to the North along the Rhine and Danube. This is the style of the
_limes_ of Upper Germany
THE ROMAN FORUM IN THE EARLY EMPIRE 281
HADRIAN’S TOMB, RESTORED 295
See p. 294
INTRODUCTION
questa del Foro tuo solitudine
ogni rumore vince, ogni gloria,
e tutto che al mondo è civile,
grande, augusto, egli è romano ancora.
CARDUCCI.
THE PERSPECTIVE OF ROMAN HISTORY
Athens and Rome stand side by side as the parents of Western
civilisation. The parental metaphor is almost irresistible. Rome is so
obviously masculine and robust, Greece endowed with so much loveliness
and charm. Rome subjugates by physical conquest and government. Greece
yields so easily to the Roman might and then in revenge so easily
dominates Rome itself, with all that Rome has conquered, by the mere
attractiveness of superior humanity. Nevertheless this metaphor of
masculine and feminine contains a serious fallacy. Greece, too, had
had days of military vigour. It was by superior courage and skill
in fighting that Athens and Sparta had beaten back the Persian
invasions of the fifth century before Christ, and thus saved Europe
for occidentalism. Again it was by military prowess that Alexander the
Great carried Greek civilisation to the borders of India, Hellenising
Asia Minor, Syria, Persia, Egypt, Phœnicia and even Palestine. This
he did just at the moment when Rome was winning her dominion over
Latium. Instead, then, of looking at Greece and Rome as two coeval
forces working side by side we must regard them as predecessor and
successor. Rome is scarcely revealed as a world-power until she meets
Greek civilisation in Campania near the beginning of the third century
before Christ. The physical decline of Greece is scarcely apparent
until her phalanx returns beaten in battle by the Roman maniples at
Beneventum. Moreover, in addition to this chronological division of
spheres there is also a geographical division. Greece takes the East,
Rome the West, and though by the time that Rome went forth to govern
her Western provinces she was already pretty thoroughly permeated with
Greek civilisation, yet the West remained throughout mediæval history
far more Latin than Greek. When Constantine divided the empire he was
only expressing in outward form a natural division of culture.
The resemblances between Rome and Greece even from the first are
very clearly marked. In many respects they are visibly of the same
family, and, though we no longer speak as confidently of “Aryan”
and “Indo-European” as did the ethnologists and philologists of the
nineteenth century, yet there remains an obvious kinship of language,
customs, and even dress. Many of the most obvious similarities, such as
those of religion, are now seen to be the result of later borrowing,
but there remains a distinct cousinship, whether derived from the
conquest of both peninsulas by kindred tribes of northern invaders, as
Ridgeway holds, or from the existence of an aboriginal Mediterranean
face, as Sergi believes--or from both.
But with all these resemblances, one of the most interesting features
of ancient history lies in the psychological contrast between Greece
and Rome, or rather between Athens and Rome. Athens is rich in ideas,
full of the spirit of inquiry, and hence fertile in invention, fond of
novelty, worshipping brilliance of mind and body. Rome is stolid and
conservative, devoted to tradition and law. Gravity and the sense of
duty are her supreme virtues. Here we have the two types that succeed
and conquer, set side by side for comparison. To which is the victory
in the end?
To the Englishman of to-day Rome is in some ways far more familiar than
Greece. Apart from obvious resemblances in history and in character,
Rome touches our own domestic history, and any man who has marked the
stability of old Roman foundations or the straightness of old Roman
roads has already grasped a fundamental truth about her. He is surely
not far wrong in the general sense of irresistible power, of blind
energy and rigid law, which he associates with the name of Rome.
Thus, there is not as there was in the case of Greece any radical
misconception of the Roman character to be combated.
But there is, it appears, a widely prevalent false perspective in the
common view of Roman history. The modern reader, especially if he
be an Englishman, is a very stern moralist in his judgment of other
nations and ages. In addition to this he is a citizen of an empire now
extremely self-conscious and somewhat bewildered at its own magnitude.
