England, not the least influential of the group of modern nations, it
was, as we have every reason to believe, completely erased by the Saxon
invaders, who came fresh from the seats of their barbarism, hating
cities and city life, and ignorant of the majesty of Rome. If a Roman
element afterwards found its way into England with the Norman conquest,
it was rather ecclesiastical than imperial, and those who brought it
were Scandinavians to the core. Alfred had been at Rome in his boyhood,
it is true, and may have brought away some ideas of central dominion;
but his laws open with a long quotation, not from the Pandects, but from
the New Testament--his character is altogether that of a Christian, not
of a Roman ruler, and if he had any political model before him, it was,
probably, at least as much the Hebrew monarchy as the military despotism
of the Caesars. Many of the Roman cities remained, and with them their
municipal governments, and hence it is assumed that municipal government
altogether is Roman. But there was a municipal government in the Saxon
capital, and evidently there must be wherever large cities exist with
any degree of independence. The Roman law was, at all events so far lost
in the early part of the Middle Ages when Christendom was in process of
formation that the study of it afterwards seemed new. Roman literature
influenced that of mediaeval Christendom down to about the end of the
twelfth century. Our writers of the time of Henry II. compose in half
classical Latin and affect classical elegancies of style. But then comes
a philosophy which in spite of its worship of Aristotle is essentially
an original creation of the mediaeval and Catholic mind couched in a
language Latin indeed but almost as remote from classical Latin as
German itself: the tongue in truth of a new intellectual world. Open
Aquinas and ask yourself how much is left of the language or the mind of
Rome. The eye of the antiquary sees the Basilica in the Cathedral, but
what essential resemblance does the Roman place of judicature and
business bear to that marvellous and fantastic poetry of religion
writing its hymns in stone? In the same manner the Roman _castra_
are traceable in the form as well as the designation of the mediaeval
_castella_. But what resemblance did the feudal militia bear to the
legionaries? And what became of the Roman art of war till it was revived
by Gustavus Adolphus? The outward mould of Christendom the Roman empire
was and that it was so gives it great dignity and interest, but it was
no more. The life came from the German forest the life of life from the
peasantry of Galilee the least Romanized perhaps of the populations
beneath the sway of Rome.
The founder of the Roman empire was a very great man. With such genius
and such fortune it is not surprising that he should be made an idol. In
intellectual stature he was at least an inch higher than his fellows
which is in itself enough to confound all our notions of right and
wrong. He had the advantage of being a statesman before he was a soldier
whereas Napoleon was a soldier before he was a statesman. His ambition
coincided with the necessity of the world which required to be held
together by force, and therefore his empire endured for four hundred, or
if we include its eastern offset, for fourteen hundred years, while that
of Napoleon crumbled to pieces in four. But unscrupulous ambition was
the root of his character. It was necessary in fact to enable him to
trample down the respect for legality which still hampered other men. To
connect him with any principle seems to me impossible. He came forward,
it is true, as the leader of what is styled the democratic party, and in
that sense the empire which he founded may be called democratic. But to
the gamblers who brought their fortunes to that vast hazard table, the
democratic and aristocratic parties were merely _rouge_ and
_noir_. The social and political equity, the reign of which we
desire to see was, in truth, unknown to the men of Caesar's time. It is
impossible to believe that there was an essential difference of
principle between one member of the triumvirate and another. The great
adventurer had begun by getting deeply into debt, and had thus in fact
bound himself to overthrow the republic. He fomented anarchy to prepare
the way for his dictatorship. He shrank from no accomplice however
tainted, not even from Catiline; from no act however profligate or even
inhuman. Abusing his authority as a magistrate, for party purposes, he
tries to put to a cruel and ignominious death Rabirius, an aged and
helpless man, for an act done in party warfare thirty years before. The
case of Vettius is less clear, but Dr. Mommsen, at all events, seems to
have little doubt that Caesar was privy to the subornation of this
perjurer, and when his perjuries had broken down, to his assassination.
Dr. Mommsen owns that there was a dark period in the life of the great
man; in that darkness it could scarcely be expected that the Republicans
should see light.
