I have in various forms tried to point out the special importance
which, in the history of the world, belongs to the period which
saw the establishment of the dominion of the Roman People over
the civilized world of its time, especially over the Hellenic and
hellenized lands round the eastern Mediterranean. It is of the first
importance for the right understanding of general history to take in
the real character of the state of things which was brought about
by this gradual establishment of the Roman dominion. It is curious
to see how constantly that state of things is misunderstood, from
looking at the matter with modern eyes. And it is the more curious
when we come to think how very modern the eyes must be which are
unable to see the matter correctly. For we have hardly to go out of
our own century to find lively images of the state of things which
Roman conquest brought about. Yet we are constantly tempted to fancy
that the rule of the early Roman Emperors, perhaps that of the
Roman Commonwealth before them, was a centralized administration,
in which all authority issued from a central power. We are used
to the great kingdoms and commonwealths of modern Europe, in
which local bodies may enjoy a greater or less degree of local
independence, but in which they hold that independence in inherent
subordination to the central authority, by virtue of laws passed
by the central legislature. The land is divided into counties,
departments, provinces, administered according to such rules as the
central legislature may think good to lay down. It is true that in
our own country the shire is, both in idea and in part of the land
in historical fact, older than the kingdom. But in a large part of
England the shire is as truly a division of the kingdom as a French
department, and where it is not so historically it has become so
practically. An English shire, an English borough, has no rights or
powers but such as it has derived, in some shape or another, from the
central power of the land, by act of Parliament or by royal charter.
That central power has the same rights and powers in every corner of
the kingdom. I speak of course only of the United Kingdom; as soon
as we get beyond its limits, as soon as we enter the Scandinavian
kingdom and the Norman duchy which lie so near to it but which form
no part of it, so soon we still find ourselves in a state of things
which has much in common with the Roman dominion. And if all this
is true of the United Kingdom, it is yet more true of states like
France and Italy, whose geographical divisions and administrative
system have been drawn up as something wholly new in quite modern
times. Yet down at least to the end of the last century, in many
parts of Germany, of Italy, of Switzerland, of all the lands to which
the power of Venice reached, the endless varieties of alliance and
subjection between different towns and lands presented the closest
analogies to the relations of which I have now to speak. Survivals
went on even to our own time. In 1865 a small district was still held
in _condominium_ by the two free cities of Lübeck and Hamburg. I
passed through it with a feeling as if I had been carried back into
some distant age. I presume that since 1866 things are different
there.
It is of course perfectly true that, at a later age of the Roman
dominion, when the Empire began to change into an acknowledged
monarchy--though monarchy is not the proper word for a power which
was often held by two or more colleagues--that Empire did come
much nearer to the character of a modern centralized state. It was
mapped out into administrative divisions, and those divisions were
administered according to a general law. But the dominion of Rome,
Commonwealth and Empire, had been in being for several ages before
this change took place. The elder Roman rule was not the rule,
despotic or constitutional, of a man over an united territory; it
was the rule of a city over other cities and lands, cities and
lands standing to the ruling city in every possible relation, from
nominally equal alliance to a subjection hardly better than bondage.
That so it should be was the natural result of the way in which the
Roman dominion was formed. With the political ideas of the third
and second centuries before Christ no other state of things was
possible. The way in which the dominion of Rome was formed, the
process by which the cities and lands of so large a part of the world
passed under the supremacy of one ruling city, has much in common
with the further process which the growth of that dominion made
inevitable, the submission of Rome herself to the dominion of one
or more of her own citizens. In both cases the change was gradual.
People often talk of the change from the Republic to the Empire,
very much as they talk of the English Reformation, as if it were a
definite act which took place in some particular year. Yet all that
was characteristic in the Imperial power arose out of its gradual
growth, its growth through an union of magistracies and extraordinary
commissions which virtually bestowed supreme authority on their
holder. Above all, out of the original character of the Empire as an
extraordinary commission granted by a vote of the Senate came the
fact that the Empire remained for ages without any law of succession.
A law prescribing a mode of election and a law prescribing a rule of
hereditary succession both assume an ordinary office which must be
filled by some one; the Empire was in its origin an extraordinary
office which might not be filled at all. A vote, or several votes, of
the Senate entrusted a single citizen--or more than one citizen--with
powers which practically amounted to sovereignty, and which in the
end grew into acknowledged sovereignty. But that growth was slow.
For a long time after the Empire began, the republican constitution,
the republican magistracies, the republican assemblies, still lived
on untouched in their outward framework. They had simply lost all
living energy through the growth of a power greater than all, a power
which sometimes directed their course of action, sometimes itself
acted in their stead. If we could conceive, as once or twice did
happen for a short time, the controlling power removed, that is, if
the extraordinary commissions which made up the Imperial power were
not granted to any one, the old elements of the commonwealth were
there, able again to act for themselves as of old. The Senate, after
ages of utter nullity, actually did act again as an independent body
when the Goth was at the gates of Rome and the Emperor was far away
at Ravenna. For Rome once more to act without her master there was no
need to create any new power, but simply to take the fetters off an
old one. In the earlier ages of the Empire, when the old traditions
were more lively, when the forms of the old constitution were still
observed, such a change would doubtless have been far more easy. A
modern kingdom cannot be changed into a republic without an active
change in its constitution. The executive authority must be vested
in some new power to be created and defined for the purpose. The
Roman Empire might have been turned back into a republic by a purely
negative change. All that was needed was not to appoint an Emperor.
