particular use which he makes of the words 'Greece' and 'Grecian.'
Sometimes he means beyond a doubt the people of Hellas and the Ægean
islands, as _opposed_ to the mixed population of Constantinople.
Sometimes he means the Grecian element as opposed to the Roman element
_in_ the composition of this mixed Byzantine population. In this case
the Greek does not mean (as in the former case) the non-Byzantine, but
the Byzantine. Sometimes he means by preference that vast and most
diffusive race which throughout Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, the Euxine and
the Euphrates, represented the Græco-Macedonian blood from the time of
Alexander downwards. But why should we limit the case to an origin from
this great Alexandrian æra? Then doubtless (330 B.C.) it received a
prodigious expansion. But already, in the time of Herodotus (450 B.C.),
this Grecian race had begun to sow itself broadcast over Asia and
Africa. The region called _Cyrenaica_ (viz., the first region which you
would traverse in passing from the banks of the Nile and the Pyramids to
Carthage and to Mount Atlas, _i.e._, Tunis, Algiers, Fez and Morocco, or
what we now call the Barbary States) had been occupied by Grecians
nearly seven hundred years before Christ. In the time of Croesus (say
560 B.C.) it is clear that Grecians were swarming over Lydia and the
whole accessible part of Asia Minor. In the time of Cyrus the younger
(say 404 B.C.) his Grecian allies found their fiercest opponents in
Grecian soldiers of Artaxerxes. In the time of Alexander, just a
septuagint of years from the epoch of this unfortunate Cyrus, the most
considerable troops of Darius were Greeks. The truth is, that, though
Greece was at no time very populous, the prosperity of so many little
republics led to as ample a redundancy of Grecian population as was
compatible with Grecian habits of life; for, deceive not yourself, the
_harem_, what we are accustomed to think of as a Mahometan institution,
existed more or less perfectly in Greece by seventeen centuries at least
antecedently to Mahometanism. Already before Homer, before Troy, before
the Argonauts, woman was an abject, dependent chattel in Greece, and
living in nun-like seclusion. There is so much of _intellectual_
resemblance between Greece and Rome, shown in the two literatures, the
two religions, and the structure of the two languages, that we are apt
to overlook radical repulsion between their _moral_ systems. But such a
repulsion did exist, and the results of its existence are 'writ large'
in the records, if they are studied with philosophic closeness and
insight, and could be illustrated in many ways had we only time and
space for such an exercise. But we must hurry on to remark that Mr.
Finlay's indefiniteness in the use of the terms 'Greece' and 'Grecian'
is almost equalled by his looseness in dealing with institutions and the
principles which determined their character. He dwells meditatively upon
that tenacity of life which he finds to characterize them--a tenacity
very much dependent upon physical[13] circumstances, and in that respect
so memorably inferior to the social economy of Jewish existence, that
we have been led to dwell with some interest upon the following
distinctions as applicable to the political existence of all nations who
are in any degree civilized. It seems to us that three forces, amongst
those which influence the movement of nations, are practically
paramount; viz., first, the _legislation_ of a people; secondly, the
_government_ of a people; thirdly, the _administration_ of a people. By
the quality of its legislation a people is moulded to this or that
character; by the quality of its government a people is applied to this
or that great purpose; by the quality of its administration a people is
made disposable readily and instantly and completely for every purpose
lying within the field of public objects. _Legislation_ it is which
shapes or qualifies a people, endowing them with such qualities as are
more or less fitted for the ends likely to be pursued by a national
policy, and for the ends suggested by local relations when combined with
the new aspects of the times. _Government_ it is which turns these
qualifications to account, guiding them upon the new line of tendencies
opening spontaneously ahead, or (as sometimes we see) upon new
tendencies created deliberately and by forethought. But _administration_
it is which organizes between the capacities of the people on the one
hand, and the enlightened wishes of the government on the other--that
intermediate _nexus_ of social machinery without which both the amplest
powers in a nation and the noblest policy in a government must equally
and continually fall to the ground. A general system of instruments, or
if we may use the word, system of instrumentation and concerted
arrangements--behold the one sole _conditio sine qua non_ for giving a
voice to the national interests, for giving a ratification to the
national will, for giving mobility to the national resources. Amongst
these three categories which we have here assigned as summing up the
relations of the public will in great nations to the total system of
national results, this last category of _administration_ is that which
(beyond the rest) postulates and presupposes vast developments of
civilization. Instincts of nature, under favourable circumstances, as
where the national mind is bold, the temper noble, veracity adorning the
speech, and simplicity the manners, may create and _have_ created good
elementary laws; whilst it is certain that, where any popular freedom
exists, the government must resemble and reflect the people. Hence it
cannot be denied that, even in semi-barbarous times, good legislation
and good government may arise. But good administration is not
conceivable without the aids of high civilization. How often have piracy
by sea, systematic robbery by land, tainted as with a curse the
blessings of life and property in great nations! Witness the state of
the Mediterranean under the Cilicians during the very sunset of Marius;
or, again, of the Caribbean seas, in spite of a vast Spanish empire, of
Buccaneers and Filibusters. Witness Bagandæ in Roman Spain, or the cloud
of robbers gathering in France through twelve centuries after _every_
period of war; witness the scourges of public peace in Italy, were it in
papal Rome or amongst the Fra Diavolos of Naples.