The noblest feature in Caesar's character was his clemency. But we are
reminded that it was ancient, not modern clemency, when we find numbered
among the signal instances of it his having cut the throats of the
pirates before he hanged them, and his having put to death without
torture (_simplici morte punivit_) a slave suspected of conspiring
against his life. Some have gone so far as to speak of him as the
incarnation of humanity. But where in the whole history of Roman
conquest will you find a more ruthless conqueror? A million of Gauls, we
are told, perished by the sword. Multitudes were sold into slavery. The
extermination of the Eburones went to the verge even of ancient license.
The gallant Vercingetorix, who had fallen into Caesar's hands under
circumstances which would have touched any but a depraved heart, was
kept by him a captive for six years, and butchered in cold blood on the
day of the triumph. The sentiment of humanity was at that time
undeveloped. Be it so, but then we must not call Caesar the incarnation
of humanity.
Vast plans are ascribed to Caesar at the time of his death, and it seems
to be thought that a world of hopes for humanity perished when he fell.
But if he had lived and acted for another century what could he have
done with those moral and political materials but found what he did
found--a military and sensualist empire? A multitude of projects are
attributed to him by writers who we must remember are late and who make
him ride a fairy charger with feet like the hands of a man. Some of
these projects are really great, such as the codification of the law and
measures for the encouragement of intellect and science; others are
questionable, such as the restoration of commercial cities from which
commerce had retired; others, great works to be accomplished by an
unlimited command of men and money, are the common dreams of every
Nebuchadnezzar. What we know if we know anything of his intentions is
that he was about to set out on a campaign against the Parthians in
whose plains this prototype of Napoleon might perhaps have found a
torrid Moscow. No great advance of humanity can take place without a
great moral effort excited by higher moral desires. The masters of the
legions can only set in action by their fiat material forces. Even these
they often misdirect; but if the empire could have given every man
Nero's golden house the inhabitants might still have been as unhappy as
Nero.
It is not doubtful that Caesar was a type of the sensuality of his age.
His worshippers even feel it necessary to gird at characters deficient
in sensual passion with a friskiness which is a little amusing when you
connect it with the spectacles and the blameless life of a learned
professor. So gifted a nature will absorb a good deal of mere sensual
vice, it is true, but a sensualist could hardly be a pure and noble
organ of humanity. In this I have the Positivists with me. Even in
Caesar's lifetime the world had a taste of the vicissitudes of empire
while he was revelling in the palace of Cleopatra and leaving affairs to
Antony and Dolabella. Perhaps the satiety of the voluptuary had
something to do with the recklessness with which at the last he
neglected to guard his life. He was the greatest patron of gladiatorial
shows and signalized his accession to power by magnificent scenes of
carnage in the arena--a strange dawn for the day of a new civilization.
Must we not a little doubt the consistency of his policy and even his
insight when we find him after all this enacting sumptuary laws?
Still Caesar was a very great man and he played a dazzling part, as all
men do who come just at the fall of an old system, when society is as
clay in the hands of the potter, and found a new system in its place,
while the less dazzling task of making the new system work, by probity
and industry, and of restoring the shattered allegiance of a people to
its institutions, descends upon unlaurelled heads. But that the men of
his time were bound to recognise in him a Messiah, to use the phrase of
the Emperor of the French, and that those who opposed him were Jews
crucifying their Saviour, is an impression which I venture to think will
in time subside. No golden scales were hung out in heaven to shew the
republicans that the balance of Divine will had turned, and that their
duty was submission. "Momentumque fuit mutatus Curio rerum--" The only
sign vouchsafed to them was the conversion of an unprincipled debauchee.
They have, therefore, a fair claim to be judged each upon the merits of
his case, and not in the lump as enemies of the human race; and to judge
them fairly is a good exercise in historical morality. The three
principal names in the party are those of Cato, Cicero, and Marcus
Brutus. Pompey, though the nominal chief of the republicans, may rather,
as Dr Mommsen truly says, be called the first military monarch of Rome.
