flourished." This is the fundamental fact to be borne in mind in
dealing with the history of Roman expansion. Mr. Reid then takes us,
step by step and province by province, through the pitiful history of
subsequent deterioration and decay. After the Hannibalic war, Roman
hegemony in Italy began to pass into domination. A policy of unwise
exclusion applied to the federated states and cities, coupled with the
assertion of irritating privileges on behalf of Roman citizens, led to
the cataclysm of the Great Social War, at the close of which burgess
rights were reluctantly conceded to all Italic communities who had not
joined the rebels. Then followed the era of the great Julius, who
probably--though of this we cannot be quite certain--wished to create a
"world-state" with Rome as its head; Augustus, to whose genius and
administrative ability tardy justice is now being done, and who, albeit
he continued the policy of his uncle, possibly leant rather more to the
idea, realised eighteen centuries later by Cavour, of a united Italy;
Adrian, who aimed above all things at the consolidation of the Empire;
and many others. Consolidation in whatsoever form almost necessarily
connoted the insistence on some degree of uniformity, and "when the
Emperors pressed uniformity upon the imperial system, it rapidly went to
pieces." Finally, we get to the stage of Imperial penury and
extravagance, accompanied by centralisation _in extremis_, when "hordes
of official locusts, military and civil," were let loose on the land,
and the tax-gatherers destroyed the main sources of the public revenues,
with the result that the tax-payers were utterly ruined. The municipal
system possessed wonderful vitality, and displayed remarkable aptitude
for offering a passive resistance to the attacks directed against it. It
survived longer than might have been expected. But when it became clear
that the only function which the _curiales_ were expected to perform was
to emulate the Danaides by pouring gold into the bottomless cask of the
Imperial Treasury,[101] they naturally rejected the dubious honours
conferred on them, and fled either to be the companions of the monks in
the desert or elsewhere so as to be safe from the crushing load of
Imperial distinction. Mr. Hodgkin and others have pointed out that the
diversion of local funds to the Imperial Exchequer was one of the
proximate causes which led to the downfall of the empire. Whilst the
municipal system lasted, it produced admirable results. Dealing with
Northern Africa, whose progress was eventually arrested by the withering
hand of Islam, Mr. Reid speaks of "the contrast between the Roman
civilisation and the culture which exists in the same regions to-day;
flourishing cities, villages, and farms abounded in districts which are
now sterile and deserted."
Apart from the special causes to which Mr. Reid and other historians
have alluded, and apart, moreover, from the intentions--often the very
wise intentions--of individual Emperors, the municipal system, and with
it the principle that local affairs should be dealt with locally, was
almost bound to founder directly the force of circumstances strengthened
the hands of the central authority at Rome. The battle between
centralisation and decentralisation still continues. Every one who has
been engaged in it knows that, whatever be the system adopted, the
spirit in which it is carried out counts for even more than the system
itself. Once place a firm, self-confident man with the centralising
spirit strong within him at the head of affairs, and he will often,
without any apparent change, go far to shatter any system, however
carefully it may have been devised, to encourage decentralisation. Such
a man was Napoleon. Every conceivable subject bearing on the government
of his fellow-men was, as M. Taine says, "classified and docketed" in
his ultra-methodical brain. It is useless to ask a man of this sort to
decentralise. He cannot do so, not always by reason of a deliberate wish
to grasp at absolute power, but because he sees so clearly what he
thinks should be done that he cannot tolerate the local ineptitude, as
he considers it, that leads to the rejection of his views. Thus, whilst
Napoleon said to Count Chaptal, "Ce n'est pas des Tuileries qu'on peut
diriger une armée," at the same time, as a matter of fact, he never
ceased to interfere with the action of his generals employed at a
distance, with results which, especially in Spain, were generally
disastrous to French arms. Another general cause which militates against
decentralisation is the inevitable tendency of any disputant who is
dissatisfied with a decision given locally to seek redress at the hands
of the central authority. St. Paul appealed to Caesar. A discontented
Rajah will appeal to the Secretary of State for India. It is certain
that in these cases, unless the appellate authority acts with the
greatest circumspection, a risk will be incurred of giving a severe blow
to the fundamental principles of decentralisation. It is no very
hazardous conjecture to assume that many of the Roman Emperors were,
like Napoleon, constitutionally disposed to centralise, and that the
greater their ability the more likely was this disposition to dominate
their minds. Thus Tacitus, speaking of Tiberius, says, "He never relaxed
from the cares of government, but derived relief from his
occupations."[102] A man of this temperament is a born centraliser.
