I never remember an historian yet, nor a topographer either, who could
tell me, or even pretend to explain by a theory, how it was that
certain things of the past utterly and entirely disappear.
It is a commonplace that everything is subject to decay, and a
commonplace which the false philosophy of our time is too apt to
forget. Did we remember that commonplace we should be a little more
humble in our guesswork, especially where it concerns prehistory; and
we should not make so readily certain where the civilization of Europe
began, nor limit its immense antiquity. But though it is a commonplace,
and a true one, that all human work is subject to decay, there seems to
be an inexplicable caprice in the method and choice of decay.
Consider what a body of written matter there must have been to instruct
and maintain the technical excellence of Roman work. What a mass of
books on engineering and on ship-building and on road-making; what
quantities of tables and ready-reckoners, all that civilization must
have produced and depended upon. Time has preserved much verse, and not
only the best by any means, more prose, particularly the theological
prose of the end of the Roman time. The technical stuff, which must, in
the nature of things, have been indefinitely larger in amount, has
(save in one or two instances and allusions) gone.
Consider, again, all that mass of seven hundred years which was called
Carthage. It was not only seven hundred years of immense wealth, of
oligarchic government, of a vast population, and of what so often goes
with commerce and oligarchy—civil and internal peace. A few stones to
prove the magnitude of its municipal work, a few ornaments, a few
graves—all the rest is absolutely gone. A few days’ marches away there
is an example I have quoted so often elsewhere that I am ashamed of
referring to it again, but it does seem to me the most amazing example
of historical loss in the world. It is the site of Hippo Regius. Here
was St. Augustine’s town, one of the greatest and most populous of a
Roman province. It was so large that an army of eighty thousand men
could not contain it, and even with such a host its siege dragged on
for a year. There is not a sign of that great town today.
A suburb, well without the walls—to be more accurate, a neighbouring
village—carries on the name under the form of Bona, and that is all. A
vast, fertile plain of black rich earth, now largely planted with
vineyards, stands where Hippo stood. How can the stones have gone? How
can it have been worth while to cart away the marble columns? Why are
there no broken statues on such a ground, and no relics of the gods?
Nay, the wells are stopped up from which the people drank, and the
lining of the wells is not to be discovered in the earth, and the
foundations of the walls, and even the ornaments of the people and
their coins, all these have been spirited away.
Then there are the roads. Consider that great road which reached from
Amiens to the main port of Gaul, the Portus Itius at Boulogne. It is
still in use. It was in use throughout the Middle Ages. Up that road
the French Army marched to Crécy. It points straight to its goal upon
the sea coast. Its whole purpose lay in reaching the goal. For some
extraordinary reason, which I have never seen explained or even guessed
at, there comes a point as it nears the coast where it suddenly ceases
to be.
No sand has blown over it. It runs through no marshes; the land is firm
and fertile. Why should that, the most important section of the great
road which led northward from Rome, have failed, and have failed so
recently, in the history of man? Where this great road crosses streams
and might reasonably be lost, at its _pontes_, its bridges, it has
remained, and is of such importance as to have given a name to a whole
countryside—_Ponthieu_. But north of that it is gone.
Nearly every Roman road of Gaul and Britain presents something of the
same puzzle in some parts of its course. It will run clear and
followable enough, or form a modern highway for mile upon mile, and
then not at a marsh where one would expect its disappearance, nor in
some desolate place where it might have fallen out of use, but in the
neighbourhood of a great city and at the very chief of its purpose, it
is gone. It is so with the Stane Street that led up from the garrison
of Chichester and linked it with the garrison of London. You can
reconstruct it almost to a yard until you reach Epsom Downs. There you
find it pointing to London Bridge, and remaining as clear as in any
other part of its course: much clearer than in most other sections. But
try to follow it on from Epsom Racecourse, and you entirely fail. The
soil is the same; the conditions of that soil are excellent for its
retention; but a year’s work has taught me that there is no
reconstructing it save by hypothesis and guesswork from this point to
the crossing of the Thames.
What happened to all that mass of local documents whereby we ought to
be able to build up the territorial scheme and the landed regime of old
France? Much remains, if you will, in the shape of chance charters and
family papers. Even in the archives of Paris you can get enough to whet
your curiosity. But not even in one narrow district can you obtain
enough to reconstruct the whole truth. There is not a scholar in Europe
who can tell you exactly how land was owned and held, even, let us say,
on the estates of Rheims or by the family of Condé. And men are ready
to quarrel as to how many peasants owned and how much of their present
ownership was due to the Revolution, evidence has already become so
wholly imperfect in that tiny stretch of historical time.
But, after all, perhaps one ought not to wonder too much that material
things should thus capriciously vanish. Time, which has secured Timgad
so that it looks like an unroofed city of yesterday, has swept and
razed Laimboesis. The two towns were neighbours—one was taken and the
other left—and there is no sort of reason any man can give for it.
Perhaps one ought not too much to wonder, for a greater wonder still is
the sudden evaporation and loss of the great movements of the human
soul. That what our ancestors passionately believed or passionately
disputed should, by their descendants in one generation or in two,
become meaningless, absurd, or false—this is the greatest marvel and
the greatest tragedy of all.