constitution, was nothing else than a well organized school of war, a
permanent establishment for conquest. Among other nations, as among the
Persians and Greeks, the desire of military glory and the lust of
conquest was only a temporary enthusiasm, called forth by some special
cause, or some mighty motive--a sudden sally--the thought of a moment.
Among the Romans it is precisely the systematically slow and progressive
march of their first conquests, their inflexible perseverance, their
unremitting activity, the vigilant use of every advantageous
opportunity, which strike the observer, and explain the cause of their
mighty success in after-times. That unshaken constancy under misfortune,
which ever characterised the Romans, they displayed even at this early
period during the conquest of their city by the Gauls; though this
misfortune, like that people itself, was but a transient calamity. In
general, the Romans never evinced greater energy than when they were
overcome, or when they met with an unexpected resistance. Sometimes in a
moment of extreme urgency, their generals, like the Consul Decius Mus,
taking a chosen body of troops, invoked the national Gods, devoted
themselves to death, and rushed on the superior forces of the enemy,
whereby though they fell the victims of their zeal, they saved the army
from the menaced ignominy of defeat, and achieved a signal victory. With
such a character, such unshaken fortitude and perseverance under
misfortune, we can well conceive that in a state so constituted like
theirs, the Romans, by their indefatigable activity in war, should in no
very great space of time have conquered and subdued all the surrounding
nations and states of Italy. It was thus they successively overcame the
kindred and confederated tribes of Latium, and the rude Sabines; that,
after a long and obstinate siege of the Tuscan city of Veii, they became
masters of the Etrurian League, lords of the beautiful Campania, and
vanquished the warlike Samnites on the Apennine range, and on the coast
of the Adriatic. They now cast their eyes on the rich provinces of Magna
Graecia. In the war against Tarentum, which was in alliance with Pyrrhus,
King of Epirus, they came for the first time in contact with the great
extra-Italic Greek powers, and had to encounter, in the ranks of the
enemy, the unwonted spectacle of war-elephants, which were there
employed according to the Asiatic custom. After the loss of the first
battles, they were victorious; and they now added Apulia and Calabria to
their conquests. Each step in the career at victory drew after it new
embarrassments, new occasions, and new matter for future wars. The
inhabitants of Syracuse, who had been for some time governed by tyrants,
formed on the retreat of Pyrrhus, an alliance with the Carthaginians,
then masters of half of Sicily, and sought their protection against the
Romans, who were confederated with their enemies, another party in the
island. This brought on the first Punic war with that Republic, then
mistress of the sea. In this warfare against Pyrrhus and the
Carthaginians, the Romans, who had been hitherto confined within the
secluded circle of the petty states of Italy, appeared for the first
time on the great historical theatre of the then political world. In
that age which was immediately subsequent to the time of Alexander the
Great, the different Macedonian and other Greek powers of importance
formed, together with Egypt and Carthage, a variously connected system
of states, in one respect, not unlike the political system of modern
Europe, at the end of the 17th and during the greater part of the 18th
century. For, according to a principle of the balance of power, each
state sought to strengthen itself by alliances, and to repress an
overwhelming ascendancy, without on that account at all relaxing its
efforts for its own aggrandizement. That on one hand, the fluctuating
condition and internal troubles of those countries, and on the other,
the fresh youthful vigour, the steady perseverance and constancy of the
Roman people, would soon put an end to this system of equilibrium--to
these political oscillations between the different states, and bring
about the complete triumph and decided ascendancy of the Romans, might
indeed have been easily foreseen, and was in the very nature of things.
