 offers an overview of the quantity of such laws known to have been enacted in the main European states from the twelfth to the eighteenth century.1

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Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury Sumptuary legislation became a common feature in pre-modern times and it can be found in many European nations with very different political systems. As feudalism declined, economic standards increased, the merchant class grew ever larger and class struggles grew ever more intense, so sumptuary laws appeared with greater frequency and sophistication. This explains the continuous and early presence of sumptuary measures in Italian city-states, which were more developed from an economic and social point of view than other European states. The connection between such changes in socio-political and economic conditions and the enactment of sumptuary measures is to be found also in the Far East (China and Japan). In Japan, for instance, sumptuary laws became commonplace with the end of local feudalism and the creation of a centralised system under the Tokugawa family and with the consequent improvement of the economy. Between the early seventeenth century and the end of the eighteenth, sumptuary laws regulating citizens’ conspicuous consumption disappeared in both West and East.2 Given that sumptuary legislation is such a widespread phenomenon, the first issue to be faced here is how to limit the scope of our research by making a choice from among the many sumptuary regimes that could be examined. Among the European examples, the instances of sumptuary legislation in England and Italy appear to offer the greatest possibilities for discussion and comparison. English legislation has attracted our attention because, although it has the shortest history in Europe, it has the advantages of having always been an expression of central government. This cannot be said for the rest of the legislation enacted in Europe; in Spain, France and Germany, for example, in addition to royal measures there were a huge number of local ordinances and sometimes, above all in France, the two types of legislation differed considerably. This makes it difficult to build up a general picture of the phenomenon.3 Moreover, English sumptuary laws represent the best example in Europe of hierarchical code regulations applied to all strata of society and of the interconnection between sumptuary laws and protectionist measures. The function of English legislation both in imposing hierarchical regulation and in protecting the local economy makes it worth examining in more detail. If one of the peculiarities of English laws is their being an expression of central government, Italian sumptuary laws are, by contrast, unique for being expressions of so many different political centres, above all the urban centres of the north of Italy, where city-states offered the most detailed and frequent sumptuary legislation in Europe. Moreover the strong influence of the classical world on Italian legislation and the continual recollection of Roman laws make it the perfect subject for a comparative analysis. The value of a ‘control group’ makes it worthwhile examining examples of laws from a completely different social, cultural and political 74

4. Sumptuary Legislation in Comparative Perspective background. For this purpose we have turned our attention to the East. The peculiarity of Japanese society makes its sumptuary legislation the best candidate for this research. Nowhere is it possible to find more detailed and frequent legislation then in Japan. Moreover, Japanese legislation, given the isolation of Japan during the Tokugawa period, appears free of any influence from the western world. In the three sections that follow, our attention will be focused above all on the reasons and purposes behind political decisions to enact sumptuary regulations. We shall underline the features common to the different societies studied, with special attention paid to those aspects that can be related in any way to Roman sumptuary legislation. Of course it is not always possible to find similarities and differences between pre-modern and classical legislation, above all in the case of Japan. But, as already said, we are not only interested in stressing differences or similarities; by examining the enactment of sumptuary legislation in such divergent societies it is possible to identify similar socio-economic and political conditions that led governments to enact these kinds of regulations. Moreover, comparative study has the great value of making us aware of what one body of legislation lacks in comparison with others, and consequently of provoking us to wonder why. English sumptuary legislation In this section we shall briefly look at sumptuary laws enacted in England, supplying a general picture of the development of English sumptuary regulation and underlining its main aims. We will examine only those laws that had a significant impact on either subsequent legislation or contemporary society. The State control of apparel in England has a shorter history than the rest of Europe. The first example of a sumptuary law on apparel is dated 1337, and the last one 1604, much earlier than in continental Europe.4 In England, as in the rest of Europe, sumptuary regulation was concerned primarily with dress and, as will be shown later, with men’s clothes rather than with women’s. In fact the first English sumptuary legislation dates to 13365 and dealt with food. This is the only English law whose target was exclusively alimentary consumption; afterwards sumptuary laws were directed at the regulation of personal appearance, even if moralistic condemnation and regulation in matters of food and drink never disappeared completely. Although enacted over three centuries, the English sumptuary laws have several elements in common. First, in England the laws took the form of negative prohibitions:6 they prohibited certain categories of persons from wearing specified clothes, garments or ornamentations. In brief, sumptuary legislation stated what might not legally be worn.7 Secondly, the sumptuary legislation enacted in England can be distinguished 75

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury from that enacted in other parts of Europe in that it consisted of State regulations issued either by the Crown or by Parliament, whereas in the rest of Europe it was made up of local ordinances. Thirdly, the essential reasons put forward for justifying the enactment of sumptuary laws did not change during the period in question. These reasons were both economic and social, namely fear of impoverishment of the land and destruction of the wealth of the kingdom, the need to maintain class distinctions, and the idea that a person’s dress should reflect his status.8 Finally, the predominant aspect of English sumptuary laws is the importance given to class distinction and its connection with dress code. All the Acts and Proclamations contain an assortment of provisions whose essential component is the connection between social classes and the clothes allowed to each of them. When examining these classifications, which are very detailed in dividing the population according to class, modern scholars wonder if they reflect real society or if they portray an ideal society, one that the law itself was trying to create. This question remains unanswered, but Keen, in his research into English society in the later Middle Ages,9 made an interesting point. He demonstrated that a sumptuary law of 1363 introduced class distinctions that are much the same as those reflected in the graduated poll tax legislation of 1379. That could mean that the social hierarchy employed in the laws reflected real social divisions. Moreover, by making distinctions within the nobility, the sumptuary laws reflected increasing stratification inside the ruling class10 at a time when status was no longer determined solely by rank but also by the economic conditions of those of the same rank.11 The earliest recorded sumptuary law in England goes back to the reign of Edward III (1327-1377). It is not easy to define what led Edward III to the promulgation of sumptuary measures. According to tradition, during his reign a huge increase in luxury and extravagance occurred as a consequence of the close economic relationship between England and its neighbour France, and this lead to the promulgation of the first sumptuary measures.12 It is interesting that extravagance was perceived to be a product imported into England from abroad – a French product – as a consequence of victory in war.13 As we have seen, in the moral condemnation of luxury it is a widespread leitmotif to consider luxury an evil not internally generated but brought in from abroad. But we must wonder, as we did for Rome, whether this picture reflects the reality of the English situation and whether the undeniable increase in wealth was the only reason for the enactment of sumptuary measures. In fact luxury was not previously unknown; during the reigns of some of Edward’s predecessors, contemporary writers had complained about the immoderate use of wealth: according to William of Malmesbury (c. 10901143), for instance, members of the lower classes competed in the luxury of their clothes with the apparel of the upper classes.14 76

4. Sumptuary Legislation in Comparative Perspective It is beyond the interest of this book to examine laws enacted from the reign of Edward III onwards targeting extravagant consumption, but what is important to underline is that the first sumptuary legislation was enacted in a period of economic prosperity and increasing trade. It is during this period that a substantial growth in English manufacturing led to an increase in the material prosperity of England.15 In addition, wealth poured into England from successes in foreign wars, above all against France. If self-indulgence was permitted and could be tolerated among the upper classes, a new danger appeared: members of the lower classes, enriched by trade, might attempt to imitate, through clothes, the new life-style. Such ‘appropriation’ of style breaks the first and most important unwritten rule in medieval society, that every man should ‘keep his place’. This ‘place’ was fixed by social custom and defined the life-style and even the appearance of every single man. To run the risk that a nobleman might be mistaken for a farmer or the wife of a knight might be mistaken for the wife of a peasant would be unforgivable,16 and the authorities decided to do something about it. They enacted sumptuary laws. The first action taken against extravagance was the Act known as ‘Statutum de Cibariis Utendis’ of 15 October 1336; it concerned, as already mentioned, control of extravagance at the table.17 Its significance lies in the fact that this was the first and last law whose target was extravagance in food; luxurious food, a key target of Roman legislation, gives way to extravagance in clothes, which from now on will dominate the attention of the legislators. The first piece of sumptuary legislation whose main aim was to control extravagance in clothes was the law enacted in 1337. What is of interest is the fact that from the very outset English sumptuary laws revealed characteristics and purposes that were to remain basically unchanged throughout the history of such legislation. This first sumptuary law dealing with clothes revealed both an economic and a social purpose. It was partly a protective measure to support the domestic cloth industry, which was of huge importance for the crown’s finances,18 as it established that no one, but for the notable exception of the royal family, could wear clothes made outside the country; merchants, foreign as well as English, were forbidden to import any clothes made in any other country. In addition it was required that none, other than members of the royal family, nobles and members of the Church, should wear fur.19 The choice of fur is quite interesting: not only did it constitute the most luxurious article of clothing but it was perceived as the most depraved luxury.20 Fur and silk are prominent subjects of sumptuary laws primarily because of their intrinsic value, but also because, being so delicate, they were therefore not suitable to wear for work.21 Prohibiting the wearing of foreign clothes and furs to all but a small and select group representing the highest echelons of society, the law’s aim was not only to underline differences between classes but also, and above all, to make 77

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury these differences visible. This becomes even clearer when we turn our attention to the last piece of sumptuary legislation enacted during the reign of Edward III, a law that regulated in great detail the dress of the various classes of society. The law was enacted in 1363 and the reasons why a new law became necessary are clearly enunciated in the words of the petition22 presented to the king: the previous measure had been useless, obviously ignored and not enforced, and extravagance in dress seems to have increased, above all among the lower classes. The declared main aim of the law was to avoid the impoverishment of the nation by re-establishing clear differences between the classes. What better way to achieve this than to dictate for each of them a different way to eat and dress? For this reason the law took into consideration all the social classes of English society, in ascending order, and fixed different standards for each group. When dealing with members of the upper classes the dispositions relate not only to social class but also to economic status.23 The law started with a hierarchical dress code applied to the whole population. To understand the purpose of this law it is useful to refer to its preamble, which attacks ‘the outrageous and excessive apparel of divers people against their estate and degree’ and complains ‘about the very great destruction and impoverishment of the land, by which cause all the wealth of the kingdom is ... consumed and destroyed’. 24 This clearly shows the economic purpose of the law: to prevent impoverishment and to support English manufacturers. But it seems that its purpose was also a social one.25 The law was enacted in order to preserve and emphasise class distinction by means of costume. It made a finely graded distinction in permitting different cloth to different classes and even within the same class, according to both social status and economic position, with the result that within the same rank the richest enjoyed a greater freedom in wearing extravagant clothes than their poorer colleagues. It has been worth examining this law in such detail because it fixed the characteristic form of sumptuary legislation on apparel for the next three centuries. The only difference in comparison to subsequent laws was the lack of differentiation within the noble class, or rather that there was differentiation but based purely on economic criteria, not on different grades of nobility. The importance of the law of 1363 lies in the fact that the history of sumptuary laws is the history of a series of attempts to impose different cloth codes based on the model of this same law. Later laws dealing with extravagance in clothes reflect the previous ones, presenting an increasing complexity in assigning clothes and ornaments. More than a century later the attention of the legislators turned to the different ranks of the nobility,26 as a result of its increasing stratification,27 and in 1483 a law was enacted making different provisions for different ranks inside the nobility,28 but at the same time combining the rest of the population below the rank of esquire and gentlemen with the group 78

4. Sumptuary Legislation in Comparative Perspective of labourers and servants. It is very unlikely that this last group also included the urban middle classes. They must have been considered as part of the class of gentlemen as a result of their increasing wealth and political influence. The evidence seems to suggest that the main purpose of this law was to dictate a sort of internal regulation within the nobility. Hunt claims that the laws cannot be considered a case of self-regulation since it was the Crown that established rules and differences inside the ranks of the nobility.29 However, this does not necessarily follow: the Crown in this case, as had happened before and would happen later, could have legislated in response to pressure from the nobility. If this attractive hypothesis is true, this law could be interpreted as a measure of self-regulation of the ruling class. Another peculiarity makes this law different from the others: it exempted from its dispositions all women except the wives of labourers and servants.30 About thirty years later an Act of 1514 spread the exemption to all women.31 This last provision has been differently interpreted by scholars; according to Baldwin ‘the reason is not clear, unless the legislators had come to believe that it was hopeless to attempt to put a curb on the feminine love of dress’.32 This explanation seems over-simple for several reasons. First, it seems to imply the existence of a sort of resistance from women for which we do not have any evidence.33 Secondly, this law is not an isolated or untypical one and cannot be considered as such; it was re-enacted several times, always referring only to men.34 This should not surprise us. The target of sumptuary legislation on apparel fluctuated between men’s clothing and women’s. It could be said that the laws ‘followed’ fashion; when men’s fashion predominated it was the target of the laws and when women’s fashion predominated then it became the target of the laws. During the Middle Ages men’s fashion had an importance that women’s did not. A key point in understanding this is the use of cloth as a status symbol; in medieval courts the extravagance of clothes displayed the political and economic importance of a man. Women’s dress was less ostentatious because women were not public people; they were relegated to the private sphere.35 For this reason, until the beginning of the sixteenth century men had much more luxurious clothes than did women.36 During the Roman Republic the only law on apparel is the one known as the Oppian law, the target of which was women’s clothing. Apart from the fact that it was, as demonstrated, first of all a war measure, another important difference must be underlined. The senators, unlike the nobles of the medieval court, could display wealth only through the ornaments of their women. The extravagance of women was the only permissible way for men to display their power and their importance. Love of luxury was considered dishonourable for a senator and not in keeping with what was seen as the root of Roman morality. Moreover, it is in the ideological significance of the toga that the reasons for this lack of ostentation in clothes can be found.37 The toga has been declared the Roman ‘national 79

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury costume’, but this does not mean that they did not wear other different types of clothes. The toga had the symbolic significance as a marker of Roman identity,38 as one of the formal indicators of Romanitas as in the famous Virgilian description of Romans as ‘Masters of peoples and people of the toga’.39 The ideal Roman citizen had to wear a toga and for the same reason a non-citizen was not allowed to do so. Luxury in clothes would therefore probably not appeal to a Roman senator, whose importance and power could not be declared in a better way than by wearing the simple clothing of a true Roman. Similar concerns to those seen above can be detected in the laws enacted during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603), the most prolific in the history of sumptuary legislation. The laws were characterised by an increase in the number of Proclamations that were issued either directly by the monarch or by the Privy Council. The Elizabethan Proclamations have several aspects in common. First, they all invoked and re-enacted the two previous laws on apparel, those of 1533 and 1553.40 Their Preambles invoked the enforcement of the previous laws, and a moral judgement on the extravagance in dress and its evil consequences is always present.41 Secondly, the content of the Proclamations was expressed in the form of prohibitions with exceptions. Thirdly, all the Proclamations were followed by a brevitas, a sort of summary of the content of the law addressed to those who had to enforce it. Despite all attempts to enforce the laws, the numerous Elizabethan Proclamations did not achieve much more than any of the sumptuary measures enacted by her predecessors. The last Proclamation enacted during Elizabeth’s reign is dated 1597 and can be seen as a summary of all previous ones. The Preamble, besides setting out the usual complaints about excesses in apparel and the failure of the previous Proclamations to make any improvement, indicates the consequences of this situation: first, the decay of hospitality, due to the big sums spent on clothes; secondly, ‘the confusion of degree, where the meanest are as richly dressed as their betters’;42 thirdly, the increase in crime, because the poor would commit robberies and crimes to be able to imitate the clothes of the rich and noble. The law is a summary of all the measures previously enacted; it is in the usual tabular form with some ‘necessary additions’. It takes the usual form of prohibition with exceptions and its regulation does not differ much from previous similar laws, but its complexity is striking as compared to the first law enacted in 1337. Never before had it been attempted to protect social hierarchy by imposing a social dress code in such detail. Sumptuary laws, enacted mainly to control and direct social behaviour, had now become a way to define social order itself. While Proclamations on apparel were issued from the beginning and throughout the reign of Queen Elizabeth (the first is dated at 1559, less than a year after the Queen’s ascent to the throne), for the first enactment of a sumptuary law we have to wait until 1563. All the laws 80

4. Sumptuary Legislation in Comparative Perspective took the form of negative provisions, the Cap Act enacted in 1571 being the only exception. This is the first and the only English law on apparel that presents a positive prescription; usually English laws established what people could not wear, the Cap Act determined what should be worn, and that was not for sumptuary reasons but for protectionist ones. Its purpose was, without a doubt, economic and protectionist; it was an attempt to protect the cap-making industry in England. This is the only law of this kind issued during the Elizabethan period; soon the fight against extravagance returned to its usual form, with the laws of 1533 and 1553 as models. The edict of 1597, which repealed the Cap Act, was the last edict issued during the reign of Elizabeth, but many bills were proposed and discussed by Parliament between 1565 and 1589. However, the Commons rejected almost all the bills presented by the House of Lords.43 The reasons for this are not clear; a possible explanation could be the general opposition, during the time in question, of the Commons to Proclamations and bills proposed by the Lords, because they were considered an expression of the Queen’s or the Crown’s power and therefore a threat to the political power of Parliament. Another, probably more plausible and simple reason, could be found in the unpopularity that these edicts had always had. The moral judgment of luxury as an evil, which leads to the ruin of a state, as well as the conviction that it is duty of the government to regulate and control it, are common patterns shared by many societies that have promulgated sumptuary laws; but another feeling is common: the perception of the uselessness of these measures. In England, as in ancient Rome, only a few had the courage to stand against the common opinion and clearly denounce the ineffectiveness of that fight.44 The enforcement of sumptuary laws, so strongly desired, did not occur or at least occurred very rarely, as proved not only by the almost total absence of court reports of cases prosecuted for infringing the laws,45 but also by literary sources. In 1552 Hugh Latimer said of excess in apparel: ‘There be lawes made and certaine statutes, how everyone in his estate shall be appareled but God knoweth the statutes are not put in execution.’46 In 1560 Sir William Cecil, in a letter written from Edinburgh to the Queen, describing the state of her army in Scotland, complained about the excess of apparel among the troops.47 This leads us to the conclusion that, despite the large number of edicts, Proclamations and bills issued during her reign, all attempts made by Queen Elizabeth I to regulate the dress habits and to control extravagance and consumption of English citizens failed. The history of sumptuary legislation in England ended suddenly in 1604 in the reign of James I when a law was passed ‘especially for this reason, for it repealeth all former laws touching apparel’;48 the Crown was not empowered to introduce further Proclamations. This is the key point, according to Hooper, who concludes that ‘the sudden repeal of the 81

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury sumptuary laws seems attributable, therefore, solely to opposition excited on constitutional grounds and not to any perception of their futility or to any reaction in sumptuary feelings’.49 In fact no sources record and no evidence has proved any open political opposition to the promulgation of sumptuary measures. Some scholars have found the reason for this repeal in general opposition to the principle of State control.50 Sumptuary legislation was repealed for political and constitutional reasons; to reject every bill proposed by the Lords was a way for Parliament to reaffirm its legislative power and its independence. The law of 1604 marks the end in England of sumptuary legislation, but sumptuary measures did not disappear; they were integrated into protectionist ones. From the beginning, English sumptuary laws found in protectionism their major target and reason for promulgation. Over the centuries other issues were added, but English sumptuary legislation never lost its characteristic of protectionism. We can conclude by saying that reasons of an economic and social nature were behind the enactment of these laws. As has been shown, protectionist motives are the foremost characteristic and leitmotif of English sumptuary laws throughout the period of enactment of such measures. Economic reasons behind the enacting of laws on apparel are, however, far from being the sole ones, nor the most important. Sumptuary laws became necessary to distinguish social classes in periods of social mobility. While it is true that throughout English history sumptuary laws have been used to support and impose hierarchical regulation, the deeper significance seems to me to be their role in redefining social order itself by the preservation of the external symbols of class hierarchy; hence the centrality of dress codes. All the Acts and Proclamations contain an assortment of provisions whose essential component is the connection between social classes and the clothes allowed to each of them, as the law enacted in 1533 shows. Let the laws speak for themselves. The law of 1363 complained about ‘the very great destruction and impoverishment of the land, by which cause all the wealth of the kingdom is ... consumed and destroyed’ that are due to ‘the outrageous and excessive apparel of divers people against their estate and degree’.51 It is useful to remember that, although this is only the second sumptuary law enacted in England, the two elements mentioned above are already present and clearly announced. The economic worry of poverty is what the law is enacted to fight, but it is the result not only of luxury, but also of a use of luxury that does not reflect class divisions. This is even better expressed in the Act of 1463, whose aim was to force people to dress ‘according to their degree’; and again the law of 1510, which we have not examined in detail, claimed economic reasons ‘great and costly array in apparel ... hath been the occasion of great impoverishing of divers of the King’s subjects, and provoked many of them to rob and to do extortion and other unlawful deeds to maintain 82

4. Sumptuary Legislation in Comparative Perspective thereby their costly array’.52 An even more explicit and comprehensive statement of intent is presented in the Preamble to the law of 1533 of which it is worth underlining a few passages. It is said that the previous laws ‘were established and devised, for the necessary repressing, avoiding and expelling of the inordinate excess’ whose results are ‘inconveniences as to be the great, manifest and notorious detriment of the common wealth, the subversion of good and politic order in knowledge and distinction of people according to their estate, pre-eminences, dignities and degrees, and to the utter impoverishment and undoing of many inexpert and light persons inclined to pride, mother of all vices’.53 What does English legislation have in common with Roman legislation, and in what ways does it differ from it? If we turn our attention to the reasons behind such legislation, the two apparently share elements in common. First, both in Rome and in England luxury is perceived as a threat to the political and social order. In many Preambles of English laws society is presented as stratified and ordered according to a strict hierarchy; extravagance threatening this hierarchy therefore represents a danger to the very constitution of society. Mainly for this reason the enactment of sumptuary laws was judged politically necessary. In Rome we do not find explicit reference to classes owing to the simplicity of Roman society compared with medieval and pre-modern societies. Moreover, English sumptuary laws were enacted in a last, probably desperate, attempt to limit, if not social mobility, then at least its display. The same reading cannot be applied to Roman legislation, whose target was just the ruling class, because fluidity in the relationship between classes, though it existed, was not such as to constitute a threat to the solidity of the Roman oligarchy. Secondly, in both kinds of legislation we find protectionist reasons. In Rome protectionist considerations can be found in the lex Fannia and Aemilia and in England the Preambles of many laws presented it as a main motivation. However, I would maintain that in both societies protectionist reasons are not the chief considerations, since I do not see economic reasons as the only or the paramount consideration behind any of the English laws. Having said that, the difference in the scale of trade between the two societies induces me to consider the economic reasons behind English sumptuary laws as being more decisive in their enactment than was the case in Rome. Japanese sumptuary legislation We now turn our attention to the East where we can find the most remarkable sumptuary legation ever enacted; remarkable because of its minuteness of detail.54 The aim of this section is to attempt to offer a general overview which, though far from exhaustive, will I hope be 83

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury sufficient to provide a clear understanding of the main characteristics and issues related to it. First of all it is necessary to briefly consider the historical and cultural background of the enactment of sumptuary legislation in Japan. Sumptuary legislation55 appears to have been established from an early period. It is recorded that as early as AD 681 laws were enacted to regulate the costumes of all classes, and during the eighth and ninth centuries measures mainly dealing with clothing were passed in an attempt to maintain class distinctions.56 But it was during the Tokugawa period that the enactment of sumptuary laws assumed a unique importance and the laws were directed at all strata of the population. From the middle of the seventeenth century through the two following centuries of the Edo period, the number, the minuteness and the frequency of these laws increased. Tokugawa shoguns ruled Japan for over 260 years from 1603, when they achieved unlimited power, until 1868. The centre of power was the shogun’s capital Edo (modern Tokyo); hence the name ‘the Edo period’ given to the era.57 During this long period Japan was completely isolated as a result of government policy, which limited the influence and the presence of foreigners in Japan. By 1633 any external relations with Europeans had been interrupted and foreign trade brought to an end; it became illegal to travel abroad and all foreign books were banned.58 The consequences of these political choices were enormous, but we may confine ourselves to observing that if on the one hand they limited the development of overseas trade, on the other the Japanese economy boomed because of the increase in domestic trade. The social consequence of this internal economic development was that the social classes of merchants and artisans increased their economic importance and consequently improved their social status. This new situation was perceived as a real threat for a society as hierarchical as the Japanese and therefore a threat to the constitution of the society itself. Life in Tokugawa Japan was strictly hierarchical, with the population divided into four distinct classes: samurai, farmers, craftspeople and traders.59 To the eye of a European, the director of the Dutch East India company, Francois Caron, the Japanese social structure appeared backward: ‘A merchant, how rich soever, is not esteemed at all, because they say he liveth by his lying, making no conscience to cousen and deceive the People for his filthy lucre sake:60 The Citizen and Artificer are likewise undervalued, because they are but Servants to the Commonalty, and forced to live by their labour and manufactures: Neither are the Country People of more account, because of the miserableness of their condition, being subject to perpetual slavery and toyling. But the Gentlemen and Souldiers, who are numerous, are honoured and feared; and they do nothing, being maintained and served by Merchants, by Citizens and by the Country Labourers.’61 At the head of the social pyramid were the emperor and the families 84