We believe that, so far from possessing any stronger principle of
vitality than the Roman institutions, those of Greece Proper (meaning
those originally and authentically Greek) had any separate advantage
only when applied locally. They were essentially _enchorial_
institutions, and even _physically_ local (_i.e._, requiring the same
place as well as the same people); just as the ordinances of Mahomet
betray his unconscious frailty and ignorance by presuming and
postulating a Southern climate as well as an Oriental temperament. The
Greek usages and traditionary monuments of civilization had adapted
themselves from the first to the singular physical conformation of
Hellas--as a 'nook-shotten'[14] land, nautically accessible and laid
down in seas that were studded with islands systematically adjusted to
the continental circumstances, whilst internally her mountainous
structure had split up almost the whole of her territory into separate
chambers or wards, predetermining from the first that galaxy of little
republics into which her splintered community threw itself by means of
the strong mutual repulsion derived originally from battlements of
hills, and, secondarily, from the existing state of the military art.
Having these advantages to begin with, reposing upon these foundations,
the Greek civil organization sustained itself undoubtedly through an
astonishing tract of time; before the ship _Argo_ it had commenced;
under the Ottoman Turks it still survived: for even in the Trojan æra,
and in the pre-Trojan or Argonautic æra, already (and perhaps for many
centuries before) the nominal kingdoms were virtually republics, the
princes being evidently limited in their authority by the 'sensus
communis' of the body politic almost as much as the Kings of Sparta were
from the time of Lycurgus to the extinction of the Peloponnesian
independence.
Accidents, therefore, although accidents of a permanent order (being
founded in external nature), gave to Greece a very peculiar advantage.
On her own dunghill her own usages had a tenacity of life such as is
seen in certain weeds (couch-grass, for instance). This natural
advantage, by means of intense local adaptation, did certainly prove
available for Greece, under the circumstances of a hostile invasion.
Even had the Persian invasion succeeded, it is possible that Grecian
civilization would still have survived the conquest, and would have
predominated, as actually it did in Ionia, etc.
So far our views seem to flow in the channel of Mr. Finlay's. But these
three considerations occur:
1st. That oftentimes Greece escaped the ravages of barbarians, not so
much by any quality of her civil institutions, whether better or worse,
as by her geographical position. It is 'a far cry to Loch Awe'; and had
Timon of Athens together with Apemantus clubbed their misanthropies,
joint and several, there would hardly have arisen an impetus strong
enough to carry an enemy all the way from the Danube to the Ilyssus; yet
so far, at least, every European enemy of Thebes and Athens had to
march. Nay, unless Monsieur le Sauvage happened to possess the mouths of
the Danube, so as to float down 'by the turn of tide' through the
Euxine, Bosphorus, Propontis, Hellespont, etc., he would think twice
before he would set off a-gallivanting to the regions of the South,
where certainly much sunshine was to be had of undeniable quality, but
not much of anything else. The Greeks were never absolute paupers,
because, however slender their means, their social usages never led to
any Irish expansion of population; but under no circumstances of
government were they or could they have been rich. Plunder therefore,
that could be worth packing and cording, there was little or none in
Greece. People do not march seven hundred miles to steal old curious
bedsteads, swarming, besides, with fleas. Sculptured plate was the
thing. And, from the times of Sylla, _that_ had a strange gravitation
towards Rome. It is, besides, worth noticing--as a general rule in the
science of robbery--that it makes all the difference in the world which
end of a cone is presented to the robber. Beginning at the apex of a
sugar-loaf, and required to move rapidly onwards to the broad basis
where first he is to halt and seek his booty, the robber locust advances
with hope and cheerfulness. Invert this order, and from the vast base of
the Danube send him on to the promontory of Sunium--a tract perpetually
dwindling in its breadth through 500 miles--and his reversion of booty
grows less valuable at every step. Yet even this feature was not the