However much his reason or his statesmanship may hold him in check, he
will probably sooner or later yield to the temptation of stretching his
own authority to such an extent as materially to weaken that of his
distant and subordinate agents.
Considerations of space preclude the possibility of dwelling any further
on the many points of interest suggested by Mr. Reid's instructive work.
This much, however, may be said, that whilst British Imperialism is not
exposed to many of the dangers which proved fatal to Imperial Rome,
there is one principle adopted by the early founders of the Roman Empire
which is fraught with enduring political wisdom, and which may be
applied as well now as it was nineteen centuries ago. That principle is
the preference shown to diversity over uniformity of system. Sir Alfred
Lyall, whose receptive intellect was impregnated with modern
applications of ancient precedents, said, "We ought to acknowledge that
we cannot impose a uniform type of civilisation." Let us beware that we
do not violate this very sound principle by too eager a disposition to
transport institutions, whose natural habitat is Westminster, to
Calcutta or Cairo.
[Footnote 97: _The Municipalities of the Roman Empire_. By J.E. Reid.
Cambridge: At the University Press. 10s. 6d.]
[Footnote 98: _L'Avènement de Bonaparte_, i. 217.]
[Footnote 99: _Vide ante_, pp. 317-326.]
[Footnote 100: _England Under the Stuarts_, p. 107. G. Trevelyan.]
[Footnote 101: Hor. _Od._ iii. 11. 25.]
[Footnote 102: _Ann._ iv. 13.]
XXII
A ROYAL PHILOSOPHER[103]
_"The Spectator," August 2, 1913_
Those who are inclined to take a gloomy view of the future on the
subject of the survival of the humanities in this country may derive
some consolation from two considerations. One is that there is not the
smallest sign either of relaxation in the quantity or deterioration in
the quality of the humanistic literature turned out from our seats of
learning. Year by year, indeed, both the interest in classical studies
and the standard of scholarship appear to rise to a higher level. The
other is that the mere fact that humanistic works are supplied shows
that there must be a demand for them, and that there exists amongst the
general public a number of readers outside the ranks of scholars,
properly so called, who are anxious and willing to acquaint themselves
with whatever new lights assiduous research can throw on the sayings and
doings of the ancient world. Archaeology, epigraphy, and numismatics are
year by year opening out new fields for inquiry, and affording fresh
material for the reconstruction of history. More especially much light
has of late been thrown on that chaotic period which lies between the
death of the Macedonian conqueror and the final assertion of Roman
domination. Professor Mahaffy has dealt with the Ptolemies, and Mr.
Bevan with the Seleucids. A welcome complement to these instructive
works is now furnished by Mr. Tarn's comprehensive treatment of an
important chapter in the history of the Antigonids. It is surely the
irony of posthumous fame that whereas every schoolboy knows something
about Pyrrhus--how he fought the Romans with elephants, and eventually
met a somewhat ignoble death from the hand of an old Argive woman who
dropped a tile on his head--but few outside the ranks of historical
students probably know anything of his great rival and relative,
Antigonus Gonatas, the son of Demetrius the Besieger. Yet there can in
reality be no manner of doubt as to which of these two careers should
more excite the interest of posterity. Pyrrhus made a great stir in the
world whilst he lived. "He thought it," Plutarch says--we quote from
Dryden's translation--"a nauseous course of life not to be doing
mischief to others or receiving some from them." But he was in reality
an unlettered soldier of fortune, probably very much of the same type as
some of Napoleon's rougher marshals, such as Augereau or Masséna. His
manners were those of the camp, and his statesmanship that of the
barrack-room. He blundered in everything he undertook except in the
actual management of troops on the field of battle. "Not a common
soldier in his army," Mr. Tarn says, "could have managed things as badly
as the brilliant Pyrrhus." Antigonus was a man of a very different type.
