The St. Louis Republic. [volume] (St. Louis, Mo.) 1888-1919, 1902-01-05
NEWS" OF 1000
YEARS AGO.
Curious Old Number of the RO-
man "Acta." a journal
of Caesars Time.

| WRITTEN FOR THE SUNDAY REPUBLIC.
After all, there is nothing new under the
! sun. London Of to-day and Rome of yester-
day are twenty centuries apart; yet man
| and manners have changed but little. IL We
| are to believe a newspaper published when
Julius Caesar ruled the world.
To be sure. Rome was deficient in many
things. Wireless biography and aerial nav
igat!or were unknown problems, and the
i, voice of the bus driver had not been heard
in the land. The seductive brandy and
| soda was 8 delight reserved for future gen.
| erations. Nor had centurions and others
been burdened with the task Of keeping
| automobile enthusiasts within a certain
| speed limit.
And yet. to pick up a copy Of the Acta
Diurna Crbis. which. was Rone's leading
daily paper, with Pliny as its star reporter.
| one might be reading a resume of a Tween
tieth Century days news, twisted into
quaint language.
The Acta was a court journal as we'll as
a general newspaper. It printed the laws
of the Emperor. enactmehts by the Senate.
the names OF incoming magistrates. a list
OF politicians who had an audience with the
Emperor OF an invitation to his banquets'
the sacrifices TO the gods, the games at the
circus, births. marriages, divorces ana
deaths of notable people. aud general Cos
sip of the day.
THE ".ACTA" WAS DAILY
POSTED IN H FORUM.
Tablets giving new insight into this early
day Journalism ave Just been discovered
I'm Rome. They show that the Acta must
have circulated extensively in every part
OF Rene. as well as in the provinces. 1t
was posted every morning in the Forum,
and copied and sold In the Argiletum-the
r,.a+ street of ancient Rome.
Fine writing was not the forte Of those
ancient chroniclers. Dry statements were
good enough for them. Imagination and
facts seem TO have been inlpartiaily mixed.
Side by side the statement Of a stabbing
| ARRAY can be found a brief story OF a won
derful phoenix being discovered near Rome
| and exhibited In the Comitia.
Pliny wrote for the Acta. Pliny pos
sessed. among other qualifications for that
position. a vivid imagination. Had he lived
in the Twentieth Century he would have
written lurid and highly circurnstantial ac-
counts of various modern events. His was
the story of the p~hoenix-which story, by
the way. seems to be the direct ancestor Of
that familiar fable of latter ~days-the sea
serpent.
Plipy contributed TO one number of the
Acta an account of an interesting phenom-
enon. He Gays that during the trial of Milo
for the murder of Clodius a shower or
baked bricks feii IN several parts OF the
city, He neglects to state. however, whether
the streets were paved thereby. or whether
the bricks piled themselves into walls.
PUBLICATION Frequently con-
SUITED BY FAMOUS LITERARY MEN.
Pliny made the mistake of living 1000
years too soon. The Leyds Press Bureau
could have used him in Berlin.
The Acta was frequently consulted by
literary men Of the day. Back numbers
were deposited In a library accessible to
students and poets. Suetonius consulted
these files when he wrote the lives of the
twelve Caesars. and found the birthday Of
Tiberius. the birthplace Of Caligula. the
three letters added by Claudius to the Ro-
man alphabet, and the dedication of Domi-
tian.
Tacitus admits having cooled from the
Acta his description of the funeral Of
Germanicus and Of the apotheosis of Claud-
ius. Other noteworthy excerpts made by the
same writer were the debates in the Senate
when a temple was to be erected TO Nero,
and when tie Senator Thraseus indignantly
protested against the cowardice of his COL
leagues who aplauded Nero's matrfcide.
Dion heard from the same source the
victories of Commodus in the amphitheater.
and other more disreputable exploits of that
Individual.
4 glance at the news summary in one