He cannot help drawing analogies from Roman history and seeking in it
“morals” for his own guidance. The Roman empire bears such an obvious
and unique resemblance to the British that the fate of the former
must be of enormous interest to the latter. For this reason alone we
are apt to regard the _fall_ of Rome as the cardinal point of Roman
history. To this must be added the influence of Gibbon’s great work.
By Gibbon we are led to contemplate above all things (with Silas Wegg)
her Decline and Fall. Thus Rome has become for many people simply
a colossal failure and a horrible warning. We behold her first as
a Republic tottering to her inevitable ruin, and then as an Empire
decaying from the start and continuing to fester for some five hundred
years. This is one of the cases which prove that History is made not so
much by heroes or natural forces as by historians. It is an accident of
historiography that the Republic was not described by any great native
historian until its close, when amid the horrors of civil war men set
themselves to idealise the heroes of extreme antiquity and thus left
a gloomy picture of unmitigated deterioration. As there was no great
historian in sympathy with the imperial regime, the reputation of the
early Empire was left mainly in the hands of Tacitus and Suetonius, the
former of whom riddled it with epigrams while the latter befouled it
with scandal. Nearly all Roman writers had a rhetorical training and a
satirical bent: all Romans were praisers of the past. Thus it is that
Roman virtue has receded into an age which modern criticism declares
to be mythological. It is a further accident that the genius of Rome’s
greatest modern historian was also strongly satirical. It was a natural
affinity of temper which led Gibbon to continue the story of Tacitus
and to dip his pen into the same bitter fluid.
Thus Rome has found few impartial historians and hardly any sympathetic
ones. But is it possible to be sympathetic? While every true scholar
feels a thrill at the name of Greece, scarcely any one _loves_ Ancient
Rome. At the first mention of her name the average man’s thoughts fly
to the Colosseum and the Christian martyr “facing the lion’s gory mane”
to the music of Nero’s fiddle. His second thought is to formulate his
explanation of her decline and fall. The explanations are as various
as political complexions. “Luxury,” says the moralist, “Heathendom,”
says the Christian, “Christianity,” replies Gibbon. The Protectionist
can easily show that it was due to the Importation of free corn, while
the Free Trader draws attention to the enormous burdens which Roman
trade had to bear. “Militarism,” explains the peace-lover; “neglect of
personal service,” replies the conscriptionist. The Liberal and the
Conservative can both draw valuable conclusions from Roman history in
support of their respective attitudes of mind. “If it had not been for
demagogues like Marius and the Gracchi,” says the Conservative, “Rome
might have continued to exhibit the courage and patriotism which
she displayed under senatorial guidance in the war against Hannibal,
instead of rushing to her doom by way of sedition and disorder.” With
equal justice the Liberal points to the stupid bigotry with which that
corrupt oligarchy, the senate, delayed necessary reforms. That, he
says, was the cause of the downfall of Rome. That was the writing on
the wall.
Whether it is or is not possible to love Ancient Rome, I would suggest
that this attitude of treating her merely as a subject for autopsies
and a source of gloomy vaticinations for the benefit of the British
Empire is a preposterous affront to history. The mere notion of an
empire continuing to decline and fall for five centuries is ridiculous.
It is to regard as a failure the greatest civilising force in all the
history of Europe, the most stable form of government, the strongest
military and political system that has ever existed.
It is just at this point that our own generation can add something of
great importance to the study of Roman history. Whatever may be said
for its faith, hope is the great discovery of our age. By the help of
that blessed word “Evolution” we have learnt not to put our Golden Ages
in the past but in the future. In many instances we have discovered
that what our fathers called decay was really progress. May it not be
so with Rome?