The various powers of the State which had left off acting or had come
to act only as the Emperor bade them, would doubtless, from lack of
practice, from change in all surrounding circumstances, have found
it practically impossible to act as they had done in the days of
the old commonwealth. But there would have been no formal hindrance
to their so doing; there would have been no need to clothe Senate
or magistrates with any powers beyond those which they still held,
though in a dormant state.
The power of Rome over her allies and dependencies during the
Commonwealth and the early Empire was very much of the same kind as
the power of the Emperors over Rome herself. It was something which
overshadowed a crowd of old powers and liberties, which brought them
down to practical nullity, but which in no way formally abolished
them. The republican institutions of Rome under the early Empire,
the constitutions of the allied states, of the dependencies, even
of the direct subjects of Rome, under both the early Empire and the
Commonwealth, were much in the same state as a man or a beast that
is fettered or bridled. His inherent physical powers of action are
not lessened; only they cannot be exercised, or can be exercised only
according to the will of a master. So it was with Rome herself under
the Emperors; so it was yet more strikingly with the dependencies of
Rome under Rome republican or imperial. As Rome herself submitted
only gradually to the rule of her Emperors, so the dependencies of
Rome submitted only gradually to the rule of Rome. There could
hardly have been one Roman province in which, as in an English
county or a French department, every inch of soil stood in the same
relation to the central power. Within the geographical bounds of most
provinces, above all within the bounds of the Greek and hellenized
provinces, there were cities and districts standing to Rome in
all those endless relations which were the natural result of the
different times and the different circumstances under which their
connexion with Rome began. Here was a free and equal ally of Rome, a
city which Rome had been glad to receive as a free and equal ally at
a time when her alliance was really valuable. Nothing had happened
to give any excuse for dragging down the old ally to any inferior
position. In theory she was still as free as ever, keeping every
power of a sovereign state within and without. No Roman magistrate
had any authority within her territory; if she sent offerings to Rome
or to Rome’s master, if she supplied a contingent to a Roman army,
all was the gift of pure friendship from one equal ally to another.
A neighbouring town might be in the strictly provincial relation;
over her soil the Roman people had become, not only sovereign, but
landlord; she might keep her old municipal constitution, but it was
purely by the grant or sufferance of the ruling city. Such a city
yielded obedience to Rome, because Rome was an acknowledged mistress;
if its free neighbour practically yielded obedience to Rome no less,
it was simply because, in an alliance between the weak and the
strong, the strong will always give law to the weak. And between
these two extremes there were endless intermediate shades. Besides
the absolutely independent ally, there were allies who also had
treaties with Rome, but whose treaties were less favourable, treaties
which bound both sides alike, but which formally placed one of the
contracting parties in a higher and the other in a lower position.
Again, there were towns of the province itself on which Rome had
bestowed, not by treaty but by her own grant, higher rights than the
rest of the province. One city was free, keeping its own law, exempt
from the ordinary jurisdiction of the Roman governor, paying no tax
or tribute to Rome, but holding all these privileges by grant from
the Roman state. Another was equally free within its own walls, but
bought its privileges by the payment of tribute to Rome. And as there
were within every Greek-speaking province spots which remained spots
of free Hellas abiding in their old freedom, so there might be other
spots which were transplanted fragments of the soil of Latium or of
Rome itself, keeping in the foreign land the rights of Latium or of
Rome. That is, there might be within the bounds of the province Latin
or Roman colonies, or towns to which, without being in their origin
Latin or Roman colonies, Rome had thought good to grant, sometimes
her own full citizenship, sometimes only the half-citizenship of
Latium. Of these, the free and allied city, the Roman and the
Latin colony, were geographically within the province, but they
were not legally part of it. To the Roman and the Latin colony we
have nothing exactly answering in modern Europe; but Andorra and
San Marino are still lively illustrations of the position of a
small state which has powerful neighbours. San Marino, a perfectly
independent state, but which, as wholly surrounded by its great
neighbour, is practically cut off from exercising any of the external
powers of an independent state, is in exactly the position of a free
and equal ally of Rome. Such an ally might keep perfect internal
freedom, but it was in the nature of things cut off from any foreign
policy. Andorra, a dependent and tributary state, though keeping full
internal freedom, would, if it had only one protecting lord, also
have its parallels among the dependent allies of Rome. But, in the
complication of mediæval relations, Andorra has two protecting lords,
two receivers of tribute. That was a state of things which could not
be in the days of the Roman Peace.
There is only one San Marino within the geographical bounds of
Italy, and San Marino is not one of the great cities of Italy. It
is therefore a harmless political curiosity, with whose rights the
Italian kingdom has no temptation to meddle. It might be otherwise
if the kingdom had many such independent towns and districts within
its borders, and if any of the great cities of Italy were reckoned
among them. Now one of the ugliest features of Roman history, one
which comes out in every page of the history of the second century
B.C., is the ungenerous way in which Rome treated her independent
allies the moment they ceased to be useful to her. As long as they
served as checks on some other power, so long they were made not a
little of; as soon as the dangerous power was overthrown or humbled,
the ally which had helped to overthrow it became an object of Roman
jealousy. The friendly power whose day of usefulness was over was
exposed to endless attempts on the part of Rome to weaken and break
it in pieces. Such is the tale of the kingdom of Pergamon, of the
city-commonwealth of Rhodes, of the confederation of Achaia. No part
of Roman history is more disgraceful than the dealings of Rome with
those three states, the model governments of their several classes.