There is a vigorous portrait of him, from the republican point of view,
by Lucan, who, though detestable as an epic poet, sometimes in his
political passages, and especially in his characters, shews himself the
countryman of Tacitus. Pompey is there described with truth as combining
the desire of supreme power with a lingering respect for the
constitution. The great aristocrat is painted as simple in his habits of
life, and his household as uncorrupted by the fortunes of its lord--the
last relics of the control imposed by the spirit of the republic on
private luxury, which was soon to be released by the Empire from all
restraint and carried to the most revolting height.
Marcus Cato was the one man whom, living and dead, Caesar evidently
dreaded. The Dictator even assailed his memory in a brace of pamphlets
entitled Anti-Cato, of the quality of which we have one or two
specimens, in Plutarch, from which we should infer that they were
scurrilous and slanderous to the last degree; a proof that even Caesar
could feel fear, and that in Caesar, too, fear was mean. Dr Mommsen
throws himself heartily into Caesar's antipathy, and can scarcely speak
of Cato without something like loss of temper. The least uncivil thing
which he says of him, is that he was a Don Quixote, with Favonius for
his Sancho. The phrase is not a happy one, since Sancho is not the
caricature but the counterfoil of Don Quixote; Don Quixote being spirit
without sense and Sancho sense without spirit. Imperialism, if it could
see itself, is in fact a world of Sanchos and it would not be the less
so if every Sancho of the number were master of the whole of physical
science, and used it to cook his food. Of the two court poets of Caesar's
successor, one makes Cato preside over the spirits of the good in the
Elysian fields, while the other speaks with respect, at all events, of
the soul which remained unconquered in a conquered world--"Et cuneta
terrarum subacta praeter atrocem animum Catonis." Paterculus, an officer
of Tiberius and a thorough Caesarian, calls Cato a man of ideal virtue
("homo virtuti simillimus") who did right not for appearance sake, but
because it was not in his nature to do wrong. When the victor is thus
overawed by the shade of the vanquished, the vanquished can hardly have
been a "fool." Contemporaries may be mistaken as to the merits of a
character, but they cannot well be mistaken as to the space which it
occupied in their own eyes. Sallust, the partizan of Marius and Caesar,
who had so much reason to hate the senatorial party, speaks of Caesar and
Cato as the two mighty opposites of his time, and in an elaborate
parallel ascribes to Caesar the qualities which secure the success of the
adventurer; to Cato those which make up the character of the patriot. It
is a mistake to regard Cato the younger as merely an unseasonable
repetition of Cato the elder. His inspiration came not from a Roman, but
from a Greek school, which, with all its errors and absurdities, and in
spite of the hypocrisy of many of its professors, really aimed highest
in the formation of character; and the practical teachings and
aspirations of which, embodied in the Reflections of Marcus Aurelius, it
is impossible to study without profound respect for the force of moral
conception and the depth of moral insight which they sometimes display.
Cato went to Greece to sit at the feet of a Greek teacher in a spirit
very different from the national pride of his ancestor. It is this which
makes his character interesting: it was an attempt at all events to
grasp and hold fast a high rule of life in an age when the whole moral
world was sinking in a vortex of scoundrelism, and faith in morality,
public or private, had been lost. Of course the character is formal, and
in some respects even grotesque. But you may trace formalism, if you
look closely enough, in every life led by a rule; in everything in fact
between the purest spiritual impulse on one side and abandoned
sensuality on the other.