The destiny or function of Rome in world-history was nothing more or
less than the making of Europe. The modern family of European nations
are her sons and daughters, and some of her daughters have grown
up and married foreign husbands and given birth to offspring. For
this great purpose it was necessary that the city itself should pass
through the phases of growth, maturity and decay. In political terms,
it was part of the Roman destiny to translate the civilisation of the
city-state into that of the nation or territorial state. Having evolved
the Province it was necessary that the City should expire. Conquest
on a colossal scale was part of the programme, absolute centralised
dominion was another part. For this purpose the change from republic to
autocracy was necessary.
Greece, as we have seen elsewhere, by her system of small states
enclosed and protected by city walls, had been able, long before the
world at large was nearly ripe for it, to develop a civilised culture
with habits of thought and speech which are now called European or
Occidental. It was in a highly concentrated social life and under
artificial conditions that Athens had laid the foundation of all our
arts, sciences and philosophies. It was, however, as we saw, impossible
for the civic democracy to expand naturally. She could hold a little
empire for a few years by means of precarious sea-power. She could
throw off a few daughter cities made in her own likeness. But for
missionary work on a large scale the city-state was not adapted.
Something much larger than a city and much more single-minded than
a democracy was necessary for that purpose. The genius of Alexander
the Great, an autocrat and a semi-barbarian, enabled him to do much
towards propagating Hellenism in the eastern part of the Mediterranean
littoral. But his early death prevented the fulfilment of his task and
the half of him that was Greek made him consider the planting of new
Greek cities the only means for fulfilling it.
Here then was the part which Rome had to play. She had to do for the
West what Alexander had attempted for the East. In some respects her
task was harder, for her work lay among warlike barbarians, but easier
in that she had not to face the corrupting influence of a rival and
more ancient civilisation.
Rome too began as a city-state and it was while she was still in that
condition that Greek civilisation came to her and took her by storm.
It was the new wine that burst the old bottle when Rome attempted to
transform herself into a Greek democracy, and failing became a monarchy
once more. It was not, therefore, a case of “decline and fall” when
Rome ceased to be a republic. No liberal need heave a sigh for the
departed republic. It was an oligarchy that had for a century deserved
to be replaced by something better, and the change was even an upward
step in liberty for all but a few hundreds of Roman nobles. If we can
but turn our minds away from the gossip of the court and the spite of
the discontented aristocracy to a just survey of that majestic and
enduring system of provincial government, we shall be able to discern
progress where historians would have us lament decay.
It was progress again when Rome gradually ceased to be a city-state
with a surrounding territory and became successively the capital of
an empire and then one of half a dozen great centres of government.
Finally it was progress, as we ought by now to be able to see, when
the artificial ramparts on the Rhine and Danube broke down and the new
nations came into their inheritance. By that time Rome had accomplished
her work and the phase of the city-state was over.
Some such convictions as these are, I think, inevitable to any one
who views European history as a whole in the light of any theory of
historical evolution. Rome has long been the playground of satirists
and pessimists. Unfortunately at this date it is difficult if not
impossible to shake their verdict and to read Roman history in the new
light. To do so you cannot follow the authorities, for they were all
on the side of deterioration. The idea of progress was unknown to the
ancient world, and above all others the Romans believed that their
Golden Age was behind them. It becomes necessary therefore to extract
truth from unwilling witnesses, always a precarious and suspicious
undertaking. All the Roman men of letters believed with Horace:
damnosa quid non imminuit dies?
ætas parentum peior auis tulit
nos nequiores, mox daturos
progeniem uitiosiorem.[1]
Unless we are prepared to accept the rank of _progenies vitiosissima_
we are compelled to discount this whole tendency of thought and read
our authorities between the lines. They were all rhetoricians, all bent
on praising the past at the expense of the present and the future;
none of them were over-scrupulous in dealing with evidence. If all the
historians had perished and only the inscriptions remained we should
have a very different picture of the Roman empire, a picture much
brighter and, I think, much more faithful to truth.
LATINISM
Hellenism we know and understand; every true classical scholar is
a Hellenist by conviction. But what is Latinism and who are our
Latinists? The altar fires are extinct and the votaries are scattered.
