Invisible Romans (4 page)

Although bad things happening to people far outnumber good things, good fortune is mentioned at times. The
Carmen
speaks of a good fate as ‘wealth and praise’ for men, ‘wealthy, rich, powerful in business affairs, great in prosperity, seizing eminence and fortune and increasing them’ and ‘fortune, eminence, commendation, praise, and a good livelihood.’ Although these might seem to fit the high end of ordinary ‘good fortune’ more than the experience of most,
mutatis mutandis
we can suppose that for ordinary persons as well, sufficient wealth, success in business, and good standing among his neighbors, friends, and associates would constitute ‘good fortune.’ Elsewhere the
Carmen
also mentions a beautiful and faithful wife, good friends, and victory over one’s enemies as good fortune for men, and good health and a fine reputation as good fortune for women. These are the things that everyone would hope to come to pass in his life, but prediction literature dwelled much, much more on the possibilities of these not happening in one aspect or another. This is quite natural, for people who seek advice are mostly worried people; as Artemidorus says, ‘People with no cares have no need of a seer’
(Dreams
3.20).

Death is the single commonest concern. In the
Carmen
there is a long list of possible deaths, almost all bad; it is mentioned in other contexts repeatedly. In Artemidorus, death, grief, and mourning are the most cited events by far. This could be one’s own death, or the death of a person close to you, family member or friend. The pervasive presence of death is striking in its dominance of worries. The ‘normality’ of death as we might view it statistically – very many children dead by age ten; half the population dead by twenty; a life expectancy of under fifty – clearly was of no consolation to people. Rather, the reality held them, and they worried about it constantly. Like all the concerns I will discuss, we should not think that ordinary men moped about in perpetual fear of the angel of death, but since death was so real, so unpredictable, and so disruptive to the living, it is no surprise that they thought about it a lot.

Disease was also constantly on men’s minds. Despite or because of the state of herbal and medical remedies in their world, disease that
could easily debilitate or kill was an ever-present threat to well-being. As with references to death, Artemidorus is full of examples of illness; and, of course, death and disease are often joined:

The inability to leave or discover a way out of one’s own abode or home in which he dreams himself to be indicates obstacles causing delay for those having in mind to be away from home, hindrances for those planning to accomplish something, serious disease for one who is sick, and death to one with a lingering disease.
(Dreams
2.2)

In the
Carmen,
disease is frequently present as a fate as well. For example:

If Saturn is in quartile of Mars while Saturn is in the tenth sign, he will have little medical treatment, he will be weak in his body, unceasing in diseases because of fevers, he will be shaking …
(Carmen
2.15)

Or:

If Saturn and Mars are in the same sign and the Moon is between them, then this native will be a leper, and scabies and itching will seize him.
(Carmen
4.1)

By definition an ordinary man had enough to live on, but his concern was whether more resources would come his way, enhancing his life, or fewer, endangering his ability to manage. And, of course, the range of financial situations was great. Artemidorus mentions all sorts, from the laborer, sailor, artisan, and service provider (e.g. innkeeper) to what would seem to be long-distance merchants and wholesalers. Whatever their financial position, however, major worries preoccupied them.

Financial success heads the list. Artemidorus can say ‘a great treasure indicates distress and anxieties’
(Dreams
2.59) and ‘a rich man must spend his money lavishly, and be the object of plots and envy’
(Dreams
4.17), but this perhaps only reflects either a little bit of popular philosophizing, or the myth of the unhappy rich, ever popular among ordinary men of all ages. By far the most references in Artemidorus are concerned with increased financial success. That success was often precarious.
Men had scant opportunity to make a great leap in economic condition. But hard-working persons could be successful, although just how many managed this is impossible to know. Artemidorus tells the tale of the child of a farmer who became a shipmaster and, indeed, ‘was extremely successful’
(Dreams
5.74). A similar story is told by the peasant of Maktar (Tunisia) who rose from poverty to local office:

I was born into a poor family. My father had no possessions or house of his own. Since the day of my birth, I have always worked my land; neither my land nor I have ever rested. When the harvest season of the year came around and grain was ripe, I was the first to cut my stalks. When the gangs of harvesters who hire themselves out around Cirta, the capital of the Numidians, or in the fertile plain of Jupiter, appeared in the country, then I was the first to reap my field. Then, leaving my country, I harvested for other men for twelve years under a burning sun. For eleven years, I commanded a gang of harvesters and harvested grain in the fields of the Numidians. By my work, having made do with little, I at last became the owner of a house and a rural estate. Today I don’t lack for anything. I have even risen to honors: I have been enrolled among the magistrates of my city, and my colleagues have elected me, me who began life as a poor peasant, Censor. I have seen my children and grandchildren come into the world and grow up around me. I have lived blamelessly, deservedly honored by all. (
CIL
8.11824 =
ILS
7457)

Although this man’s success is spectacular, it was by no means unique. Artemidorus gives an interpretation of a dream that one has a large head:

To dream that you have a large head is a good thing for a rich man who has not yet held high office, as well as for a poor man, an athlete, a moneylender, a banker, and the collector of monetary subscriptions. For a rich man, it portends a leadership role in which there is need of a crown for him, or a priestly fillet, or a diadem. For the others, it means successful business and additional monetary gain. So the increase in the size of the head points to these things.
(Dreams
1.71)