"He was the one monarch before Marcus Aurelius whom philosophy could
definitely claim as her own." But in forming an estimate of his
character it is necessary to bear constantly in mind the many different
constructions which in the course of ages have been placed on the term
"philosophy." Antigonus, albeit a disciple of Zeno, the most unpractical
idealist of his age, was himself eminently practical. He indulged in no
such hallucinations as those which cost the Egyptian Akhnaton his Syrian
kingdom. As a thinker he moved on a distinctly lower plane than Marcus
Aurelius. Perhaps of all the characters of antiquity he most resembles
Julian, whose career as a man of action wrung from the Christian
Prudentius the fine epitaph, "Perfidus ille Deo, quamvis non perfidus
orbi." These early Greek philosophers were, in fact, a strange set of
men. They were not always engaged in the study of philosophy. They
occasionally, whilst pursuing knowledge and wisdom, indulged in
practices of singular unwisdom or of very dubious morality. Thus the
eminent historian Hieronymus endeavoured to establish what we should now
call a "corner" in the bitumen which floated on the surface of the Dead
Sea, and which was largely used for purposes of embalming in Egypt; but
his efforts were completely frustrated by the Arabs who were interested
in the local trade. The philosopher Lycon, besides displaying an
excessive love for the pleasures of the table, was a noted wrestler,
boxer, and tennis-player. Antigonus himself, in spite of his love of
learning, vied with his great predecessors, Philip and Alexander, in his
addiction to the wine-cup. When, by a somewhat unworthy stratagem, he
had tricked the widowed queen Nikaia out of the possession of the
Acrocorinthian citadel, which was, politically speaking, the apple of
his eye, he celebrated the occasion by getting exceedingly drunk, and
went "reeling through Corinth at the head of a drunken rout, a garland
on his head and a wine-cup in his hand." Antigonus was, in fact, not so
much what we should call a philosopher as a man of action with literary
tastes, standing thus in marked contrast to Pyrrhus, who "cared as
little for knowledge or culture as did any baron of the Dark Ages." When
he was engaged in a difficult negotiation with Ptolemy Philadelphus he
allowed himself to be mollified by a quotation from Homer, who, as Plato
said, was "the educator of Hellas." Although not himself an original
thinker, he encouraged thought in others. He surrounded himself with men
of learning, and even received at his court the yellow-robed envoys of
Asoka, the far-distant ruler and religious reformer of India. Moreover,
in spite of his wholly practical turn of mind, Antigonus learnt
something from his philosophic friends; notably, he imbibed somewhat of
the Stoic sense of duty. "Do you not understand," he said to his son,
who had misused some of his subjects, "that _our_ kingship is a noble
servitude?" Nevertheless, throughout his career, the sentiments of the
man of action strongly predominated over those of the man of thought. He
treated all shams with a truly Carlylean hatred and contempt. Moreover,
one trait in his character strongly indicates the pride of the masterful
man of action who scorns all adventitious advantages and claims to stand
or fall by his own merits. Napoleon, whilst the members of his family
were putting forth ignoble claims to noble birth, said that his patent
of nobility dated from the battle of Montenotte. Antigonus, albeit he
came of a royal stock, laid aside all ancestral claims to the throne of
Macedonia. He aspired to be king because of his kingly qualities. He
wished his people to apply to him the words which Tiberius used of a
distinguished Roman of humble birth: "Curtius Rufinus videtur mihi ex se
natus" (_Ann._ xi. 21). He succeeded in his attempt. He won the hearts
of his people, and although he failed in his endeavour to govern the
whole of Greece through the agency of subservient "tyrants," he
accomplished the main object which through good and evil fortune he
pursued with dogged tenacity throughout the whole of his chequered
career. He lived and died King of Macedonia.
The world-politics of this period are almost as confused as the
relationships which were the outcome of the matrimonial alliances
contracted by the principal actors on the world's stage. How bewildering
these alliances were may be judged from what Mr. Tarn says of
Stratonice, the daughter of Antiochus I., who married Demetrius, the son
of Antigonus: "Stratonice was her husband's first cousin and also his
aunt, her mother-in-law's half-sister and also her niece, her
father-in-law's niece, her own mother's granddaughter-in-law, and
perhaps other things which the curious may work out." Mr. Tarn has
unravelled the tangled political web with singular lucidity. Here it
must be sufficient to say that, after the death of Pyrrhus, a conflict
between Macedonia and Egypt, which stood at the head of an
anti-Macedonian coalition of which Athens, Epirus, and Sparta were the
principal members, became inevitable. The rivalry between the two States
led to the Chremonidean war--so called because in 266 the Athenian
Chremonides moved the declaration of war against Antigonus. The result
of the war was that on land Antigonus remained the complete master of
the situation. With true political instinct, however, he recognised the
truth of that maxim which history teaches from the days of Aegospotami
to those of Trafalgar, viz. that the execution of an imperial policy is
impossible without the command of the sea. This command had been secured
by his predecessors, but had fallen to Egypt after the fine fleet
created by Demetrius the Besieger had been shattered in 280 by Ptolemy
Keraunos with the help of the navy which had been created by Lysimachus.