Except for a small volume of the choicest Latin poetry of the Augustan
age, what that is Latin gives us pleasure to-day? Greek studies seem
to attract all that is most brilliant and genial in the world of
scholarship: Latin is mainly relegated to the dry-as-dusts. Who reads
Lucan out of school hours? Who would search Egypt for Cicero’s lost
work “De Gloria”? Who would recognise a quotation from Statius?
It has not always been so. Once they quoted Lucan and Seneca across
the floor of the House of Commons. The eighteenth century was far more
in sympathy with Ancient Rome than we are. In those days it would not
have seemed absurd to argue the superiority of Vergil over Homer. Down
to that day Latin had remained the alternative language for educated
people, the medium of international communication, even for diplomacy,
until French gradually took its place. Only if you specifically sought
to reach the vulgar did you write in English. Though Dr. Johnson could
write a very pretty letter in French, he used habitually to converse
with Frenchmen in Latin; not that it made him more intelligible, for,
in fact, no foreigner could understand the English pronunciation of
Latin; but that he did not wish to appear at a disadvantage with a mere
Frenchman by adopting a foreign jargon. As for public inscriptions,
though half the literary men in London signed a round-robin entreating
the great autocrat to write Oliver Goldsmith’s epitaph in English,
Johnson “refused to disgrace the walls of Westminster Abbey with an
English inscription.”
What is the cause of the eclipse which Latin studies are still
suffering? One cause, perhaps, is to be found in the misuse of the
language by the pedagogues and philologists of the past in the school
and the examination-room. But another cause is the recent discovery
of the true Greek civilisation, whereby scholars have come to realise
that Latin culture is in the main only secondary and derivative. At
the present moment we are passing through a stage of revolt against
classicism, convention, and artificiality. We know that Greek culture,
truly discerned, is neither “classic” nor conventional nor artificial,
but Latinism is still apparently subject to all these terms. The
Latinity of Cicero, Vergil, Ovid, Horace, Lucan, and the greater part
of the giants, in fact all the Latin of our schools is--what Greek is
not--really and truly classical. They were not writing as they spoke
and thought. They had studied the laws of expression in the school of
rhetoric, and on pain of being esteemed barbarous they wrote under
those laws. Style was their aim. Their very language was subject
to arbitrary laws of syntax and grammar. The English schoolboy who
approaches Cicero by way of the primer’s rules and examples is entering
into Latin literature by much the same road as the Romans themselves.
The Romans were grammarians by instinct and orators by education. Thus
Latin is fitted by nature for schoolroom use, and for all who would
learn and study words, which after all are thoughts, Latin is the
supremely best training-ground. The language marches by rule. Rules
govern the inflexions and the concords of the words. The periods are
built up logically and beautifully in obedience to law. Latin, of all
languages, least permits translation. You have only to translate Cicero
to despise him.
In the world of letters, as in that of politics, there are the virtues
of order and the virtues of liberty. Our own eighteenth century was
logical in mind because it had to clothe its thoughts in a language of
precision. But even Pope and Addison are rude barbarians compared with
Vergil and Cicero. _De gustibus non est disputandum_--let some prefer
the plain roast and others the made dish. Latin may be an acquired
taste, but no sort of excellence is mortal. Latin will come into its
own again along with Dryden and Congreve, along with patches and
periwigs. Meanwhile it must be a very dull soul who is unmoved by the
grandeur of Roman history, the triumphant march of the citizen legions,
the dogged patriotism which resisted Hannibal to the death, and the
pageantry and splendour of the Empire. One must be blind not to admire
the massive strength of her ruined monuments, arches, bridges, roads,
and aqueducts. And one must be deaf indeed not to enjoy the surges of
Ciceronian oratory or the rolling music of the Vergilian hexameter.
Greece may claim all the charm of the spring-time of civilisation, but
Rome in all her works has a majesty which must command, if not love,
wonder and respect. Mommsen justly remarks that “it is only a pitiful
narrow-mindedness that will object to the Athenian that he did not know
how to mould his State like the Fabii and Valerii, or to the Roman that
he did not learn to carve like Phidias and to write like Aristophanes.”