After the first Punic war, the Romans to the conquest of Sicily added
that of Corsica and Sardinia; and they next subdued the Cisalpine Gauls
in the North of Italy. When even Hannibal, the most formidable enemy the
Roman Republic ever had to encounter, and the one who had the most
deeply studied its true character, and the danger threatening the world
from that quarter; when even he, after the many great victories which,
in a long series of years, he had obtained over the Romans, in the
second Punic war; though he shook the power, was unable to break the
spirit of this people;--when this was the case, one might regard the
great political question of the then civilized world as settled; and it
could no longer be a matter of doubt that that city justly denominated
Strength, and which even from of old had been the idol of her sons, (who
accounted every thing as nought in comparison with her interests); that
that city, I say, was destined to conquer the world, and establish an
empire, the like whereof had never yet been founded by preceding
conquerors. The second Punic war terminated under the elder Scipio
before the walls of Carthage, and it completed the destruction of that
rival of Rome, at least as a political power. The Princes and states
that while it was yet time, should have formed a firm and steadfast
league against the common foe, fell now separately under the sword of
the victors, and the yoke of conquest. In the further progress of their
triumphs, the conquerors knew how to assume a certain character of
generosity, and give a certain colour of magnanimity to their acts, in
the eyes of a gazing and terrified world. Thus, for instance, after the
defeat of Philip, King of Macedon, they declared to deluded Greece that
she was free; and again, Antiochus the Great, whose arrogance had given
offence to many, and whose overthrow was in consequence the subject of
very general joy, was compelled to cede the Lesser Asia as far as Mount
Taurus; and the victors gave away the conquered provinces and kingdoms
to the Princes in their alliance, and affected not to have the intention
of subduing and keeping all for themselves. For it was yet much too soon
to let the unconquered states and nations perceive that all, without
distinction, were destined, one after the other, to become the provinces
of the all-absorbing empire of Rome. Thus now overpassing the limits of
Greece, the Romans had obtained a firm footing in Asia; and this first
step was soon enough to be succeeded by other and still further
advances. Historians have often remarked the decisive moment when Caesar,
after an instant's reflection and delay, crossed the Rubicon; but we may
ask now, when Rome herself had passed her Rubicon, where was that
historical limit--that last boundary-line of ambition, after passing
which no return, no halt were possible; if now, when all right, all
justice, every human term and limit to ambition were lost sight of, if
now idolized Rome in the fulness of her Pagan pride, and in her rapid
career of destruction, marching from one crime against the world to
another, descending deeper and deeper into the abyss of interminable,
foreign and domestic bloodshed, was, from the summit of her triumphs, to
sink beyond redemption, down to Caligula and Nero?--We might point out,
as an instance of this ever growing and reckless arrogance, the moment
when the last king of Macedon,[64] not more than a century and a half
from the death of Alexander the Great, was led in triumph into the city
of the conquerors, a captive and in chains, to sate the eyes of the
Roman populace. It entered into the high designs of Providence in the
government of the world, during this middle and second period of
universal history, that each of the conquering nations should receive
its full measure of justice from another worse than itself, emerging
suddenly from obscurity, and chosen as the instrument of its
annihilation or subjection. But a still more decisive example of the
spirit of Roman conquests was the cruel destruction of Carthage in the
third Punic war, begun without any assignable motive and from pure
caprice. In this case no other resistance could be expected than the
resistance of despair, which here indeed showed itself in all its
energy. For seventeen days the city was in flames, and the numbers that
were exterminated amounted to seven hundred thousand souls, including
the women and children sold into slavery; so that this scene of horror
served as an early prelude to the later destruction of Jerusalem. The
wiser and more lenient Scipios had been against this war of
extermination, and had had to contend with the self-willed rancour of
the elder Cato; yet a Scipio conducted this war, and was the last
conqueror over the ashes of Carthage. And this was a man universally
accounted to be of a mild character and generous nature; and such he
really was in other respects and in private life. But this reputation
must be apparently estimated by the Roman standard, for whenever Rome
and her interests were at stake, all mankind and the lives of nations
were considered as of no importance. Besides, it is really not in the
power of a General to do away with the cruelty of any received system of
warfare.