Antigonus decided to regain the power which had been lost. His efforts
were at first frustrated by the wily and wealthy Egyptian monarch, who
knew the power of gold. "Egypt neither moved a man nor launched a ship,
but Antigonus found himself brought up short, his friends gone, his
fleet paralysed." Then death came unexpectedly to his aid and removed
his principal enemies. His great opponent, the masterful Arsinoë, who
had engineered the Chremonidean war, was already dead, and, in Mr.
Tarn's words, "comfortably deified." Other important deaths now followed
in rapid succession. Alexander of Corinth, Antiochus, and Ptolemy all
passed away. "The imposing edifice reared by Ptolemy's diplomacy
suddenly collapsed like the card-house of a little child." Antigonus was
not the man to neglect the opportunity thus afforded to him. Though now
advanced in years, he reorganised his navy and made an alliance with
Rhodes, with the result that "the sea power of Egypt went down, never to
rise again." Then he triumphantly dedicated his flagship to the Delian
Apollo. The possession of Delos had always been one of the main objects
of his ambition. It did more than symbolise the rule of the seas. It
definitely brought within the sphere of Macedonian influence one of the
greatest centres of Greek religious thought.
The rest of the story may be read in Mr. Tarn's graphic pages. He
relates how Antigonus incurred the undying enmity of Aratus of Sicyon,
one of those Greek democrats who held "that the very worst democracy was
infinitely better than the very best 'tyranny'--a conventional view
which neglects the uncomfortable fact that the tyranny of a democracy
can be the worst in the world." He lost Corinth, which he never
endeavoured to regain. His system of governing the Peloponnesus through
the agency of subservient "tyrants" utterly collapsed. "It is," Mr. Tarn
says, "a strange case of historical justice. As regards Macedonia,
Antigonus had followed throughout a sound and just idea of government,
and all that he did for Macedonia prospered. But in the Peloponnese,
though he found himself there from necessity rather than from choice, he
had employed an unjustifiable system; he lived long enough to see it
collapse."
The main interest to the present generation of the career of this
remarkable man consists in the fact that it is illustrative of the
belief that a man of action can also be a man of letters. As it was in
the days of the Antigonids, so it is now. Napier says that there is no
instance on record of a successful general who was not also a well-read
man. General Wolfe, the hero of Quebec, on being asked how he came to
adopt a certain tactical combination which proved eminently successful
at Louisbourg, said, "I had it from Xenophon." Havelock "loved Homer and
took pattern by Thucydides," and, according to Mr. Forrest, adopted
tactics at the battle of Cawnpore which he had learnt from a close
study of "Old Frederick's" dispositions at Leuthen. There is no greater
delusion than to suppose that study weakens the arm of the practical
politician, administrator, or soldier. On the contrary it fortifies it.
Lord Wolseley, himself a very distinguished man of action, speaking to
the students of the Royal Military Academy of Sir Frederick Maurice, who
possessed an inherited literary talent, said that he was "a fine example
of the combination of study and practice. He is not only the ablest
student of war we have, but is also the bravest man I have ever seen
under fire"; and on another occasion he wrote: "It is often said that
dull soldiers make the best fighters, because they do not think of
danger. Now, Maurice is one of the very few men I know who, if I told
him to run his head against a stone wall, would do so without question.
His is also the quickest and keenest intellect I have met in my
service."
[Footnote 103: _Antigonos Gonatas_. By W. Woodthorpe Tarn. Oxford: At
the Clarendon Press. 14s.]
XXIII
ANCIENT ART AND RITUAL[104]
_"The Spectator," August 9, 1913_
Any new work written by Miss Jane Harrison is sure to be eagerly
welcomed by all who take an interest in classical study or in
anthropology. The conclusions at which she arrives are invariably based
on profound study and assiduous research. Her generalisations are always
bold, and at times strikingly original. Moreover, it is impossible for
any lover of the classics, albeit he may move on a somewhat lower plane
of erudition, not to sympathise with the erudite enthusiasm of an author
who expresses "great delight" in discovering that Aristotle traced the
origin of the Greek drama to the Dithyramb--that puzzling and
"ox-driving" Dithyramb, of which Müller said that "it was vain to seek
an etymology," but whose meaning has been very lucidly explained by
Miss Harrison herself--and whose "heart stands still" in noting that "by
a piece of luck" Plutarch gives the Dionysiac hymn which the women of
Elis addressed to the "noble Bull."