No learning, no eloquence, can avail to whitewash the faithless and
brutal dealings of the Roman Senate towards powers whose only fault
was to be weaker than Rome and to have done good service to Rome.
This feeling of jealousy towards the allies lingered on long after
all ground for jealousy had passed away, when the free city was free
only within its own walls, and could not lift hand or foot against
the mighty ally by whose dominion it was hemmed in. But the wrongs
of these cities under Roman rule were far more largely due to more
immediate causes, to the overbearing love of power, to the baser
love of gain, which formed the dark side of the Roman character.
The liberties of these weak states were often encroached on, not
only by the Roman state itself, but by particular Roman magistrates,
and even by powerful men who were not at the moment magistrates.
The establishment of the Empire undoubtedly did something to check
the oppressions of the Roman governors, on whom there was very
little check under the commonwealth. But if the Empire led to less
oppression on the part of the representatives of the central power,
it led to more meddling on the part of the central power itself. A
man placed at the head of the world stands in a different position
from a city placed at the head of the world. To the ruling city the
dependent states are simply dependent states; it gets what it can out
of them, but it has no temptation to meddle for the sake of meddling.
The ruling man has temptations to meddle, and it may even be that,
the better disposed he is, his temptations to meddle become greater.
The natural tendency of the Empire was to unity and centralization
everywhere and in every way. Under imperial rule, the endless variety
of relations among the allies, dependents, and subjects of Rome
gradually changed into the one character of direct members of the
Roman Empire. But the change was slow. Sovereign commonwealths sank
into municipalities, and municipalities sank into something less
than municipalities, by mere force of circumstances, without any
formal act. It is often very hard to say when this or that free city
finally lost its distinct being through absolute incorporation in
the Roman Empire. It is certain that the memory of past freedom, as
something that still was not wholly past, lived on for ages. Under
the early Empire the commonwealths of Greece and Asia, whatever was
their formal relation, were in practice, not only subject to the
Roman Empire, but very much at the mercy of the governors of the
provinces within which they geographically lay. But they still were
commonwealths, though dependent or even subject commonwealths. Their
senates, assemblies, or other ruling bodies, had practically sunk to
the functions of town-councils, and they were open, in a way in which
an English town-council is not, to the caprice of an external power.
But they were town-councils which had been sovereign parliaments.
Some of them were in theory sovereign parliaments still. And even
those which were furthest from that character, the councils of those
towns which were neither free and allied states, nor Roman colonies,
nor in any way privileged above the general provincial relation,
had not wholly lost their original character. Deep into the time of
the Empire, the old character of the Roman dominion, that of a city
ruling over other cities, still left its traces. In such a state of
things the authority of the councils or assemblies of the subject
states might practically be smaller than that of the town-council of
an English borough. That is, the assembly might be afraid of acting
in any matter of importance without the leave of the central power
or its representative. It might practically confine its action to
matters of routine and ceremony, at most to votes of honours and
setting up of statues, because any bolder action would awaken Roman
jealousy. That is to say, the free and allied state could in theory
do everything, even the provincial town could in theory do many
things, according to its own free will. But generations of submission
to an irresistible neighbour had taught it not to exercise that
free will except according to the higher will of the power which
was supreme over all. If the rights of the subordinate state became
formal or even null, it was because they were wide and indefinite;
they were the powers of a community which still kept a distinct
being, but which was placed under the irresistible influence,
sometimes under the direct dominion, of a stronger community. This is
a position altogether different from that of a town or district in a
modern kingdom or commonwealth where every part of the land has equal
rights. In such a kingdom or commonwealth, whatever powers, great
or small, this or that board or council has, are held according to
the law of the land. As long as those powers are exercised according
to the law of the land, no administrative interference is to be
feared; if the law is broken, if the local authority steps beyond
its legal powers, the wrong will be made good, not by an arbitrary
will, but by a legal process. It was wholly different with the cities
of which we speak, whether free, dependent, or subject; they were
still separate commonwealths with inherent rights, even if those
rights could no longer be exercised; their assemblies had once been
parliaments, and to both the forms and the feelings of parliaments
they still clave. And one city at least among the allies of Rome kept
its substantial freedom down to an age when many fancy that the Roman
power itself had altogether vanished from the earth. The freedom of
Cherson was overthrown, not by Mummius in the second century on one
side, not by Vespasian in the first century on the other, but by
the Amorian Theophilos in the ninth. Till that day the last of the
Greek commonwealths lived on its ancient life, and for the simplest
of reasons. Not only the Emperor himself, but the proconsul of
Achaia, of Macedonia, or of Asia, could at any moment encroach on,
the Emperor could at any moment destroy, the freedom of any Greek
city that lay geographically within those provinces. He had always
the physical power to encroach or to destroy; not uncommonly he had
the will. But the commonwealth which lay far away in the Tauric
Chersonêsos stood in another case. The faithful ally could not be
changed into the helpless subject, except by the same kind of effort
which was needed for a Gothic or a Persian war.