4. Sumptuary Legislation in Comparative Perspective of ancient nobility, the Kugé. However, the real power was in the hand of the military class, the Buké or samurai, which had a hierarchy of its own. At the top was the shogun, whose office was hereditary and autocratic,62 beneath him were the daimyo, lords who controlled massive amounts of land. Beneath the daimyo there were all the samurai, whose importance was defined according to their income. The total number of samurai of all grades was about two million. All were exempt from taxation and privileged to wear a sword.63 The noble and military classes ruled the rest of the population, divided into three other classes, farmers, craftspeople and traders. Among the common people the farmers (hyakushô) occupied the highest social position. They were ranked immediately after the samurai and their occupation was traditionally considered quite honourable. But if we keep in mind that 20% of the annual national crop of rice was reserved for the shogun and considering that annual production of rice at that time was about 25 million koku and the population about 12 million,64 it is easy to imagine that little was left to the farmers, who often had to give up over half of their rice crop to the system. Famine in the countryside was not uncommon during this period. Thus, although farmers held a privileged social condition, they lived in a precarious financial state. When conditions became intolerable, farmers ignored the prohibition of the shogun and moved to the cities to try to find their fortune in trade. The artisan class (Shôkunin), just below the farmers, included all craftsmen. The crafts were directly connected with the activity of the samurai and were highly prized. The last class was the commercial one (Akindô), which included merchants, bankers, shopkeepers and in general every kind of trader. Although their economic situation was probably better than that of the former two classes, they were at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Outside these four classes there were large groups of people including actors, priests and eta. The last were outcasts, avoided by the Japanese community and forced to live in their own spaces. They were considered not Japanese and scarcely human beings. Besides them there was the group of the Hinin, which literally means not human beings. Mendicants, certain classes of prostitutes and persons outlawed by society belonged to this last group.65 The unification of the country and the consolidation of the Tokugawa family resulted in a more stable economy and, as a consequence, an increase in the population, an increase in the amount of land under cultivation, and finally a massive increase in productivity.66 At the same time, Japanese cities expanded so rapidly that between 1550 and 1700 Japan became one of the most urbanised societies in the world.67 The new wealth brought with it new forms of consumption and a new desire for luxurious life. As in other countries, economic changes affected society and threatened the social balance between classes. But in Japan, as with every other aspect of life, consumption also had to be hierarchically scaled 85

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury and as a consequence it was felt necessary to enact sumptuary laws. The same need to maintain class distinctions, which in England led to the enactment of sumptuary laws, is clearly also the starting point for the enactment of sumptuary measures in Japan. The huge number of laws enacted does not allow us to examine all of them; therefore our examination will be restricted to the measures enacted during the first period of the new regime, when the biggest economic and social revolution took place. We shall examine a few examples of laws for each stratum of population they targeted. In doing so we shall follow the approach adopted by Shively in his ‘Sumptuary regulation and status in early Tokugawa Japan’, the most complete catalogue of sumptuary laws enacted in Japan during the seventeenth century.68 The main aim of the laws addressed to farmers was to limit and suppress, as much as possible, all consumption of luxuries. This explains the minuteness of this set of laws, and its severity. Every detail of the farmers’ existence was prescribed by law, and differently according to everyone’s income. The farmers’ social status was considered next to that of samurai, because farmers were considered productive and above all because the samurai’s income depended upon their production. For this reason it was extremely important that they produced as much and consumed as little as possible.69 For the peasants there was no room for any luxury that might endanger their ability to pay taxes, and, in order to control the farmers’ expenditures, the central government enacted an extraordinary number of very detailed laws whose minuteness has no comparison even among other Japanese sumptuary laws. The regulation for villagers issued by law in 1643, for instance, paid great attention to what the peasants could wear and eat. The minuteness of such regulations becomes apparent in just the following examples: ordinary farmers could not wear rain caps, or carry umbrellas. The women were not allowed to wear leather sandals: they might wear only straw-sandals or wooden clogs; and the thongs of the sandals or the clogs were to be made of cotton. In 1649, it was forbidden to drink tea or to smoke tobacco; the manufacture and consumption of sake was limited.70 As for the residences of farmers, even the dimensions were fixed;71 they could not have verandas or floor mats or paper-covered sliding doors.72 Banquets were also regulated: the quality and quantity of food allowed during wedding parties and New Year banquets were fixed by law. The number and cost of wedding presents were fixed by law, and on the occasion of a child’s birth, the grandparents were allowed to give only four presents, including ‘one cotton baby-dress’, and the values of the presents were fixed. Not only were the farmers limited in their consumption, but also, in order to avoid their being tempted, merchants were forbidden to sell their products in rural areas and were sometimes even denied access to certain determined areas. The first law directed towards samurai, issued in 1615, laid down 86

4. Sumptuary Legislation in Comparative Perspective fundamental rules for the conduct of the entire military class. It was amended frequently, but all the following sumptuary laws can be considered as revised versions of this first one.73 The main purpose of the law is clear: ‘The distinction between lord and vassal, between superior and inferior, must be clearly marked by the apparel.’74 The key point in the enactment of these laws was to make clear the differences between ranks within the samurai class. This was true not only for clothing; frugality was also encouraged among samurai in many other aspects of their lives and so the laws contain a huge number of instructions concerning many different aspects of daily life. It was not allowed to display wealth and luxury in banquets, marriages, or in paying and returning visits. Laws were enacted concerning buildings and decorations,75 the number of soups, viands and drinks allowed during banquets and the kind of utensils with which to serve guests.76 The laws for daimyo on the one hand urged them to practise frugality, while on the other were more permissive within certain limits. Sumptuary legislation targeting the daimyo, was an economic measure of support for those running the risk of being in debt and economically dependent on chonin (literally ‘townsmen’, a social class comprised of merchants and artisans) because of the extravagance of their consumption. Moreover, the brake on expenditure helped those daimyo who felt the continuous competition to display power and wealth to be an economic constriction. The laws directed at chonin had as their main target the curbing of the display of wealth of these richest merchants. ‘In recent years, certain shrewd Kyoto people have started to lavish every manner of magnificence on men’s and women’s clothes and to put out design books in colours. Such behaviour by wives and the marriage of daughters have drained the household finances and impaired the family business of countless merchants.’77 This passage quoted from Nippon eitagura (‘The Japanese Eternal Storehouse’) by Ihara Saikaku,78 supplies us with a picture of the luxuries enjoyed by the new rich and also with the justification put forward by rulers for the enactment of sumptuary laws. The reasons are those already met: the need to preserve social difference, the need for frugality, and finally respect for the ethical-religious system. The first comprehensive law, whose addressees were chonin, was promulgated in 1649; every aspect of the life of townsmen seems to have been the target of minute legislation: clothes, decoration, transport, private celebrations, just to mention some of them; the laws went into such detail that we can even find subsections about saddles and saddle cushions. Another comprehensive law was enacted in 1668; it was mainly against extravagance in the building and decoration of houses, in pleasure boats and in objects of decoration for festive days and festivals. It also legislated against extravagance during private events such as marriages, funerals and memorial services. The laws quoted are just a few examples of the laws enacted during the Tokugawa regime directed at chonin. In the 87

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury early eighteenth century the laws became more detailed. At the beginning of the century there were laws against new designs in furnishings, cakes and books and the size of dolls. In addition, the possession of expensive tobacco pouches, incense containers, lacquer sake-cups, cake boxes and house decorations was made illegal. These laws were mainly the reaction of a not very rich ruling class confronted by an inferior class that showed off its wealth. The laws tried to restrain the display of wealth that could offend the samurai class whose economic condition was not as good. To avoid jealousy and the weakening of discipline in the military class, the merchants became the object of particularly strict laws. The laws were enacted to keep social order and social distinctions and to prevent displays of wealth that clearly would have demonstrated the disparity between political power and the distribution of wealth. It is important to underline that in the laws directed to chonin no reference can be found to the value of parsimony, as we will find in the law directed to different ranks of samurai, and not even the leitmotif of the necessity of parsimony for not squandering patrimony. While the laws for daimyo were enacted to limit their expenditure as economic measures to protect their patrimony, I would suggest that the laws for chonin were enacted not to help or protect the chonin themselves but the samurai. The really rich people in Japanese society were no longer members of the samurai class but merchants. They could afford and enjoy a lifestyle that was not within the samurai’s means. That created a competitive spirit between the two groups, a competition whose losers were destined to be samurai. Not only could they not compete with the wealth of merchants but the competition itself was a cause of social debilitation. The sumptuary laws, imposing upon chonin strict limits in displaying wealth, helped the samurai to accept the need to live within their economic possibilities. Before concluding this section it is worth considering some other Japanese regulations, which, if they cannot be defined as sumptuary measures, supply us with elements to help us understand what was behind the enacting of sumptuary laws. In a society where every aspect of daily life was limited and fixed, so that everything reflected social differences, even the organisation of language reflected the hierarchical organisation of the society. With the same minuteness of detail that characterised the rules for dress, diet, and many other aspects of life, many rules regulated utterances.79 These were positive regulations; it was stressed and fixed what should be said, which verbs and words should be chosen according to everyone’s social status. Only certain words, verbs, pronouns were allowed when speaking to superiors, and others when speaking to members of the same social group or with inferiors. Consider the following examples. From early times etiquette demanded that language reflect the status of speakers, underlined the importance of the superior and the humility of the inferior. That is not unique; in many Indo-European languages we 88

4. Sumptuary Legislation in Comparative Perspective find double orders of language, one formal and one informal. What is surprising in Japan is again the minuteness of detail, and the pedantic attention to differences among classes. For instance, from the Emperor himself down through all strata of society, each class had a different way of expressing the second person pronoun.80 Even at the start of the twentieth century there were still sixteen different ways to say ‘you’, and eight forms for using it to address children, pupils and servants.81 It has been argued that social distinctions were clearly the base of the social system in Japan during the Edo period. What is surprising is the submission of the Japanese to this status and to a system that controlled everyday life in such detail. In fact, to keep such rigid social status unchanged needed much more than a simple set of laws, and from the beginning the Tokugawa shogun felt the need to justify the predominance of a small group over the majority of society. The answer to their worries was found in the philosophical system of Confucianism imported from their neighbour China. Confucianism was promoted in Japan by Hayashi Razan (15831657), founder of official Tokugawa philosophy. Not only the rigid distinctions between classes and subclasses but also the fact that they were based on differentiations of clothing, modes of address and means of transportations, were rationalised by Confucianism and its concept of li (rei in Japanese), ‘decorum’. Confucianism established subordination as a cornerstone of its moral code. The principal subordination was that of the son to the father and all other social relationships were compared to this main one. Hayashi Razan wrote: Heaven is above and earth is below. This is the order of heaven and earth. If we can understand the meaning of the order we can also perceive that in everything there is an order separating those who are above and those who are below. When we extend this understanding between heaven and earth, we cannot allow disorder in the relations between ruler and subject, and between those who are above and those who are below. The separation into four classes of samurai, farmers, artisans and merchants, like the five relationships, is part of the principle of heaven and is the Way which was taught by the sage Confucius ... there is a differentiation between the above and the below. Likewise among the people, rulers are to be respected and subjects are to submit humbly. Only when differentiation between those who are above and those who are below is made clear can there be law and property ... the more the rulers are respected, and the more the subjects submit humbly and the more the differentiation is made clear-cut, the easier it is to govern a country.82 In these principles it is easy to recognise the cornerstones of the Tokugawa political and social system. Social distinctions, the necessity 89

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury that everyone was recognisable as a member of a distinct class, and also the supremacy of agriculture over trade and the connected inferiority of merchants, found moral and philosophical justification in Confucianism. Therefore to keep social distinctions was morally good and right. Considering what has already been said, it is clear that sumptuary laws in Japan were not exceptional measures but an essential part of legislation whose intention was to preserve social order. According to Tokugawa ideology, social order was based on a hierarchical organisation of society, the top of which was occupied by the military class. But with the development of internal trade, the consequent enrichment of the merchant class and the loss of economic power by the ruling class, it became difficult to maintain the distinctions. Since it was impossible to stop the changes and their consequences, a solution was sought in maintaining the distinction through appearances. Japanese sumptuary laws were mainly social measures whose aim was to keep social order unchanged. Their enactment is connected with a series of technological and general economic changes that were seriously threatening the social order. They were a defensive measure taken by the ruling class to protect themselves and their supremacy: the ruling class had not only to keep the inferior classes under control but also, and I would say above all, to limit their own freedom and control members of their own class. Does this motivation differ from that which lay behind the enactment of sumptuary measures by members of the senatorial class in Republican Rome? In general terms the answer is no, but it is the different development of the society that makes a difference. As with English society, so with Japanese society we see a stratification far more complex than the Roman one. Despite this, however, what strikes me is that in both societies, so far away in both space and time, sumptuary laws were used as a means of social preservation of the ruling class: a ruling class that despite its huge power felt the need to cover up the real motivation for its constant and continued intervention in matters of private life with ideological and moralistic reasons. The use of moralistic discourse is a leitmotif in the enactment of sumptuary laws in Europe, but what is surprising is to find the same kind of uses of ideological discourses in a society free from the influence of classical philosophy or Christianity. Italian sumptuary legislation The last set of laws we are going to examine were enacted in Italy between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries. Generally speaking it can be said that Italian laws present, mutatis mutandis, characteristics and concerns similar to the English and the Japanese ones. For the Italian legislators, as for their counterparts around the world, the target of their fight against luxury was principally extravagance in clothes, banquets 90

4. Sumptuary Legislation in Comparative Perspective and marriages. On the other hand, major differences arise from the lack of a single political entity in Italy, combined with the influence of both the classical world and the Church, which shaped the distinctive characteristics of the laws. We can start by saying that Italy holds the lead where sumptuary laws are concerned: the earliest European sumptuary law was enacted in Italy in 115783 and her legislation is the most detailed and frequent in Europe. The main enactors of sumptuary laws in Italy were urban centres: the enactment of this kind of legislation occurred mainly in the northern part of the peninsula where the governments of citystates were prolific legislators.84 Despite the plurality of legislative centres a few general lines can be traced about what could, improperly, be called Italian sumptuary legislation: though sumptuary laws were freely enacted by local governments, they were very often influenced by neighbouring cities. In general, the principal objects of Italian sumptuary legislation were women’s clothing85 and extravagance in celebratory feasts, especially weddings. Actually, every single display of luxury seems to have been the object of legislation with the only exception being that of interior furnishings, despite their great cost.86 The possible explanation for this lack of regulation for such an extravagant aspect of life could be found in the fact that, while rich clothes and rich weddings or funerals were all occasions for the public display of private wealth, private furnishings could be admired by only a limited number of people. It is important to underline that this was also the case in Republican Rome, where buildings and furnishings never became the objects of sumptuary regulations. This similarity could be explained by the undeniable influence that Roman legislation and in general classical culture had on Italy, but also by the fact that the main target of Italian, and one might say all sumptuary legislation was the display of luxury rather than the actual luxury and wealth itself. Italian sumptuary laws were mainly concerned with aspects of wedding celebrations, fixing the number of guests, the price of gifts, and the number of attendants for the bride and groom, and so on. Banquets too were the object of detailed sumptuary legislation from the very beginning. What this legislation tried to do was prevent the public disorder that banquets could provoke, and limit the display of family power and wealth. In addition, since, as in Republican Rome, banquets were used for forming political alliances, the governors hoped to be able to keep these private meetings under control through the enactment of sumptuary laws. Mainly for this reason we find throughout Italy laws limiting the number of guests and the type and quantity of foods allowed. As marriages were also opportunities for the creation of political alliances, banquets offered on such occasions were the object of sumptuary measures.87 Laws targeting feasts were enacted during the thirteenth century in Padua, 91

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury

Venice and Bologna,88 and the fourteenth century saw the enactment of these laws in several centres in northern Italy.89 Clearly the laws tried to limit the occasions for people or groups to gather together, above all from different districts. Briefly, it could be maintained that every private occasion that could be transformed or used for political reasons, was the object of sumptuary laws. Clearly, during the first two centuries of such legislation, legislators were not overly interested in clothes; however from the fifteenth century 92

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onwards, laws concerned with ceremony and men’s fashion declined compared to those concerned with women. Figure 2 clearly shows how the number of sumptuary laws concerning women’s clothes increased enormously from 1200 until 1500, while in Figure 3 I have taken into account data concerning just three major Italian cities: Bologna,90 Siena91 and Venice.92 Figure 3 also demonstrates that it was from the beginning of the fourteenth century that women’s clothes became the main target. 93

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury This shift in the interest of the legislators is well illustrated by two Venetian laws. The first, enacted on 22 May 1334, after having condemned in general all extravagant expenditures,93 restrained both male and female luxury in clothes. Only thirty years later the tone is completely different; the object of moral condemnation is clearly pointed out with the words ‘many vanities and dissolute expenditure of brides and other women and ladies’ extravagance that gravely offends God’.94 Clearly the main target of the legislators became not luxury in clothes per se but specifically women’s clothes. What did men find threatening in women’s dress? First, as we shall see below, legislators were deeply concerned with the political economy of marriage. In their view there was an important correlation between excessive female extravagance and the inflation of dowries, and consequently a decline in the number of marriages and a fall in the birth rate. Secondly, the fact that sumptuary concerns moved from male and female luxury to an almost exclusive interest in women’s clothes was not a consequence of a decrease in extravagance in men’s fashion but rather indicated a major acceptance of it. This is linked to the condition and position of women in society, relegated to the role of daughter first, and then wife and mother. If the luxury enjoyed by men could be justified by the political role they held in society, the same could not be applied to women, whose life had to be spent within the confines of the house. Moreover, the wealth displayed by a public personality in some ways brought fame and prestige to the city itself. For this reason sometimes, paradoxically and surprisingly, extravagance within the governing class was promoted and encouraged by the same governors who were attempting to limit extravagance in others.95 In addition women were not only allowed, but also compelled, to show extravagance in dress in official situations.96 A third major factor was the role of theological discourse and the enormous impact and influence that the Church and churchmen had on the promulgation of sumptuary measures. The morality of women was a central preoccupation of the ecclesiastical authorities; and dress and ornaments, when either too lavish or even just inappropriate, were considered visible signs of immorality. In fact the idea that clothes reflect the morality of women was not born with Christianity but it goes back to the classical world. In Rome, for instance, according to Livy, in at least two cases Vestal Virgins were accused of un-chastity as a direct consequence of their appearance.97 Widespread was the idea that women lavishly attired would seduce men and lead them to ruin – an idea reflected in many Preambles during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in which women were said to be the ‘ruin of men’.98 That idea was based on the dualism of discourses on women and luxury: the moralistic one, which was rooted in a sort of misogyny that presumed a close link between luxury and the vanity of women,99 and the economic one, for which female 94

4. Sumptuary Legislation in Comparative Perspective extravagance threatened the patrimony of families.100 The sense in which it is possible to speak of misogyny is well exemplified by an examination of the language used in the laws. In laws targeting men, the language is never more than legalistic, but the same cannot be said of those laws targeting women; we read of the necessity ‘to contain the fertile subtleties of women through corrective measures’,101 of ‘lasciviousness of the female sex’,102 and of ‘the nature and condition of the female sex, full of vanity and cause of many ills’.103 The need to promulgate sumptuary laws as necessary corrective measures and cures for the lack of morality in women was promoted above all by the Church. The influence of the Church and of churchmen in league with secular power on the promotion of sumptuary measures is extremely important. The moral condemnation of women’s extravagance, combined with the moral duty for men to contain it and to be responsible for women’s behaviour, is a leitmotif of the preaching of those years.104 The preaching of the churchmen105 and the general condemnation of luxury by the Church certainly pressed the lay authorities who relied on the help of churchmen for the enforcement of laws. Finally, women’s clothes when provocative were judged as scandalous and as something that undermined the reputation of the entire community. All these factors together – the moral condemnation of women’s luxury and the threat of the collapse of patrimonies as a consequence of female extravagance – led to a proliferation of laws regulating of women’s dress, concerning every aspect of female fashion and ornaments. At this point, instead of examining the laws themselves, for which one can refer to the complete account of Italian laws on clothes made by Killerby in her study of Italian sumptuary laws between 1200 and 1500,106 I would like to turn to the reaction of the women to this ‘persecution’ perpetrated by the men of their family and their governors. Though women were rarely passive in their response, their reaction is hard to evaluate; there is little evidence of women’s reactions prior to the fifteenth century and the little information available was mainly provided by men. Sumptuary laws met different forms of resistance: from 1437 onwards there is a series of petitions written by women; appeal to aristocracy was quite a common way to obtain dispensation; and finally the last possible form of protest was to find new ways to evade the laws – often it was enough to coin new and different names for the objects banned. However, an episode deserves particular attention as perhaps the most eloquent response from a woman. The person involved was one of the most prominent noblewomen in Bologna, Nicolosa Sanuti, wife of Nicoló Sanuti, count of Porretta, and lover of Sante Bentivolgio, the ruler of Bologna. After the enactment of a set of sumptuary measures by Cardinal Bessarion, she sent to the papal legate a treatise demanding that the laws be repealed. The treatise is not only the lengthiest of its kind, but it is the only one to question the ideology behind the enactment of sumptuary 95

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury statutes.107 What provoked such a reaction was not the severity of the laws – in fact they were quite lenient when compared with previous ones – but the fact that they disallowed all the privileges the nobility had previously enjoyed. What makes this treatise particularly interesting for us is the fact that to plead her case she used examples and arguments from the classical world by referring directly to the lex Oppia and its repeal; for instance, she reminded the Cardinal that even if Roman women had been limited in the use of gold and luxurious clothes during the Second Punic War, the restriction was abolished after the end of the crisis. The Roman measure was understandable because of the hard conditions of war, but the Bolognese laws were only useful in feeding the avarice of husbands who put money before dignity. She argued that history showed that if women did not surpass men, they at least showed themselves to be their equals. Bolognese women could be as heroic as their Greek and Roman predecessors, having within them the power of the Sabines to save a civilisation from demographic ruin. Clothes were so important for women because it was them that they were reduced: ‘State offices are not allowed to women, nor do they strive for priesthood, triumphs, and the spoils of war, for these are the customary prizes of men. But ornament and decoration, the token of our virtue, those, while the power is left us, we shall not allow to be stolen from us.’108 How can we not see in these words the echo of those delivered by M. Fundanius and L. Valerius, as related by Livy, for the abrogation of the Oppian law?109 Sanuti’s treatise failed; the Cardinal never replied and he personally took to ensuring that his laws were enforced. What is worth highlighting is the use of, and continuous reference to, the classical world; it is not an isolated case but a common feature. In an oratio used as the Preamble to the law enacted in Spoleto in 1530, the anonymous orator quotes Marcus Oppius and Terentius Romulus as ‘patres’ of the lex Oppia, the law that shaped those that followed, all of which were listed at the end of the oratio. He remembers Lycurgus and his laws. He cites Ulpian, for whom the only item of jewellery allowed to a woman was her own children, and he points to Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, as an example to be followed. Finally he evokes the words of Justinian, for whom wealthy citizens were useful to the State as far as they did not squander their patrimonies.110 The influence of Roman legislation on Italian is evident, but it would be a mistake to think it was limited to ideology; Brundage claims that the fact that so many similarities can be traced between Roman sumptuary legislation and Italian statutes allows us to suggest that Italian legislators imitated the Roman prescriptions.111 Sumptuary laws were enacted for a variety of reasons, depending upon the type of authority that issued them, ecclesiastical or civil, and depending upon the kind of civil authority. Moral and religious reasons, as in England and in Japan, were the most commonly put forward. But 96

4. Sumptuary Legislation in Comparative Perspective that does not mean that the authorities were concerned with the spiritual implication of extravagance as much as with its social and economic repercussions. First of all, sumptuary laws were necessary to distinguish the social classes. In a period of social mobility with the economic rise of a new middle class of rich merchants and businessmen, it became urgent to be able to distinguish members of different classes. Sumptuary legislation must have appeared as a useful means of imposing some order. We shall not examine it in detail since the observations made for the English and the Japanese sumptuary laws can be applied to the Italian laws, which in this aspect of social control do not differ greatly. Secondly, besides the need to distinguish the classes, the Preambles put forward two other main reasons: the dissipation of capital and the decline of marriages and births. The use of sumptuary laws as a means to prevent the dissipation of private patrimonies is a leitmotif throughout the history of sumptuary laws, found in every society examined so far. Briefly, it can be said that the general concern was to prevent the withdrawal of wealth and capital from productive activities and to prevent citizens from ruining themselves. Above all for those cities whose wealth depended on trade, it was absolutely necessary to direct money into commercial activities. Money, the first source of wealth, had to circulate in order to produce new wealth and therefore the spending of it on luxurious goods had to be discouraged. The governments of other centres, whose wealth was based on craft production, tried to protect local industries through sumptuary measures. Again protectionist measures and sumptuary laws seem to share the same path. Extremely rare during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, protectionist measures became quite common in the following centuries, above all from the middle of the fourteenth century. From the end of the thirteenth century many areas of Italy enjoyed a period of intense and rapid economic development; as a consequence, governments felt the need to protect the local industries that were taking their first steps and whose activities could easily be put at risk by the strong competition of industries of neighbouring cities. To protect their own industries, governments adopted different measures: in some cases they applied duties on imported goods; in others they banned the importation and the sale of foreign goods. Moreover those cities whose main income came more from trade, such as Genoa and Venice, tried to prevent and to limit not only the importation of foreign luxurious products but also the consumption of local luxury goods that could have been exported. The motivations so far classified do not surprise; we have found them in England, Japan and to some extent in ancient Rome. What seems to be a peculiar characteristic of Italian sumptuary laws is the use of such measures as a means of demographic control. As said before, the size of the population seems to have worried the Italian legislators; when, between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Italian population reached its lowest point, the Preambles of sumptuary laws were enriched 97