Under the flowing toga of Latinism the natural Roman is concealed from
our view. It is possible that the progress of research and excavation
may to some extent rediscover him and distinguish him, as it has
already done for his Hellenic brother, from the polished courtiers of
the Augustan age who have hitherto passed as typical products of Rome.
It is astonishing how little we really know of Rome and the Romans
after all that has been said and written about them. The ordinary
natural Roman is a complete stranger to us. It is certain that he did
not live in luxury like Mæcenas, but how did he live and what sort
of man was he? We can discern that his language was not in the least
like that of Cicero. It appears that he neither dreaded nor disliked
emperors like Nero, as did Tacitus and Juvenal. As for his religion,
much has already been done, and more still remains to be done, to
show that he did not really worship the Hellenised Olympians who pass
in literature for his gods. Recent scholarship has done something to
reveal to us the presence of a real national art in Rome, or at any
rate of an artistic development on Italian soil which made visible
steps of its own out of Hellenic leading-strings. Thus there is some
hope that the real Roman will not always elude us. But for the present
in the whole domain of art, religion, thought, and literature, Greek
influence has almost obliterated the native strain. For the present,
therefore, we must be content to regard Roman civilisation as mainly
derivative, and our principal object will be to see how Rome fulfilled
her task as the missionary of Greek thought. This object, together
with the unsatisfactory nature of the records, must excuse the haste
with which I have passed over the earlier stages of Roman republican
history. It is obvious that the first three centuries of our era will
be the important part of Roman history from this point of view. Also,
if the progress of civilisation be our main study, nothing in Roman
history before the beginning of the second century B.C. can come
directly under our attention. When the Romans first came into contact
with the Greeks they were still barbarians, with no literature, no art,
and very little industry or commerce. The earlier periods will only be
introductory.
ITALY AND THE ROMAN
The pleasant land of Italy needs no description here. Our
illustrations[2] will recall its sunny hill-sides, its deep shadows,
its vineyards and olive-yards. But there are one or two features of its
geography which have a bearing upon the history of Rome.
To begin with, the geographical unity of the Italian peninsula is
more apparent than real. The curving formation of the Apennines
really divides Italy into four parts--(1) the northern region, mainly
consisting of the Po valley, a fertile plain which throughout the
Republican period was scarcely considered as part of Italy at all,
and was, in fact, inhabited by barbarian Gauls; (2) the long eastern
strip of Adriatic coast, an exposed waterless and harbourless region,
with a scanty population, which hardly comes into ancient history;
(3) the southern region of Italy proper, hot, fertile, and rich in
natural harbours, so that it very early attracted the notice of the
Greek mariners, and was planted with luxurious and populous cities long
before Rome came into prominence; and (4) the central plain facing
westward, in which the river Tiber and the city of Rome occupy a
central position. Etruria and Latium together fill the greater part of
it. Its width is only about eighty miles, so that there is no room for
any considerable rivers to develop, and, in fact, there are only four
rivers of any importance in a coast-line of more than 300 miles. We may
call the whole of this region a plain in distinction from the Apennine
highlands; but it is, of course, plentifully scattered with hills high
enough to provide an impregnable citadel, and to this day crowned with
huddled villages.
Rome herself on her Seven Hills began her career by securing dominion
over the Latin plain which surrounded her on all sides but the north.
The Roman Campagna,[3] which is now desolate and fever-stricken, was
once all populous farmland. The river Tiber, though its silting mouth
and tideless waters now render it useless for navigation, was in the
flourishing days of Ancient Rome navigable for small vessels and Ostia
was a good artificial harbour at its mouth. Thus it is history rather
than geography which has made Rome into an unproductive capital. We may
conclude that geography has placed Rome in a favourable position for
securing the control of the Mediterranean and especially of the western
part of it.