The example of the first great re-action of nations, too late aroused,
was set by Greece in the war of the Achaian league. It terminated like
all the preceding wars;--Corinth was consumed, and its destruction
involved that of an infinite number of noble and beautiful works of art,
belonging to the better ages of Greece. Among the nations of the North
and West that lived under a yet free and natural form of government, the
Spaniards distinguished themselves by a peculiar obstinacy of
resistance. Scipio was unable to conquer Numantia; the people who
defended their liberty behind this rampart, set fire to the city, and
the remaining defenders devoted themselves to a voluntary death. In the
public triumph which the Romans celebrated on this occasion, they were
able to exhibit only a few brave Lusitanians of a gigantic size. Now
commenced the civil wars:--the first was occasioned by Tiberius
Gracchus, then leader of the popular party at Rome. To undertake the
complete justification of any one of the leading men in the Roman
parties, would be an arduous, not to say impracticable task; yet we may
positively assert of the elder Gracchus, that he was the best man of his
party; as the same observation will apply to the Scipios in the opposite
party of the Patricians. The proposal of Gracchus was this--that the
rights of Roman citizens should be extended to the rest of Italy. It was
in the very nature of things that such a change, or at least one very
similar, should now take place, as in fact it did somewhat later; for
after the conquest of so many provinces, the disproportion between the
one all-ruling city and the vast regions which it had subdued, was much
too great to continue long. The armed insurrection of all the Italian
nations that occurred soon after, sufficiently proves of what vital
importance this measure was considered. But the pride of the ruling
Patricians was extremely offended at this claim--they regarded it as an
attempt to subvert the ancient constitution of the country--and, in the
revolt that ensued, Tiberius Gracchus lost his life. From that time
forward the principles apparently contended for on both sides were mere
pretexts--whether it were the maintenance of the law, and of the ancient
constitution, as asserted by the Patricians--or the just claims of the
people, and the necessary changes which the altered circumstances of the
times demanded, as alleged by the opposite party. It was now an open
struggle for ascendancy between a few factious leaders and their
partisans--a civil war carried on between fierce and formidable
Oligarchs.
The effusion of blood was still greater in the troubles which the
younger Caius Gracchus occasioned, and which had the same motive and the
same object as the preceding commotions, though conducted with more
animosity, and stained by greater crimes; and in the Patrician party,
the noble Scipio, the hero of the third Punic war, fell a victim of
assassination. Murders and poisoning were now every day more common; and
it became the practice to carry daggers under the mantle. On this
occasion we may cite an observation, made not by any father of the
church, or any Christian moralist; but by a celebrated German historian,
who was in other respects an enthusiastic admirer of the Republican
heroism of the ancients: "Rome, the mistress of the world," says he,
"drunk with the blood of nations, began now to rage in her entrails." Of
Marius and Sylla, on whom next devolved the conduct of the Patrician and
Plebeian parties in the civil war, now conducted on a more extended
scale, it is difficult to decide which of the two surpassed the other in
cruelty and blood-thirstiness. Marius was indeed of a ruder, and more
savage character--but Sylla evinced perhaps a more systematic and
relentless ferocity. Both were great generals; and it was only after
obtaining splendid victories over foreign nations that they could think
of turning their fury against their native city, after having spent
their rage on the rest of mankind. The victories of Marius had delivered
Rome from the mighty danger with which she had been menaced, by the
irruption of the powerful tribes of the Cimbri and Teutones--the first
fore-runner of the Great Northern migration. Danger served but to arouse
the Roman people to more triumphant exertions; and every effort of
hostile resistance, when once overcome, tended only to confirm their
universal dominion. The greatest and most formidable of these efforts of
resistance was made by Mithridates, King of Pontus--it began by the
murder of eighty thousand Romans in his dominions, and the simultaneous
revolt of all the Italian nations against the Roman sway. No enemy of
the Romans, since Hannibal, had formed such a deep-laid plan as
Mithridates, whose intention it was to unite in one armed confederacy
against Rome all the nations of the North, from the regions of Mount
Caucasus, as far as Gaul and the Alps. By his victories over this enemy,
Sylla prepared to return to Rome, torn and convulsed by civil war; and
on his entry into the city, he treated it with all the infuriated
vengeance of a conqueror, proscribed, gave full loose to slaughter, and
perpetrated the most execrable atrocities. We may cite as a strange
instance of the still surviving greatness of the Roman character, the
fact, that Sylla, immediately after all this immense bloodshed, as if
every thing had passed in perfect conformity to law and order, laid down
the Dictatorship, retired peacefully to his estate, and there prepared
to write his own history. In one respect, however, he was a flatterer of
the multitude--he seems to have thoroughly understood the Roman people,
for he was the first to introduce the games of the circus, those bloody
combats of animals, those cruel Gladiatorial fights, which afterwards,