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury by a new enemy, demographic decline – an extreme result of the craving for luxuries that was perceived as mainly dominating women. The idea is straightforward: expenditure on weddings and dowries, not to mention expenditure on wedding gifts, was so extravagant that none could any longer afford to get married.112 Every aspect that could limit or stop the creation of new families was considered a serious threat to demographic potential and therefore the military and economic power of the State.113 In this context one cannot stress enough the importance of marriage in medieval and early modern society and the role played by dowries in making marriages and in creating new relationships. The importance of this matter requires a deeper examination that is beyond the scope of this chapter, so we must limit ourselves to an explanation and consideration of just a few elements. First of all, from the fifteenth century a rise in the size of dowries made it more difficult for fathers to marry their daughters off. This huge increase was due, on the one hand, to the competition among nobles to seek the most advantageous marriage for their daughters and therefore for themselves and, on the other hand, to the importance that the size of the dowry had for young women. Dowries were the way for families to gain, through a good marriage, political or social benefits. For women the size of their dowry represented in public the measure of their worth. Moreover, a large dowry would not only have secured a good marriage but also have determined the lifestyle of the new bride and her position inside her husband’s family. In brief, a good dowry could attract a desirable husband and consequently a comfortable life; by contrast a small dowry could signify the loss of social privileges. As a consequence it became a matter of honour and sometimes an ineluctable duty for fathers to supply their daughters with honourable and rich dowries. Dante looks back with regret to the times when: Non faceva, nascendo, ancor paura la figlia al padre, che ’l tempo e la dote non fuggien quinci e quindi la misura.114 Secondly, dotal inflation had a significant effect on marital relations,115 giving, for the first time, more financial power to the brides; in fact the woman remained, even after marriage, the only person in charge of her dowry, and so men often became economically dependent upon their wives.116 The continuous limiting of the excessive expenditure on female clothes became the only way for men to re-establish their power inside the family and to prevent women from wasting their personal patrimonies that often constituted the base of the family’s wealth. Finally, women themselves became victims of the increase in the size of the dowries. The destiny for those girls whose fathers could not afford to raise a rich dowry or could not raise it for all their daughters, was to be forced to enter convents.117 This was a widespread phenomenon above 98

4. Sumptuary Legislation in Comparative Perspective all during the fourteenth century and it could be one of the reasons for dissoluteness of moral behaviour inside religious houses.118 As Hughes claims, ‘throughout Italy dowries went up, and laws to restrain them multiplied’.119 In 1463 the citizens of Pisa begged Florence’s Senate to enact sumptuary laws to take remedial acts against the poverty of the city,120 and in response Florence issued a sumptuary law which stated that the people of Pisa felt that, if a curb was placed on expenditure on clothes and ornaments, many more marriages could have taken place for the honour of God, the honour of the girls, and the relief of the entire community.121 In several centres, sumptuary laws appeared to be the only and perfect solution to limit the outrageous consequence of dowry inflation. The first law of this kind was enacted in the south of Italy, in Messina, and goes back to the thirteenth century (1272), but soon sumptuary measures whose main target was to control extravagant dowries, trousseaus and matters concerned with marriage in general can be found all over the peninsula. In Genoa the trousseau was fixed at no more than one fifth of the dowry by a law dated 1449.122 We find the same law, imposing a limit on the size of dowries, in Gubbio123 and in Siena,124 to quote just two examples. Briefly, Italian cities were much concerned with the issue of population, and the dowry system formed a key element; large dowries discouraged marriages and consequently the production of children. For this reason, sumptuary legislation concerned mainly with the size of the dowry but also with other aspects of marriage was widespread across the peninsula. The link between sumptuary laws and population rates was not new. Roman legislators too had been concerned with the birth rate and control of marriages. For example, we saw how the Augustan matrimonial legislation was presented by the ancients as concerning the birth rate despite, as has been demonstrated, its real purposes being so different.125 Moreover, as with fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Italians, the Romans of the middle Republic seem to have experienced some level of dowry inflation. What is surprising is that, despite the inflation, sumptuary laws were never, as far as we know, enacted to control the size of dowries. In order to understand why, it is necessary to examine briefly the legal status of the dowry in Rome, and to ask whether it is legitimate and justified to speak of dowry inflation in the Republican period. Dowries in Rome We can start by saying that a dowry in Rome was essentially a contribution from the wife’s family to the expenses of the new household. This characteristic remained unchanged despite variations in the legal position and the value of dowries over the centuries. The development of the dowry in Roman society is inextricably connected to the institution 99

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury of marriage, and the destiny of a dowry itself depended upon the kind of marriage that linked the two families. Generally speaking, while in Renaissance Italy the bride remained in control of her dowry after the marriage, in Rome the dowry was the property of the husband or of the pater familias of the husband’s family. This is valid above all for the early Republic, when marriage cum manu (by which the woman passed from the potestas of her father to that of her husband or his pater familias) was the most common; in this case the dowry became part of the dominium of the husband, and the bride lost every right to her own patrimony. However, before the end of the Republic and during the Principate marriage sine manu became the dominant form. Since a woman married sine manu remained in her father’s potestas, on her father’s death she acquired full rights over her property, including her dowry. Before continuing it must be said that our knowledge of Roman marriage remains scant, especially as far as the transition from the form of marriage cum manu to sine manu is concerned. What can be said is that the shift from one form to the other did happen and that by the end of the Republic marriage cum manu had become very rare. This shift from one kind of marriage to the other finds its explanation in the increase of the divorce rate from the third century BC onwards. Due to the frequency of divorce, specific measures became necessary to establish the destiny of the dowry.126 Generally the dowry was considered as a movement of patrimony between two familiae; it belonged legally to the husband during marriage but not completely, the wife and her father still had rights over it. Usually, members of the upper class stipulated in a premarriage agreement something concerning the dowry (pacta dotalia) and its destiny in the case of divorce. In the absence of these pacts, the destiny of dowries depended on several factors: why the marriage ended, who gave the dowry and the type of the dowry itself. Roman law distinguished between dos profectitia, given by the father of the bride, and dos adventicia, which came from the woman herself or from some other person, or from the father but not as a transfer of property. In the case of the death of the wife, the dowry adventicia remained with the husband; the dowry profectitia could be claimed back by her father but, at the same time, the husband was entitled to keep one-sixth of it for each child. If the father died, the dowry became adventicia and the husband could retain it. The reversion of the dowry was a rarity127 as it was more common for fathers to die before their daughters. In fact one third of brides had already lost their fathers at the moment of their marriage,128 so that their dowries were necessarily adventiciae.129 If the husband died, the widow could claim the dowry back completely so that she could re-marry. In the case of divorce, if no special pre-marital contracts had been made, the wife or her father could initiate an action for the recovery of it (actio rei uxoriae). But whether the divorce was instigated by the woman or her family, the husband was entitled to keep 100

4. Sumptuary Legislation in Comparative Perspective one-sixth of the dos for each child up to a maximum of three, and another one-sixth as compensation for a ‘moral offence’.130 Even if this area requires deeper examination, these details alone allow us to underline the first main difference between marriage in ancient Rome and in Europe during medieval and early modern times. In Christian societies, where marriage was considered an indissoluble arrangement for life, the dowry became part of the patrimony of the new family unit. In Rome, where divorce and remarriage were common, what happened to dowries is less straightforward in cases of divorce and death. The huge number of rules concerning marriage reveals that the main interest seems to have been to keep the woman ‘dotata’ so that she could remarry.131 Moreover, it is without doubt a clear indication of the important role played by dowries in the contracting of marriage. Despite this, no law limiting the size of the dowry, or connected with it in any other way, was enacted in Rome. If it was so important to fix ‘What was going back to whom’, why did no rule fix the ‘What’? In order to try to find a plausible answer it is necessary to analyse the main purpose of the dowry in Roman society and its average size. Sources seem to suggest that the dowry was not only intended to contribute to the wealth of the household, as we stated at the beginning, but also to allow the woman to maintain the lifestyle and social position appropriate to her and her new family.132 As we have seen, in Italy, where the dowry represented the daughter’s share in the family property, members of the aristocracy often went into debt to supply their daughters with good dowries. This often led to the postponement of marriage and, consequently, to a decline in the birth rate. All of this urged governments to enact sumptuary laws. In Rome the situation appears different. The size and the value of the dowry are central in trying to understand the problem. The following figures are quoted from the work of Saller, who had examined ‘the statement of value of real dowry and the moralistic and satiric stock figures for extravagant dowries’.133 Pliny offered to help his friend’s daughter with 50,000 sesterces,134 while in another situation he contributed the amount of 100,000 sesterces.135 On both occasions Pliny did not supply the entire dowry but a contribution; however if Pliny considered it important to mention this contribution it must have constituted the largest part of the dowry and have been therefore worthy of praise for him. Another valuable source of information is Apuleius; he, despite having married Prudentilla, a widow sui iuris, with a patrimony of 4,000,000 sesterces,136 received a dowry worth only 300,000 sesterces,137 a ‘modica’ one, protests the writer, if compared with the dowry of 400,000 sesterces that Rufinus, a poor and ill-clad man, had given to his daughter. Apuleius harshly criticised his enemy Rufinus for having lent a large amount of money to dower his daughter.138 From all of this we can reach two conclusions: first of all, the fact that the two dowries, that of the rich Prudentilla and that of the daughter of the ‘poor’ Rufinus, were almost 101

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury of the same amount suggests that this amount represents the customary value of the dowry among the rich provincial class. Secondly, the criticism addressed to Rufinus by Apuleius for his being in debt for a dowry, in the way it is mentioned, seems to imply that it was not a common practice among Romans. Actually, in Renaissance Italy, where to borrow money was the common practice, such words would not have been perceived as a criticism.139 Moreover it also proves that Roman fathers generally did not need to borrow money in order to provide their daughters with honourable dowries. Up to this point, the examples examined belong to the rich provincial aristocracy whose wealth was, without doubt, inferior to that of the wealthiest citizens of the city of Rome; it is therefore natural to ask what was the size of the dowries of the daughters of the richest citizens. Thanks to information supplied by ancient authors we can fix the dowries’ worth somewhere between hundreds of thousands and a million sesterces. Tacitus says that in AD 19 Tiberius consoled a girl for not having been chosen as a Vestal Virgin, bestowing on her a dowry of one million sesterces.140 Certainly Tiberius with this act wanted to demonstrate his generosity; therefore the gift must have been generous but at the same time not extravagant or excessive. One might say that the sum given by the emperor was the conventional sum for the dowry of a woman from a rich senatorial family; the same figure is testified to by Martial,141 Juvenal142 and Seneca,143 who all refer to dowries worth one million sesterces. It seems possible to conclude that a dowry of a million sesterces was considered to be large but not excessive. At this point we need to place the value of a dowry in relation to the wealth of the family which supplied it, in order to be able to compare the size of Roman dowries with those of early modern Italian societies. Unfortunately the only data at our disposal concerns the case of Prudentilla (above, p. 101), whose dowry represented just about 7% of her estate. In general it could be claimed that the very large dowries must have been of the same measure. Those dowries worth millions were of the same order, representing one year’s income of relatively rich senators.144 Compared to the dowries of many European societies, where a dowry was typically three to five times the annual income and part of the woman’s inheritance, Roman dowries were much smaller and were by no means part of the woman’s inheritance; they simply constituted an economic aid to allow the bride to settle down with dignity into the new household. This is clearly stated by Pliny, who says of Quintilianus’ daughter, ‘She must be provided with clothes and attendance appropriate to her husband’s position.’145 The limited size of dowries might surprise us, after having seen the extravagance the Romans displayed in every other aspect of their private lives. The difference in the size of dowries between Rome and the Italian city-states is enormous, but it reflects mainly profoundly different 102

4. Sumptuary Legislation in Comparative Perspective attitudes towards the institution of marriage in the two societies. Where marriage thought of as a life-long relationship, a rich dowry is seen as a share of the woman’s inheritance; it has a different significance and makes more sense than in a society where divorce is a daily occurrence. Therefore, if it is considered to be the right of the husband to retain part of the dowry after divorce, it becomes the logical desire of the pater familias to give to the new household a minimum dowry, wishing to ensure the passage of wealth to his own descendants. It was the instability of Roman marriage that kept down the inflation of dowries so common in early modern societies.146 I would like to prove this theory with two different pieces of evidence. First, it is during the Republican period, above all during the second half of the second century, that we find evidence of rich dowries, surprisingly richer than those recorded for the Empire, despite the difference in wealth of the two periods. The richest dowries ever enjoyed by Roman brides were those of Scipio’s daughters. Before dying, Scipio Africanus had fixed for each of his two daughters a dowry of fifty talents (1,250,000 sesterces), of which the widow paid half, leaving the obligation to complete the payment to Scipio Aemilianus.147 Cicero’s wives brought him rich dowries: Terentia 400,000 sesterces in cash and some urban property and Publilia 1,200,000 sesterces. One could maintain that probably the richest dowries are attested for a period in which divorce was not a common feature and marriage cum manu was the most common form. In this situation, to supply daughters with rich dowries was not feared as a possible economic loss. Although this theory may appear reasonable, lack of information means we cannot be certain about this matter. What can be stated is that the instability of Roman marriage probably limited the inflation of Roman dowries. A similar phenomenon happens also in modern society, as shown by Goody, whose research concludes that dowries are, usually and across the world, an alternative to inheritance, a sort of pre-mortem inheritance for the bride; but, and this is what most concerns us, the exceptions to this general rule are found above all in societies with a high divorce rate, such as Arab societies.148 Moreover, while in European societies, above all in the Preambles of sumptuary laws, a common theme was the worry and concern that sumptuous dowries could lead to the ruin of entire patrimonies, in Roman literature this does not appear.149 That is due of course to the limited size of the dowry but also to the system of its payment. By law, the dowry in cash was to be paid in three annual instalments, starting at the end of the first year.150 For instance in 162 BC, when Scipio Aemilianus was left with the burden of paying the second part of the dowry that Scipio Africanus promised to his daughter, he did it in one go, surprising the husbands.151 Cicero, whose financial situation was not so good, had more problems in paying the three instalments of the dowry for Tullia, but in a letter to Atticus he admits that his difficulties were due to maladministration of 103

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury his property and he never complained about the size of the dowry itself.152 Actually in the same letter he demonstrates that he expected to be able to pay the third part of the dowry thanks to the current income from his estate.153 Clearly this system of payment prevented the dowry giver from having to borrow large amounts of cash and then being irreparably in debt. At this point we can try to answer the question asked at the beginning of this section: why were laws never enacted to control the size of dowries? It was during the second half of the second century and for all of the first century BC that Roman brides enjoyed the wealthiest dowries. At the same time, divorce probably became more common and the dowry stopped being considered as a life-defining sum, because a woman might have needed to bring a dowry to more than one marriage. As a consequence the Roman dowry froze, and during the Principate the size of dowries remained at the same level if not inferior to those of the Republic. Moreover, preventive measures enabled patres familias to pay dowries without turning to loans. Dowries were neither extravagant nor did they represent a threat to the patrimony of the ruling class, and as a consequence they did not become the object of specific legislation. Finally, I would like to underline another aspect that might explain the different attitudes to dowries in Roman and pre-modern societies. We have seen how in Italy the increasing value of dowries had consequences for the birth rate since those fathers who could not supply their daughters with an honourable dowry had other options, most notably sending them to nunneries. But in Rome the situation appears completely different: a father had to get his daughter married; there were no alternatives. The idea of an unmarried woman probably did not exist and there was no counterpart to the nunnery in pre-Christian Rome. Since there did not exist any other possibility for a woman other than marriage, in Rome we do not find any connection between dowries and marriage and birth rate. This brief study has shown how the sumptuary legislation enacted in Italy involved some combination of social, economic and moral regulation. The social aspect appears to be predominant in Italian regulation. The decline in population that occurred in Italy during the fourteenth century was both seen as a threat to the wealth and military power of many Italian centres and attributed to the increase of extravagance of marriages and dowries. Sumptuary laws whose targets were dowries, every aspect of wedding celebrations and women’s dresses and ornaments proliferated right across Italy. Mutatis mutandis, this legislation, or more precisely the motivation behind these kinds of sumptuary measures, echoed the Augustan matrimonial legislation of 18 BC. The same concerns about the birth rate and above all the transmission of property led both Augustus and the Italian governors to use the instrument of legislation as a remedy and a cure; in first-century Rome encouraging marriage and procreation, 104

4. Sumptuary Legislation in Comparative Perspective and in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Italy limiting mainly the size of dowries and the lavishness of weddings. Economic concern took the shape of protectionist measures, both in the form of the prohibition of the importation of foreign products, typical of cities whose economy was based on craft, and in the shape of limitations on the consumption of those goods that could be exported, typical of cities whose economy was based on trade. We have noted that this phenomenon is not unique but characteristic of sumptuary legislation across Europe, as a reaction to the huge increase in trade and industry. The moral discourse was, in Italy, fundamentally influenced by the strong presence of the Church. We have shown how deeply linked are the enacting of sumptuary measures and the preaching of churchmen, above all in targeting women for their extravagance. Here also, as in previous chapters, we have demonstrated how diverse political, economic and social considerations, impossible to ignore, converge in sumptuary legislation. Conclusion This chapter has been devoted to an examination of sumptuary legislation in three pre-modern societies. After a brief introduction about premodern sumptuary regulation and its features, our attention has focused on the legislation enacted in England, Japan and Italy, examples of great interest and significance. The characteristics and peculiarities of such legislation have been highlighted, so we do not need to rehearse them here. Rather, in this concluding section, we shall turn our attention to the similarities and differences between these three legislative regimes so as to be able to compare them with Roman legislation. Although there are numerous differences in the socio-political and cultural backgrounds of the societies examined, what is striking is that it is possible to trace a common pattern in their sumptuary legislation. Although it might seem inappropriate to compare other aspects of societies as far apart as, for instance, Italy in the fourteenth century and Japan in the seventeenth, it is not only possible but also logical to look for similarities in their sumptuary policy. The existence of common features may enable us to discover what underlay sumptuary legislation in each case. First, in each of the societies so far examined we have found the existence of a ‘sumptuary ethic’, according to which it is the proper duty of government to regulate consumption. It was used as a premise and justification for the enactment of sumptuary laws: in England and in Italy to avoid the ‘anger of God’ towards extravagant living; in Japan to follow the dictates of Confucianism. What is most striking is that the moral condemnation of luxury assumed a similar feature wherever sumptuary laws were enacted. Luxury is dangerous: it weakens and 105

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury debilitates individuals and therefore puts the State at risk. Luxury is socially disruptive: it does not allow clear distinctions to be made between members of different strata of society, and it threatens to undermine the exclusivity of the ruling class in the use of symbols of wealth and power. Luxury is a sin: it goes against the natural order established by God and it brings famine and death. We have found these same features, without substantial difference, in both England and Italy, societies influenced by the classical criticism of luxury and by Christian condemnation of it as a sin. In Japan the idea of luxury as a sin is not detectable, and all moral discourse is based on the Confucianist cornerstone of subordination, and therefore on the moral need to maintain and emphasise distinctions. However, despite these differences in ideology, in every society sumptuary legislation has been presented as dictated by moral reasons, and even when other motivations seem to have influenced legislators the moral stand against luxury seems to overshadow any other consideration of a socio-political and economic nature. The second constant feature is the presence of protectionist concerns interconnected with sumptuary reasons. Sumptuary laws were used as a means of defending the local economy. In England protectionist laws and sumptuary laws shared the same path.154 We have seen that in Italy, during the thirteenth century and above all from the middle of the fourteenth, protectionist measures became very common: sometimes applying duties on imported goods or banning the importation and the sale of foreign goods. It is more difficult to cite single examples for Japan where, shut off from any contact with the outside world, the whole policy of the Tokugawa regime can be defined as deeply protectionist. The third ever-present element is the duty of the government to defend the patrimonies of the ruling class by preventing their impoverishment. Self-indulgence is a real danger to patrimony since it leads the rich to impoverishment and the poor to ruin. Every single law so far examined in England, as in Japan and Italy, consistently presents this same concern. Closely connected with the previous point is the fourth common feature: the use of sumptuary laws to impose hierarchical regulation. An omnipresent purpose of the legislation we have examined is the protection of hierarchical differentiations; sumptuary laws were necessary to distinguish social classes in periods of social mobility. This aspect has been underlined many times in this book. Here it seems enough to remind ourselves that the principal and most urgent purpose of all English sumptuary laws ‘were established and devised, for the necessary repressing, avoiding and expelling of the inordinate excess’ whose results are ‘inconveniences as to be the great, manifest and notorious detriment of the common weal, the subversion of good and politic order in knowledge and distinction of people according to their estate, pre-eminences, dignities and degrees, and to the utter impoverishment and undoing of many 106

4. Sumptuary Legislation in Comparative Perspective inexpert and light persons inclined to pride, mother of all vices’;155 that every aspect of daily life in Japan was strictly hierarchically controlled; and that, although Italian legislation did not regulate according to social hierarchy, in all Italian sumptuary laws a list of exceptions and distinctions for eminent members of the society was made. The final common aspect is the interest, in some cases the sole interest, in imposing clothing regulations. The concern with clothes cannot be motivated solely by the moral condemnation of luxury, since that does not explain why extravagant clothes were more worthy of condemnation or dangerous than extravagant houses, furnishings or even banquets. Sumptuary laws targeting clothes attempted to ‘construct an order of appearance that allowed the relevant social fact, in particular about social and economic status, gender and occupation, to be “read” from the visible signs disclosed by clothes of the wearer’.156 Sumptuary laws served the purpose of distinguishing men from women, married from unmarried, prostitutes from other women, Christians from Jews, nobles from merchants, merchants from peasants. This explains the centrality of dress codes in sumptuary laws since they were mainly focused on the preservation of the external symbols of class hierarchy, as Japanese legislation and the detailed English hierarchical dress regulation have clearly demonstrated. The analysis of English, Japanese, and Italian sumptuary laws in this chapter has demonstrated that a combination of several aspects, reasons and purposes is needed to explain a phenomenon as complex as sumptuary legislation. It was mainly economic and social factors that led to the promulgation of laws whose aim was to perpetuate, enforce and make visible the hierarchical structure of society. Finally, this comparative analysis has brought to light an aspect which I personally consider the most compelling and unexpected of all: sumptuary legislation, whenever and wherever enacted, was about limiting and controlling the display of luxury rather than the actual luxury and wealth itself.

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Conclusion Sumptuary legislation, too often disregarded by modern scholars as a phenomenon, if not of little interest, then certainly to be considered as marginal in the whole panorama of Roman policy, is in reality a fascinating and complex topic on which I hope I have shed some light – not only Roman policy during the last two centuries of the Republic but also, and above all, on issues of identity and self-perception among the Roman ruling class. The most superficial reading of sumptuary laws reveals that they were enacted to limit luxury when new wealth poured into Rome as a consequence of expansion and conquest. But what I hope to have demonstrated here is that what was being fought was not wealth itself, which was paramount in the definition of a member of the ruling class, but its use in the political arena for the achievement of personal aims. This explains why only certain aspects of luxurious living became targets of sumptuary laws; above all banquets, because of their use in the political scene for acquiring power and influence. This is the first and most obvious difference between Roman and pre-modern sumptuary legislation. While in Rome extravagance in food was the main target of sumptuary laws, during the later medieval and early modern period the main target became dress. Extravagance of the table did not disappear as a target of sumptuary laws, but it became a secondary one, and by the fifteenth century the issue of food was no longer an object of sumptuary measures. This is the most evident difference, and for this reason it has attracted the interest of scholars; but in fact there are more significant differences that need to be stressed. The economic motive and the class character of medieval and pre-modern sumptuary legislation constitute the main differences between the Roman laws and the other laws examined here. Roman legislation does not make explicit reference to class; it was restricted to the ruling class. It can be considered, as already demonstrated, as a form of self-regulation by a ruling class that felt the need to protect itself. But one could argue that in a similar fashion the Japanese, Italian and English ruling classes also wished to protect themselves by enacting such legislation. The difference lies in what or whom they were defending themselves against. Roman legislation was a form of self-protection from an enemy that smouldered inside the ruling 109

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury class itself: the strong and ruinous competition among its members. Premodern legislation was a form of defence against an attack which came from outside: the rise of new social forces that could seize the distinctive features of the ruling classes and succeed to their power. The Roman oligarchy, if compared to the ruling classes of the pre-modern societies examined in the second part of this book, appeared solid and strong. The necessity to enact sumptuary laws in order to re-establish class divisions is the consequence of social mobility and of the rise of new social forces, aspects that cannot be attributed to Roman society during the second and first centuries BC. Sumptuary laws in medieval and early modern societies had to preserve distinctions and combat fluidity by establishing fixed distinctions at a time when social mobility was becoming a political issue. In Rome there were some tensions caused by newly emerging social forces, especially as a result of the extension of Roman citizenship and slave manumission, but I would maintain that this never put at risk the existence of the ruling class and it never became a major political issue. What has just been said does not deny the political significance of Roman sumptuary laws. On the contrary what Roman legislation shared with that of other societies is precisely the connection between the control of extravagance and socio-political issues. Whereas the early modern laws targeted dress in an attempt to maintain hierarchical distinctions through appearance, the Romans targeted banquets in an attempt to control competition among members of the ruling class and to prevent the use of personal wealth to increase the political power of individuals within the ruling class. Sumptuary laws are the weapons of self-defence used by the Roman ruling class to protect the basis of its own power. From what or whom? The simplest answer is from the strong competition that occurred between the members of the ruling class in every aspect of life and that was putting at risk their patrimonies and the very stability of their class. Moreover new economic conditions were proving detrimental from a political point of view. The use of personal wealth to foster political and electoral support may explain the laws’ continual interest in banquets, whose political use has been stressed. But this is not enough; the danger connected with this view is to underestimate the significance of the moralistic discourse that surrounded the enactment of such legislation; the extremely important role played by the mos maiorum in the selfdefinition of Roman identity and specifically of the Roman ruling class is, in my view, the key aspect in fully understanding sumptuary legislation. Luxury, the origin and causes of all moral illness, needed to be defeated as Heracles fought the Hydra, a terrible monster with many heads. What is at stake in this battle is what is quintessentially Roman; Romanitas itself. By conducting this war, the Roman ruling class, especially the senatorial class, intended to manifest their loyalty to the mos maiorum in front of the other members of the elite and the people, in order to reenforce their legitimacy to rule in the eyes of those who held the power 110

Conclusion to give them power. The laws were never enforced in Rome, as in many of the other places where they were enacted, because, in my view, what really mattered was to enact the various laws rather than their actual effect on the problem. I am not denying that the various legislators tried to limit luxurious banquets, funerals, expensive clothes, and so on, for the reasons examined above, but the act of simply proposing the law was of equal importance.