The long abiding independence of Cherson is a fact to which I have
often had occasion to call attention from other points of view. So
is the independence of the Lykian League, though the less favourable
geographical position of that power allowed its freedom to come to an
end eight hundred years sooner than the freedom of Cherson. I have
elsewhere spoken of that League as perhaps the most skilfully planned
example of a federal constitution that the elder day could show;[2]
it concerns me now as an example of the degree of independence which
a considerable territory could keep under the general supremacy
of Rome, from the fall of Perseus to the reign of Claudius. For
the story of its origin we have to go to the narrative, unhappily
fragmentary, which Polybios gives of the events which led to the
deliverance of Lykia from Rhodian rule;[3] for a full account of its
constitution we have only to turn to the description of Strabo.[4] It
is specially instructive when the geographer tells us that the League
still kept the right of war and peace, though, he adds, in his day
that right could not be exercised at all, or could be exercised only
as Rome thought fit.[5] After reading this, it is certainly curious
to read the comment of a recent scholar who thinks that the powers of
the League and the measure of its independence were something like
those of the city of London.[6] A nearer analogy might surely be
found in the relations in which many of the smaller powers of Europe
stood not very long back; it is not very unlike that in which some
of them stand at this moment. The position of Lykia towards Rome
is very like that in which various Italian and German states stood
towards Austria forty years back. It is very like that in which
Servia at this moment stands to Austria and Montenegro to Russia.
It is in short the position of a “protected” state, whether the
protection be avowed or only practical. But there is this important
difference. A protected state now has at least some voice in choosing
its protector; it can exercise the old Teutonic right of seeking a
lord. And a small state may even keep perfect independence without
any protector at all, simply through the jealousies of the greater
powers. A small state may sometimes live on in perfect freedom
surrounded by powers stronger than itself. Any one of them could at
any moment put an end to its freedom; but none of them is likely to
make the attempt, because the others, for their own ends, will not
allow it. But Rome stood alone in the world; there was no choice of
protectors; whatever independence was left was held only by Roman
sufferance. Whenever it suited Roman policy or caprice to extinguish
the independence of any state, the thing was done.
[2] History of Federal Government, i. 208.
[3] Polybios, xxx. 519; xxxi. 7, 16, 17.
[4] Strabo, xiv. 3, vol. iii. p. 219, Tauchnitz.
[5] Καὶ περὶ πολέμου δὲ καὶ εἰρήνης καὶ συμμαχίας ἐβουλεύοντο
πρότερον, νῦν δ' οὐκ εἰκὸς, ἀλλ' ἐπὶ τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις ταῦτ' ἀνάγκη
κεῖσθαι, πλὴν εἰ ἐκείνων ἐπιτρεψάντων ἢ ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν εἴη χρήσιμον.
That is to say, the right had never been formally taken away;
only it practically could not be exercised.
[6] In writing this article I have had several times in my
thoughts a controversy on “Home Rule under the Roman Empire,”
which will be found in two numbers of _Macmillan’s Magazine_ for
November 1882 and March 1883. This controversy is instructive in
many ways, specially as showing how utterly, and how contentedly,
large parts of Roman history and Roman literature may be passed
by, even by a scholar who enjoys a high repute in other branches
of those subjects. The comparison between the Lykian League and
the city of London comes from the second of the two articles. Its
author could hardly have read the description of the League in
Strabo.
The Lykian League, as embracing a considerable territory, has,
from its geographical side, more in common with the kingdoms and
principalities which lived on under Roman vassalage, than with the
single city-commonwealths which supply the examples which most
naturally occur to us. It must have been beyond the power of any
single proconsul in a peaceful time seriously to interfere with the
liberties of Lykia. It is true that the federal states of Greece
still lived on for Pausanias to see them at work; and two generations
earlier the sacred convocation of the Amphiktyons had drawn a new
life from the measure of redistribution ordained by the Emperor
Augustus.[7] But we may be sure that no confederation of old Greece
kept anything like such a measure of political life as that which
Strabo saw at work in Lykia. What little life there still was in the
Greek world abode in the single cities, and there was doubtless more
life among the Greek cities of Asia than in those of old Greece. Of
Lykia in Strabo’s day we have only Strabo’s general description;
we have no detailed illustrations of the working of the political
system; least of all have we any speeches, any letters, any political
treatises, either from Lykian orators or philosophers or from Roman
magistrates who had dealings with the Lykian League or its cities.
Let us leap on to the age of Trajan, and we shall find that that
age is rich in materials for the political life of the Achaian and
Bithynian provinces and of the free cities which lay within their
geographical boundaries. We have four highly instructive contemporary
writers, two Greek and two Latin, one of the latter being the
renowned Emperor himself. We have from Plutarch a treatise on the
duties of a Greek statesman of his day. We have from Diôn Chrysostom
several speeches actually delivered in the assemblies of Greek cities
in the reign of Trajan. We have the correspondence of Trajan himself
with the younger Pliny when Pliny was proconsul of Bithynia. We thus
get two sides of the picture. We see how things looked in the eyes
of two literary Greeks, one of whom to be sure was bound to make the
best of things and to make his rhetoric as acceptable as he could to
his Greek hearers. We see also how things looked in the eyes of two
official Romans, an Emperor and a proconsul who were among the best
of their several classes, but whose very virtues laid them open to
one special temptation. Both Trajan and Pliny loathed oppression and
wrong of every kind, and they sincerely sought the welfare of all for
whose welfare they were responsible. But for that very reason they
were more likely to be led to constant meddling with the affairs of
their subjects than rulers who might now and then be guilty of some
gross piece of tyranny, but who for the most part left people alone
in the time between one act of oppression and another. The colouring
on the Greek and on the Roman side is very different; but the main
outlines are the same in both pictures. In both cases we see cities
which keep much--which in some cases keep everything--of the outward
show of free commonwealths, but which do not dare to exercise their
powers, even in very small matters, without the knowledge and good
will of the Roman prince or his local representative.