most comfortless in the case. That the zone of pillage should narrow
with every step taken towards its proper ground, this surely was a bad
look-out. But it was a worse, that even this poor vintage lay hid and
sheltered under the Ægis of the empire. The whole breadth of the empire
on that side of the Mediterranean was to be traversed before one cluster
of grapes could be plucked from Greece; whereas, upon all the horns of
the Western Empire, plunder commenced from the moment of crossing the
frontier. Here, therefore, lies one objection to the supposed excellence
of Grecian institutions: they are valued, upon Mr. Finlay's scale, by
their quality of elastic rebound from violence and wrong; but, in order
that this quality might be truly tested, they ought to have been equally
and fairly tried: now, by comparison with the Western provinces, that
was a condition not capable of being realized for Greece, having the
position which she had.
2ndly. The reader will remark that the argument just used is but
negative: it does not positively combat the superiority claimed for the
Greek organization; that superiority may be all that it is described to
be; but it is submitted that perhaps the manifestation of this advantage
was not made on a sufficient breadth of experiment.
Now let us consider this. Upon the analogy of any possible precedent,
under which Rome could be said to have taken seven centuries in
unfolding her power, our Britain has taken almost fourteen. So long is
the space between the first germination of Anglo-Saxon institutions and
the present expansion of British power over the vast regions of
Hindostan. Most true it is that a very small section of this time and a
very small section of British energies has been applied separately to
the Indian Empire. But precisely the same distinction holds good in the
Roman case. The total expansion of Rome travelled, perhaps, through
eight centuries; but five of these spent themselves upon the mere
_domestic_ growth of Rome; during five she did not so much as attempt
any foreign appropriation. And in the latter three, during which she
did, we must figure to ourselves the separate ramifications of her
influence as each involving a very short cycle indeed of effort or
attention, though collectively involving a long space, separately as
involving a very brief one. If the eye is applied to each conquest
itself, nothing can exhibit less of a slow or gradual expansion than the
Roman system of conquest. It was a shadow which moved so rapidly on the
dial as to be visible and alarming. Had newspapers existed in those
days, or had such a sympathy bound nations together[15] as could have
supported newspapers, a vast league would have been roused by the
advance of Rome. Such a league _was_ formed where something of this
sympathy existed. The kingdoms formed out of the inheritance of
Alexander being in a sense Grecian kingdoms--Grecian in their language,
Grecian by their princes, Grecian by their armies (in their privileged
sections)--_did_ become alarming to the Greeks. And what followed? The
Achæan league, which, in fact, produced the last heroes of
Greece--Aratus, Philopoemen, Cleomenes. But as to Rome, she was too
obscure, too little advertised as a danger, to be separately observed.
But, partly, this arose from her rapidity. Macedonia was taken
separately from Greece. Sicily, which was the advanced port of Greece to
the West, had early fallen as a sort of appanage to the Punic struggle.
And all the rest followed by insensible degrees. In Syria, and again in
Pontus, and in Macedonia, three great kingdoms which to Greece seemed
related rather as enemies than as friends, and which therefore roused no
spirit of resistance in Greece, through Rome had already withdrawn all
the contingent proper from Greece. Had these powers concerted with Egypt
and with Greece a powerful league, Rome would have been thrown back
upon her Western chambers.
The reason why the Piratic power arose, we suppose to have been this,
and also the reason why such a power was not viewed as extra-national.
The nautical profession as such flowed in a channel altogether distinct
from the martial profession. It was altogether and exclusively
commercial in its general process. Only, upon peculiar occasions arose a
necessity for a nautical power as amongst the resources of empire.
Carthage reared upon the basis of her navy, as had done Athens, Rhodes,
Tyre, some part of her power: and Rome put forth so much of this power
as sufficed to meet Carthage. But that done, we find no separate
ambition growing up in Rome and directing itself to naval war.