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Appendix Catalogue of Sumptuary Laws There follows a chronologically ordered catalogue of Roman sumptuary laws, according to the classification by Rotondi. For each law the relevant ancient sources, the date, the legislator and the content are given. I have also included the lex Aufidia, considered by some scholars to be part of the sumptuary discourse, the lex Publicia and the lex Cincia, because they too expressed a similar concern: the use of wealth to further personal aims. Lex Metilia Pliny is the only source who supplies us with information about the law promulgated to regulate the textile industry. Quoting the law that refers to different clays used by fullers, Pliny says: ‘As the Metilian law referring to fullers still stands, the law which Gaius Flaminius and Lucius Aemilius as censors put forward to be carried before the People.’1 The dating of the law and even the identity of the author are unknown.2 Pliny attributes the law to the censors Aemilius and Flaminius, who held office in 220-219 BC,3 but the ancient sources provide us with information about only one Metilius, tribune of the plebs in 217, who proposed a measure to coordinate the power of the magister equitum with that of the dictator.4 Scholars are divided on this conflicting information. One group is inclined to identify the ‘two’ tribunes as one, but they disagree about the dating of the law. The other group believes in the existence of two separate tribunes who share the same name. With respect to the first group mentioned above, there are two hypotheses. Lange5 suggests Metilius was tribune twice, first in 220-219 and later in 217, and dates the law to 220-219. Münzer dates the law to 217, believing that Metilius held two tribunates, one with Flaminius as censor and one with him as consul.6 Both scholars believe Metilius carried the edict in the form of a plebiscite in 217. Scullard7 claims that Metilius, as tribune in 217, could have carried, in the form of a plebiscite, a censorial edict of 220. As for the group who believe in the existence of two tribunes of the same name, Cassola8 argues that Lange et al. fail to consider Pliny’s text. Pliny does not mention a previous censorial edict, telling us only that the law had been approved by the censors Flaminius and Aemilius in 113

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury 220-219. Therefore, Cassola suggests the existence of two people of the same name, one tribune in 220-219 and another in 217. He attributes the Metilian law to the former, and he dates the law in 220-219. Lack of information does not allow us to date the measures with absolute certainty and the issue is still open for debate. The only question related to the date that concerns us here is whether or not the law was a war measure, but despite differing on date and author both theories seem to corroborate this reading of the legislative act. Unfortunately the state of our knowledge is no better concerning the contents of the law. Our only source, Pliny,9 does not provide us with any details, though the law seems to have controlled the process used by fullers during the manufacture of uncoloured materials.10 The aims of the law remain obscure: economic and moral purposes and motivations have been put forward as explanations by different scholars. According to those who consider Metilius and Flaminius as political allies, the law was passed to support the rural plebs against the urban plebs, restricting the latter’s business.11 The law thus becomes part of Flaminius’ political project. The weakness of this theory is, as Clemente12 underlines, the anachronistic idea of a Roman society divided between the country and the city plebs; moreover it is not clear to me how this law could economically support the country plebs. The small amount of information supplied by Pliny does not enable us to maintain that the law’s aim was to restrict the business of the urban craftsmen; rather it is safer to limit ourselves and say that it established technical rules in the execution of their work. It is not obvious why the censors were interested in these technical aspects, but we can hypothesise that the law forbade the use of expensive products in the cloth manufacturing process. For this reason the law has been considered a sumptuary measure against extravagance in clothes.13 Clemente notes that a few years after the Metilian law another law against extravagance in clothing was put forward by the tribune Oppius. He maintains that the aim of these different laws could be the same, namely to limit the use of clothes considered too extravagant and inappropriate during a period of war, and to meet the war needs for which the fullers’ skills could be useful. As we have seen before, it seems that the law should be considered as a war measure more than a sumptuary law in the strict sense. Lex Oppia Livy is our main source for the Oppian law.14 He says: ‘among the anxieties of great wars, either scarce finished or soon to come, an incident occurred, unimportant to relate, but which, by reason of the passion it aroused, developed into a violent contention. Marcus Fundanius and Lucius Valerius, tribunes of the people, proposed to the assembly the abrogation of the Oppian Law. The tribune M. Oppius had carried this law in the heat of Punic War, in the consulship of Q. Fabius and Tiberius 114

Appendix: Catalogue of Sumptuary Laws Sempronius, that no woman should own more than half an ounce of gold, or wear a parti-coloured garment15 or ride in a carriage in the City or in a town within a mile, except during religious festivals.’16 The law can be dated to 215, the year of the consulship of Q. Fabius and Tiberius Sempronius. The pressures of time and the strains of war, which provided the backdrop to the law’s promulgation, are further explained by Livy.17 According to Livy, the purpose of this law was not just to limit female excesses. He says, ‘for if the law had been passed for the purpose of holding female caprice under restrain there would be danger some that its abrogation would rouse their passion; but the occasion itself will tell you why the law was passed’.18 In another passage: ‘Who fails to see that the poverty and distress of the State wrote that law, since all private property had to be diverted to public use, and that the law was to remain in force as long as the cause for its enactment lasted?’19 The law was a fiscal measure whose purpose was to collect money and other assets to fill the coffers of the State. The law is related to other measures of this kind, such as the collection of funds for widows and wards20 and the contributions of gold and silver in 210.21 Livy’s theory is not confirmed by other sources. Livy does not quote the exact contents of the law, and his text creates problems of interpretation. A careful examination of his words, ‘ne qua mulier plus semunciam auri haberet neu uestimento uersicolori uteretur neu iuncto uehiculo in urbe oppidoue aut propius inde mille passus nisi sacrorum publicorum causa ueheretur’,22 reveals some contradictions. Let us consider the first provision; the prohibition of women to habere more than a semuncia of gold. Some modern scholars wonder if it is possible to believe that the law forbade women to own more than one semuncia, and translate habere with the concept of ownership, knowing that women not sui iuris were unable to own anything.23 They have tried to face this contradiction by developing the hypothesis that women were forbidden to wear, not own, more than a semuncia of gold.24 Culham underlines how the law refers to the gold owned by men but worn by women. Neither of these interpretations suggests the idea of an economic measure. Other scholars25 assume that the provision addressed the ownership of gold. Whatever the main target of the law, there is an episode that seems to indicate that it was not enforced. In 210, the senators gave their gold and silver and bronze money to the treasury, reserving only the rings for themselves, their wives and children, a bulla for each son and an ounce of gold for each wife and daughter.26 If on this occasion the women could keep one uncia of gold we can argue either that the Oppian law did not order the confiscation of all the gold the women had in excess of one semuncia, or that it was not enforced. Livy’s interest does not lie in the law itself but in the ‘res parva’,27 transformed into a serious matter by the passion of those involved: the debate for the abrogation of the law.28 In 195, M. Fundanius and 115

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury L. Valerius proposed the abrogation of the law which was defended by two other tribunes, M. and P. Iunius Brutus, with Cato’s support. Livy supplies us with the speech of Cato in defence of the law and that of Valerius for its abrogation. We cannot concern ourselves with a detailed examination of the speech, which has been subjected to full analysis elsewhere; generally, the interest of historians has been in determining the authenticity of the two speeches, mainly because of the importance of at least one of the speakers. But for our discussion it is important to stress just a few aspects: not only has it been proved by Fraccaro and Scullard29 that Cato’s speech is not original, but it is also uncertain that Cato published a speech against the abrogation of the law, since no fragment or title exists.30 The speech is a free composition by Livy, who does not include Cato’s speeches where they were extant. This is the only full speech reported by Livy, who in three other passages demonstrates knowledge of the existence of an original speech31 but does not insert it. Livy knew that Cato spoke in defence of the law, but given that no speech had survived he took this opportunity to compose a speech for Cato. The style of the speech is not authentic, being very different from Cato’s well-known style and containing a few anachronisms.32 Despite this, the debate and the content of the two speeches remain of great interest to us, as does the reading by Milnor in the context of Augustan policy. It goes without saying that Livy is the most Augustan of authors so this must be kept in mind in our attempt to understand his extraordinary interest in the debate that seems to reflect problems and concerns more in tune with the Augustan age than Cato’s time. As noted by Milnor, Cato starts his speech by warning against the invasion of the public sphere by private business; but is it not the main aim of his speech to advocate and defend State intervention by means of law in private matters that were traditionally left to the individual’s discretion? On the one hand the need to keep the boundary between public and private is deeply an antiAugustan sentiment, but on the other the idea that in certain situations the State must contain and control private life is in line with Augustus’ social legislation33 and, I would add, the ideological background of every sumptuary discourse. Valerius’ argument differs considerably from Cato’s; in his speech, history makes its entry and the specific historical circumstances of the promulgation of the law are considered and compared with the present ones: Hannibal in Italy, lack of resources to pay and to recruit new soldiers, poverty – these are the circumstances that compel the State to intervene in matters of extravagance. At that particular and dramatic moment of the City’s history, both women and men had to suffer restrictions, but now that the war was over, victory and its fruits should be enjoyed by everyone.34 Moreover, while Cato argues that wealth spent on extravagant items is the cause of disaster for the City, Valerius distinguishes between extravagant items, purple clothes and gold; while 116

Appendix: Catalogue of Sumptuary Laws money spent on clothes might indeed constitute a waste, gold, which cannot be consumed, does not lose its value if in the form of jewellery instead of coins. Moreover, female jewellery should not be seen as just private consumption, but rather regarded as a symbolic and real display of national power and wealth. This argument is of particular interest for us in its differentiation between objects of luxury whose importance and significance were clearly not perceived to be the same, because, mutatis mutandis, the same differentiation explains the targets of sumptuary legislation. The law was repealed, not as a consequence of any of the senators’ speeches but, according to Livy, because of the agitation of women. Even the women’s reaction presents a few problems; Cato accused the opposition of instigating the women’s discontent and orchestrating the tumult.35 Pomeroy36 suggests that the men could have permitted this demonstration, as the abrogation of the law would have allowed them to display their wealth via the ornaments of their women; the wealth of the women reflected the power and the importance of their men. Although it cannot be denied that the women could not demonstrate without the men’s consent, this does not mean that we should automatically disregard the idea that they could have organised a demonstration on their own behalf. The women had the benefit of some independence; witness, for instance, the contribution made by women in 207, when they elected 25 delegates to collect contributions for the war.37 Even religious events permitted women to meet together. Valerius, in his speech, reminded his audience of all the occasions on which the women’s intervention had been of decisive importance, placing them within the res publica as indispensable protagonists of civic life.38 The men either allowed, or at least did not forbid, their women to demonstrate against a law that was becoming a limit even for them. The law was abrogated. Lex Publicia Macrobius, talking about the Saturnalia, comments: ‘Since many, because of greed, made the Saturnalia an excuse to ask for and demand gifts from their clients, a practice which bore heavily on those of more slender means, one Publicius, a tribune, proposed to the People that no one should send anything but wax tapers to one richer than himself.’39 Macrobius is the only source we have for this legislation and unfortunately he fails to supply any information that helps either to date it or to identify the legislator. His primary interest is to explain the tradition of giving presents during the Saturnalia. He says that Publicius was a tribune, but not knowing the date we are unable accurately to identify him. Nevertheless, modern historians40 attribute this plebiscite to C. Publicius Bibulus, tribune in 209 BC,41 because of a connection with a law promulgated by Cincius Alimentus in 204. According to Rotondi, a connection exists between the 117

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury two measures because they shared the same purpose, vide Cato as quoted by Livy: ‘What brought about the Cincian law except that the plebeians had already begun to be vassals and tributaries to the Senate?’42 It must nonetheless be pointed out that the only thing that we know about the lex Publicia is that it restricted to candles (non nisi cerei ditioribus missitarentur)43 the presents that clients could give during the Saturnalia per avaritiam a clientibus ambitiose munera exigerent. Probably the law prevented clients from seeking to obtain favour by giving expensive presents and similarly prevented patrons from demanding expensive gifts. We know from Martial that extravagant gift-giving at the Saturnalia existed during the Imperial period,44 but we have no such clear authority to inform of us of this practice during the Republic. However, it is suggested that the mere existence of a law limiting the giving of gifts to candles implies that the giving of extravagant gifts must have been a problem that required the attention of the State. It tried to avoid the possibility of using personal wealth to obtain political benefits and in this it can be considered part of the sumptuary discourse. Lex Cincia de donis et muneribus A few years after the promulgation of the Publician law, if the above date is correct, a law was enacted against the corruption of barristers.45 This law is recorded by several sources: Tacitus calls it the Cincian law46 and Cicero47 the lex Cincia de donis et muneribus. Livy refers to Cato who asked, ‘what led to the passing of the Cincian Law concerning presents and fees except the condition of the plebeians who had become tributaries and tax payers to the Senate?’48 Modern scholars49 attribute the law to the tribune M. Cincius Alimentus on the grounds of Livy’s information that ‘the plebeian tribunes who accompanied the praetor were M. Claudius Marcellus and M. Cincius Alimentus’50 and, following Cicero, date it to 204 BC, four years after the taking of Tarentum.51 This law against the corruption of barristers52 forbade barristers to receive presents from their clients. The law made provision for a small number of exceptions; it actually did not completely forbid the giving of donations, for instance it distinguished personae non-exceptae from personae exceptae who had no other limitation.53 Donations were forbidden, but any that were given, although against the law, remained valid and the guilty were not punished. The Cincian law is the only example of a lex imperfecta about which the sources supply us with information. The Tituli ex Corpore Ulpiani gives us information about the lex imperfecta and quotes the lex de donis et muneribus as an example of lex imperfecta. ‘A law is perfect, which forbids something to be done, and if it has been done rescinds it, such as the lex . A law is imperfect, which forbids something to be done, and if it has been done does not rescind it, and 118

Appendix: Catalogue of Sumptuary Laws imposes no penalty upon him who breaks the law; such as the lex Cincia, which prohibits more than two thousand asses to be donated, except to certain relatives, and if more than that is given does not rescind the donation.’ 54 In 17 BC, Augustus renewed the law with a senatus consultum, and a penalty of four times the sum received was imposed on the advocate.55 Claudius modified the law, allowing advocates to be paid, but he limited their fees to no more than 10,000 sesterces. Anyone who took more than that would be open to prosecution.56 Nero permitted a fixed and reasonable fee (certam iustamque mercedem).57 Lex Orchia The law promulgated by the tribune Orchius is the first of a series of measures to control the extravagance of the table.58 Macrobius supplies us with all the information necessary to identify both the legislator and the date of the law. ‘The very first of these laws on dinners to come before the People was the Orchian law, proposed by Gaius Orchius, a tribune of plebs, pursuant to a motion in the Senate, in the third year after the appointment of Cato as censor. Since the text of the law is long, I will not cite it in full, but its main provision prescribed the permitted number of guests at a meal. This is the law which was later the subject of speeches by Cato, in which he complained loudly that more guests were being invited to dinners that it allowed.’59 The law is dated to the third year of Cato’s censorship (182 BC) by Macrobius, our only source, who also tells us that the law limited the number of guests at entertainments, but nothing about other provisions.60 The interest of scholars has been aroused by the intervention of Cato; several sources mention a speech or speeches that Cato delivered about this law when attempts were later made to repeal it. Unfortunately the information is conflicting and raises some key issues. With regard to the law, Macrobius says ‘de qua Cato mox orationibus suis vociferabatur’. The use of the plural (orationibus) could suggest that Cato spoke about this law on more than one occasion, which seems to be confirmed by Festus, who, in two separate passages, suggests that Cato made two speeches, the first against the bill (Cato in ea qua legem Orchiam dissuadet),61 and the second perhaps against its abrogation (Cato in suasione de lege Orchia derogaretur).62 Further information about a speech of Cato is supplied by a passage of the Scholia Bobbiensia63 that says ‘non aliter et Cato in legem Orchiam conferens’, proving the existence of a speech but not enlightening us on the relationship between it and the law. The two passages of Festus and the plural form used by Macrobius raise questions about the number of speeches that Cato made on the Orchian law, and about the context of such speeches. It is unlikely that Cato would have spoken against a sumptuary law, for two reasons. First, he was well 119

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury known for his firm moral beliefs and second, according to Macrobius this is the law about which Cato complained loudly that more guests were being invited to dinners than it allowed.64 Scholars disagree on the actual number of speeches delivered by Cato on this law; Lange proposed that Cato spoke about the Orchian law twice: first, when the law was proposed, he spoke against it because it was not strict enough and later, after the approval of the Fannian law, he objected to the repeal of the Orchian law. Fraccaro65 raised objections to this interpretation: if the law was not severe enough then Cato might have demanded more sternness, but he would not have spoken against a sumptuary law. Moreover, since Cato was the leader of the ‘conservative party’, if he had disapproved of this law no one else would have approved of it. Meyer interpreted the title of the speech as Oratio, ne legi Orchiae derogaretur, having corrected the first passage of Festus by adding the negation ne.66 Fraccaro, examining the passage of Festus, argues that the original texts should be read in dissuasione ne lex Orchia derogaretur. According to Fraccaro, in the transmission of the text, the very unusual word dissuasione has been replaced with the widespread suasione and as a consequence the original ne has been changed to de. The title of the speech would have been Ne lex Orchia derogaretur dissuasio.67 That the law was repealed is often inferred from a passage of Varro68 who, when talking about the ideal number of guests during a dinner, makes no mention of any limit imposed by law. Scullard rejects this argument, considering it ‘scarcely conclusive’.69 Lex Fannia 70

The consul Fannius proposed the second law against the extravagance of the table71 in 161 BC, eleven years before the Third Punic War,72 in year 592 ab urbe condita.73 Gellius supplies us with information about a decree of the Senate, passed in the consulship of Gaius Fannius and Marcus Valerius Massala, which preceded the Fannian law. He says, quoting Ateius Capito: ‘Only recently I read in the Miscellanies of Ateius Capito an old decree of the Senate, passed in the consulship of Gaius Fannius and Marcus Valerius Messala, which provides that the leading citizens, who according to ancient usage “interchanged” at the Melagesian games, that is acted as host to one another in rotation, should take an oath before the consul in set terms, that they would not spend on each dinner more than one hundred and twenty asses in addition to vegetables, bread and wine; that they would not serve foreign, but only native, wine, nor use at table more than one hundred pounds’ weight of silverware.’74 No other source supplies us with this information but, as Clemente75 underlines, it is possible that the content of the sumptuary law went back to this decree of the Senate. The provisions of the law subsequent to that decree are: 120

Appendix: Catalogue of Sumptuary Laws It allowed ‘the expenditure of one hundred asses a day at the Roman and the plebeian games, at the Saturnalia, and on certain other days; of thirty asses on ten other days each month; but on other days of only ten’.76 It forbade ‘the serving of any bird course beside a single hen that had not been fattened, a provision that was subsequently renewed and went on through all the laws’.77 It ordained ‘that not more than three persons outside the family should be entertained, on market-days no more than five’.78 The information supplied by Pliny with regard to the measure on the consumption of non-fattened hens has been variously explained by scholars. Thanks to Varro79 we know that the only hens that were fattened were those imported from Africa, and due to their rarity they were very expensive. Pais80 explains that the reason for this measure is that the Roman gourmet, despite the abundance of wild hens in Italy, preferred the tastier and more expensive imported fattened hens. In order to avoid the use of extravagant products this law was promulgated. It was considered so necessary as to be introduced not by a praetor or a tribune but by the consuls themselves on the recommendation and advice of all good citizens.81 According to Macrobius, who quotes Sammonicus Severus, the senators, seeing that the situation did not improve after the promulgation of the Orchian law, thought it necessary to promulgate a new and stricter law, since extravagant dining was doing unbelievable harm to the State. Macrobius describes the situation: ‘Things had come to pass that the pleasures of the table were enough to introduce many youths of good family to sell their virtue and their freedom, and many of the common people of Rome used to go to the Place of Assembly overcome with wine and deliberate on matters which concerned the public safety in a state of drunkenness.’82 Both Gellius (‘This is the law to which the poet Lucilius alludes when he says: The paltry hundred pence of Fannius’) 83 and Macrobius (‘The Fannian law went further and limited the permissible expenditure to one hundred asses, so that poet Lucilius, with his usual wit, speaks of “Fannius and his miserable little hundred” ’) 84 make the connection between the law at hand and a passage of Lucilius. Lex Didia The Fannian law was seen as a very good measure against extravagance, and eighteen years after its promulgation it was extended to the whole of Italy by a new law that Macrobius85 called ‘Didian’.86 He87 permits us to date this legislative measure to 143 BC, eighteen years after the Fannian Law but, he does not identify the legislator other than to imply that his name was Didius. It is often asserted that the law was promulgated by a tribune; Rotondi assumes it without further explanation, and Pais 121

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury defines the law as a plebiscite. Münzer88 identifies the legislator with T. Didius, father of T. Didius, T. F(ilius)., tribune in 103. The latter was, probably, the consul of 98 BC, T. Didius T.f. Sex n(epos). He may have been the son of the presumed tribune of 143, who would therefore have been T. Didius, Sex filius. All these assumptions remain unconfirmed by any source, and we cannot make any claim as to his status or identity. While the author of the law remains otherwise unknown, the same cannot be said of its content. The law had two proposals; it extended the lex Fannia to the whole of Italy, and was aimed at not only those who gave entertainments that exceeded in expense what the law had prescribed, but also all those who were present at such entertainments. Lex Aufidia Pliny is the only source to mention this legislative measure: ‘There was an old resolution of the Senate prohibiting the importation of African wild animals into Italy. Gnaeus Aufidius, when Tribune of the Plebs, carried in the Assembly of the People a law repealing this and allowing them to be imported for shows in the Circus.’89 The dating of the plebiscite is uncertain, as is the identity of the legislator. He could be the tribune of the plebs of 170 mentioned by Livy,90 or the Aufidius whom Cicero knew as an ex-praetor in 94 BC.91 or an otherwise unknown Aufidius. While De Sanctis,92 following Lange,93 maintains that the law has to be attributed to the tribune of 170, some historians94 date the law to a more recent period, around 110 BC, identifying the Aufidius mentioned by Pliny with the praetor referred to by Cicero. They argue that in 170 relations with Africa were not frequent and the shows in the Circus were not yet sumptuous. In reality we know for sure that even before that date wild animals had been imported from Africa. The first mention we find in the sources is in the year 251 BC, when L. Metellus exhibited in the Circus 142 elephants, which he had brought from Sicily after his victory over the Carthaginians.95 There was a venatio in 186 BC, during the games celebrated by M. Fulvius, in which lions and panthers were exhibited.96 The Ludi Circenses, exhibited by the curule aediles P. Cornelius Scipio Nasica and P. Lentulus in 168 BC, are a proof of the growing magnificence of the age; sixty-three African panthers and forty bears and elephants were presented on that occasion.97 As Pliny informs us, the law was enacted in order to abrogate a senatus consultum that banned the importation and exhibition of wild animals during the games. It is not clear why Aufidius wanted to abrogate the ancient decree of the Senate that had been a restriction on extravagance, while a few other laws were promulgated in order to limit extravagance in other sectors of daily life. 122

Appendix: Catalogue of Sumptuary Laws

Lex Licinia A few years after the promulgation of the Didian law, another law98 was passed in order to complete the previous legislative measure against luxury at the table. Macrobius and Gellius are the only ancient sources that mention it. Gellius says: Next the Licinian law was proposed which, while allowing the outlay of one hundred asses on designated days, as did the law of Fannius, conceded two hundred asses for weddings and set a limit of thirty for other days; however, after naming a fixed weight of dried meat and salted provisions for each day, it granted the indiscriminate and unlimited use of the products of the earth, vine and orchard. The poet Laevius mentions this law in his Erotopaegnia. These are the words of Laevius by which he means that a young goat that had been brought for a feast was sent away and the dinner served with fruit and vegetables, as the Licinian law had provided: The Licinian law is introduced, The liquid light to the kid restored. Lucilius has also the said law in mind with these words: Let us evade the law of Licinius. 99 The law is also recorded by Macrobius: After the Didian law P. Licinius Crassus Dives introduced the Licinian law. The aristocratic party supported his proposal and approved it with such enthusiasm that the Senate decreed that, after promulgation only and without awaiting confirmation after three market days, it should be universally observed as if it had already received the assent of the people. This law for the most part, with but a few changes, contained the same provisions as the Fannian Law, its purpose being to obtain the authority of a fresh law, since respect for the older law was beginning to lapse. To summarise, the Licinian Law enacted that Romans might consume only thirty asses’ worth of food a head on the Kalends, Nones, and market days and that on other days not thus excepted not more should be provided and served than three pounds’ weight of dried meat and one pound of salt fish, together with any produce of the earth, vine, or orchard.100 Even though Gellius101 does not precisely indicate the identity of the Licinius who proposed the law or the exact year it was passed, he nevertheless gives us an important clue to its date. He tells us that Lucilius referred to the law in his satires, which gives us a terminus ante quem of 103, when Lucilius died. 123