under the Emperors, became like bread, one of the most indispensable
necessaries to the Roman people, and one of the most important objects
of concern to its rulers. For these games, where the Roman eye delighted
to contemplate men devoted to certain death contend and wrestle with the
most savage animals, Pompey on one occasion introduced six hundred lions
on the arena, and Augustus, four hundred panthers. Thus did a thirst for
blood, after having been long the predominant passion of the
party-leaders of this all-ruling people, become an actual craving--a
festive entertainment for the multitude. And yet the Romans of this age,
when we consider their conduct in war--in the battles and victories they
won, or the strength of character they evinced, whether on the tented
field, or on the arena of political contests, displayed an admirable, we
might sometimes say a super-human, energy; so that we are often at a
loss how to reconcile our admiration with the detestation which their
actions unavoidably inspire. It was as if the iron-footed God of war,
Gradivus, so highly revered from of old by the people of Romulus,
actually bestrode the globe, and at every step struck out new torrents
of blood; or as if the dark Pluto had emerged from the abyss of eternal
night, escorted by all the vengeful spirits of the lower world, by all
the Furies of passion and insatiable cupidity, by the blood-thirsty
demons of murder, to establish his visible empire, and erect his throne
for ever on the earth. There can be no doubt that if the Roman history
were divested of its accustomed rhetoric, of all the patriotic maxims
and trite sayings of politicians, and were presented with strict and
minute accuracy in all its living reality, every humane mind would be
deeply shocked at such a picture of tragic truth, and penetrated with
the profoundest detestation and horror. The licentiousness of Roman
manners, too, was really gigantic; so that the moral corruption of the
Greeks appears in comparison a mere infant essay in the school of vice.
The civil wars that next followed had in all essential points the same
character with the first, though the fearful recollection, which still
dwelt in men's minds, of the times of Marius and Sylla, tended to
introduce at first a certain caution in all external proceedings; but in
the course of their progress, these wars resumed the sanguinary
character of the earlier civil contests. The proper circle of the Roman
conquests, whose natural circumference was now marked out by all the
countries bordering on the Mediterranean, was, in the second period of
the civil wars, pretty well filled up by Caesar and Pompey--by Pompey on
the side of Asia, and by Caesar on the side of the incomparably more
formidable and more warlike nations of the North-western frontier. The
conquest of Gaul was achieved by an uncommon effusion of human blood,
even according to a Roman estimation; and in the fifty battles related
by Caesar to have been fought in the Gallic war, in the complete
subjugation of Spain, in the first wars on the Germanic frontiers and in
Britain, as well as in the North of Africa against Juba, and against the
son of Mithridates, the number of men left on the field is computed at
twelve hundred thousand; and it is to be observed that as Caesar is his
own historian, these estimates have in part been given by himself. Yet
was he praised for his goodness and the mildness of his character; but
this praise must be measured by the Roman standard, and it is so far
true that Caesar was by no means vindictive, nor in general subject to
passion, nor cruel without a motive. But, whenever his interest required
it, he was careless what blood he spilled. The war between Caesar and
Pompey extended over all the provinces and regions of the Roman world;
but, when conqueror, Caesar formed and followed up the plan of completing
and consolidating his victory by a system of lenity and conciliation.
With all his indefatigable activity and consummate wisdom, with all the
equanimity, prudence and energy of his character, he appears to have
been still weak enough to imagine that the laurels he had acquired, in a
way unequalled by any, were insufficient without the diadem--at least he
gave occasion for such a suspicion. And so the second Brutus perpetrated
on his person the act, for which the elder had been so highly commended
by all Roman historians. To relate the subsequent civil war of Brutus
and Cassius, the reconciliation between Antony and Octavius, which
involved the death of Cicero, the new rupture and war between the latter
rivals, would serve only to swell this account of Rome and her
destinies. These contests terminated in the establishment of monarchy,
when the bloody proscriptions and civil wars of preceding times were
forgotten, and Octavius, under the name of Augustus, appeared as the
restorer of general peace, and the first absolute monarch of the Roman
world;--a monarch whose long reign was on the whole very happy, when
compared with previous times, and who during his life was half-deified
by his subjects. Unlimited power was still clothed and half veiled in
the old republican forms and expressions; and the recollection of
Caesar's fate was too present to the mind of the cautious Augustus, for
him ever to neglect those forms and usages. It would really appear as if
the world were destined to breathe for a time in peace, and to repose
awhile from those earlier wars, before another and a higher peace
descended, and became visible on the earth--and along with that other,
higher and divine peace, a new and spiritual combat, waged not with the
warlike parties of old, nor even with external and earthly power, but
with the secret and internal cause of all those agitations, and all that
injustice in the world.