[7] See History of Federal Government, i. 136.
The political treatise of the wise and kindly Plutarch[8] is one
which cannot be read without sadness. To a Greek, a Bœotian,
living in a land which had once been so great and which was so
utterly fallen, the contrast between what had been and what was came
more keenly home than it could come to his Asiatic contemporary.
The cities of Diôn’s native Bithynia had never been so great in
the past, and they were far more prosperous in the present, than
the cities for whose would-be statesmen and orators the sage of
Chairôneia had to give rules. But in both writers we find things
looked at from the same general point of view. Local independence
is assumed as the state of things which exists at least in theory.
We read page after page of both Plutarch and Diôn without any hint
that the commonwealths of which they were speaking had any superior
beyond their own walls. Both write in a way in which no one would
write for the instruction of a newly-chosen town-councillor in a
modern state. It is for parliaments, not for town-councils, that the
whole language is fitted. But ever and anon we come to some passage
which shows us that the parliaments with which we are dealing are
parliaments working in fetters, parliaments which can practically
do nothing without the approval of a foreign superior. In our own
land we find the nearest parallel in ecclesiastical bodies, and
the likeness is increased by the fact that the range within which
the Greek assemblies of that day were most active was that which
concerned religious worship and that large class of subjects which
in Greek ideas were connected with religious worship. A Convocation
organized like a Parliament, carrying on its debates as freely
as a Parliament, but whose acts go for nothing unless they have
the licence of the Crown beforehand and the consent of the Crown
afterwards, a Convocation which, without ever being suppressed,
without ever having its formal meetings interrupted, could be
practically suspended for a hundred and fifty years, has far more
likeness to one of these Greek assemblies than can be found in a
local body whose powers are narrowly defined, but which can freely
exercise such powers as it has. We have another parallel in the
Chapter electing its Bishop, electing him freely according to all
outward look, but whose choice not only needs the approval of the
Crown, but is actually dictated beforehand by the Crown, under
heavy penalties if that dictation is not obeyed.[9] We read several
chapters of Plutarch which might have been written for any Greek
commonwealth in days before either the later or the former Philip.
Presently the mention of certain demagogues who corrupted the
people by shows of gladiators is a sign that the Roman has entered
into the Greek world.[10] But, for anything in that or in several
following chapters, the commonwealths so corrupted might have been as
independent as when earlier demagogues were said to have corrupted
their countrymen by allurements of other kinds. We go on further,
and the full truth comes out. The Greek commonwealths of Plutarch’s
day had no longer anything to do with wars, with alliances, with
putting down of tyrants, and some might think that in such a state
of things there was no room for statesmanship left. Plutarch thought
otherwise; there were still public trials at home; there were
embassies to be sent to the Emperor; there were dealings with Roman
governors, possibly with bad governors. These things needed some
qualifications; energy, daring, discretion, were all needed by those
who had to plead for the weak before the powerful.[11] The chosen
magistrate was not to despise his office because he had not so free
a field as the magistrates of old times; but he was never to forget
the difference between him and them. Periklês might say that he was
called to rule among freemen, among Greeks, among Athenians. The
magistrate of Plutarch’s day was to remember that he ruled with a
ruler over him; that his city was in subjection to the proconsuls of
Rome, to the procurators of Cæsar.[12] War was impossible; of freedom
they had as much as their masters left to them, as much perhaps as
was good for them[13] when Greece was so weak, when there was no
power left in her which the slightest bidding of a proconsul could
not upset.[14] In such times public men must be careful to give no
offence, no occasion, to dangerous neighbours; they must above all
avoid such occasion as was given by disputes at home or with other
cities. At the same time, while fully understanding their dependent
position, they must avoid base cringing and flattery; they must not
make the governor yet more of a master than he is disposed to be by
calling him in on all occasions;[15] and it will be wise to make
some powerful Roman their friend.[16] They will do well to study the
records of old Greece, but only for examples suited to the actual
state of things; tall talk about Marathôn and Plataia and Eurymedôn
should be left to the rhetoric of the schools; but peaceful examples
from earlier times, examples of courtesy, humanity, and good faith,
were as instructive then as they ever had been.[17]
[8] His Πολιτικὰ Παραγγέλματα, commonly quoted as _Reipublicæ
Gerendæ Præcepta_.
[9] A still closer parallel might have been found up to the
present reign, as long as the Deans of the churches of the Old
Foundation were chosen by the Chapters. By long-standing custom a
nominee of the Crown was always chosen, though there was not, as
in the case of the election of Bishops, any legal obligation so
to do.