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury Macrobius emphasises that senators believed the law so necessary and urgent that they ordered that it come into force immediately. Therefore they did not wait for ‘the time of three market days’, and they took the approbation of the comitia for granted. Macrobius seems to supply us with important information in order to date the legislation and to identify the legislator as P. Licinius Crassus Dives. According to some historians,102 especially those from the early twentieth century, the legislator named by Macrobius is to be identified with P. Licinius Crassus (cos. 97 BC), the father of M. Crassus the triumvir (cos.70, 55 BC). The problem arises from Macrobius’ statement that he had the cognomen Dives. If this is right he cannot be the triumvir’s father, as there is no evidence, as Marshall has demonstrated, that the triumvir’s family had had the cognomen Dives.103 The cognomen Dives belongs to the family of Licinii Crassi which Mucianus belonged to, and not to the family which the consul of 97 BC belonged to. The confusion between the two different families has given rise to mistakes of identification and dating. Aste104 was the first modern historian to raise objections concerning this identification and dating, adducing two different arguments against the attribution of the law to a praetor in 104. First of all, the year 104 BC seems to be too close to the death of Lucilius, who quoted this law as something so well known it was almost a proverb.105 Secondly, because of the pressure of the Cimbri and Teutones on the Empire’s borders and also because of the tension between the nobility and the people, it is unlikely that any member of the Senate would have proposed a new law against luxury at that time. For all these reasons, according to Aste, the dates so far proposed are based on an incorrect identification of the legislator, who should be identified with P. Licinius Crassus Dives Mucianus, the consul of 131, because of his role as both jurist and reformer.106 We could argue that he might be the legislator but not necessarily as consul in 131. Marshall believes that the law could be attributed to P. Licinius Crassus Dives Mucianus because his consulship in 131 ‘was not long after the tribunate in 143 BC of T. Didius, the author of the lex Didia, who in turn was preceded for only a short time by the consulship in 161 of Fannius Strabo, the author of the lex Fannia. Thus the consul of 131 BC fits quite well into the chronological order of this law as given by Macrobius and this consul did have the name Dives.’107 Even if some modern historians accept this identification,108 the problem remains, and will probably continue to remain, unsolved as a result of the imprecision of the evidence. Gellius does not clarify either the legislator or the date of the law, and even if Macrobius does, his information may not be credible. It could be as incorrect as that about the Aemilan law which he erroneously attributes to M. Aemilius Lepidus, as we shall see. Gellius and Macrobius also disagree even about the content of the law, whose main aim was to complement previous laws against the 124

Appendix: Catalogue of Sumptuary Laws extravagance at table. According to Gellius, the law allowed citizens to spend during certain days one hundred asses for meals, during wedding days two hundred asses and during fixed days three hundred asses. Macrobius refers to different amounts for different kinds of days: the citizens could spend thirty asses during the Kalends, the Nones and market days, and on an ordinary day only three librae of smoked meat and one libra of salted fish. The provisions of the Licinian law, which was a broadening of the Fannian law, are more precise and go into more detail. The aim of the law was to control excesses, not only the expenses and the use of precious and expensive things but also the use of meat and fish. According to the poet Laevius, the kid (goat) escaped death thanks to the Licinian Law: ‘Lex Licinia introducitur Lux liquida haedo redditur.’ Gellius explains that the law replaced meat with vegetables. This order was actually respected: in a letter to Gallus dated 57 BC, Cicero, who had been suffering from gastric attacks for ten days, blames a sumptuary law for his illness: In case you should wonder what caused this attack, or how I brought it upon myself, it was that sumptuary law which is supposed to have inaugurated ‘plain living’. It was that, I say, which proved my undoing. For your gourmets, in their anxiety to bring into favour fruits of the earth, which are exempted under the law, season their mushroom, pot herbs, and greens of every kind with a skill that makes them irresistibly delicious.109 The letter shows how citizens tried to compensate for the forbidden food with other delicacies and how the later sumptuary laws did not change this disposition,110 even when the Licinian law was abrogated round about 97 BC by the tribune M. Duronius, who criticised the pretension to put new life into obsolete uses.111 According to Valerius Maximus, as a consequence of this plebiscite Duronius was dismissed from the Senate by the censors M. Antonius and L. Valerius Flaccus.112 In reality the fact that Duronius was expelled but the law was not re-enacted seems to prove that the censors’ action was a personal attack against Duronius himself and not against his abrogation of the law.113 Lex Aemilia sumptuaria ‘Besides these laws we find an Aemilian law, setting a limit not on the expense of dinners, but on the kind and quantity of food.’114 The legislator of this new lex sumptuaria is not easy to identify, as other sources give us conflicting information. While Gellius talks only about an Aemilian law, Pliny attributes this law to Marcus Aemilius Scaurus during his consulate in 115 (‘... shrews, which sumptuary legislation and Marcus Scaurus the leading citizen during his consulship ruled out’).115 125

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury According to Rotondi,116 Macrobius erroneously attributes the law to Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, consul in 78 BC, when he says, ‘After Sulla’s death Lepidus too, as consul, himself proposed a law to ration food.’117 It is questionable whether the law attributed by Macrobius to Aemilius Lepidus is the law at hand; actually the law quoted by him could be a different one. Modern historians118 agree with Pliny in attributing this law to Aemilius Scaurus. This identification seems to have arisen from a passage of Aurelius Victor attributing to Scaurus a sumptuary law119 and from the information, supplied by Priscianus, on a speech given by M. Aemilius Lepidus Porcina in order to abrogate Aemilian law.120 As Gellius says, this law did not limit expenditures on entertainment, but by specifying accurately ‘the kind and the quantity of food’ (ciborum genus et modus);121 it forbade particular foods. Ancient sources do not provide us with precise information about the list of foods forbidden; we are informed by Pliny only that the food prohibited included shrews.122 Lex Cornelia The lex Cornelia sumptuaria123 is attributed to the dictator Sulla and dated to 81 BC by Gellius: ‘Lucius Sulla in his dictatorship proposed a law to the people’124 and by Macrobius:125 ‘The above named laws were followed by the Cornelian law, itself too a sumptuary law which was proposed by Cornelius Sulla dictator.’ The content of the law is well known. It imposed further limits on the sum that could be spent on a banquet; it provided that ‘on the Kalends, Ides and Nones, on days of games, and on certain regular festivals, it should be proper and lawful to spend three hundred sesterces on a dinner, but on all other days not more than thirty’.126 Moreover, according to Macrobius,127 the law brought down the prices of foodstuffs. The behaviour of the citizens, who, having forgotten the previous leges sumptuariae, imprudently ate too much and squandered their fortune, was, according to Gellius, the reason that pushed Sulla to propose another lex sumptuaria.128 Macrobius gives us a different reading of this legislation, which, according to him, by fixing lower costs for food, incited citizens to prepare large quantities of food and made even the poor people slaves of gluttony.129 Lex Antia A few years after the lex Aemilia, a new law was promulgated against extravagance at the table. Gellius130 named it Antia, and Macrobius131 attributed it to Antius Restio. Rotondi,132 assuming that Cicero referred to this sumptuary law in the letter written to Gallus in 57 BC,133 presumes that the letter permits us to date this legislation between Sulla’s dictatorship and 57 BC. He believes that the information provided by the 126

Appendix: Catalogue of Sumptuary Laws sources allows us to identify the author of the law with Antius Restio, a tribune of 71 BC.134 What should be underlined is that these assumptions remain uncorroborated by any source and we cannot claim to have identified the legislator. Besides the measures taken to limit the outlay for dinners, the law fixed that no magistrate or magistrate-elect should dine out anywhere, except at the house of stipulated persons.135 According to some modern scholars,136 this last provision aimed to limit the offence de ambitu. But Gellius is quite precise in indicating that magistrates (qui magistratus esset) and magistrates elect (magistratumve capturus esset) were not allowed to dine out, and that the law did not refer to candidates. Moreover, what we would expect to find prohibited in a law on ambitus is candidates acting as hosts, rather than as guests. Therefore it seems that the law cannot be considered in relation to the leges de ambitu. It is more likely that the purpose of the law was to limit the use of banquets for creating political alliances or for buying the favour of magistrates. According to Macrobius137 the law, though it was optima, was not respected, and Antius Restio to avoid being a useless spectator of its violation did not accept invitations for dinner. Rogatio Licinia Pompeia 138

Dio Cassius is the only source to mention a rogatio sumptuaria proposed by Pompeius Magnus and Crassus in 55 BC. The proposal, as well as trying to limit personal expenditures, proposed ‘heavier penalties upon those who offer bribes.’ The consuls dropped it on Hortensius’ advice. Rogatio Scribonia Cicero,139 in a letter to Atticus, mentions another law proposed by Scribonius Curio that tried to limit luxury in transport, levying heavy taxes on transgressors. Rotondi140 thinks that this law could be part of a lex Viaria, quoted by Cicero,141 proposed by the same tribune in 50 BC. On closer examination it does not seem to be confirmed by any source, so we can only note that Scribonius Curio proposed a bill against extravagance. Lex Iulia sumptuaria Caesar promulgated a sumptuary law according to Suetonius,142 Dio Cassius143 and Cicero.144 The law forbade not only the luxury of the table, but also the luxury of private means of transport and clothes, as in Suetonius: ‘He imposed duties on foreign wares. He denied the use of litters and the wearing of scarlet robes or pearls to all except to those of a designated position and age, and on set days.’145 The sources emphasise not only that Caesar promulgated a law that concerned different aspects of 127

Fighting Hydra-Like Luxury private life but also that he made every effort to enforce the law. According to Suetonius: ‘In particular he enforced the law against extravagance, setting watchmen in various parts of the market, to seize and bring to him dainties which were exposed for sale in violation of the law; and sometimes he sent his lictors and soldiers to take from a dining-room any article which had escaped the vigilance of his watchmen, even after they had been served.’146 Cassio Dio confirms Suetonius’ account, saying that Caesar not only regulated extravagance by law but also practically ‘checked it by stern measures’.147 Despite all these measures taken by Caesar, his law did not produce the desired effect and, as with the previous laws, this one too was soon disregarded, as Cicero tells Atticus: ‘Caesar made up his mind to stay in Rome and he gives the reason that was in my letter, a fear that his law might be disregarded in his absence as the sumptuary law had been.’148 Lex Iulia sumptuaria Suetonius149 and Gellius150 tell us that Augustus enacted a sumptuary law. While the former151 only cites the law together with other legislative measures to control the moral behaviour of the citizens, Gellius152 supplies us with a lot of information about its content. The law allowed 200 sesterces to be expended upon festivals on dies profesti, 300 upon those on the Kalends, Ides, Nones, and some other festive days, and 1000 upon marriage feasts. According to Gellius, who quotes Ateius Capito, Augustus or Tiberius made modifications to the law: from 300 to 2000 sesterces were allowed to be expended upon entertainments in order to restrain the outlay for banquets at least within these limits.153 Despite these modifications even this law was soon ignored, like all the other laws which tried to limit extravagance, and the price of food and luxury went up day by day, as Tacitus says: ‘all other aediles had pointed out that the sumptuary law was disregarded, that prohibited prices for household articles were every day on the increase, and that moderate measures could not stop it’.154

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Notes Abbreviations follow those used in the Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd edn, edited by Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Tit. Ulp. = Tituli ex Corpore Ulpiani.

Preface 1. Amos 6.4. 2. Sall. Cat. 12.1. 3. Chapman, Jonson & Marston (1605) IV.366-70. 4. Ishida Baigan, quoted in Shively (1964) 158. 5. Macrob. Sat. 3.17.4; Gell. 2.24.1. 6. Muzzarelli (2003a) 17. 7. Lieberson (1985) 44. 8. Golden (1992) 310. 9. Golden (1992) 310-311. 10. Bloch (1963) 18-19. On the strengths and weaknesses of comparative studies between Western and East Asia in history, see Pasti (1964).

Introduction 1. Hunt (1996) 77-83. 2. On the idea of luxury Sekora (1977); Douglas & Isherwood (1979) 27. 3. Friedländer (1908) 142. 4. Berry (1994) 19-21. 5. For commentary see Kaye (1924). 6. Hundert (1994). 7. Sekora (1977) 1. 8. Ibidem; Murray (1978). 9. Hunt (1996) 77. 10. Polyb. 4.57. 11. Pl. Leg. 728e ff; cf. Rep. 4.421d5; Arist. Pol. 1295b. 12. Dante Inferno XVI.72-3: ‘The new inhabitants and the sudden gains,/ Pride and extravagance have in thee engendered,/ Florence, so that thou weep’st thereat already!’ (All translations of Dante in this book are by Longfellow (1867).) 13. 37 Edw. III: c.2; c.4.

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Notes to pages 3-9 14. Hunt (1996) 77-102. 15. Dante Paradiso XV.97-105: ‘Florence, within the ancient boundary/ From which she taketh still her tierce and nones,/ Abode in quiet, temperate and chaste./ No golden chain she had, nor coronal,/ Nor ladies shod with sandal shoon, nor girdle/ That caught the eye more than the person did.’ 16. Arist. EN 1150b. 17. Pl. Rep. 590b. 18. On the idea of the eastern origin of luxury and effeminacy cf. Said (1978). 19. Sall. Cat. 11.5. 20. Plu. Cat. Mai. 16. 21. See more in Berry (1994) 76-7. 22. Flor. 1.24.6. 23. The concept of luxuria as coming from the western bounds, while one would have expected from the ‘eastern’ is related to the view of the first Christians that Rome was the devil’s land while the East was the land of Christ; cf. Tert. 3; Ambr. De Misteriis 2.7. 24. Prudent. Psych. 379. 25. Plin. HN 12.41. 26. Stubbes (1583) 1972. 22. 1. The Roman Response to Luxury 1. On Roman luxury see Slob (1986); Baltrusch (1989); Edwards (1993) 13772. 2. Edwards (1993) 1-12. 3. Ibid. 4. 4. Cic. Rep. 5.1. 5. Livy 39.6.7. 6. Carey (2003) 75-101. 7. Plin. HN 33.148-50: ‘It was the conquest of Asia that introduced luxury into Italy. This was in the 565th year from the foundation of the city of Rome. But receiving Asia as a gift dealt a much more serious blow to our morals, and the bequest of it that came to us on the death of King Attalus was more disadvantageous than the victory of Scipio. For on that occasion all scruples entirely disappeared in regard to buying these articles at the auctions of the king’s effects at Rome – the date was the 622nd year of the city, and in the interval of 57 years our community had learnt not merely to admire but also to covet foreign opulence.’ 8. Polyb. 32.11: ‘It (dissoluteness) arose from the prevalent idea that owing to the destruction of the Macedonian monarchy universal dominion was secured to them beyond dispute; and in the second place, from the immense difference both in public and private wealth and splendour, occasioned by the importation of the riches of Macedonia into Rome.’ 9. Sall. Cat. 10. 10. Vell. 2.1. 11. Val. Max. 9.1.3: ‘For our city the end of the Second Punic war and the victory over Philippus, king of Macedonia, gave confidence for a more extravagant way of life.’ 12. Cf. Earl (1961) 13-15. 13. Sall. Iug. 49.2; Cat. 9.1. 14. Sall. Cat. 7; Iug. 41.2. 15. Sall. Cat. 10. See Lintott (1972); Heinz (1975) 45-8; Conley (1981); Levick

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Notes to pages 9-11 (1982) 53-62; Wiedemann (1993) 48-57. 16. ‘Against the resolution of Cato to destroy Carthage, Nasica presented the necessity to spare it: “In my opinion, Carthage must be spared.” He saw, probably, that the Roman people, in its wantonness, was already guilty of many excesses, and in the pride of its prosperity, spurned the control of the Senate, and forcibly dragged the whole State with it, whithersoever its mad desires inclined it. He wished, therefore, that the fear of Carthage should abide to curb the boldness of the multitude like a bridle, believing her not strong enough to conquer Rome, not yet weak enough to be despised.’ Plut. Cat. Mai. 27.2; Diod. Sic. 34.33.5; App. Pun. 69; Livy Per. 48. 17. Val. Max. 7.2.3. Also App. Pun. 65. 18. Sall. Cat. 1.12; Iug. 41.3; Vell. Pat. 2.1.1. Polyb. 36.9.4; Oros. Hist. 4.23.9; Flor. 1.31.5. 19. Plut. Cleom. 9.1; Pl. Leg. 3.698b; Arist. Pol. 5.1308a-b; 7.1334a; Polyb. 6.18; 6.57.5; Thuc. 1.23.6. 20. Liv. 39.6.7. 21. Cic. Rep. 2.7. 22. Sall. Cat.10.6; Iug. 41.9. 23. Cf. Plaut. Trin. 28-31; Livy 38.17.18; Sall. Cat. 10.6; 36.5; Petron. 119; Plut. Cat. Mai. 23. 24. Pliny HN 13.91; 36.113. 25. Sall. Cat. 10.6. 26. Pliny HN 33.148. 27. Cf. Pliny HN. 36.8; Macrob. Sat. 3.3.16; Sall. Iug. 31.9. 28. Sall. Cat. 11.4. 29. Livy praef. 1.11. 30. Val. Max. 4.3.5. Pliny HN 18.4: ‘at any rate there is a famous statement of Manius Curius, who after celebrating triumph and making a vast addition to the empire said that a man not satisfied with seven acres must be deemed a dangerous citizen.’ Cf. Flor. 13.22; Frontin. Str. 4.3.12. 31. Val. Max. 4.3.5. 32. Val. Max. 4.4.7; cf. Dio Cass. 5.23.2; Cic. Cato. 16.56; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 10.17.4. 33. Dion. Hal. 19.15.1; Dio Cass. 8.40. 34. Val. Max. 4.3.6. 35. An exhaustive collection of exampla virtutis has been produced by Litchfield (1914) 1-74. 36. Sall. Cat. 12; Livy 34.4.2. 37. Sen. Dial. 9.3.3: ‘For the man that does good service to the state is not merely he who brings forward candidates and defends the accused and votes for peace and war, but he also who admonishes young men, who instils virtue into their minds, supplying the great lack of good teachers, who lays hold upon those that are rushing wildly in pursuit of money and luxury, and draws them back, and, if he accomplishes nothing else, at least retards them – such a man performs a public service even in private life.’ 38. Cic. Mur. 76. 39. Roman authors can be critical of excessive magnificence too. Cf. Cicero’s criticism of Pompey’s games. Cic. Pis. 65. 40. La Penna (1988) 18. 41. Cic. Flacc.: ‘For there were these principles and there was this greatness of mind in our ancestors, that while in their private affairs, and as to their own personal expenses, they lived contented with a little, and without the smallest

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Notes to pages 11-13 approach to luxury; where the empire and the dignity of the state was concerned, they brought everything up to a high pitch of splendour and magnificence.’ 42. Sall. Cat. 9.2. 43. Hor. Carm. 2.15: ‘Private estates were small and great was the common wealth.’ 44. Arist. EN 4.2, 1122a-23a: ‘Magnificence is an attribute of expenditures of the kind which we call honourable, e.g. those connected with the gods – votive offerings, buildings, and sacrifices – and similarly with any form of religious worship, and all those that are proper objects of public-spirited ambition, as when people think they ought to equip a chorus or a trireme, or entertain the city, in a brilliant way.’ 45. Dem. Third Olynthiac 25; Against Androtion 76. ‘Such was their rank in the world of Hellas: what manner of men they (ancestors) were at home, in public or in private life, look round you and see. Out of the wealth of the state they set up for our delight so many fair buildings and things of beauty, temples and offerings to the gods, that we who come after must despair of ever surpassing them; yet in private they were so modest, so careful to obey the spirit of the constitution, that the houses of their famous men, of Aristides or of Miltiades, as any of you can see that knows them, are not a whit more splendid than those of their neighbours. For selfish greed had no place in their statesmanship, but each thought it his duty to further the common wealth. And so by their good faith towards their fellow Greeks, their piety towards the gods, and their equality among themselves, they deserved and won a great prosperity.’ 46. The only law on apparel enacted in Rome during the period under scrutiny is the lex Oppia targeting women’s clothing. It is worth noting that Roman elite males wore a uniform in the shape of the toga. 47. Veyne (1990) 208-14. 48. Cic. Fam. 8.3. 49. Cic. Off. 2.57: ‘And yet I realise that in our country, even in the good old times, it had become a settled custom to expect magnificent entertainments from the very best men in their year of aedileship. So both Publius Crassus, who was not merely surnamed “The Rich” but was rich in fact, gave splendid games in his aedileship; and a little later Lucius Crassus (with Quintus Mucius, the most unpretentious man in the world, as his colleague) gave most magnificent entertainments in his aedileship. Then came Gaius Claudius, the son of Appius, and, after him, many others – the Luculli, Hortensius and Silanus. Publius Lentulus, however, in the year of my consulship, eclipsed all that had gone before him, and Scaurus emulated him. And my friend Pompey’s exhibitions in his second consulship were the most magnificent of all. And so you see what I think about all this sort of thing.’ 50. Asc. Scaur. 22 (Stangl); More examples in Shatzman (1975) 84-7. 51. Veyne (1990) 208-14. 52. The first recorded gladiatorial games are attributed to the ex-consul D. Iunius Brutus Pera and his brother in 264 BC in memory of their father; Val. Max. 2.4.7; Livy Per. 16. Hopkins (1983) 4. 53. Livy 41.28. 54. Livy Per. 48. 55. Dio Cass. 37.51. 56. Cic. Sull. 19.54. 57. For instance M. Acilius Glabrio, as candidate for the censorship of 189, won the favour of the electors by giving congiaria to the people; Livy 37.57.11.

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Notes to pages 13-17 58. Shatzman (1975) 251. 59. Plut. Caes. 5; Plin. HN 33.53. 60. Dio Cass. 43.23. 61. Sall. Cat. 54.2. 62. Livy 7.2.13. 63. Cic. Sest. 106. 64. Dio Cass. 54.2. 65. Polyb. 31.28.6. 66. Livy 44.18.8: ‘It has been noted as a sign of the increasing scale on which the Circus games were conducted that in those of the curule aediles P. Cornelius Scipio Nasica and P. Lentulus, sixty-three African panthers and forty bears and elephants formed part of the show.’ 67. Dio Cass. 66.25. 68. Ibid. 68.15. 69. Rotondi (1912) 328-9. 70. Suet. Aug. 43 71. Cf. Bourdieu (1975) 98-110; Elias (1983). 72. Cato 3.1; cf. Nepos Att. 13.1-3; Hor. Carm. saec. 2.15; Sall. Cat. 12.13.20; Lucr. 2.20-36; Verg. Aen. 9.71-713; Plin. HN 19.33.36; Sen. Ep. 89.21.100.5-6; Tac. Ann. 3.53. On luxurious gardens and fishponds see Varro Rust. 3.7.9; 3.17.23; Cic. Att. 18.6; 19.6; Val. Max. 9.1.1; Macrob. Sat. 3.15.6. 73. See Berry (1994) 64-7; Griffin (1976); Wallace-Hadrill (1990a). 74. Cic. Leg. 2.2; cf. also Vitr. 7.5; Sen. Ep. 89.122. 75. Sen. Ep. 89.21; Plut. Luc. 39.2-3. 76. Suet. Cal. 7.2-3. 77. Edwards (1993) 137-72. 78. Milnor (2005) 16-27. 79. Cic. Off. 1.138-9: ‘The truth is, a man’s dignity may be enhanced by the house he lives, but not wholly secured by it; the owner should bring honour to his house, not the house to its owner ... in the home of a distinguished man, in which numerous guests must be entertained and crows of every sort of people received, care must be taken to have it spacious. But if it is not frequented by visitors, if it has an air of lonesomeness, a spacious palace often becomes a discredit to its owner ... One must be careful, too, not to go beyond proper bounds in expense and display, especially if one is building for himself. For much mischief is done in this way, if only in the example set.’ 80. Ibid. 81. Cic. Att. 18.1. 82. Cic. Off. 1.138-9. 83. Wallace-Hadrill (1988) 43-97. 84. Vitr. 6.5.1-2. 85. Cic. Phil. 12.24: ‘Domesticis me parietibus vix tueor sine amicorum custodiis. Itaque in urbe, si licebit, manebo. Haec mea sedes est, haec vigilia, haec custodia, hoc praesidium stativum.’ 86. See Riggsby (1997) 36-56; Treggiari (1998) 1-23. 87. Vell. Pat. 2.14.3. 88. Cic. Dom. 100. 89. Milnor (2005) 26. 90. Cic. Off. 1.138. 91. ORF2 174. 92. Val. Max. 9.1.4; Plin. HN 17.2-5. 93. Varro Rust. 3.5.12; Plin. HN 17.2.

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Notes to pages 17-21 94. Plin. HN 36.109. 95. Cf. Shatzman (1975) 403-9. 96. Cic. Fam. 5.6.2. 97. Cic. Att. 1.13.6. 98. Plin. HN 36.103. 99. In Pompeii the finest houses, the ‘house of Pansa’, the ‘house of the Faun’ and the ‘house of Sallust’ are dated to the middle of the second century. For social content cf. D’Arms (1970). For the diffusion of luxury cf. Wallace-Hadrill (1990b) 145-92. For archaeological evidence of extravagant villas in Etruria cf. Carandini (1984). 100. Columella 1.4.8. 101. Cf. Cic. Leg. 3.30.1. 102. Varro Rust. 59.2. Cf. Gabba (1981) 39. 103. See Gowers (1993). 104. Apul. Apol. 39. 105. Wallace-Hadrill (2008) 340. 106. ORF3 95; cf. Livy 39.6. 107. Tac. Ann. 3.55.1. 108. Sergi (1997) 18. 109. Plaut. Cas. 248: ‘Age ut lubet bibe, es, disperde rem.’ 110. Plaut. Most. 20: ‘Dum tibi lubet licetque, pota perde rem corrumpe erilem adulescentem optumum.’ 111. Plaut. Trin. 360: ‘That waster who devoured all he had and more too?’ ‘Quin comedit quod fuit, quod non fui?’ 112. Cf. Plaut. Pseud. 1107; Catull. 29.14; Cic. Phil. 11.37; Mart. 5.70.4. 113. Cic. Phil. 2.18; Cat. 2.3. 114. Plaut. Bacch. 742; Most. 22. 115. Della Corte (1967) 79-93. 116. Hudson (1989). 117. La Penna (1989) 27. 118. Hor. Sat. 2.2.20. 119. Ibid. 53-5. 120. Ibid. 2.2.23-7. 121. Ibid. 2.8.6-85; The menu in outline: ‘First there was a wild boar ... Around it were pungent turnips, lettuces, radishes – such things whet a jaded appetite – skirret, fish-pickle, and Coan lees.’ And moreover ‘the rest of the folk – we, I mean – eat fowl, oysters, and fish, which had a flavour far different from any we knew, as, for instance, was made clear at once, after he had handed me the livers of a plaice and a turbot ... then is brought in a lamprey, outstretched on a platter, with shrimps swimming around ... then follow servants, bearing on a huge charger the limb of a crane sprinkled with much salt and meal, and the liver of a white goose on rich figs and hares’ limbs torn off, as being more dainty then if eaten with loins. We saw black birds served with the breast burnt, and pigeon without the rumps, real dainties.’ 122. Ibid. 2.8.4-6: ‘According to him the wild boar was caught when a gentle south wind was blowing. The lamprey was caught before spawning; if taken later, its flesh would have been poorer.’ 123. Ibid. 2.4.12-13. 124. For details see the next chapter: lex Fannia; lex Aemilia; lex Cornelia. 125. La Penna (1988) 10. 126. Cic. Pis. 67. 127. Varro Rust. 2.5.