A golden age of literature and poetry served now to adorn the general
peace, which the mighty Augustus had conferred on the conquered world.
This poetry was however but a late harvest which flourished towards the
autumn of declining Paganism. Plautus and Terence we can regard merely
as tolerably successful imitators of the Greeks. The beautiful diction
and poetry of Virgil and Horace are in a general survey of literature
chiefly valuable, inasmuch as they gave a noble refinement to a language
which, in modern ages, and even still among ourselves, has been
universally current; but all this poetry, including that, which the
richer, more copious, and more inventive fancy of Ovid produced, can be
considered by posterity as only a very thin gleaning after the full
bloom and rich harvest of Grecian poetry and art. The real poetry of the
Roman people lay elsewhere than in those artificial compositions of
Greek scholars. It must be sought for in the festive games of the
circus, which the prudent Augustus never neglected--in those theatrical
combats, where the Gladiator, wrestling with death, knew how to fall and
die with dignity, when he wished to obtain the plaudits of the
multitude--in that circus, in fine, which so often afterwards resounded
with the cry of an infuriated populace;--"Christianos ad leones," "the
Christians to the lions, the Christians to the lions."
In the department of history, the case was very different from what it
was in poetry. There the strong practical sense of the Romans, their
profound political sagacity, the far wider circle of their political
relations, gave them a decided advantage over the Greeks, who can shew
no historian, possessed of the simple grandeur of Caesar;--a style as
rapid, and as straight-forward, as the exploits of Caesar himself; or
distinguished, like Tacitus, by that deep insight into the abyss of
human corruption; while to Livy must be assigned a place by the side at
least of the most illustrious Greeks. Among the Romans, political
eloquence and philosophy, by that union of the two, such as prevails in
Cicero's writings, as well as by the greater magnitude and practical
importance of the subjects which both found for discussion, possess a
peculiar charm and value. At this period the study of Greek philosophy
was regarded and prosecuted by the Romans merely as an useful auxiliary
to eloquence; and in the general depravity of morals, and amid the utter
indifference for public misery and universal bloodshed, the philosophy
of Epicurus naturally found the most admirers. It was only at a later
period, when, under the better emperors, some men had undertaken the
task of the moral regeneration of the Roman people and the Roman state,
that those who entertained this great design sought for the last plank
of national safety in the stoical philosophy, which harmonized so well
with the austere gravity of the Roman character. Then this philosophy
obtained numerous followers among the Romans, as in earlier times it had
found favour with many of them, especially among the Jurists.
In the whole circle of human sciences, jurisprudence is that department
of intellect, in which the Romans have thought with the most
originality, and have exerted the greatest influence; and which, by
means of their writers, has obtained at once a very great degree of
refinement, and a very wide diffusion. Caesar had formed the project of a
general digest of Roman laws; but this great design, like so many others
he had entertained, was left unexecuted; and the age of Augustus at
least was distinguished by two great lawyers of opposite schools. It is
by the scientific jurisprudence which they have bequeathed to posterity,
more than by any thing else, that the Romans have exerted a mighty
influence on after-ages. It must strike us at first sight as singular,
that a nation which, in its external relations, had risen to greatness,
and indeed had founded its greatness, on so fearful an excess of
injustice, should have risen to such eminence in the science of
jurisprudence, as the Romans undoubtedly have. But the injustice of
their conduct towards other states and nations this people well knew how
to conceal under legal forms, and establish on legal titles; and it
often happened that, by the inconsistent conduct of other nations, they
were able to give a colouring of equity to their acts, and shew on their
side the strict letter of law.
In the next place, the Roman jurisprudence regarded more immediately the
relations of private life, and all the artificial forms of civil law;
and we can well conceive that a people like the Romans, distinguished
for so sound a judgment and such strong practical sense, and whose minds
were so exclusively bent on civil life, and its various relations,
should have attained such distinction in the science of civil
jurisprudence, notwithstanding the enormous iniquity of their conduct in
the wider historical department of international law; and here we may
find an explanation of that apparent contradiction between law and
injustice, such as we find frequent examples of in human nature and in
the records of history.
