Ancient City was dark enough

The obverse to the bright picture of the Ancient City was dark enough. If the citizens engaged in war, and war was always, until the consolidation of empire by Rome, a possible event, defeat meant the risk of having the city razed to the ground, or turned into an open village; sometimes a general massacre, or slavery for man and woman. Or, if in domestic politics, a crisis occurred, which with us means a change of government, in Greece or Italy it might imply to the losers at the ballot confiscation and exile; and the defeated party, be they democrat or aristocrat, lost home and country, and became outcasts and outlaws until they could get a reversal of the sentence.

Furthermore, it must be remembered that the full privileges of citizen belonged only to a portion of the inhabitants of the city — a portion which might not exceed one-tenth, whilst ninety per cent, of the actual dwellers within the walls might be slaves, freedmen, aliens, strangers, clients; and camp-followers. And the slaves in the public service, in the mines and factories, or in the farms, docks, ships, or warehouses led a life too often of appalling misery and toil. Even the household slaves who shared the intimacy of their master or mistress, who were often their superiors in culture and refinement, were liable to horrible punishments, to bodily and moral degradation, and to any cruelty or insult which brutality and caprice might inflict city tours istanbul.

During the brilliant age at Greece

During the brilliant age at Greece, and at last under the empire at Rome, domestic life in our modern sense was stunted or corrupt. At Greece, the wife was too often the drudge or the appendage of the household; at Rome, she too often became the tyrant. Female society in its higher meaning was unknown, unless in a depraved sense. Vice, indolence, indecency, were not only things not involving shame, but things which in an elegant form were a matter of public pride.

Thus this apotheosis of the City had both black and brilliant sides. But there is no essential connexion between its bright and its dark aspect. This religious veneration of the City, this worship of the City as the practical type of religion, was extravagant, anti-social, and inhuman in the wider sense of patriotism and human duty. But it had elements of fixity, of dignity, of reality, and of moral and religious fervour, that are wholly unknown to our city life, inconceivable even by us, elements to which our tepid Patriotism makes but a feeble approach.

The citizens were not indeed the members of a great nation, but a very close, jealous, and selfish civic aristocracy. Within their own order they gave the world fine examples of equality, simplicity, sociability, and public devotion, such as are hardly intelligible to modern men, such as no republican enthusiasm has ever in modern days attempted to revive. In the horror of dirt and the religion of personal health and perfection, they gave the world inimitable examples at which we look back in wonder and awe. For the love of beauty we have taken to us the love of comfort; for the profusion of art we have substituted material production; for the religio loci we prefer the vague immensities of the Universe; in place of public magnificence and social communion, we make idols of our domestic privacy and private luxuriousness.