Claudia Reflects on the Poor State of the Roman Culture

Rome did not rule supreme because of some accident or some divine grace. We Romans rule because of hard work, wisdom, dedication, and a sense of responsibility. We are far from perfect. Justice existed in the law courts for the wealthy and powerful. Even citizenship was poorly distributed. The true citizen must be Roman; Italians did not have the same rights. Within Rome exists a large body of non-citizens, some freed slaves, and others still bound by servitude. Some of the slaves are Italians; many are captives from other countries, often not even sharing in our skin coloring. Some slaves speak a crude form of Latin. Others understand not a word and respond with grunts and waves of the hand or grimaces of the face.

Even within the higher classes justice is not equal. Surely all but the most prejudiced male would admit that women were not treated fairly. Girl babies are often abandoned, left to die; female children are not given the education of the male child. The entire idea of primogeniture, that the first-born son gets the wealth, interferes with our thinking.

Commerce and power are our king and queen. The schools are not designed to emphasize the history of Rome, its artists and writers and poets and philosophers. These mean nothing. What matters is the teaching of business and mathematics and the other sciences that prepare the citizen for his place in the modern world.

Female education is in even more disarray. It is a dismal reminder to any intelligent woman of the poor place women have in this Rome of men. Girls are taught obedience, courtesy, and grace. They are taught how to run a home, cook, and manage slaves. They are told when to shop and when to go out into public places. They are told how to dress in order to appeal to men. The fashion papyri always demonstrated exotic and erotic clothing so that, at an early age, girls learn that sexual obedience and a slavish attachment to the men folk is in order. They are taught graciousness at social events, when it is acceptable to talk when men are talking, what part of the room they must gather in when the men are wining and dining, what parts of the atrium are always forbidden women, how to bow out of a conversation graciously when it is a man’s-chat-only.

Pilatus would be quick to add that there is no place for philosophy in the schools.

Rhetoricians, who used to occupy the marketplaces, are hard to find. Lawyers have learned the art of clever words and clever juxtapositions of gestures and acting, all necessary parts of the Roman legal system.

Physicians are trained more in the magic of Aesculapius than in the scientific school of Hippocrates. When anyone of importance becomes ill, Greeks physicians are quickly called to the bedside and the Roman physicians are asked to leave. The Roman physician depends on luck charms, other mystical incantations that have meaning only to him, a jargon of health we call it.

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