There is also another element of contradiction in the Roman law,
considered both in itself, and in its relation to other codes--a
contradiction which strongly pervaded the whole theory of that
legislation, and may furnish us with a clue to a right judgment on the
Roman jurisprudence, and on the influence it has exercised on posterity.
This is the distinction between strict or absolute law, and the law of
equity, that is to say, the law qualified by historical circumstances.
In the Germanic law, as it is a law of custom and ancient usage, a law
qualified by times and circumstances, the principle of equity is more
predominant; and we have, indeed, reason to regret that this native and
original legislation of the modern European nations should, by the
prevailing influence of the more scientific jurisprudence of ancient
Rome, have been cast into the back-ground, in proportion as those
nations began to mistake the true character of their historical
antiquity. The Roman jurisprudence, as it deals in rigid formulas, and
adheres to the strict letter, inclines more towards rigid and absolute
law; and its spirit has something akin to the stern international policy
of the ancient Romans. But is this strict and absolute law a fit
criterion to apply to earthly concerns, can it be a true standard of
human justice, in its more large and general applications to the great
transactions of universal history, and in its relations to divine
justice? Every thing absolute (and such undoubtedly is _strict law_, in
the relations of private, and still more in those of public life),
everything absolute is sure to provoke its contrary, and if continued,
will occasion successive reactions, that can terminate only in the
mutual destruction of conflicting parties--the inevitable result of all
contests carried to extreme lengths--unless some higher principle of
peace intervene to compose and determine them by a divine law of equity.
But if this conciliating principle do not pronounce its sentence, or if
it be not attended to, extreme injustice only can spring from this rigid
and inflexible application of extreme law; and this is quite in the
spirit of the old saying of the Jurists, which we must here apply in a
more general sense, in order to estimate with truth and accuracy the
nature of the contests which divide the world. "Let justice be done,"
they say (and the word is here used in the juridical sense of strict and
absolute law), "let justice be done, though the world should be ruined."
And we may well say in reply:--Woe to mankind, woe to every individual,
woe to the world, were they doomed to be finally judged according to
this rigid justice, and this rigid justice only, by _Him_ who alone has
the power and the right to dispense such severe justice unto men, and
judge them by its rules. But since such full and inexorable justice
belongs to God only, who is incapable of error; and since all human
justice is but the temporary delegate of the divine; it should
necessarily be mild, indulgent, qualified by circumstances; and should
on the principle of equity be as lenient as possible, and be ever
mindful of its due limits. And this principle is applicable to the most
important as well as the most insignificant relations of life, and is so
thoroughly connected with them all that, according as we adopt the one
or the other principle of strict and absolute law, or of mild equity,
the whole of our conduct, opinions, and views of the world must differ.
The power of the state is only a temporary, and delegated, power,
destined to accomplish the ends of divine justice; and this dignity,
indeed, is sufficiently exalted, and the responsibility attached to it
sufficiently great; but this supreme human justice, unless it disregard
its own limits, as well as those of mankind, is not divine justice, nor
the immediate authority of God, nor God himself.
The old hereditary vice and fundamental error of the Roman government,
and indeed of the Roman people, was that political idolatry of the
state, to which the false theory of strict and absolute law was of
itself calculated to lead. Although the absolute power of Augustus was
still somewhat veiled under the old forms of the Republic, yet even in
his reign commenced the formal deification of the person of the Prince,
and, under the succeeding emperors, it exceeded all bounds, and
descended to the basest forms of adulation. And if even this idolatry
had been paid, not so exclusively to the person of an Augustus or a
Tiberius, as to the idea of the state identified with that person; and
if thus the real object of that Pagan worship had been in the latest, as
in the earliest, times, Rome, the eternally prosperous, the
everlastingly powerful, the world-destroying, and people-devouring,
Rome, to which every thing must fall a sacrifice; still it was not the
less a thorough political idolatry. And as a sensual worship of Nature
eminently characterized the poetical religion of the Greeks--as the
abusive rites of magic were peculiar to the false mysteries of Egypt--so
this third and greatest aberration of Paganism,--political idolatry in
its most frightful shape, formed the distinguishing character and
leading principle of the Roman state, from the earliest to the latest
period of its history.