Accidentally, when the war arose between Cæsar and Pompey, it became
evident that for rapidly transferring armies and for feeding these
armies, a navy would be necessary. And Cicero, but for _this crisis_,
and not as a _general_ remark, said--that 'necesse est qui mare tenuit
rerum potiri.'
Hence it happened--that as no permanent establishment could arise where
no permanent antagonist could be supposed to exist--oftentimes, and
indeed always, unless when some new crisis arose, the Roman navy went
down. In one of these intervals arose the Cilician piracy. Mr. Finlay
suggests that in part it arose out of the fragments from Alexander's
kingdoms, recombining: partly out of the Isaurian land pirates already
established, and furnished with such astonishing natural fortresses as
existed nowhere else if we except those aërial caves--a sort of mountain
nests on the side of declivities, which Josephus describes as harbouring
Idumean enemies of Herod the Great, against whom he was obliged to
fight by taking down warriors in complete panoply ensconced in baskets
suspended by chains; and partly arising on the temptation of rich
booties in the commerce of the Levant, or of rich temples on shore
amidst unwarlike populations. These elements of a warlike form were
required as the means of piracy, these fortresses and Isaurian caves as
the resources of piracy, these notorious cargoes or temples stored with
wealth as temptations to piracy, before a public nuisance could arise
demanding a public chastisement. And yet, because this piracy had a
local settlement and nursery, it seemed hardly consonant to the spirit
of public (or international) law, that all civil rights should be denied
them.
Not without reason, not without a profound purpose, did Providence
ordain that our two great precedents upon earth should be Greece and
Rome. In all planets, if you could look into them, doubt not (oh, reader
of ours!) that something exists answering to Greece and Rome. Odd it
would be--_curioes_! as the Germans say--if in Jupiter--or Venus--those
precedents should exist under the same _names_ of Greece and Rome. Yet,
why not? Jovial--and Venereal--people may be better in some things than
our people (which, however, we doubt), but certainly a better language
than the Greek man cannot have invented in either planet. Falling back
from cases so low and so lofty (Venus an inferior, Jupiter a far
superior planet) to our own case, the case of poor mediocre Tellurians,
perhaps the reader thinks that other nations might have served the
purpose of Providentia. Other nations might have furnished those
Providential models which the great drama of earth required. No.
Haughtily and despotically we say it--No. Take France. _There_ is a
noble nation. We honour it exceedingly for that heroic courage which on
a morning of battle does not measure the strength of the opposition;
which, when an enemy issues from the darkness of a wood, does not stop
to count noses, but like that noblest of animals, the British bull-dog,
flies at his throat, careless whether a leopard, a buffalo, or a tiger
of Bengal. This we vehemently admire. This we feel to be an echo, an
iteration, of our own leonine courage, concerning which--take you note
of this, oh, chicken-hearted man! (if any such is amongst _our_
readers)--that God sees it with pleasure, blesses it, and calls it 'very
good!' Next, when we come to think at odd times of that other courage,
the courage of fidelity, which stands for hours under the storm of a
cannonade--British courage, Russian courage--in mere sincerity we cannot
ascribe this to the Gaul. All this is true: we feel that the French is
an imperfect nation. But suppose it _not_ imperfect, would the French
therefore have fulfilled for us the mission of the Greek and the Roman?
Undoubtedly they would not. Far enough are we from admiring either Greek
or Roman in that degree to which the ignorance, but oftener the
hypocrisy, of man has ascended.
We, reader, are misanthropical--intensely so. No luxury known amongst
men--neither the paws of bears nor the tails of sheep--to us is so sweet
and dear as that of hating (yet much oftener of despising) our excellent
fellow-creatures. Oftentimes we exclaim in our dreams, where excuse us
for expressing our multitude by unity, 'Homo sum; humani nihil mihi
tolerandum puto.' We kick backwards at the human race, we spit upon
them; we void our rheum upon their ugly gaberdines. Consequently we do
not love either Greek or Roman; we regard them in some measure as
humbugs. But although it is no cue of ours to admire them (viz., in any
English sense of that word known to Entick's Dictionary), yet in a
Grecian or Roman sense we may say that [Greek: thaumazomen],
_admiramur_, both of these nations: we marvel, we wonder at them
exceedingly. Greece we shall omit, because to talk of the arts, and
Phidias, and Pericles, and '_all that_,' is the surest way yet
discovered by man for tempting a vindictive succession of kicks. Exposed
to the world, no author of such twaddle could long evade assassination.