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Notes to pages 22-29 128. Ibid. 3.2.14-15. 129. Ibid. 3.5.9. 130. Ibid. 3.6.6. 131. Ibid. 3.17. 132. ORF3 139: ‘qui antea obsonitavere aere, postea centenis obsonitavere.’ 133. ORF3 fr. 146. 134. Plu. Cat. Mai. 9.7. 135. Plin. HN 19.56; 26.43; Juv. 5.92; Gell. 6.16.6; Sen. Ep. 89.22. 136. Sall. Cat. 13.3. 137. Polyb. 31.24. 138. Corbeill (1997) 99-128. 139. Cic. Verr. 2 183; 3.61; 1.66. 140. Macrob. Sat. 3.13.11. 141. Varro rust. 3.4.3. 142. Plut. Luc. 40.1; cf. 41.3-6: ‘ “We desire,” said Cicero “to dine with you today just as you would have dined by yourself.” Lucullus demurred at this, and begged the privilege of selecting a later day, but they refused to allow it, nor would they suffer him to cover with his servants that he might not order anything more provided than what provided for him. Thus much, however and no more, they did allow him at his request, namely, to tell one of his servants in their presence that he would dine that day in the Apollo. Now, this was the name of one of his costly apartments, and he thus outwitted the men without their knowing it. For each of his dining-rooms, as it seems, had a fixed allowance for the dinner served there, as well as its own special apparatus and equipment, so that his slave hearing where he wished to dine, knew just how much the dinner was to cost, and what were to be its decorations and arrangements. Now the usual cost of a dinner in the Apollo was fifty thousand drachmas and that was the sum laid out on the present occasion. Pompey was amazed at the speed with which the banquet was prepared, notwithstanding it had cost so much. In these ways then Lucullus used his wealth wantonly.’ 143. Cic. Off. 1.138-40. 144. Plin. Ep. 10.116. 145. Cic. Rep. 4 fr. 8; Val. Max. 7.5.1. 2. Previous Measures Against Extravagance 1. Cic. Leg. 2.59: ‘There are other rules, too, in the Twelve Tables, which provide for the limitation of the expense and the mourning at funerals, which were borrowed for the most part from the laws of Solon.’ ‘Iam cetera in duodecim minuendi sumptus sunt lamentationisque funebris, translata de Solonis fere legibus.’ 2. For an exhaustive demonstration of the possibility for modern scholars to depend upon their texts I refer the reader to Toher (1991). 3. Plut. Sol. 21.4 4. Ibid. 24.3. 5. On the authenticity of this as Solonian cf. Toher (1991) 164. 6. Demosthenes Against Macartatus 62. 7. Plut. Lyc. 27. ‘Touching burials, Lycurgus made very wise regulations; for, first of all, to cut off all superstition, he allowed them to bury their dead within the city, and even round about their temples, to the end that their youth might be accustomed to such spectacles, and not be afraid to see a dead body, or imagine

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Notes to pages 29-34 that to touch a corpse or to tread upon a grave would defile a man.’ 8. Herodotus 6.58. 9. The similarities are so striking that it might have been influenced by Athenian laws. Cf. Alexiou (1974) 15; Parker (1983) 34. 10. Frisone (2000) 83-4. 11. Cic. Leg. 2.66. 12. Diod. Sic. 11.38.1-5. 13. Toher (1991) 168. 14. Ibid. 15. Sourvinou-Inwood (1995) 440. 16. Thuc. 2.34 17. Ibid. 18. Mazzarino (1947); Ampolo (1984) 469-76. 19. Mazzarino (1947). 20. Garland (1994) 81. 21. Gagarin (1986); Hölkeskamp (1992b) 87-117; ibid. (1992a) 49-81; ibid. (1999); R. Garland (1995); ibid. (1989) 1-15; Morris (1987); ibid. (1989): 296-320; ibid. (1992-3) 35-50; Seaford (1994), esp. 74-105; Toher (1991) 159-75. 22. Plut. Sol. 12.8. 23. Alexiou (1974). 24. Ibid. 22. 25. Ibid. 21. 26. Montinaro (1999). 27. Tabula X.1: ‘hominem mortuum in urbe ne sepellito urito’, Crawford (1996) 704. 28. Cic. Leg. 2.58: ‘A dead man, says a law of the Twelve Tables, shall not be buried or burned inside the city. I suppose the latter is on account of danger of fire.’ 29. Flower (1996) 115-21. 30. Cic. Leg. 2.58; cf. Plut. Mor. 282f-283a. 31. Crawford (1996) 711. 32. Tabula X.9.10, in Crawford (1996) 711, drawing on Cic. Leg. 2.61: ‘In addition there are two laws about graves, one of which protects buildings which are private property, and the other the graves themselves. For the provision: “No new pyre or mound may be erected nearer than sixty feet to another person’s building without the consent of the owner” is made through fear of dangerous fires. But the rule that ownership of the “forum” (that is the entrance court of a tomb), or of the mound may not be acquired by possession protects the special privileges of the graves. These are the rules we find in the Twelve Tables.’ On usucapio compare Gaius 2.48: ‘Item liberos homines et res sacras et religiosas usucapi non posse manifestum est.’ 33. Tabula X.2: ‘Hoc plus ne facito: rogum ascea ne polit.’ 34. Tabula X.3: ‘tria recinia tunicula purpurea decem tibicines.’ On these two passages see Crawford (1996) 706. 35. Cic. Leg. 2.59: ‘Iam cetera in XII minuendi sumptus sunt lamentationisque funebris.’ 36. Plut. Sol. 21.6. 37. Colonna (1977) 159. 38. Tabula X.6: ‘He is not to place perfumed liquid on a dead man. (Prohibition of circumpotatio) He is to scatter a pyre with no more than ... wine.’ Tabula X.7: ‘Whoever wins a crown himself or his familia, or it be given to him for bravery, and if it is placed on him or his parent when dead, it is to be without liability.’

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Notes to pages 34-38 Tabula X.8: ‘Nor is he to add gold, but for whomsoever the teeth are joined with gold, and if he shall bury or burn it with him, it is to be without liability’, in Crawford (1996) 710; Cic. Leg. 2.60. 39. Tabula X.4: ‘Mulieres genas ne radunto neue lessum funeris ergo habento’, in Crawford (1996) 707; Cic. Leg. 2.59; 2.64. 40. Plut. Sol. 21.6. 41. Tabula X.5: ‘Homini mortuo ne ossa legito, quo post funus faciat’, in Crawford (1996) 708; Cic. Leg. 2.60. 42. Colonna (1981) 229-32. See also Cornell (1980) 26, 71-8. 43. The authenticity of this embassy has been a matter of discussion among scholars; bibliography in Crifò (1972) 115-32. 44. Livy 3.31.8. 45. Momigliano (1967) 357. 46. Colonna (1981) 229. 47. Livy 3.31.8; Dion. Hal. 10.54.3. 48. Plin. HN 34.2. 49. Cornell (1995) 275. 50. Details in Cornell (1995) 107. 51. Toher (1986) 324-6. 52. Holloway (1994) 168-71. 53. Toher (1986) 324-6. 54. Flower (1996) 120. 55. See Daube (1969) 120; Gabba (1981) 27-44; Baltrusch (1989) 43. 56. Baltrusch (1989) 44-50. 57. Plut. Cat. Mai. 16.1-2. 58. Cic. Leg. 3.7.10: ‘Censoris populi aevitates, suboles familias pecuniasque censento, urbis templa, vias, aquas, aerarium vectigalia tuento, populique partis in tribus discribunto, exin pecunias aevitatis ordinis partiunto, equitum peditumque prolem discribunto, caelibes esse prohibento, mores populi regunto, probrum in senatu ne relinquonto.’ 59. Astin (1985) 233-9. 60. Suet. Aug. 27.5; Livy 24.18; 40.46; 41.27; 42.3. 61. Livy, talking about the first appointment of the censors, says (4.8.2): ‘This year saw the beginning of the censorship, an office which, starting from small beginnings, grew to be of such importance that it had the regulation of the conduct and morals of Rome, the control of the senate and the equestrian order. The power of honouring and degrading was also in the hands of these magistrates; the legal rights connected with public places and private property and the revenues of the Roman people, were under their absolute control.’ 62. The censorship was regarded as the highest dignity; Plut. Cat. Mai. 16.1: ‘Ten years after his consulship, Cato stood for the censorship. This office towered, as it were, above every other civic honour, and was, in a way, the culmination of a political career.’ Plut. Flam. 16.1: ‘Titus was appointed censor. This is the highest office at Rome, and in a manner the culmination of a political career.’ 63. Suolahti (1963); Wiseman (1969) 59-75; De Martino (1972) 276ff.; Astin (1978); Nicolet (1980). 64. The task of enrolling senators was handed on to the censors by the lex Ovinia, the date of which is unknown, although recent scholars place it some time between 339 and 334. Moreover the law established that those who were chosen as senators held the position for life. See Cornell (2000) 69-89. 65. Cic. Clu. 42; 43; 44; 46; 47. 66. Cic. Rep. 4.6.

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Notes to pages 38-42 67. Crook (1967) 83. 68. Stangl 189; Ps.-Ascon.: ‘Regendis moribus civitatis censores quinto anno creari solebant. Hi prorsus cives sic notabant: ut, qui senator esset, eiceretur senatu; qui eques R., equum publicum perdere; qui plebeius, in Caeritum tabula referretur et aerarius fieret ac per hoc non esset in Albo centuries suae, sed ad hoc [non] esset civis tantummodo, ut pro capite suo tribute nomine aera praeberet.’ 69. Astin (1988) 14-34. 70. Cic. Leg. 3.28. 71. Cic. Rep. 5.1. 72. Cic. Leg. 3.30-1. 73. For convenience I use the classification made by Astin (1988) 19. 74. Zonaras 7.19: ‘The censors gave sworn assurance that nothing they did was inspired by favour or enmity, but that they took thought and action from true consideration of what was best for the commonwealth.’ See also Dio Cass. 54.13.2. 75. Livy 40.24; 29-37; Val. Max. 7.2.6. 76. Cic. Clu. 122. 77. Dion. Hal. 20.13.2-3. 78. Plin. HN 18.3. 79. Gell. 4.12.1-3. 80. Tabula V.7: ‘Si furiosus? prodigusue? essit, agnatum gentiliumque in eo familiaque ?pecuniaque? eius potestas esto’, in Crawford (1996) 643-6. Cf. Ulp. Dig. 27.10.1pr ‘Lege duodecim tabularum prodigo interdicitur bonorum suorum administratio, quod moribus quidem ab initio introductum est. Sed solent hodie praetores vel praesides, si talem hominem invenerint, qui neque tempus neque finem expensarum habet, sed bona sua dilacerando et dissipando profudit, curatorem ei dare exemplo furiosi: et tamdiu erunt ambo in curatione, quamdiu vel furiosus sanitatem vel ille sanos mores receperit: quod si evenerit, ipso iure desinunt esse in potestate curatorum.’ ‘By the Law of the Twelve Tables, the administration of his own property is forbidden to a spendthrift. This provision had previously been introduced by custom. In our day, however, where Praetors or Governors encounter a man of this kind, who regards neither time nor limit, so far as expenditures are concerned, but wastes his property by dissipating and squandering it, they appoint a curator for him just as they do for an insane person, and both continue under curatorship, until the insane person recovers his senses, or the spendthrift conducts himself properly. Whenever this takes place, the parties, by operation of law, cease to be under the supervision of their curators.’ 81. Details in Watson (1975) 78-80. 82. Paul Sent. 3.42.7. ‘Quando tibi bona paterna avitaque nequitia tua disperdis liberosque tuos ad egestatem perducis, ob eam rem tibi aere commercioque interdico.’ 83. From the Tituli ex corpore Ulpiani (12.2-3) it seems that only those who inherited by intestate succession might be interdicted: ‘qui ex testamento parentis heredes facti male dissipant bona.’ 84. See Solazzi (1960) 245. 85. Dig. 27.10.1: ‘Lege duodecim tabularum prodigo interdicitur bonorum suorum administratio, quod moribus quidem ab initio introductum est.’ Paul. Sent. 3.4a.7: ‘Moribus per praetorem bonis interdicitur hoc modo: quando tibi bona paterna avitaque nequitia tua disperdis liberosque tuos ad egestatem perducis, ob eam rem tibi ea re commercioque interdico.’ 86. Watson (1974) 168ff.

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Notes to pages 42-45 87. Astin (1988) 23. 88. Cic. de orat. 2.287 ‘optimus colonus, parcissimus, modestissimus, frugalissimus’. 89. Plut. Cat. Mai. 21.8: ‘But that surely was too vehement a speech of Cato’s, when he went so far as to say that a man was to be admired and glorified like a god if the final inventory of his property showed that he had added to it more than he had inherited.’ Ibidem 8.11; ORF3 fr. 246. 90. In 142, the censor Scipio Aemilianus tried to give a nota to T. Claudius Asellus, but L. Mummius opposed his decision: Cic. De Or. 2.268; Val. Max. 6.4.2. 91. Gell. 6.11.9. 92. Ascon. Tog. Cand. 65.68-70 Stangl. 93. Nicolet (1980) 79. 94. Cic. Fam. 13.5.2. 95. Suet. Aug. 40. ‘Since many knights whose property was diminished during the civil wars did not venture to view the games from the fourteen rows through fear of the penalty of the law regarding theatres, he declared that none were liable to its provisions, if they themselves or their parents had ever possessed a knight’s estate.’ 96. Cram (1940) 71-110. 97. Val. Max. 2.9: ‘quod decem pondo vasa argentea comparasset.’ 98. Ibid.: ‘The consul Fabricius, having become censor, expelled from the senatorial body a man who had been honoured with two consulships and one dictatorship, Publius Cornelius Rufinus, because he was believed to have been the first to be extravagant in supplying himself with silver goblets, having acquired ten pound’s weight of them’; Dion. Hal. 20.13.1; Livy Per. 14; Gell. 4.8.7; Zonaras 8.6.9; full account of ancient sources in MRR I.196. 99. For a full account of Cato’s censorship, see Astin (1978) 94-7. 100. Plut. Cat. Mai. 16.7. 101. On Cato’s dicta on luxury and extravagance of the table see Astin (1978) 78-103. 102. Livy 39.44.1-4: ‘Jewels and women’s dresses and vehicles which were worth more than fifteen thousand asses he directed the assessors to list at ten times more than their actual value; likewise slaves less than twenty years old, who had been bought since the previous lustrum for ten thousand asses or more than their actual cost, and he ordered that on all these articles a tax of three asses per thousand should be imposed.’ Cf. Plut. Cat. Mai. 18.2. 103. Probably it dealt only with extravagant expenditures: Scullard (1951) 260. 104. Plin. HN 8.68. 105. Cram (1940) 93-4. 106. Plut. Cat. Mai. 14.3. 107. Plut. Mor. 200e 108. Cram (1940) 96. 109. Vell. Pat. 2.10.1: ‘Let us now go on to note the severity of the censors Cassius Longinus and Caepio, who summoned before them the augur Lepidus Aemilius for renting a house at six thousand sesterces.’ Cf. Val. Max. 8.1.d.7; Cic. Brut. 97. 110. Plin. HN 13.24: ‘It is certain that in 89 BC the censors Publius Licinius Crassus and Lucius Julius Caesar issued a proclamation forbidding any sale of “foreign essences”, that being the regular name for them.’ 111. Plin. HN. 14.95.

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Notes to pages 45-58 112. Cic. Fam. 8.14.4; Att. 6.9.5. 113. Astin (1978) 94-7. 114. See the examples of Cato and Scipio in nn. 89-90. 115. See Gell. 2.2.2; ORF3 fr. 133; 185; 177. 116. Plu. Cat. Mai. 16.7. 117. Cato Agr. praef.: ‘At ex agricolis et viri fortissimi et milites strenuissimi gignuntur.’ 118. Further details in Astin (1988) 29-30. 119. ‘Ignominia virtutem acuit’, Val. Max. 2.9.9. 120. Baltrusch (1989). 121. Plin. HN 17.1-4; Val. Max. 9.1.4. 122. Clemente (1981) 4. 123. Cic. Rep. 5.1. 3. Sumptuary Laws 1. Clemente (1981) 1-14. 2. Macrob. Sat. 3.17.3. 3. Gell. 2.24. 4. Macrob. Sat. 3.17.5. 5. For a more detailed analysis of each law the reader is referred to the catalogue contained in the appendix where all references to ancient sources and a modern bibliography can be found. See also Savio (1940) 174-94. 6. Macrob. Sat. 3.17.1. 7. Ibid. 3.17.2. 8. Plin. HN 10.51.1. 9. Clemente (1981) 7. 10. Finley (1973); D’Arms (1981); Duncan-Jones (1982). 11. Daube (1969) 117-28. 12. Plin. HN 7.139; ORF3 p.10. 13. Plut. Cat. Mai. 21.8. 14. Rotondi (1912); Gabba (1980); D’Arms (1981); Baltrusch (1989). 15. Cato Agr. praef. 16. Gabba (1980) 91-102. 17. Landolfi (1990). 18. D’Arms (1981). 19. Rotondi (1912) 283. 20. Plut. Mor. 528b. 21. D’Arms (1999) 301-19. 22. Dunbabin (1991) 121-48. 23. Dauster (2003) 65-93. 24. Landolfi (1990). 25. Clemente (1981). 26. Cic. Mur. 74. 27. Cic. Rep. 4. fr. 8. 28. Dauster (2003) 93. 29. De Robertis (1973) I. 30. Tabula VIII.14.15; Crawford (1996) 694-5. 31. Cic. Pis. 4.9; Dom.129. 32. Plin. Ep. 10.33. 33. Ibid. 10.34; Sherwin-White (1966) 606-9.

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Notes to pages 59-62 34. Millar (1998) 13-48. 35. Edwards (1993) 24-8. 36. Val. Max. 2.9.5: ‘A bridle has been laid upon you, citizens, quite intolerable. You have been bound and tied with a galling chain of slavery. A law has been passed commanding you to be frugal. Let us then revoke that regulation, overlaid as it is with the rust of rugged antiquity. For indeed, what use is liberty if we are not allowed to go to perdition with luxury as we want to?’ 37. Val. Max. 2.9.5: ‘Censors M. Antonius and L. Flaccus expelled Duronius from the senate because as Tribune of the Plebs he had revoked a law passed to limit money spent on banquets.’ 38. Landolfi (1990). 39. Dio Cass. 54.16.1. On the dating of the Augustan leges Iuliae see Rotondi (1912) 444; Arangio-Ruiz (1977), 249-4; Raditsa (1980), 295. McGinn (1988) 70104. 40. See Astolfi (1970) 38-48. 41. It should be noted that the Digest and its component jurists tend to refer to the Julio-Papian laws as a single entity: Dig. 3.2.23. 42. Tit. Ulp. 14: ‘Feminis lex Iulia a morte viri anni tribuit vacationem, a divortio sex mensum, lex autem Papia a morte viri biennii, a repudio anni et sex mensum.’ 43. More details in Riccobono (1945); Astolfi (1970); Csillag (1976); WallaceHadrill (1981) 73-6. For full bibliography see Raditsa (1980). 44. Paul. Dig. 23.2.44. 45. Ulp. Dig. 23.2.43. 46. Astolfi (1970) 38-48. 47. Roman law distinguishes clearly between hereditas and legatum as noted in Dig. 30.116: ‘Legatum est delibatio hereditatis, qua testator ex eo, quod universum heredis foret, alicui quid collatum velit.’ The legatum is defined by the Digest as a part of the hereditas, which a testator gives out of it as a gift to a person out of that whole (universum) which is diminished to the heres by such gift. 48. Tit. Ulp. 17.1: ‘Quod quis sibi testamento relictum, ita ut iure civili capere possit, aliqua ex causa non ceperit, ‘caducum’ appellatur veluti cecidit ab eo: verbi gratia si caelibi vel Latino iuniano legatum fuerit, nec intra dies centum vel caelebs legi paruerit, vel Latinus ius Quiritium consecutus sit; aut si ex parte heres scriptus vel legatarius ante apertas tabulas decesserit vel peregrinus factus sit.’ 49. Tit. Ulp. 14.1.3: ‘This part was amended by the SC Pernicianum, passed under Tiberius, that established that, but if they had not obeyed the law before attaining those respective ages, they were perpetually bound by its penalties.’ 50. Tit. Ulp. 16.1a. 51. Tit. Ulp. 15.1. 52. Gaius 3.111; 3.286. 53. Tac. Ann. 15.19. 54. Gaius 3.42; Besnier (1949) 93-118; Riccobono (1950) 156-8. 55. The values reported by the Gnomon might not be those fixed by Augustus, but that is beyond this research. See Humbert (1972) 514. 56. Tac. Ann. 15. 19; Plin. Ep. 7.16.2. 57. Gell. 2.15.3-8. 58. Paul. Dig. 38.1.37. 59. Tit. Ulp. 29.3. 60. Gaius 3.39-54. 61. Astolfi (1970) 174. 62. See Raditsa (1980) 320.

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Notes to pages 62-65 63. Tabula V.3. in Crawford (1996) 638. ‘Uti legassit super familia pecuniaue tutelauesua, ita ius esto.’ 64. Dig. 23; 2; 19. 65. R. Gest. Div. Aug. 8.5. 66. Suet. Aug. 34. 67. Dio Cass. 56.6.4: ‘Indeed, it was never permitted to any man, even in olden times, to neglect marriage and the begetting of children; but from the very outset, when the government was first established, strict laws were made regarding these matters, and subsequently many decrees were passed by both the Senate and the people, which it would be superfluous to enumerate here.’ 68. Suet. Aug. 89.2; Livy Per. 59.6. 69. Gell. 1.6. 70. As already seen, Cicero is here talking about an ideal law for censorship. But it has been claimed that his model of censorship is closely based on the actual practice of censorship. 71. Cic. Leg. 3.7: ‘caelibes esse prohibento, mores populi regunto, probrum in senatu ne relinquunto’. 72. Such an oath is testified also by Dion. Hal. 2.25.7. The whole section of Dionysius on Romulus’ constitution (2.7-29) derives from a first-century pamphlet, probably of the age of Sulla. Details in Gabba (1960) 175-225, esp. 216-18. 73. Gell. 4.3.2: ‘quod iurare a censoribus coactus erat uxorem se liberum quaerundum gratia habiturum’. 74. Plu. Cam. 2; Val. Max. 2.9.1; Paul. (Fest.) 519 L. 75. Dion. Hal. 9.22.2. 76. Brunt (1971) 558-66. 77. As in Suet. Aug. 34: ‘Having made somewhat more stringent changes in the last of these than in the others, he was unable to carry it out because of an open revolt against its provisions, until he had abolished or mitigated a part of the penalties, besides increasing the rewards and allowing a three years’ exemption from the obligation to marry after the death of a husband or wife.’ 78. Hor. Carm. saec. 17; Carm. 3.6.37-41. 79. Dio Cass. 56.2.7. 80. Prop. 2.7.14: ‘Unde mihi patriis natos praebere triumphis? Nullus de nostro sanguine miles erit.’ 81. For the data recorded by the Gnomon see above. 82. Plin. Pan. 26. ‘Locupletes ad tollendos liberos ingentia praemia, et pares poenae, cohortantur; pauperibus educandis una ratio est, bonus princeps.’ 83. More details in Brunt (1971) 563. 84. See Champlin (1991). 85. See Maine (1889) 128. 86. Daube (1965) 253. 87. Crook (1973) 38-44. 88. For details see Kroll (1933) 110-12. 89. Cic. Dom. 85. 90. Suet. Jul. 83.2: ‘In his last will, however, he named three heirs, his sisters’ grandsons, Gaius Octavius, to three-fourths of his estate, and Lucius Pinarius and Quintus Pedius to share the remainder. At the end of the will, too, he adopted Gaius Octavius into his family and gave him his name. He named several of his assassins among the guardians of his son, in case one should be born to him, and Decimus Brutus even among his heirs in the second degree.’ 91. Suet. Aug. 101: ‘tertio gradu propinquos, amicosque compluris’.

