More than two thousand years ago, at a time when the people in the
British Isles and in most parts of Western Europe were living the lives
of savages, occupied in fighting, hunting, and fishing, dwelling in rude
huts, clad in skins, ignorant of everything that we call civilization,
Rome was the centre of a world in many ways as civilized as ours is now,
over which the Roman people ruled. The men who dwelt in this one city,
built on seven hills on the banks of the river Tiber, gradually
conquered all Italy. Then they became masters of the lands round the
Mediterranean Sea: of Northern Africa and of Spain, of Greece, Egypt,
Asia Minor and the Near East, and of Western Europe. The greatness of
Rome and of the Roman people does not lie, however, in their conquests.
In the end their conquests ruined them. It lies in the character, mind,
and will of the Romans themselves.
In the history of the ancient world the Romans played the part that men
of our race have played in the history of the modern world. They knew,
as we claim to know, how to govern: how to govern themselves, and how to
govern other people. To this day much in our laws and in our system of
government bears a Roman stamp. They were great soldiers and could
conquer: they could also hold and keep their conquests and impress the
Roman stamp on all the peoples over whom they ruled. Their stamp is
still upon us. Much that belongs to our common life to-day comes to us
from them: in their day they lived a life not much unlike ours now. And
in many respects the Roman character was like the British. We can see
the faults of the Romans, if we cannot see our own; we can also see the
virtues. We can see, too--looking back at them over the distance of
time, judging them by their work and by what is left to us of their
writings--how the mixture of faults in their virtues explains the fall
as well as the rise of the great power of Rome.
[Illustration: LAR, or Household God]
The Romans were men of action, not dreamers. They were more interested
in doing things than in understanding them. They were men of strong will
and cool mind, who looked out upon the world as they saw it and, for the
most part, did not wonder much about how and why it came to be there. It
was there for them to rule. That was what interested them. Ideas they
mostly got from other people, especially from the Greeks. When they had
got them they could use them and turn them to something of their own.
But they were not distracted by puzzling over ideas. Their religion was
that of a practical people. In the later days of Rome few educated men
believed in the gods. But all the ceremonies and festivals were
dedicated to them; and magnificent temples in their honour were erected
in which their spirits were supposed to dwell. In the old days every
Roman household had its particular images--the Lares and Penates which
the head of the family tended and guarded. Connected with this office
was the sacred authority of the head of the family--the paterfamilias.
His word was law for the members of the household. And the City of Rome
stood to its citizens in the place of the paterfamilias. The first laws
of a Roman's life were his duty to his father and to the State. They had
an absolute claim on him for all that he could give. The Roman's code of
honour, like the Englishman's, rested on this sense of duty. A man must
be worthy of his ancestors and of Rome. His own life was short, and
without honour nothing; the life of Rome went on.
Courage, devotion to duty, strength of will, a great power of silence,
a sense of justice rather than any sympathy in his dealings with other
men: these were the characteristic Roman virtues. The Roman was proud:
he had a high idea of what was due from himself. This was the groundwork
out of which his other qualities grew, good and bad. Proud men are not
apt to understand the weakness of other people or to appreciate virtues
different from their own. The defects of the Romans were therefore
hardness, sometimes amounting to cruelty both in action and in
judgement; lack of imagination; a blindness to the things in life that
cannot be seen or measured. They were just rather than generous. They
trampled on the defeated and scorned what they could not understand.
They worshipped success and cared little for human suffering. About
this, however, they were honest. Sentimentalism was not a Roman vice,
nor hypocrisy. When great wealth poured into the city, after the Eastern
conquests of Lucullus and Pompeius, the simplicity of the old Roman life
was destroyed and men began to care for nothing but luxury, show, and
all the visible signs of power. They were quite open about it: they did
not pretend that they really cared for other things, or talk about the
'burden of Empire'.
The heroes of Roman history are men of action. As they pass before us,
so far as we can see their faces, hear their voices, know their natures
from the stories recorded by those who wrote them down at the time or
later, these men stand out in many respects astonishingly like the men
of our own day, good and bad. Centuries of dust lie over them. Their
bones are crumbled to the dust. Yet in a sense they live still and move
among us. Between them and us there lie not only centuries but the great
tide of ruin that swept the ancient world away: destroyed it so that the
men who came after had to build the house of civilization, stone by
stone anew, from the foundation. The Roman world was blotted out by the
barbarians. For hundreds of years the kind of life men had lived in Rome
disappeared altogether and the very records of it seemed to be lost.
Gradually, bit by bit, the story has been pieced together, and the men
of two thousand years ago stand before us: we see them across the gulf.
The faces of those belonging to the earliest story of Rome are rather
dim. But they, too, help us to understand what the Romans were like. We
learn to know a people from the men it chooses as its heroes; about whom
fathers tell stories to their children. They show what are the deeds and
qualities they admire: what kind of men they are trying to be.