[10] C. 5. ἢ τοῦ βαλανείου διδόντες ἢ πυῤῥίχας τινας ἢ μονομάχων
θεάματα παρασκευάζοντες ἀεὶ δημαγωγοῦσι, μᾶλλον δὲ δημοκοποῦσι.
[11] C. 10.
[12] C. 17. ἀρχόμενος ἄρχεις, ὑποτεταγμένης πόλεως ἀνθυπάτοις,
ἐπιτρόποις Καίσαρος.
[13] C. 32. ἐλευθερίας δὲ ὅσον οἱ κρατοῦντες νέμουσι τοῖς δήμοις
μέτεστι, καὶ τὸ πλέον ἴσως οὐκ ἄμεινον.
[14] C. 32. ποία δύναμις ἣν μικρὸν ἀνθυπάτου διάταγμα κατέλυσεν ἣ
μετέστησεν εἰς ἄλλο.
[15] C. 19. οἱ πάντι δόγματι καὶ συνεδρίῳ καὶ χάριτι καὶ
διοικήσει προσάγοντες ἡγεμονικὴν κρίσιν ἀναγκάζουσι ἑαυτῶν μᾶλλον
ἢ βούλονται δεσπότας εἶναι τοὺς ἡγουμένους.
[16] C. 18.
[17] C. 17.
The precepts of Plutarch are perfectly general. He draws no
distinction between the different classes of cities, according
to the greater or less degree of independence which they still
formally kept. For in truth they were all practically in the same
case; all had, in his own phrase, the shoe of the Roman over their
heads.[18] The provincial town could act freely in many things, if
the governor did not choose to meddle; the independent ally could
not act freely in any thing, if the governor did choose to meddle. We
find things on the whole the same when we turn from the philosopher
giving wise precepts in his study to the orator actually haranguing
the assemblies whose duties Plutarch so carefully lays down. Diôn
Chrysostom is a rhetorician by profession, and he has the faults of
his profession; but there is much that is attractive about the man
and his writings, and he gives us several instructive pictures of
Greek life in his own day. His orations on subjects of theoretical
politics, on kingship, aristocracy, democracy, and the like, sound
a little unpractical under the universal rule of Rome; but we must
remember that it mattered a good deal whether the reigning prince was
Domitian or Trajan. We gain real additions to our knowledge from the
picture of the Euboian hunter, possessed of the civic franchise but
who had never been in the city, and we learn better what an Euboian
city was like in Diôn’s day.[19] More interesting still is his
picture of the Greek city of Olbia or Borysthenês, still clinging to
its Greek speech and manners amid the constant attacks of dangerous
barbarian neighbours.[20] Of more importance for our purpose is his
oration to the Rhodians, an oration of good advice, but of course
largely mingled with panegyric on his hearers and their city. This is
a document of deep interest, if read by the light of the history of
that illustrious island in the second century before Christ. Rhodes
is throughout addressed as a free commonwealth, as a democracy;[21]
it is the one Greek state besides Athens which keeps its freedom;[22]
it is the only one which still cherishes the glory of the Hellenic
name.[23] The relations of the state to Rome are nowhere dwelled upon
after the manner of Plutarch; Emperors are several times casually
mentioned, but not as masters;[24] the point of connexion between
Rhodes and Rome of which the orator is most inclined to speak is the
part played by the Rhodians in the Roman civil war.[25] He knows of
no break between the mighty Rhodes of an earlier day and the still
flourishing democracy which he harangues. Some of his sayings could
hardly have been approved by Plutarch; they are too much in the
Marathôn and Eurymedôn style; but they could not, even as flourishes,
have been addressed to a people who were not free, at least in
theory, however precarious might be the tenure by which their freedom
was held.
[18] _Ibid._ ὁρῶτα τοὺς καλτίους ἐπάνω τῆς κεφαλῆς.
[19] Oration vii. Εὐβοϊκὸς ἢ Κυνηγός.
[20] Oration xxxvi. Βορυσθενικός.
[21] Oration xxxi. vol. i. p. 364, Dindorf. ταῦτα ἐν δημοκρατίᾳ
καὶ παρ' ὑμῖν, οἱ μέγιστον φρονεῖτε ἐπὶ τῷ νομίμως καὶ δικαίως
διοικεῖν τὰ παρ' ἑαυτοῖς.
[22] _Ibid._ p. 380. τοῖς μὲν γὰρ [Ῥοδίοις] μόνον ὑπάρχειν τὴν
ἐλευθερίαν δίχα Ἀθηναίων.
[23] _Ibid._ p. 350. τῆς λοιπῆς Ἑλλάδος τρόπον τίνὰ ἐσβεσμένης
μόνους ἐφ' αὑτοῖς διαφυλάξαι τὸ κοινὸν ἀξίωμα τῶν Ἑλλήνων εἰς τὸν
νῦν παρόντα χρόνον. So p. 398; μόνοι καταλείπεσθε τῶν Ἑλλήνων οἷς
ἂν καὶ παραινέσαι τις καὶ περὶ ᾧ ἔστιν ἔτι λυπηθῆναι δοκούντων
ἁμαρτάνειν.
[24] _Ibid._ pp. 359, 380, 381, 387, 393.
[25] _Ibid._ pp. 367, 383.
