LIFE IN ANCIENT HOME

Bruce Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 2182, 11 July 1890, Page 4

LIFE IN ANCIENT HOME

Canon Liddon, discoursing in St. Paul's Cathedral recently on the public virtues in Ancient Rome, said everything outward at Home, the world's centre, was on a splendid scale. The public buildings, the temples, tho baths, the pubhe shows, everything connected with tho army, everything connected with the machinery and the apparatus of government, waa calculated to impress, ujicl oven to awe, the imagination ; but there was ono overshadowing defect iv that great world which would ha,yo come home with especial force to the ininde of the class from which the .rank and file of

the Koman forces wcro chiefly rocruited — it was a world without love ; it was a world full of want and suffering, and tho whole of the great social and political machine went round and round without taking any account; of this. It "would bo easy, he said, to point to a few facts which might at first sight appear to traverse this severe judgment. Liberality was indeed a sort of virtue which had to be practised, whether he liked it or not, by every public man in Koine, from tho Emperor downwards. Every public man had to make over to the public in some shape or other, a certain part of his income, whether in gifts to his native city or to the club or society to which he belonged, over and above gifts to his friends and relatives . He must build a theatre, or an aqueduct, or a fountain, or a temple ; he must make a new road, he must repair tho city walls, _he must give corn, wino, oil to be distributed among the citizens ; he must endow public baths ; ho must endow a public library. When, for instance, Julius Crasar triumphed the people were feasted in the streets at 22,000 tables, and the costliest wines of. •Southern Italy and of the Greek Archipelago were said to have run in rivers. But all this was not the outcome of love ; they wero forms of expenditure which were selfish. The main object of such expenditure -vyas to secure that sort of popularity which means political power. It was repaid if not in kind, yet substantially. It had no more to do with charity, which lovos its object for his own sake and not for the sake of what can be got out of him, than any other kind of outlay of capital with a view to a calculated return has to do with it. In order to do real good the eye must rest not on what is prudent in, or on what is expected of, tho giver, but on what is needed in the recipient. Nothing was done systematically in the old world for classes or individuals who could make no return. There was no sort of care for widows or for orphans, there were no hospitals, there was no public provision for those who were not citizens, and therefore had no influence, there was no consideration, it was little enough to say that, for the immense class of slaves. Slaves were mere property to bo bought and sold and punished, and, at one time, killed at the discretion of their masters. All this was in harmony with the principle laid down by great teachers "of the ancient world such as Plato and Aristotle. In Plato's ideal state the poor have no place, beggars are expelled or left to die. In Aristotle's account of the virtues, the most prominent, iroin a Christian point of view, is generosity, but on examination generosity turns out to be a prudential mean between avarice aud extravagance.