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Notes to pages 65-69 92. Val. Max. 7.8.5; 8.5.9. 93. For instance, L. Licinius Lucullus (cos. 74) received many legacies from provincials in Asia: Cic. Flacc. 85; Plut. Luc. 37. 94. See Shatzman (1975) 409-14. 95. Cic. Phil. 2.40: ‘You have said that no inheritances come to me. Would that this accusation of yours were a true one; I should have more of my friends and connections alive. But how could such a charge ever come into your head? For I have received more than twenty millions of sesterces in inheritances. Although in this particular I admit that you have been more fortunate than I. No one has ever made me his heir except he was a friend of mine, in order that my grief of mind for his loss might be accompanied also with some gain, if it was to be considered as such. But a man whom you never even saw, Lucius Rubrius, of Casinum, made you his heir. And see now how much he loved you, who, though he did not know whether you were white or black, passed over the son of his brother, Quintus Fufius, a most honourable Roman knight, and most attached to him, whom he had on all occasions openly declared his heir (he never even names him in his will), and he makes you his heir whom he had never seen, or at all events had never spoken to. I wish you would tell me, if it is not too much trouble, what sort of countenance Lucius Turselius was of; what sort of height; from what municipal town he came; and of what tribe he was a member. “I know nothing,” you will say, “about him, except what farms he had.” Therefore, he, disinheriting his brother, made you his heir. And besides these instances, this man has seized on much other property belonging to men wholly unconnected with him, to the exclusion of the legitimate heirs, as if he himself were the heir. Although the thing that struck me with most astonishment of all was, that you should venture to make mention of inheritances, when you yourself had not received the inheritance of your own father.’ 96. Suet. Aug. 101: ‘quamvis viginti proximis annis quaterdecies milies ex testamentis amicorum percepisset’. 97. Hopkins (1980) 101. 98. Suet. Aug. 66.4: ‘amicorum tamen suprema iudicia morosissime pensitavit’. 99. Ibid. 100. Wallace-Hadrill (1981) 59. 101. Plin. Pan. 37.2. 102. Val. Max. 7.7.2. 103. Wallace-Hadrill (1981) 64. 104. Hopkins (1983) 238-47. 105. Sen. Ben. 4.20; 6.38. 106. Wallace-Hadrill (1981) 70. 107. Plin. Ep. 7.20; 8.18. 108. Gaius 2.25. 109. It is worth stressing that 25% is an astonishingly small portion of the estate and that this implies a huge role played by legacies. 110. Hopkins (1983) 242. 111. Plin. Ep. 2.20. 112. See Galinsky (1981) 126-44; Raditsa (1980) 320. 113. Tac. Ann. 3.25: ‘The lex Papia Poppea had been passed by Augustus in his later years in order to sharpen the penalties of celibacy and to increase the resources of the exchequer.’ 114. Tac. Ann. 2.37-8. 115. Tac. Ann. 15.19; Plin. HN 14.15; Plin. Ep. 4.15.3.

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Notes to pages 70-78 116. Macrob. Sat. 3.17.1. 4. Sumptuary Legislation in Comparative Perspective 1. Hunt (1996) 25. 2. The reasons, which we cannot examine in detail, are many and varied: we may mention the failure of any attempt to enforce sumptuary laws, the rise of the modern bourgeoisie, and the rise of individualism. See Freudenberg (1963) 43. 3. For a complete bibliography on French sumptuary laws see Bulst (2003); for bibliography on Spanish sumptuary laws, Aventin (2003); for bibliography on German sumptuary laws, Jaritz (2003). 4. The last European sumptuary law on apparel was enacted in Poland in 1776: Harte (1976). 5. The earliest enactment with some aspect of sumptuary measure is dated 1188. It was enacted by King John and forbade knights to wear ermine and fur during the crusades. Scholars do not offer any explanation for this measure. The first law that is generally agreed to be sumptuary dates from the fourteenth century: Veale (1966) 18. 6. We know of just one act that does not present the same form, namely the Cap Act enacted in 1571: 8 Eliz. I: c.11. 7. See for instance: 2 Edw. III: c.2; 37 Edw. III: c.2; 3 Edw. IV: c.1-4; 24 Henry VIII: c.13; 5 Eliz. I: c11. 8. See 37 Edw. III: c.2; c.4; 3 Edw. IV: c.5; 22 Edw. IV: c.1. 9. Keen (1990). 10. McFarlane (1973) 123. 11. Cornwall (1988) 11. 12. Baudrillart (1880) 187. 13. Indeed there was a profound connection between the English and the French courts, and though we cannot concern ourselves with an examination of the historical reasons for this mutual influence, it should not be forgotten how the two countries, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, imitated each other very closely and styles were imported into England from the continent. 14. William of Malmesbury quoted in Strutt (1842) 134. 15. See Waugh (1948) 21-95. 16. Harte (1976) 139. 17. Hunt (1996) 299. 18. Harte (1976) 132-65. 19. 11 Edw. III: c.2; c.4. 20. As in Piers Plowman; see Langland (1995). 21. Veblen (1999) 131-45 distinguishes between ‘conspicuous consumption’ and ‘conspicuous leisure’ and draws attention to the fact that some clothes acquire hierarchic value and significance not just for their value but for their being delicate and not suitable for work. 22. ‘Since many necessaries within the kingdom have been greatly increased in price because divers people of divers conditions use different apparel not pertaining to their estate; that is to say labourers use the apparel of craftsmen, and craftsmen the apparel of varlets, and varlets the apparel of squires, and squires the apparel of knights; ... poor women and others the apparel of ladies, poor clerks fur like the king and the lords; therefore the below-mentioned merchandise sells at greater prices than it was accustomed to, and the wealth of the kingdom is destroyed, to the great damage of the Lords and Commons. For

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Notes to pages 78-80 which they pray a remedy ...’, 37 Edw. III: c.2; c.4; Rotuli Parliamentorum vol. II, 278. 23. 37 Edw. III: c.11. 24. Ibid. 25. Baldwin (1926) 55; Hunt (1996) 303. 26. Hunt (1996) 308. 27. This stratification is visible in the development of ranks within the peerage by the mid-fifteenth century. For a detailed examination see McFarlane (1973) 123-5. 28. The law forbade anyone other than the royal family to wear any cloth of gold or purple silk. Moreover, no one below the rank of duke was allowed to wear cloth of gold of tissue and no one below the rank of lord could wear plain cloth of gold. To wear doublets in velvet or any velvet and damask or satin gowns was not allowed to men of rank below knights. None below the rank of a squire or gentleman could wear damask or satin in their doublets, or camlet in their gowns. Woollen cloth of foreign manufacture and sable fur were prohibited to anyone below the rank of lord, clearly to protect English manufacturers. Servants in husbandry, common labourers, and servants of handicraftsmen were forbidden to wear any cloth worth more than 2 s. a broad yard. 22 Edw. IV: c.1; Baldwin (1926) 113-17. 29. Hunt (1996) 308. 30. Ibid. 31. 6 Hen. VIII: c.14. 32. Baldwin (1926) 116. 33. Hunt (1996) 308. 34. For a detailed account see Boehn (1932-35) 133. 35. Hunt (1996) 308. 36. See Thrupp (1948) 148-9. 37. Cf. Stone (1994); Davies (2005) 121-30. 38. Wallace-Hadrill (2008) 43. 39. Virg. Aen. 1.282. cf. Dench (2005) 276-9. 40. It is worth quoting them in full: 24 Hen. VIII: c.13 (1533): None shall wear in his apparel any: Cloth of gold, silver, or tinsel; satin, silk, or cloth mixed with gold or silver, nor any sables: except earls and all of superior degree, and viscounts and barons in their doublets and sleeveless coats; Woollen cloth made out of the realm; velvet, crimson, scarlet or blue; furs, black genets, lucerns; except dukes, marquises, earls or their children, barons and knights of the order; Velvet in gowns, coats, or outermost garments; furs of leopards; embroidery, pricking or printing with gold, silver or silk; except baron’s sons, knights or men that may dispend £200 by year; Taffeta, satin, damask, or silk camlet in his outermost garments; velvet, otherwise than in jackets, doublets, etc, fur whereof the kind groweth not within the Queen’s dominions, except grey genets, bodge; except a man may dispend £100 by year. Phil. and Mary: c.2 (1553): None shall wear any silk in: Hat, bonnet, nightcap, girdle, scabbard, hose, shoes, spur leathers; except the son or daughter of a knight or the wife of the said son, a man that may dispend £20 by year or is worth £200 in goods.

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Notes to pages 80-85 41. See, for example, the Proclamation of 1566 in Steele (1910) I.66. 42. Jerdan (1842) 247. 43. See Baldwin (1926) 213-15. 44. ‘Every evil in a state is not to be met by law. And as it is in natural, so it is in the politique body, that sometimes the remedy is worse than the disease.’ With these words the MP John Bond disagreed with the common opinion; quoted in Kent (1973) 451-7. 45. In the Court Leet Records (Southampton) (1.1.161) for the period 15501580 we find just two cases connected with sumptuary measures. 46. Latimer (1635) 233. 47. Calendar of State Papers Scotch Series I 154. 48. 1 James I: c.25; Hooper (1915) 448. 49. Ibid. 50. Hurlock (1965) 295-301. 51. 37 Edw. III: c.2; c.4. 52. 1 Hen. VIII: c.1. (1510). 53. 24 Hen. VIII: c.13. See Elton (1973) 121. 54. This chapter is based exclusively on the reading of literature in English. I have mainly relied, as far as sumptuary measures are concerned, on the works of Shively (1955), (1964) and Hall (1920), which are far from recent. The laws, or the collection of laws quoted, have not been read in the original, as all are in Japanese, but rather as they are quoted in the work of Hall. The part concerning Japanese history and culture during the Tokugawa period has been based on the reading of more modern research such as The Cambridge History of Japan (1991) IV. 55. The Japanese word for sumptuary law is ken’yakurei. Ken’yaku means regulating expenditure and rei means laws. 56. See Shively (1964) 136; Hearn (1904) 165. 57. Beasley (1990) 1-20. 58. Sheldon (1973) 18. 59. Traditional Japanese society was divided into two classes: the governing class, including all orders of the nobility and military class, and the producing class. See Dunn (1969); Hearn (1904). Even if during the Tokugawa period considerable social development and change occurred, Japanese society remained an aggregate of clans and sub-clans, maintained by military force. Perez (2002) 230. 60. These words call to mind those of Cicero on trade (Cic. Off. 1.151). 61. Cooper (1965) 54. 62. See Whitney (1991). 63. Hearn (1904) 243. 64. There is no agreement among scholars on the size of the population at the beginning of the Tokugawa period. The population of Japan during the Tokugawa era went through three stages: rapid growth during the seventeenth century, extraordinary stability during the eighteenth, and the beginnings of increase again during the nineteenth. Estimates of the national population in 1600 range from 6 to 20 million, with 12 million probably the most accurate. In 1721 the central government of the shogun ordered the first of a series of censuses, which indicated a population of 26,065,425 estimated for 1721. By the end of the Tokugawa era, the national population had grown to well over 30 million; in 1877 it was 36 million; White (1992) 9. 65. Hearn (1904) 243. 66. Sheldon (1973) 5.

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Notes to pages 85-89 67. Nakai (1991) 519-95. 68. Shively (1964). 69. For a detailed account of the social status of farmers in Tokugawa Japan and of sumptuary laws towards farmers, see Wigmore (1969). 70. In 1642 a law stated: ‘From this year, sake may not be made in rural areas. However towns on the main highways are excepted. They may sell to travellers but not to farmers. If sake is sold to farmers, the sake making equipment will be confiscated’ TK 2781 in Shively (1964) 154. 71. A farmer with an income of 100 koku of rice was allowed to build a house 60 feet long, but no longer: he could not build it with a room containing an alcove; and he was not allowed except by special permission to roof it with tiles. A farmer whose property was assessed at 50 koku was forbidden to build a house more than 45 feet long. A farmer with a property assessed at 20 koku was not allowed to build a house more than 36 feet long, or to use in building it such superior qualities of wood. The roof of his house was to be made of bamboo-thatch or straw; and he was strictly forbidden the comfort of floor-mats. A farmer assessed at 10 koku was forbidden to build a house more than 30 feet long. See Hearn (1904) 167. 72. Shively (1964) 154. 73. Revised versions are dated 1617, 1629, 1635, 1663, 1683, 1710 and 1717. Their content is similar except for the version of 1710. 74. Hall (1920) 286-319. 75. A proclamation dated 1657 limited the length of the roof beams of daimyo houses; NZKS 3829. Hatamoto, retainers close to the Daimyo/Shogun, were forbidden to decorate their houses using woodcarving or metal ornaments, or lacquered mouldings. 76. Just as an example I quote the Shoshi Hatto, enacted in 1636: ‘As regards the utensils and appurtenances of the table: (lacquered) wooden vessels, bowls, drinking cups and stands ornamented with gold and silver designs are not to be used on ordinary occasions of entertaining friends. But when entertaining personages of high rank, or when a visitor of unusual eminence is received, then there is no objection to the use of such ornamental lacquered ware. On special occasions, such as New-Year’s time, birthday celebrations or at wedding ceremonies, gold and silver cups and elaborate (kame-ashi) cup stands may be used at discretion. The general rule for the mode of living is to aim at simplicity, and in the use of wine (sake) there must be no drinking to inebriety’ (quoted in Hall (1920) 286-319). 77. Ihara (1688). 78. Ihara Saikaku (1642-93) began his literary career as a haikai (comic linked verse) poet, astonishing contemporaries with his skill at composing sequences of thousands of stanzas in a single sitting. Later he turned to writing ukiyozoshi, a popular prose form which in his hands was elevated to high art through the use of literary allusion, techniques borrowed from poetry, an irreverent style and keen sense of the ironic. Merchants, rogues, misers, warriors, and amorous women populated Saikaku’s stories. 79. For lack of bibliography the examination of this matter is based mainly on the work of Hearn (1904). 80. Nouns of relationships were multiplied and graded: there were nine different terms indicating father, nine for mother, eleven for wife, eleven for son, nine for daughter and seven for husband. These terms are still in use. The importance given to respect towards superiors is demonstrated by the fact that Ieyasu authored a Samurai to kill any person of the three inferior classes guilty of being

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Notes to pages 89-94 rude. What was considered rude? The shogun himself provided an explanation: a rude person signified ‘an other-than-expected person’. Whoever committed an act in an ‘unexpected manner’, that is, contrary to prescribed etiquette, became worthy of the death penalty. 81. Hearn (1904) 171. 82. Maruyama (1974) 11. 83. Niccolai (1939) 125-6; Hughes (1983) 72-3. 84. During the thirteenth century, sumptuary measures can be found also in south Italy. In 1272 Charles I of Anjou issued the first law of this kind in Messina: Del Giudice (1886) 120-2. 85. Brundage (1987) 343-55. 86. Just three measures concerning furnishings are known, one enacted in Florence in 1373, the second in Venice in 1476 and the third in Milan in 1498. On Florence see Rayney (1985); on Venice Bistort (1912) 356-8; on Milan Verga (1900) 5-79. 87. In Perugia, where one of the most ancient laws of this kind was enacted in 1266, it was forbidden for people of the city and of its district to meet together for weddings and engagement parties without previously informing the podestà or the capitano del popolo. Fabretti (1888); Bonardi (1912) 5. 88. Killerby (2002) 69. 89. Such laws were enacted in Milan (Verga (1900) 39), Florence (Villani (1848) 10-153; Rayney (1985) 58), Aquila (Piacentino (1947) 73-6) and Siena (Casanova (1901) 66). 90. On Bologna see Muzzarelli (2002), (2003b) 185-220. 91. On Siena see Ceppari Ridolfi & Turini (1993); Ceppari Ridolfi (2003). 92. On Venice see Newett (1902); Bistort (1912); Molà (2003) with full bibliography. 93. ‘Ex quibus multis expensis multi pereunt et homines ad nihilum deducuntur’, Bistort (1912) 66. 94. ‘Fiunt multe vanitates et expense inordinate , circa sponsas et alias mulieres et dominas, in quibus pro certo Deus graviter offenditur ....’, ibid. 95. In Venice, in 1433 for instance, the councillors of the doge were forced by law to wear more extravagant and coloured clothes even if mourning relatives; and again in 1536, the Senate stated that when the councillors ‘leave the palace dressed in lugubrious clothing, and so dressed go through the city, this is diminishing the honour of their office and of our government’ (‘Quam cito recedunt a palatio induunt vestes lugubres, et sic induti vadunt per civitatem, quod est in diminutionem honoris Consiliare et Regiminis nostri’, Newett (1902) 251). 96. In Siena, for the visit of Robert of Arras in 1291, forbidden clothes were allowed for a short time. In Venice, in 1459, on the occasion of the visit of French ambassadors, an act was passed requiring all ladies, who attended the feast given in honour of the guests, to wear bridal garments. It was also allowed to wear jewellery generally forbidden by law, Mazzi (1880) 133-44. 97. Livy 4.44: ‘In this same year Postumia, a Vestal virgin, had to answer a charge of un-chastity. Though innocent, she had given grounds for suspicion through her gay attire and unmaidenly freedom of manner. After she had been remanded and finally acquitted, the Pontifex Maximus, in the name of the whole college of priests, ordered her to abstain from frivolity and to study sanctity rather than smartness in her appearance.’ Also Livy 8.15: ‘Minucia, a Vestal, incurred suspicion through an improper love of dress, and subsequently was accused of un-chastity on the evidence of a slave.’ 98. Hughes (1983) 84.

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Notes to pages 94-99 99. See Chapter 1. 100. Hunt (1996) 240. 101. Quoted in Killerby (2002) 118. 102. Ibid. 103. Ibid. 104. Actually the condemnation of fashion and extravagance has a longer history than the sumptuary regulation of it; theologians and moralists were concerned with fashion even before the end of the thirteenth century. St Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274) examined the moral consequences of luxury in female clothes, arriving at the conclusion that in some circumstances excessive attention and luxury expenditures for clothes could be sinful: Busa (1974) 2.2. 105. In Venice, in 1304, Fra Paolino urged sumptuary laws as the only means against the pride of wives, and against the inability of husbands, who went along with their desire for extravagance, to control them. He wrote: ‘Sometimes the man follows too much the will of the woman in buying her ornaments, and this gives rise to much evil, excessive expenditures, and the woman is more than ever filled with pride, and for the vainglory desires still more to go out and show herself ... And if the custom of the city in this respect is extravagant, it should be regulated by laws after the manner of the Romans.’ Quoted in Foucard (1858) appendix. 106. Killerby (2002); Brundage (1987). For the laws enacted in Venice see Bistort (1912). 107. Bridgeman (2000) 209-26. 108. Frati (1928) 245-8. 109. Livy 34.7: ‘Magistracies, priestly functions, triumphs, military decorations and rewards, spoils of war – none of these fall to their lot. Neatness, elegance, personal adornment, attractive appearance and looks – these are the distinctions they covet, in these they delight and pride themselves; these things our ancestors called the ornament of women.’ 110. Ottaviani (2003) 33-45. 111. Brundage (1987) 353. 112. ‘It must please you to make provision on the immoderate and immodest ornaments of women because of which, and the excessive expenditure involved, great inconvenience and harm have occurred and still occur in our city and community: because there is a great number of young women to be married and similarly a great number of great men ready to take wife who are unable to marry. And this because those who are ready to take a wife cannot withstand the large and excessive expenses incurred, and those women who are to be married cannot provide a dowry of great enough sufficiency to cover said expenses and their trousseaus ... And for these reasons young women do not marry, and young men do not take wives and so our city decreases: so that the old pass away and few young children are born’, quoted in Bongi (1863). 113. Franceschi (2003) 170. 114. Dante Paradiso XV 103-5: ‘A daughter’s birth did not yet fill/a father’s heart with fear,/for age and dowry had not yet fled to opposite extremes.’ 115. Queller & Madden (1993) 685-711. 116. Hunt (1996) 267; Hughes (1993) 95. 117. From Queller & Madden (1993) 707: ‘Propter quod aliqui eorum filias coguntur in monasteries carcerare cum dignis lacrimis, et plantibus ipsarum.’ 118. Prostitution or violation of vows of chastity in nunneries became such a widespread phenomenon that many governors legislated in order to limit this, either punishing the culprits or trying to limit the entrance of girls without

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Notes to pages 99-103 dowry. In Venice men who had sexual relations with nuns were punished by banishment. 119. Hughes (1983) 95. 120. Rayney (1985) 466-7. 121. Ibid. 122. Pandiani (1915) 119-21. 123. Law dated 1469; see Mazzatinti (1897) 293. 124. Law dated 1424; see Casanova (1901); Ceppari Ridolfi (2003). 125. See Chapter 3. 126. Further details in Corbett (1930). 127. Gardner (1985) 449-53. 128. More on the age of marriage in Hopkins (1965) 309-27. 129. More in Gardner (1986) 97-116. 130. Corbett (1930) 152-4. 131. Saller (1984) 197-9. 132. In a letter to Quintilianus, Pliny clearly states: ‘Since your daughter is about to marry a distinguished man, Nonius Celer, on whom the requirements of public duties impose a certain need for splendour, she ought to have clothing and a retinue in accordance with her husband’s position; of course such things do not increase her worth but nevertheless adorn it and provide for it’ (Plin. Ep. 6.32) 133. Saller (1984) 200. 134. Plin. Ep. 6.32. 135. Plin. Ep. 2.4. 136. Apul. Apol. 71. 137. Apul. Apol. 92. 138. Ibid. 139. Saller (1984) 201. 140. Tac. Ann. 2.86: ‘Post quae rettulit Caesar capiendam virginem in locum Occiae, quae septem et quinquaginta per annos summa sanctimonia Vestalibus sacris praesederat; egitque grates Fonteio Agrippae et Domitio Pollioni quod offerendo filias de officio in rem publicam certarent. Praelata est Pollionis filia, non ob aliud quam quod mater eius in eodem coniugio manebat; nam Agrippa discidio domum imminuerat. Et Caesar quamvis posthabitam decies sestertii dote solatus est.’ 141. Mart. Epigr. 2.65. 142. Juv. 6.137.10. 143. Sen. Dial. 12.6. 144. Duncan-Jones (1982) 32. 145. Plin. Ep. 6.32: ‘Debet secundum condicionem mariti veste comitatu, quibus non quidem augetur dignitas, ornatur tamen et instruitur.’ 146. Saller (1984) 203. 147. Polyb. 31.27: ‘In the next place he had to pay the daughters of the great Scipio, the sisters of his adoptive father, the half of their portion. Their father had agreed to give each of his daughters fifty talents, and their mother had paid the half of this to their husbands at once on their marriage, but left the other half owing on her death.’ 148. Goody (1976) 61. 149. Saller (1984) 203. 150. Polyb. 31.27: ‘According to Roman law the part of the dowry still due had to be paid to the ladies in three years, the personal property being first handed over within ten months according to Roman usage.’ Balsdon (1962) 186-9. 151. Polyb. 31.27.

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Notes to pages 104-115 152. Cic. Att. 11.2.2. 153. Cic. Att. 11.23.3. 154. Cf. 3 Edw. IV: c.5. 155. 24 Henry VIII: c.13. See Elton (1973) 121. 156. Hunt (1996) 42. Appendix 1. Plin. HN 35.57.197. 2. On Metilius see Lange (1876-79) II.161; RE s.v. Metilius (1) 1397; Fraccaro (1956-75) I.477; Scullard (1951) 48; MRR I.236-44; Cassola (1961) 361-3; Rotondi (1912) 252. 3. MRR I.235. 4. Livy 22.25; Plut. Fab. 7.5. 5. Lange (1876-79) II.161. 6. RE s.v. Metilius (1) 1397. 7. Scullard (1951) 48; MRR I.236-44; Fraccaro (1956-1975) I.477; Cassola (1961) 361-3; Rotondi (1912) 252; Savio (1940) 175. 8. Cassola (1961) 361-3. 9. Plin. HN 35.57.196. 10. Rotondi (1912) assumes that the law contained penal sanctions but no source confirms it. 11. RE s.v. Flaminius (2) 2497. 12. Clemente (1981). 13. Lange (1876-79) II.161; Fraccaro (1956-75) I.477; Cassola (1961) 214; Rotondi (1912) 252. 14. On the lex Oppia see Livy 34.1.3; 4.6, 10, 18, 20; 6.15-16; 8.3; Tac. Ann. 3.33.4; Val. Max. 9.1.3; Oros. 4.20.14; Zonaras 9.17.1. RE s.v. Oppius (8) 729; RE s.v. sumptus 901; Rotondi (1912) 252; Scullard (1951) 48; Gabba (1981) 541; Culham (1982) 786-93; Pomeroy (1975) 177-81. 15. In another passage Livy (34.7.4) seems to suggest that only purple clothes were forbidden by the law. He says: ‘And when you, a man, are allowed to have purple on your outer garment will you not permit your wife to own a purple cloak ... ?’ 16. Livy 34.1. 17. Livy 34.6.12-15: ‘Hannibal was in Italy; victorious at Cannae; he already held Tarentum, Arpi and Capua; he seemed ready to march on our city of Rome; our allies had abandoned us, we had no troops in reserve; no naval allies to maintain the fleet, no money in the treasury; slaves were being purchased for employment as soldiers, on condition that the price money should be paid their owners at the end of the war; the contractors agreed to furnish grain and other things demanded by the war on the same settlement day; we furnished slaves for rowers in proportion to our census-rating, and ourselves bore the cost; we all, following the example set by the senators, gave our gold and silver for the public use; widows and minors deposited their money in the treasury; we were forbidden to have at home more than a certain quantity of gold and silver plate or coined silver or bronze; at such a time the matrons so absorbed in luxury and adornment that the Oppian law was needed to restrain them.’ 18. Livy 34.6.10. 19. Livy 34.6.16-18. 20. Livy 24.18.

