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Partly through the constant growth of oppression naturally incident to every tyrannic government, partly through the indirect operation of the Roman revolution in the seizure, for instance, of the property of the soil in the province of Asia by Gaius Gracchus, in the Roman tenths and customs, and in the human hunts which the collectors of the revenue added to their other avocations there the Roman rule, barely tolerable even from the first, pressed so heavily on Asia that neither the crown of the king nor the hut of the peasant there was any longer safe from confiscation, that every stalk of corn seemed to grow for the Roman -decumanus-, and every child of free parents seemed to be born for the Roman slave-drivers.
Its frank confessions and calm analysis of motive and action have been compared with Montaigne's: if Montaigne had been graduated after a due education in Purgatory, or if his pedigree had been remotely crossed with a St. Anthony and he had lived to see the fluctus decumanus gathering in the tide of Puritanism, the likeness would have been closer.
Nearly five centuries, in fact, it cost, and not three, to Christianize even the entire Mediterranean empire of Rome; and the premature effort of Constantine ought to be regarded as a mere fluctus decumanus in the continuous advance of the new religion, one of those ambitious billows which sometimes run far ahead of their fellows in a tide steadily gaining ground, but which inevitably recede in the next moment, marking only the strength of that tendency which sooner or later is destined to fill the whole capacity of the shore.
Partly through the constant growth of oppression naturally incident to every tyrannic government, partly through the indirect operation of the Roman revolution in the seizure, for instance, of the property of the soil in the province of Asia by Gaius Gracchus, in the Roman tenths and customs, and in the human hunts which the collectors of the revenue added to their other avocations there the Roman rule, barely tolerable even from the first, pressed so heavily on Asia that neither the crown of the king nor the hut of the peasant there was any longer safe from confiscation, that every stalk of corn seemed to grow for the Roman -decumanus-, and every child of free parents seemed to be born for the Roman slave-drivers.
The list of strange creatures might be extended indefinitely, even fishes included; but who has ever heard of a tame pet rat? Not the small white, pink-eyed variety, artificially bred, which one may buy at any dealer's, but a common brown rat, Mus decumanus, one of the commonest wild animals in England and certainly the most disliked.
Whether the nomenclature of the augur, the soldier and the land-commissioner was adopted in the towns, is a more difficult, but fortunately a less important question. Modern writers speak of the cardo and the decumanus of Roman towns, and even apply to them more highly technical terms such as striga and scamnum.
The town grew from one of 360 to a breadth of over 800 yds. And as it expanded, it broke loose from the chess-board pattern. The builders of later Timgad did not resemble those of later Turin. Even the decumanus, the main 'east and west' street, wandered away north-west in an uncertain curve, and all that has been discovered of streets outside the walls of Trajan is irregular and complicated.
Of augural lore we have indeed enough and to spare. We know that the decumanus and the cardo, the two main lines of the Roman land-survey and probably also the two main streets of the Roman town-plan, were laid out under definite augural and semi-religious provision. We should expect to find more.
It had been a fine spectacle, and we enjoyed it amazingly; it raised Mus decumanus to a beast of immense importance in my mind. Soon he became even more important in an unpleasant way when it was discovered that rats were abundant indoors as well as out.
Mus rattus on Sundays, if you please, and in nowise to be confused with that canaille, Citizen Mus decumanus, the common brown rat had not the slightest intention that any one should see him, if he could help it. His wife might be trusted to look out for herself. And for this reason, perhaps, his march was a progress to wonder at.
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