Attempts to revive old Roman simplicity of dress and habits in the age
of Lucullus, were no doubt futile enough: yet this is only the
symbolical garb of the Hebrew prophet. The scene is in ancient Rome, not
in the smoking-room of the House of Commons. The character as painted by
Plutarch, who seems to have drawn from the writings of contemporaries,
is hard of course, but not cynical. Cato was devoted to his brother
Caepio, and when Caepio died, forgot all his Stoicism in the passionate
indulgence of his grief, and all his frugality in lavishing gold and
perfumes on the funeral. Caesar in "Anti-Cato" accused him of sifting the
ashes for the gold, which, says Plutarch, is like charging Hercules with
cowardice. Where the sensual appetites are repressed, whatever may be
the theory of life, the affections are pretty sure to be strong, unless
they are nipped by some such process as is undergone by a monk. Cato's
resignation of his fruitful wife to a childless friend, revolting as it
is to our sense, betokens not so much brutality in him as coarseness of
the conjugal relations at Rome. Evidently the man had the power of
touching the hearts of others. His soldiers, though he has given them no
largesses, and indulged them in no license, when he leaves them, strew
their garments under his feet. His friends at Utica linger at the peril
of their lives to give him a sumptuous funeral. He affected conviviality
like Socrates. He seems to have been able to enjoy a joke too at his own
expense. He can laugh when Cicero ridicules his Stoicism in a speech;
and when in a province he meets the inhabitants of a town turning out,
and thinks at first that it is in his own honour, but soon finds that it
is in honour of a much greater man, the confidential servant of Pompey,
at first his dignity is outraged, but his anger soon gives place to
amusement. That his public character was perfectly pure, no one seems to
have doubted; and there is a kindliness in his dealings with the
dependants of Rome which shews that had he been an emperor he would have
been such an emperor as Trajan--a man whom he probably resembled, both
in the goodness of his intentions and in the limited powers of his mind.
Impracticable, of course, in a certain sense he was; but his part was
that of a reformer, and to compromise with the corruption against which
he was contending would have been to lose the only means of influence,
which, having no military force and no party, he possessed--the
unquestioned integrity of his character. He is said by Dr. Mommsen to
have been incapable of even conceiving a policy. By policy I suppose is
meant one of those brilliant schemes of ambition with which some
literary men are fond of identifying themselves, fancying, it seems,
that thereby they themselves after their measure play the Caesar. The
policy which Cato conceived was simply that of purifying and preserving
the Republic. So far, at all events, he had an insight into the
situation, that he knew the real malady of the State to be want of
public spirit, which he did his best to supply. And the fact is, that he
did more than once succeed in a remarkable way in stemming the tide of
corruption. Though every instinct bade him struggle to the last, he had
sense enough to see the state of the case, and to advise that, to avert
anarchy, supreme power should be put into the hands of Pompey, whose
political superstition, if not his loyalty, there was good reason to
trust. When at last civil war broke out, Cato went into it like
Falkland, crying "peace;" he set his face steadily against the excesses
and cruelties of his party; and when he saw the field of Dyrrhaeium
covered with his slain enemies, he covered his face and wept. He wept a
Roman over Romans, but humanity will not refuse the tribute of his
tears. After Pharsalus he cherished no illusion, as Dr Mommsen himself
admits, and though he determined himself to fall fighting, he urged no
one else to resistance: he felt that the duty of an ordinary citizen was
done. His terrible march over the African desert shewed high powers of
command, as we shall see by comparing it with the desert march of
Napoleon. Dr. Mommsen ridicules his pedantry in refusing, on grounds of
loyalty, to take the commandership-in-chief over the head of a superior
in rank. Cato was fighting for legality, and the spirit of legality was
the soul of his cause. But besides this, he was himself without
experience of war; and by declining the nominal command he retained the
real control. He remained master to the last of the burning vessel. Our
morality will not approve of his voluntary death; but then our morality
would give him a sufficient motive for living, even if he was to be
bound to the car of the conqueror. Looking to Roman opinion, he probably
did what honour dictated; and those who prefer honour to life are not so
numerous that we can afford to speak of them with scorn. "The fool,"
says Dr Mommsen, when the drama of the republic closes with Cato's
death--"The fool spoke the Epilogue" Whether Cato was a fool or not, it
was not he that spoke the Epilogue. The Epilogue was spoken by Marcus
Aurelius, whose principles, political as well as philosophical, were
identical with those for which Cato gave his life. All that time the
Stoic and Republican party lived, sustained by the memory of its
martyrs, and above them all by that of Cato. At first it struggled
against the Empire; at last it accepted it, and when the world was weary
of Caesars, assumed the government and gave humanity the respite of the
Antonines. The doctrine of continuity is valid for all parties alike,
and the current of public virtue was not cut off by Pharsalus. On the
whole, remote as the character of Cato is in some respects from our
sympathies, absurd as it would be if taken as a model for our imitation,
I recognise it as a proof of the reality and indestructibility of moral
force, even when pitted against the masters of thirty legions.