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Notes to pages 115-119 21. Livy 26.36.6-9. 22. Livy 34.1.3. 23. Corbett (1930) 107-14; Watson (1971) 28-9. 24. Rotondi (1912) 252; Culham (1982). 25. Scullard (1951) 48; Clemente (1981) 5. 26. Livy 26.36.5. 27. Livy 34.1. 28. Milnor (2005) 154-79. 29. See Fraccaro (1910)132-4; Scullard (1951) 257. 30. Milnor (2005) 164. 31. See Livy 38.54; 39.42; 45.2. 32. See Livy 34.1: ‘The brighter and better the fortunes of the Republic become day by day, and the greater the growth of its dominion – and now we are penetrating into Greece and Asia, regions filled with everything that can tempt appetite or excite desire.’ The Romans first went to Asia in 190, five years after the date of the speech. 33. Milnor (2005) 165. 34. Livy 34.6.6. 35. Livy 34.2; cf. Desideri (1984) 63-74. 36. Pomeroy (1975) 176. 37. Livy 27.37.8. 38. Milnor (2005) 178. 39. Macrob. Sat. 1.7.33. 40. Savio (1940) 185; Rotondi (1912) 258. 41. Livy 27.20.11-13. 42. Livy 34.4.9: ‘Quid legem Cinciam de donis et muneribus nisi quia vectigalis iam et stipendiaria plebs esse senatui coeperant.’ 43. Macrob. Sat. 1.7.33. 44. Martial testifies how the Saturnalia made a few people rich (Epigr. 4.46): ‘The Saturnalia have made Sabellus a rich man. Well may Sabellus be puffed up and think and declare that no barrister among them is more fortunate.’ He lists all the presents that could be received food, togas, furniture, slaves and trinkets. The law allowed only presents whose value was symbolic (Epigr. 7.53). 45. On the Cincian law see Rotondi (1912) 261; Scullard (1951) 16; Savigny (1850); Talamanca (1989). 46. Tac. Ann. 11.5. 47. Cic.Sen. 10; De Or. 2.286. 48. Livy 34.4.9. 49. Rotondi (1912) 261; Scullard (1951) 16. 50. Livy 29.20.11. 51. Cic. Sen. 4.10. 52. Tac. Ann. 11.5. 53. Frg. Vat. 298. FIRA II.531. 54. Tit. Ulp. 1.1.2; According to classic jurisprudence a lex imperfecta is a law that does not punish a person who has infringed it and does not annul the action. The Sanctio made a law a lex perfecta. In a lex perfecta, the act that is contrary to the provisions of the lex, is declared by the lex to be null. If a lex did not contain this sanctio, it was called imperfecta. A lex was called minus quam perfecta, when the act that was contrary to its provisions was not declared null, but the lex imposed a penalty. See Talamanca (1989) 235. 55. Dio Cass. 56.18. 56. Tac. Ann. 9.7: ‘The emperor thought that these arguments, though less

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Notes to pages 119-121 noble, were not without force. He limited the fee which might be taken to ten thousand sesterces, and those who exceeded this limit were to be liable to the penalties of extortion.’ 57. Suet. Ner. 17. 58. On the Orchian law see: RE X.886; Kübler, RE s.v. sumptus 905; Savio (1940) 175; Pais (1931); Fraccaro (1959) 33; Rotondi (1912) 252; La Penna (1988) 31; Coudry (1997) 9. 59. Macrob. Sat. 3.17.2. 60. Macrob. Sat. 3.17.3. 61. ORF 3 8.140 (Festus 280 L). 62. ORF 3 8.139 (Festus 220 L). 63. ORF 3 8.141 (Schol. Bob. in Cic. Sest. 141 Stangl). 64. Macrob. Sat. 3.17: ‘Et haec est lex Orchia de qua Cato mox orationibus suis vociferabatur, quod plures quam praescripto eius cavebatur ad coenam vocarentur.’ 65. Fraccaro (1956-75) I.236. 66. ORF2 93: ‘[In suasione de lege] legendum in suasione, ne de lege O derogaretur.’ 67. Fraccaro (1956-75) I.236; Scullard (1951) 265. 68. Varro ap. Gell. 13.11.1-2. 69. Scullard (1951) 265. 70. RE VI s.v. Fannius (20). 71. On the lex Fannia see: Plin. HN. 10.71.1; Macrob. Sat. 3.17; Gell. 2.24.1; Pais (1931) 284; Scullard (1951) 222; Rotondi (1912) 287; Clemente (1981) 6-7; Gabba (1981) 553; Coudry (1997) 14. 72. Plin. HN 10.51.1: ‘I find this first singled out in the old interdicts dealing with feasts as early as the law of the consul Gaius Fannius eleven years before the Third Punic War (undecim annis ante tertium Punicum bellum).’ 73. Macrob. Sat. 3.17.3: ‘And twenty-two years after the Orchian law the Fannian law was enacted – A.U.C. 592, according to Gellius.’ 74. Gell. 2.24.1. 75. Clemente (1981) 6-7. 76. Gell. 2.24. 77. Plin. HN 10.51.1. 78. Athenaeus Deipnosophistes 4.108. 79. Varro Rust. 3.9.17. 80. Pais (1931) 284. 81. Macrob. Sat. 3.1. 82. Macrob. Sat. 3.1.7.4. 83. Gell. 2.24.1. 84. Macrob. Sat. 3.1.7.5. 85. Macrob. Sat. 3.17.6: ‘Eighteen years later the Fannian Law was followed by the Didian law, which had a two-fold object. Its first and most important aim was to enact a sumptuary law, which would be binding on the whole of Italy and not at Rome alone; for the Italians were holding that the Fannian law did not apply to them but only to citizens resident in Rome. The second aim was to make liable to penalties of the law not only those who had exceeded the expenditure allowed for a luncheon or a dinner but those persons too who had been invited to the repast and had taken part in it.’ 86. On the Didian law: Pais (1931) 289; Rotondi (1912) 295; Harris (1972) 63945; Clemente (1981) 6-7. 87. Macrobius is the only ancient source that mentions the law. Pliny is probably

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Notes to pages 122-125 referring to the Didian law when, talking about the Fannian law, he says (HN 10.71), ‘a provision that was subsequently renewed and went on through all our laws’. 88. RE s.v. Didius (1) 406. 89. Plin. HN 8.24. 90. Livy 43.8.2. 91. Cic. Fin. 5.54. 92. De Sanctis (1980) IV.615n.319. 93. Lange (1876-79) 311. 94. Rotondi (1912) 328; Savio (1940). 95. Plin. HN 8.6. 96. Livy 39.22.2: ‘These were followed by the Games which M. Fulvius had vowed in the Aetolian war and were exhibited for ten days ... The hunting of lions and panthers and the whole spectacle presented almost as much splendour and variety as those of the present.’ 97. Livy 44.18.8|: ‘It has been noted as a sign of the increasing scale on which the Circus games were conducted that in those of the curule aediles P. Cornelius Scipio Nasica and P. Lentulus, sixty-three African panthers and forty bears and elephants formed part of the show.’ 98. On the Licinian law see: Savio (1940) 185; Aste (1941) 581-8; Crawford (1978); Marshall (1973). 99. Gell. 2.7.10. 100. Macrob. Sat. 3.17.7. 101. In another passage Gellius (15.8) supplies us with a speech by Favorinus, who spoke in favour of the Licinian law. 102. Münzer was the first to suggest that the Crassus quoted by Macrobius could be the father of the triumvir in RE s.v. Licinius (61) 249, 288 and 335. Compare: Savio (1940) 185; Lange (1876-79) III 71; Pais (1918) III.20-79; Crawford (1978) 79. 103. Marshall (1973). 104. Aste (1941) 581-8. 105. On the other hand this could be good evidence in favour of this identification. The poet might have quoted a law that was well known because it was recent. 106. Licinius Crassus Dives Mucianus, son of P. Mucius Scaevola, who had been adopted by Publius Licinius Crassus Dives, Pontifex Maximus consul in 205. He was a prominent personality, who was very active in Rome in many different contexts; according to ancient writers, he was a remarkable orator, jurist and politician. Cicero (De Or. 1.170.) introduces him with these words: ‘assuredly I think that our relative Publius Crassus, surnamed Dives, while in many other ways a man of taste and accomplishment, was particularly to be extolled and eulogised ... ’. 107. Marshall (1973). 108. Gabba (1981) 541-58; Clemente (1981) 6-7. 109. Cic. Fam. 7.26. 110. Those which may possibly be referred to here are the lex Licinia and the lex Aemilia (115 BC), which also defined both the quantity and quality of food allowable at banquets Cf. Gell. 2.24.12. 111. Val. Max. 2.9.5: ‘A bridle has been laid upon you, citizens, quite intolerable. You have been bound and tied with a galling chain of slavery. A law has been passed commanding you to be frugal. Let us then revoke that regulation, overlaid as it is with the rust of rugged antiquity. For indeed, what use is liberty if we are not allowed to go to perdition with luxury as we want to?’

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Notes to pages 125-127 112. Val. Max. 2.9.5: ‘Censors M. Antonius and L. Flaccus expelled Duronius from the senate because as Tribune of the Plebs he had revoked a law passed to limit money spent on banquets.’ 113. Landolfi (1990). 114. Gell. 2.24.12. 115. Plin. HN 8.82. 116. Rotondi (1912) 320. 117. Macrob. Sat. 3.17.13. 118. ORF3 25; Rotondi (1912) 320; Gabba (1981) 553; Clemente (1981) 5. 119. Aur. Vict. De vir. ill. 72.1: ‘Marcus Aemilius Scaurus nobilis consul legem de sumptibus et libertinorum suffragiis tulit.’ 120. Priscian 9.38: ‘Aemilius Porcina orator in oratione uti lex Aemilia abrogetur’ in Grammatici Latini 474. 121. Gell. 2.24.12. 122. Plin. HN 8.82. 123. See Rotondi (1912) 355; RE IV. 1 (1931) s.v. sumptus 901; Voigt (1890). 124. Gell. 2.24.11. 125. Macrob. Sat. 3.17.12. 126. Gell. 2.24.11. 127. Macrob. Sat. 3.17.12. 128. Ibid. 129. Macrob. Sat. 3.17.11: ‘It placed no check on rich banquets and set no limit to extravagant eating and drinking, but it lowered the prices of the foodstuff. And good heaven! What food they were, the choice and all but unheard of dainties, the fish and the titbits named in that law! And yet all that the law did was to make them cheaper. I should go so far to say that its effect was simply this: by cheapening the price of these foods it encouraged the preparation of a lavish abundance of dishes and enabled even the less well-off to become the slaves of appetite.’ 130. Gell. 2.24.13. 131. Macrob. Sat. 3.17.13: ‘Then, a few years after, another law came before the people on the motion of Antius Restio.’ 132. Rotondi (1912) 367; Griffin (1973). 133. Cic. Fam. 7.26.2. 134. Syme (1963). 135. Gell. 2.24.12: ‘Besides curtailing outlay, contained the additional provision, that no magistrate elect should dine out anywhere except at the house of stipulated persons.’ 136. Sauerwein (1970) 140-3. 137. Macrob. Sat. 3.13: ‘It was excellent as its provisions were and although it was never repealed – was nullified by a stubborn extravagance and the strength of the general addiction to such vices. Nevertheless it is worthwhile to remember that Restio, who proposed the law, is said never again to have dined out as long as he lived, for fear of witnessing contempt for a law which he had himself proposed for the public good.’ 138. Dio Cass. 39.37. 139. Cic. Att. 6.1.25. 140. Rotondi (1912) 413. 141. Cic. Fam. 8.6.5. 142. Suet. Iul. 1.33. 143. Dio Cass. 43.25. 144. Cic. Att. 7.1; cf. Déry (1993) 156-7.

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Notes to pages 127-128 145. Suet. Iul. 1.33. 146. Ibid. 147. Dio Cass. 43.25. 148. Cic. Att. 8.7. 149. Suet. Aug. 34: ‘Some laws he abrogated, and he made some new ones; such as the sumptuary law, that relating to adultery and the violation of chastity, the law against bribery in elections, and likewise that for the encouragement of marriage. Having been more severe in his reform of this law than the rest, he found the people utterly averse to submit to it, unless the penalties were abolished or mitigated, besides allowing an interval of three years after a wife’s death, and increasing the premiums on marriage.’ 150. Gell. 2.24.14-15. 151. Suet. Aug. 34. 152. Gell. 2.24.14-15. 153. Ibid. 154. Tac. Ann. 3.52.

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166

Index aedificatio, 18 aediles responsible for games, 12-13 Alexiou, M., 32 Apuleius, 19, 101-2 Archestartus of Gela, 19 Aristotle on luxury/decadence, 4 on magnificence, 11 Ateius Capito, 50, 120, 128 Augustus games, 14 lex Iulia and lex Papia Poppaea: concern with size of population, 64, 104; link with the past, 63; testamentary practice, 64-7; transmission of property and status, 66 sumptuary law, see lex Baltrusch, E., 46 banquets and patronage, 56 as performance, 56 luxurious, see luxury social importance, 55-7 birds, 20, 21, 22, 121 C. Claudius Pulcher, 44 C. Fabricius Luscinus, 10, 43 Caesar organisation of funeral games, 13-14 sumptuary law, 52, 127 testament, 65 Cap Act, 81 captatores/legacy hunters, 67, 68 Cassola on Metilius, 113-14 Cato against the abrogation of the Oppian law, 51, 113, 115

against the abrogation of the Orchian law, 60, 119-20 De Agricultura, 53 De Signis et tabulis, 44 De Sumptu suo, 17 De Vestitu et vehiculis, 44 fight against luxury, 4, 15, 22, 23, 45 on cooks, 19 on management of property, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45 on mercatura, 54 celibacy forbidden by Augustan legislation, see Augustus targeted by censoria intervention, 37 censors cura morum, 27, 36-9, 40, 48 description of duties, 37, 40-1 intervention in matter of luxury, 42-5 lectio senatus/recognitio equitum, 38, 46 nota censoria, 37, 46 significance of censorial intervention, 46-7 chonin, 87; laws targeting, see sumptuary laws Christianity, 2, 5, 33, 90 church/churchmen, 73, 77, 91, 94, 95, 105 Cicero De Republica, 8, 57 on banquets, 23, 24 on censorship, 37, 38, 39, 43, 46, 63 on gladiatorial games, 13, 14 on good taste, 21 on Greek funerary legislation, 29 on inheritances, 64, 65 on lex Antia, 126

167

Index on lex Cincia de donis et muneribus, 118 on lex Iulia sumptuaria, 127, 128. on lex Licinia, 125 on luxury and magnificence, 9-11, 23 on private houses, 15, 16, 17, 18 on rogatio Scribonia, 127 on Tenth Table, 27-8, 33-4, 35, 36 Pro Murena, 57 Cincinnatus, 10 Claudian plebiscite, 53-4 Clemente on lex Fannia, 120 on lex Metilia, 11 on sumptuary laws, 49, 56 clothes as target of legislation, 12, 55, 73, 77-81, 107 lex Iulia sumptuaria, 127 lex Oppia, 51, 116, 117 shift in the interest of legislators from men’s to women’s, 92-4, 96, 98 Cn. Cornelius Lentulus Clodianus, 42 Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus, 47 Cn. Manlius Vulso, 8 collegia, 58 Columella, 18 competition for political power and offices, 57, 59, 67 in the displaying of wealth in houses, 18, 25 in funeral rites, 33, 36 in Italy in contracting advantageous marriage, 98 in Japan between samurai and the merchant class, 87-8 in matter of inheritance, 65 in organising games, 13-14, 25 sumptuary legislation, 53, 110 Confucianism, 101, 102, 105 Cornelius Lentulus Niger, 23 Cornell, T., 35 Crawford, M., 33, 34 daimyo, 85 laws targeting, see sumptuary laws Dante, 2, 3, 98 Daube, D., 53, 64 delicacies, 19, 20, 23, 51, 125

Demosthenes on magnificence, 11 on Solonian legislation, 28 Dio Cassius on lex Iulia sumptuaria, 127 on rogatio Licinia Pompeia, 127 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 40, 63 dowry in Italy: importance for women, 98; inflation, 96, 99, 103; targeted by sumptuary laws, 99 in Rome: destiny of, 100-1; dos adventicia, 100; dos profectitia, 100; size, 101-2; system of payment, 103-4 pacta dotalia, see marriage Edward, C., 3, 7, 59 ekphora, 30, 31 Elizabeth I, ix, 80 Proclamations, 80, 81 Ennius on food, 19, 22 on Roman morals, 8, 48 extravagance, see luxury Festus, 119, 120 fish, 19, 20, 21, 123, 125 Florence, 2, 3, 99 Florus, 4 food, x, 19-23, 25, 52, 55, 59, 109, 123, 125, 128 laws dealing with, see sumptuary laws Fraccaro on Cato’s speech about lex Orchia, 120 frugalitas/frugality, 10, 17, 87 funerary measures in Greece, 27-30 Athens, 28 Catana, 29 Ceos, 29 Gambreion, 29 Mytilene, 29 Sparta, 28 Syracuse, 30 fur, 77 furniture, 8, 17 G. Fannius, 51, 120-1, 123, 124 Garland, R., 32 gastronomic literature, see Ennius,

168

Index Plautus, Horace, Varro Gellius on censorship, 41, 63 on lex Aemilia, 125 on lex Antia, 126-7 on lex Cornelia, 126 on lex Fannia, 120, 121 on lex Iulia sumptuaria, 127, 128 on lex Licinia, 123, 124, 125 on sumptuary laws, 50 Gnomon of the Idios Logos, 61 Hedypatheia, 19 Hedyphagetica, 19 homonoia, 32 Horace on Augustan legislation, 64 on magnificence, 11 Satires, 20-2, 25 Hume, D., 2 idealisation of the past, 3, 10, 24, 53 ignominia/ignominy, 38, 46 infamia, 38 Italian city-states/comuni, xi, 10, 74, 102 James I, 81 L. Drusus, 13, 17 L. Gellius Poplicola, 42 L. Licinius Crassus, 17, 45, 47, 52, 53, 123-4, 127 L. Licinius Lucullus, 23, 39 L. Valerius Flaccus, 44, 60, 125 Lange, L. on lex Aufidia, 123 on Metilius, 113 on number of speeches delivered by Cato on lex Orchia, 120 leges de ambitu, 56, 127 leges sumptuariae Aemilia, 52, 83, 125-6 Antia, 52, 126-7 Aufidia, 14, 113, 122 Cincia de donis et muneribus, 56, 113, 117, 118-19 Cornelia, 52, 126 Didia, 50, 51, 121-2, 123, 124 Fannia, 50-2, 54, 56, 60, 83, 120-1, 122, 124, 125 Iulia sumptuaria, 127-8

Licinia, 51, 52, 54, 60, 123-5 Metilia, 51, 69, 113-14 Oppia, 4-5, 51, 60, 69, 79, 96, 11417 Orchia, 22, 44, 50, 51, 52, 56, 60, 119-20, 121 Publicia, 56, 113, 117-18 rogatio Licinia Pompeia, 127 rogatio Scribonia, 127 lex Acinia Calpurnia, 56 lex Aelia Sestia, 62 lex Cornelia Baebia, 56 lex Cornelia Fulvia, 56 lex Falcidia, 67 lex Fufia Canina, 62 lex Furia testamentaria, 67 lex imperfecta, 61, 118 lex Iulia de adulteriis, 62 lex Iulia de maritandibus ordinibus, 60, 63, 68 lex Papia Poppaea, 60-3, 69 lex Voconia, 62 Livy Cato’s speech on lex Oppia, 44, 49, 116 on censorship, 37 on games, 14 on lex Cincia, 118 on lex Oppia, 114-15, 117 on moral decline, 8, 9 on Roman morals, 10, 53 Vestal Virgins, 94 luxury as cause of decadence, 2, 7, 9-10, 45 as discourse, 2-5 concept, 1-2 distinction between luxury and magnificence, 10-12 distinction between luxury and wealth, 53-4 from East, 8-9 in food/ banquets, 18-24, 25; moral condemnation, 22; examples of luxurious banquets, 23-4 in games, 12-15, 25 in houses, 25; moral condemnation, 15; houses as political headquarters, 16-17; examples of luxurious houses, 17-18 origin, 8-9 weakness and effeminacy, 3-4, 10, 23, 25, 44, 45

169

Index M. Aemilius Lepidus, 13, 17, 42, 124, 126 M. Aemilius Scaurus, 125-6 M. Scaurus, 13, 17 Macrobius on extravagant banquets, 23 on lex Aemilia, 125 on lex Antia, 126 on lex Cornelia, 126 on lex Didia, 121 on lex Fannia, 120 on lex Licinia, 123-5 on lex Orchia, 119 on Saturnalia, 117 on sumptuary laws, 50-1, 69 maladministration, see property Mandeville, B., 1, 2 marriage Augustan marriage legislation, see Augustus cum manu/sine manu, 100, 103 decline, 94-5 pacta dotalia/pre-marriage agreement in Rome, 100-7 target of sumptuary laws, 87, 91 Martial on dowry, 102 on gift exchange during Saturnalia, 118 Metilius, tribune, 51, 113-14 metus hostilis 8-9 Montesquieu, 2 mos maiorum, 3, 8, 25 connection between censorship and, see censors foundation of Roman State and identity, 8, 9, 26 Münzer on Didius, 122 on Metilius, 113 P. Cornelius Rufinus, 43, 48 P. Licinius Crassus, 53 pater familias, 62, 100, 103 patria potestas, 62 peacock, 22 Plato, on luxury/decadence, 2 Plautus, 19-22, 25 Casina, 19 Mostellaria, 19 Trinummus, 19 Pliny the Elder

on censorship, 41 on lex Aufidia, 14, 122 on lex Fannia, 121 on lex Metilia, 69, 113-14 on luxurious houses, 17 on luxury, 4 on moral decline, 8, 9 on wild boar meat, 44 Pliny the Younger 24, 58 on dowries, 101-2 on inheritance, 66 Plutarch on Cato’s fight against luxury, 4, 22, 45, 54 on censorship, 36, 37, 44, 63 on funerary legislation, 28, 29, 32 on Lucullus, 23 on Roman banquets, 55 Polybius on games, 14 on luxury/decadence, 2, 8 Populus Romanus/people, 10, 13, 15, 23, 25, 55 as political body, 59-60 property maladministration, 19, 40, 41, 42, 45, 104 right of women over, 100, 101 transmission of, 50; see lex Iulia and lex Papia Poppaea prosthesis, 28, 30, 31 Prudentilla, 101, 102 Prudentius, 4 Q. Aelius Tubero, 13 Q. Aemilius Papus, 43 Q. Caecilius Metellus, 9, 53 Q. Fulvius Flaccus, 13 Quintilianus, 102 Roman identity role of censors in defining, 37-40 self definition, 7 Rotondi, G., 113 on lex Antia, 126 on lex Aemilia, 126 on lex Didia, 121 on lex Publicia, 117 on rogatio Scribonia, 127 ruling class cohesion of, 46 interest in curbing luxury, see Senate

170

Index 24-6, 49, 58-60; see also leges sumptuariae as hierarchical code regulations, 74, 78, 82, 106, 107, 110 in England, 74, 75; dealing with food, 75, 77; enacted in 1337, 77; enacted in 1533 and 1553, 78-80; enacted in 1363, 78, 82; enacted during the reign of Elizabeth I, 80-1; opposition to, 81, 82; Statutum de Cibariis Utendis, 77 in France, 73, 74 in Italy, 73, 90-8; church interference, 94-6, 105; dealing with food, 91; opposition to, 94-6; targeting celebration/marriage, 91, 98 in Japan, 74; dealing with food, 86; directed towards daimyo, 87-8; directed towards farmers, 87; directed towards samurai, 86; directed towards merchants (chonin), 87 in Rome: as result of moral condemnation of luxury, 49, 52, 59; connection with leges de ambitu, 56f; fail to regulate games, 14-15; fail to regulate houses, 18-19; opposition to, 60; sources, 50-1; to control the system of patronage, 57; to curb competition, 53

perceived moral superiority/selfdefinition, 7, 15, 37, 38, 59, 70, 71 Sallust ix funeral games, 14 on luxury/decadence, 4, 8-9 on magnificence, 11 Sammonicus Severus, 50, 121 Sanuti, Nicolosa, 95-6 Saturnalia Gellius, 50 day of, 117, 118, 121 Scholia Bobbiensia, 119 Scipio Aemilianus, 8, 13, 42, 44, 103 Scipio Africanus, 8, 103 Scipio Nasica, 9, 14, 122 Scullard, H.H. on lex Oppia, 116 on Metilius, 113 self-indulgence, see luxury self-regulation sumptuary legislation as a matter of, 52, 79 Senate members expelled from, 38, 42, 43, 60, 125 in Florence, 99 promoter of sumptuary regulations, 52, 59, 119, 120, 122, 123, 124 social obligation between members, 46 senatus consultum, 14, 50, 52, 119, 122 Seneca, 10, 16, 102 shogun, see Tokugawa silk, 77 Smith, Adam, 2 Solonian legislation, 27, 28, 29, 30, 32, 34, 35 Sourvinou-Inwood, C., 31 Statutum de Cibariis Utendis, 77 Stoicism, 15 Suetonius on Augustan legislation, 63 on games, 15 on inheritances, 65-6 on lex Iulia sumptuaria, 127, 128 on luxurious houses, 16 Sulla, 4, 9, 13, 52, 56, 126 sumptuary ethic, 1, 105; see also luxury sumptuary laws, ix-x, 1-6, 7, 12,

T. Sempronius Gracchus, 44 Tacitus on Augustan legislation, 69 on dowry, 102 on lex Cincia, 118 on lex Iulia sumptuaria, 128 on luxury, 19 Tertullian, 4 Tiberius, 69, 102, 128 Tituli ex Corpore Ulpiani, 118 toga, 79-80 Toher, M., 30, 36 Tokugawa period, xi, 76, 84-6, 87, 106 philosophy, see Confucianism shoguns, 84, 85, 89 Twelve Tables dealing with associations and clubs, 58

171

Index dealing with family, 62 dealing with funerals, 27, 34-6; Tabula X.9, 33; Tabula X.2, 34; Tabula X.3, 34; Tabula X.3, 34 dealing with waste of property, 41-2 influence of Solon legislation, 28, 33, 35 unguenta, 45 Valerius Maximus, 8, 9, 46, 60, 65 Varro on banquets, 21-3, 121 on lex Fannia, 120 Velleius Paterculus, 8, 17 Vestal Virgins, 23, 94, 102 virtus, 8, 9, 10, 26 Vitruvius, 16 Voltaire, 2

wealth as cause of decadence, 2, 3, 7, 24 define Roman upper class, 39, 42, 53, 106 difference between wealth and luxury, 54, 107 display, 12, 14-16, 18, 20, 27, 32, 36, 79, 87, 91, 117 increase: in Rome, 52, 109; in England, 76-7, 79; in Japan, 85; in Italy, 96-7 limited by legislation, 35 use of, 11, 43, 56-7, 62, 70, 110, 113, 118 William of Malmesbury, 76 women in England, 78-9 in Italy, 91, in Japan, 86-87 in Rome, see lex Oppia inheritance law, see lex Voconia luxury of, 4, 12, 51, 75, 93, 94, 95, 98

172