Success came to some, but worries came to all. First, there is debt. Debt is a focus of the
Carmen
and there are many references in Artemidorus to debt and debtors; this indicates widespread use of loans. For example, usurers who hold a mortgage on a man’s ship appear in dreams given in Artemidorus, as does an artisan who because of debt has to leave his workshop and city. Land was used as collateral for loans to pay taxes or raise capital, and men worried that default would mean its loss. The specter of failed business ventures is a fairly common dream motif; one example involves a perfume maker who ‘lost his store’; this is said matter-of-factly by Artemidorus. Then there is unemployment, another common economic evil mentioned repeatedly; this does not seem to involve day-laborers, who might be expected to be unemployed much of the time, but rather tradesmen and artisans, whose work might be supposed, in normal situations, to be steadier. We know from other preindustrial societies that underemployment is endemic; these fears of unemployment mean that there were many men out of work or with tenuous or part-time work among ordinary Romans, and they feared the prospect. Although one might be a fine artisan or even a shipowner, this was no guarantee that work would be available. So the potential for unemployment was constantly on men’s minds.

And in business there was always the possibility of a falling-out with business partners and associates. The
Carmen
focuses on these worries, as well as on concerns about dealing with local officials, especially the market supervisors who had the power to harass a businessman. Artemidorus notes:

And even if a man conducts his business well and goes so far as to take on unprofitable expenditures, he is still always censured by the market supervisor. For it is impossible to be a supervisor without constantly doing this.
(Dreams
2.30)

Petty harassments were a fact of life and could go beyond this to outright corruption, as in the
Satyricon
15 episode in which local officials attempt to seize stolen property, scare off its owners with the threat of prosecution, then sell the articles for their own profit.

The only thing that takes up more space in the
Carmen
than business and travel is family matters of various sorts. Men had intense concerns
about marriage and about children and relatives. Dorotheus goes into great elaboration about what the charts have to say on prospects and the future of marriages. What kind of a husband will he be? What kind of a wife? What status differences will be involved? That is, will the man marry ‘low,’ for example to a slave or a prostitute, or will he marry well? Will a relative be married? Will the person charted marry multiple times? What is little mentioned is romantic love. On the contrary, when women are involved, strong emphasis is put on sexual control. In the magical papyri an overwhelming number of charms and incantations deal with securing the (apparently unwilling) sexual subservience of a woman to a man. In only one case is it explicitly a husband-and-wife issue; the impression in all others is that either an undefined relationship exists, or an adulterous one. Thus sexual drive was very much on the minds of ordinary men. Given the fact that in the magical papyri there are so many charms, incantations designed to compel a woman’s affections, it is somewhat surprising that sexual attraction does not seem to be on the worry list for men seeking astrological and dream-interpretation advice. Success in love (whatever that might mean in a variety of contexts) is missing from the
Carmen.
In Artemidorus, some dreams do interpret a man or a woman’s love life – ‘If a young man or woman is wounded in the breast by someone s/he knows, it indicates love’
(Dreams
1.41) – but this is quite rare. There is reference to wifely love, to mistresses, to whores and debauchery, but there is no preoccupation with what we would think of as the emotion of love per se. It seems that thinking about ‘romantic love’ is a luxury men cannot afford – their concerns are much more concrete. If ‘love’ is a part of a man’s life, so be it – but it is not a concern of the first order. He is much more concerned with the realia of ‘love,’ for example if he will get access to a woman he loves, or, on a more personal level, if he will be impotent (‘joy will not come to him in the acts of Aphrodite’) or ‘oversexed’: excess in sexual intercourse is predicted for both men and women in the case of one natal horoscope.

The possibility of a happy marriage is there, but overshadowed by many fates of poor outcome, and there is much worry about quarrelsome marriage, emphasized by the frequency with which epitaphs of happily married couples state that they ‘lived without quarrels,’ perhaps sometimes protesting overmuch and at the very least validating that lack of
quarrelsomeness was something to be sought in a marriage. Good and bad outcomes to marriage have a whole section of Artemidorus’ book to themselves. The necessities of a good marriage are ‘agreement and love,’ but it is entirely possible that one partner will dominate the other like his or her master a slave; only occasionally is a purely good outcome mentioned, as for example in Artemidorus when he gives wifely excellences as attractiveness, faithfulness, being a good housekeeper, and showing obedience to her husband
(Dreams
2.32).

2. Domination of women. A clay figure pierced with needles. The accompanying spell, written on a lead tablet, shows the magical intent of a man to control a woman sexually.

Misfortunes for the wife and children weigh significantly upon the mind. Within marriage two concerns are uppermost. First of all, will the marriage be stable or unstable? There seems to be a good deal of worry over both female and male debauchery and sexual misconduct, especially in the
Carmen,
but also in Artemidorus, where licentious wives are mentioned a number of times. A focus on the extramarital relations of both partners comes into many horoscopes. There is explicit
and frequent concern that the husband will be a philanderer (this was clearly not accepted as a ‘given’). A good wife should be faithful, but the concern for loose, debauched woman is preeminent. Artemidorus notes that the husband ‘exercises control and authority over [his wife’s] body’; ‘controls and governs’ his wife. So when she goes astray, this is a direct catastrophe for the husband’s reputation and standing. The horoscopes and dream interpretations paint a picture resembling the disloyal, sexually loose women mentioned so frequently and in such detail in Apuleius’ novel. Whatever the reality, the ordinary man evidently worried a lot about the faithfulness of his wife (and she about her husband’s).