But Rome is entitled to some separate notice, even after all that has
been written about her. And the more so in this case, because Mr. Finlay
has scarcely done her justice. He says: 'The Romans were a tribe of
warriors. All their institutions, even those relating to property, were
formed with reference to war.' And he then goes on to this invidious
theory of their history--that, as warriors, they overthrew the local
institutions of all Western nations, these nations being found by the
Romans in a state of civilization much inferior to their own. But
eastwards, when conquering Greece, her institutions they did _not_
overthrow. And what follows from that memorable difference? Why, that in
after days, when hives of barbarians issued from central Europe, all the
Western provinces (as not cemented by any native and home-bred
institutions, but fighting under the harness of an exotic organization)
sank before them; whereas Greece, falling back on the natural resources
of a system self-evolved and _local_, or epichorial in its origin, not
only defied these German barbarians for the moment, but actually after
having her throat cut in a manner rose up magnificently (as did the
Lancashire woman after being murdered by the M'Keans of Dumfries)[16],
staggered along for a considerable distance, and then (as the
Lancashire woman did not) mounted upon skates, and skated away into an
azure infinite of distance (quite forgetting her throat), so as to--do
what? It is really frightful to mention: so as to come safe and sound
into the nineteenth century, leaping into the centre of us all like the
ghost of a patriarch, setting her arms a-kimbo, and crying out: 'Here I
come from a thousand years before Homer.' All this is really true and
undeniable. It is past contradiction, what Mr. Finlay says, that Greece,
having weathered the following peoples, to wit, the Romans; secondly,
the vagabonds who persecuted the Romans for five centuries; thirdly, the
Saracens; fourthly and fifthly, the Ottoman Turks and Venetians;
sixthly, the Latin princes of Constantinople--not to speak seventhly and
eighthly of Albanian or Egyptian Ali Pashas, or ninthly, of Joseph Humes
and Greek loans, is now, viz., in March, 1844, alive and kicking. Think
of a man, reader, at a _soirée_ in the heavenly spring of '44 (for
heavenly it _will_ be), wearing white kid gloves, and descended from
Deucalion or Ogyges!
Amongst the great changes wrought in every direction by Constantine, it
is not to be supposed that Mr. Finlay could overlook those which applied
a new organization to the army. Rome would not be Rome; even a product
of Rome would not be legitimate; even an offshoot from Rome would be of
suspicious derivation, which _could_ find that great master-wheel of the
state machinery a secondary force in its system. It is wonderful to mark
the martial destiny of all which inherited, or upon any line descended
from Rome in every age of that mighty evolution. War not barbaric, war
exquisitely systematic, war according to the vigour of all science as
yet published to man, was the talisman by which Rome and the children
of Rome prospered: the S.P.Q.R. on the legionary banners was the sign
set in the rubric of the heavens by which the almighty nation, looking
upwards, read her commission from above: and if ever that sign shall
grow pale, then look for the coming of the end, whispered the prophetic
heart of Rome to herself even from the beginning. But are not all great
kingdoms dependent on their armies? No. Some have always been protected
by their remoteness, many by their adjacencies. Germany, in the first
century from Augustus, retreated into her mighty forests when closely
pressed, and in military phrase 'refused herself' to the pursuer. Persia
sheltered herself under the same tactics for ages;[17] scarcely needed
to fight, unless she pleased, and, when she did so, fought in alliance
with famine--with thirst--and with the confusion of pathless deserts.
Other empires, again, are protected by their infinity; America was found
to have no local existence by ourselves: she was nowhere because she was
everywhere. Russia had the same illimitable ubiquity for Napoleon. And
Spain again is so singularly placed with regard to France, a chamber
within a chamber, that she cannot be approached by any power not
maritime except on French permission. Manifold are the defensive
resources of nations beyond those of military systems. But for the Roman
empire, a ring fence around the Mediterranean lake, and hemmed in upon
every quarter of that vast circuit by an _indago_ of martial hunters,
nature and providence had made it the one sole available policy to stand
for ever under arms, eternally 'in procinctu,' and watching from the
specular altitude of her centre upon which radius she should slip her
wolves to the endless circumference.