Less interesting in themselves than any of these, but perhaps in a
certain way more instructive, are the speeches which Diôn makes in
his own city of Prusa and in other towns of his native province. He
had to preach peace and concord both to rival cities and to rival
parties in the same city, and also to plead his own cause against
his own enemies.[26] The assemblies which he addresses are always
assumed to be self-acting bodies; references to the existence
of Rome come in only casually, and Diôn does not often copy the
plain-speaking of Plutarch.[27] But the speeches of the Greek orator
put on a tenfold interest when we come to compare them with the
memorable correspondence which is luckily preserved to us between
a Roman Emperor and a proconsul of Bithynia in Diôn’s own day. The
letters which passed between Trajan and Pliny seem at first sight to
describe a wholly different state of things from that which appears
in the speeches of Diôn. If we compare the two, we shall see that
they set before us two opposite sides of the same state of things.
From the two together we shall get a clear notion of the state of
the various cities of Bithynia, and of the different relations in
which, like those of any other province, they stood to the ruling
power. Speeches and letters together illustrate the show of freedom
which existed in perhaps every case, the reality of freedom which
existed in some cases, and at the same time the precarious tenure
by which both the shadow and the reality were held. We see the
ordinary provincial town, still keeping the style of “res publica,”
passing “psephismata,” sending “legati” to the Emperor and the
neighbouring governors, playing in short at being a commonwealth, but
not venturing to do any local act of the least importance without
consulting the Emperor’s representative. Diôn brings out one side,
Trajan and Pliny bring out the other side; that is all. Diôn makes
a speech to the people of Nikomêdeia, exhorting them to peace and
harmony with the people of Nikaia. Many passages would have been
in place in the mouth of a mediator between Athens and Sparta five
hundred years earlier. There is no direct mention of any superior
authority as bearing rule over both; the orator indeed tells his
hearers that after all they cannot make war on their enemies,[28]
and warns them lest by their dissensions they make the Greek name
ridiculous among the Romans.[29] We are for the moment amazed when
we turn from this picture of two seemingly independent commonwealths
to the letters which show how the Emperor and his representative
had to be consulted by Nikomêdeia, Nikaia, and every other city,
about the smallest municipal regulations, about every kind of local
improvement.[30] It is an odd comment on the dissensions between
city and city of which Diôn speaks, when Trajan, remembering how
Nikomêdeia and other cities had been torn by seditions, will not
allow the creation of a company of firemen, lest it be turned to some
dangerous political purpose.[31] We again feel sure that Pliny, in
his zeal, meddled in many matters which a worse proconsul would have
left alone, and that, in his desire to do right, he referred many
things to the Emperor which such a proconsul would have settled for
himself in a high-handed way. Reading speeches and letters together,
we better understand both. We are dealing with commonwealths,
but with commonwealths acting in fetters. They do everything for
themselves by votes of their own assemblies. But those votes need a
licence beforehand, a confirmation afterwards, or both the one and
the other, from the overruling power that stands without.[32]
[26] See the forty-third and forty-fourth orations.
[27] Once perhaps in the home orations, xliv. (vol. ii. p. 117);
εὖ γὰρ ἴστε ὅτι τὴν μὲν λεγομένην ἐλευθερίαν, καὶ τὸ ὄνομα τοῦθ',
ὃ παρὰ τῶν κρατούντων καὶ δυναμένων γίγνεται ἐνιότε οὐ δυνατὸν
κτήσασθαι.
[28] Oration xxxviii. Πρὸς Νικομηδεῖς περὶ ὁμονοίας τῆς πρὸς
Νικαιεῖς. vol. ii. pp. 74, 75, 76.
[29] _Ibid._ p. 80.
[30] Epp. Plini et Trajani, 31, 33, 34, 37, 39, 40, 41, 48, 49,
70, 71, 74, 81, 90.
[31] Ep. 34. “Tibi quidem secundum exempla complurium in mentem
venit posse collegium fabrorum apud Nicomedenses constitui. Sed
meminerimus provinciam istam et præcipue eas civitates ejusmodi
factionibus esse vexatas. Quodcumque nomen ex quacumque causa
dederimus iis qui in idem contracti fuerint ... hetæriæque fient.”
[32] In Ep. 81 there are references to Diôn himself. He was a
Roman citizen.
Both Nikomêdeia and Nikaia, and Diôn’s own city of Prusa, were only
ordinary provincial towns with no special privilege. But there
were spots in Bithynia which were more highly favoured. Here, as
elsewhere, the Roman colony, the free and allied city, were locally
in the province, but not of it. It is plain that even cities of
this rank were used to a good deal of meddling on the part of the
Roman officers; but they resented such treatment and appealed to
their privileges. Apameia was no provincial town, but a Roman colony.
Diôn, who claimed to be one of its citizens, made a speech before
its senate, in which he sets forth the dignity of its colonial
character.[33] Pliny, more busy than other proconsuls, claimed to
look over the accounts of the colony. The colonists told him that he
was welcome to do so, that it was their common wish that he should do
so. But he should remember that it was a thing which no proconsul had
ever asked before; their ancient privileges gave them the right of
managing their own commonwealth as they thought good. Pliny asks for
and receives a statement of their case in writing. He thinks much of
the paper irrelevant; but he sends it to the Emperor to be guided by
his judgement. In all this correspondence one somehow thinks of the
correspondence of Augustine and Gregory; the superior is so clearly
the wiser man of the two. Trajan writes back that the straightforward
dealing of the men of Apameia is to be respected; the proconsul is
to tell them that it is by the Emperor’s special request that he
asks to look at their accounts; he is to do so without any prejudice
to their privileges for the future.[34] We here see plainly enough
the difference inherent in the position of a Roman colony as
distinguished from that of an ordinary town of the province. Still an
Emperor and a proconsul less scrupulous than Trajan and Pliny might
have made short work of the liberties of Apameia. Under the men with
whom the colonists had actually to deal, those liberties, when once
established by sufficient evidence, were safe.
