Although in literature Rome was but the echo of Greece, she civilized
all the Western world, for which the Greeks had done nothing. Her
language, out of which sprang the various languages of the Romance
nations, is in case of need a means of communication among scholars
of all countries, and her books will always remain--a wise selection
being made--the best for the higher culture of the mind. They have
merited above all others the title of _litterae humaniores_, the
literature by which men are made. A cardinal, reading the 'Thoughts
of Marcus Aurelius' (written in Greek, it is true, but written by a
Roman), exclaimed, "My soul blushes redder than my scarlet at sight of
the virtues of this Gentile."
Suppose Rome destroyed by Pyrrhus or Hannibal, before Marius and Caesar
had driven the German tribes back from Gaul: their invasion would have
been effected five centuries sooner; and since they would have found
opposed to them only other barbarians, what a long night would have
settled down upon the world!
It is true that when the Roman people had laid hands upon the
treasures of Alexander's successors, the scandal of their orgies
exceeded for a century anything that the East had ever seen; that
their amusements were sanguinary games or licentious plays; that the
Roman mind, after receiving a temporary benefit from Greek philosophy,
went astray in Oriental mysticism; and that finally, after having
loved liberty, Rome accepted despotism, as if willing to astonish the
world as much by her great corruption as she did by the greatness of
her empire.
But can we say that no other age or nation has known servility of
soul, licentiousness in public amusements, and the conspicuous
depravity in morals that is always to be seen where indolence and
wealth are united?
To the legacies left by Rome which have now been enumerated, we must
add another, which ranks among the most precious. Notwithstanding the
poetic piety of Virgil, and Livy's official credulity, the dominant
note of Latin literature is the indifference of Horace, when it is not
the daring skepticism of Lucretius. To Cicero, Seneca, Tacitus, and
the great jurisconsults, the prime necessity was the free possession
of themselves, that independence of philosophic thought which they
owed to Greece. This spirit, begotten of pure reason, was almost
stifled during the Middle Ages. It reappeared when antiquity was
recovered. From that day the renascent world set forward again; and
in the new path France, heir of Athens and of Rome, was long her
guide--for art in its most charming form, and for thought, developed
in the light.
Upon a medal of Constantine his son presents to him a globe surmounted
by a phoenix, symbol of immortality. For once the courtiers were not
in the wrong. The sacred bird which springs from her own ashes is a
fitting emblem of this old Rome, dead fifteen centuries ago, yet alive
to-day through her genius: _Siamo Romani_.