[33] Oration xli. vol. ii. pp. 103, 105.
[34] Plin. et Traj. Epist. 47, 48 (56, 57). The claim of the
colony is “habuisse privilegium et vetustissimum morem arbitrio
suo rem publicam administrare.” The Emperor’s answer is,
“Remuneranda est igitur probitas eorum, et jam nunc sciant quod
inspecturus es ex mea voluntate salvis, quæ habent privilegiis
esse facturum.”
But within the geographical limits of Bithynia there was something
yet higher than a Roman colony. Amisos was an independent state
surrounded by Roman territory. The city had in past times seen
many settlers and many masters; it was at last delivered from its
oppressors by Augustus Cæsar, and it became a free ally of Rome,
bound to Rome only by the terms of its treaty.[35] We know not what
those terms were; they may, like treaties with Gades and Aitôlia,
have formally bound Amisos to respect the majesty of Rome, or they
may not. That difference mattered little to a commonwealth whose
geographical position compelled it in any case practically to respect
that majesty. But it mattered greatly that, within its own walls,
Amisos was by right perfectly free, governed by its own laws, which
might or might not agree with the laws of Rome. Still it is plain
that its treaty rights could not always secure the commonwealth from
the meddling of Roman proconsuls. And it again marks the difference
between the servant and the master that Pliny speaks of the liberties
of Amisos as existing by the indulgence of Trajan, while Trajan
himself grounds them directly on the faith of treaties. The proconsul
asks if an _eranos_, a benefit club, is to be allowed in Amisos. Such
a question marks the way in which the rights even of a perfectly free
city were liable to be interfered with. Trajan, as we have seen in
the case of the Nikomêdeian firemen, had a great dislike to unions
and societies of any kind which might possibly be turned to political
ends. No _eranos_ is to be allowed in any city that is subject to
the laws of Rome. But at Amisos, a city ruled by its own laws, Pliny
is not to interfere with the establishment of such a body. The way
in which the great Emperor speaks is remarkable. The might of Cæsar
stands disarmed before the majesty of treaties. Trajan carries out a
certain policy wherever he has the legal right to do so; where he has
no such right, he forbears. Yet his words seem to imply that even he,
the just Emperor, might have interfered with the rights of the free
commonwealth, had he seen really good cause for doing so.[36] What
other Emperors and other proconsuls did, with or without cause, it is
easy to guess.
[35] See its own citizen Strabo, xii. 3 (iii. 24 Tauchnitz). The
Dictator Cæsar delivered it from Pharnakês; Antonius παρέδωκε
βασιλεῦσι, εἶτ' ἠλευθερώθη πάλιν μετὰ τὰ Ἀκτιακὰ ὑπὸ Καίσαρος
τοῦ Σεβάστου καὶ νῦν εὖ συνέστηκεν. Pliny (92 or 93) says,
“Amisenorum civitas libera et fœderata beneficio indulgentiæ
tuæ legibus suis utitur.” Trajan answers, “Si legibus istorum
quibus de officio fœderis utuntur concessum est eranon habere,”
&c. “In cæteris civitatibus, quæ nostro jure obstrictæ sunt, res
hujusmodi prohibenda est.” There is another mention of Amisos in
Letter 110, which reads rather like sharp practice on the part of
the free and allied city, its _boule_ and _ecclesia_.
[36] “Possumus quo minus habeant non impedire, eo facilius si
tali conlatione non ad turbas et ad inlicitos cœtus, sed ad
sustinendam tenuiorum inopam utuntur.”
It is not at all wonderful if most of the business done by the
assemblies of these commonwealths had to do with religious and social
matters, and again with formal and trifling matters, with votes of
honours, statues, and the like. As Diôn several times tells them
implicitly, as Plutarch tells them more directly, the decision of
greater matters had passed into other hands. The point is that these
cities still kept the form of commonwealths, commonwealths that must
have passed most of their lives in fear and trembling, but still
commonwealths, even if in fetters, not mere municipalities, such as
we are used to in our own day. In Eastern Europe and Western Asia
this state of things is the direct and necessary consequence of the
events of the Polybian age. The history of the Roman power in Western
Europe is a wholly distinct subject. There Rome did not enslave or
destroy, but created. The towns of the West looked forward, while the
Greek commonwealths looked backward. The gradual extinction of these
last was the necessary consequence of later changes, of changes which
followed on the centralizing and despotic tendencies of the later
Empire. Much of local independence had vanished between Strabo’s day
and Pliny’s; the Lykian League itself was a thing of the past when
Trajan respected the privileges of Amisos. How late any traces of
freedom lingered we need not here inquire. My present object is to
show the long abiding effects of the peculiar process by which the
Roman dominion was definitely formed in that great determining period
of the world’s history which is marked by the second century before
Christ.