The political condition of the world was most melancholy. All power
was concentrated at Rome and in the legions. The most shameful and
degrading scenes were daily enacted. The Roman aristocracy, which had
conquered the world, and which alone of all the people had any voice
in public business under the Cæsars, had abandoned itself to a
saturnalia of the most outrageous wickedness the human race ever
witnessed. Cæsar and Augustus, in establishing the imperial power, saw
perfectly the necessities of the age. The world was so low in its
political relations that no other form of government was possible. Now
that Rome had conquered numberless provinces, the ancient
constitution, which was based upon the existence of a privileged
patrician class, a kind of obstinate and malevolent Tories, could not
continue.
[Footnote 5: From the "History of the Origins of Christianity," the
same being a series of which the first book was "The Life of Jesus."
This passage is from the second volume which is entitled "The
Apostles." From an anonymous translation, published in 1866 by
Carleton, of New York.]
But Augustus had signally neglected every suggestion of true policy by
leaving the future to chance. Destitute of any canon of hereditary
succession, of any settled rules concerning adoption, and of any law
regulating election, Cæsarism was like an enormous load on the deck of
a vessel without ballast. The most terrible shocks were inevitable.
Three times in a century, under Caligula, Nero, and Domitian, the
greatest power that was ever united in one person fell into the hands
of most extravagant and execrable men. Horrors were enacted which have
hardly been surpassed by the monsters of the Mongol dynasties. In that
fatal list of monarchs one is reduced to apologizing for a Tiberius,
who only attained thorough detestableness toward the close of his
life; and for a Claudius, who was only eccentric, blundering, and
badly advised.
Rome became a school of vice and cruelty. It should be added that the
vice came, in a great degree, from the East, from those parasites of
low rank and those infamous men whom Egypt and Syria sent to Rome, and
who, profiting by the oppression of the true Romans, succeeded in
attaining great influence over the wretches who governed. The most
disgusting ignominies of the empire, such as the apotheosis of the
emperors and their deification during life, came from the East, and
particularly from Egypt, which was at that period one of the most
corrupt countries on the face of the earth.
However, the veritable Roman nature still survived, and nobility of
soul was far from extinct. The lofty traditions of pride and virtue,
which were preserved in a few families, attained the imperial throne
with Nerva, and gave its splendor to the age of the Antonines, of
which Tacitus is the elegant historian. An age in which such, true and
noble natures as those of Quintilian, Tacitus, and Pliny the Younger
were produced need not be wholly despaired of. The corruption of the
surface did not extend to the great mass of seriousness and honor
which existed in the better Roman society, and many examples are yet
preserved of devotion to order, duty, peace, and solid integrity.
There were in the noble houses admirable wives and sisters. Was there
ever a more touching fate than that of the young and chaste Octavia,
the daughter of Claudius, and wife of Nero, remaining pure in the
midst of infamy, and slain at twenty-two years of age, without having
known a single joy? The epithets "castissimo," "univiro,"[6] are not
at all rare in the inscriptions. Some wives accompanied their husbands
into exile, and others shared their noble deaths. The ancient Roman
simplicity was not lost. The children were soberly and carefully
brought up. The most noble ladies worked with their own hands at
woolen fabrics, and the excesses of the toilet were almost unknown in
the higher families.
[Footnote 6: These epitaphs mean respectively "the most chaste" and
"the wife of one husband."]
The excellent statesmen who, so to speak, sprang from the earth under
Trajan, were not improvised. They had served in preceding reigns; but
they had enjoyed but little influence, and had been cast into the
shade by the freedmen and favorite slaves of the Emperor. Thus we find
men of the first ability occupying high posts under Nero. The
framework was good. The accession of bad emperors, disastrous as it
was, could not change at once the general tendency of affairs, and the
principles of the government. The empire, far from being in its decay,
was in the full strength of vigorous youth. Decay will come, but two
centuries later; and, strange to say, under much more worthy monarchs.
In its political phase the situation was analogous to that of France,
which, deprived by the revolution of any established rule for the
succession, has yet passed through so many perilous changes without
greatly injuring its internal organization or its national strength.
In its moral aspect, the period under consideration may be compared to
the eighteenth century, an epoch entirely corrupt, if we form our
judgment from the memoirs, manuscripts, literature, and anecdotes of
the time, but in which, nevertheless, some families maintained the
greatest austerity of morals.
Philosophy joined hands with the better families of Rome, and resisted
nobly. The stoic school produced the lofty characters of Cremutius
Cordus, Thraseas, Arria, Helvidius Priscus, Annæus Cornutus, and
Musonius Rufus, admirable masters of aristocratic virtue. The rigidity
and exaggeration of this school arose from the horrible cruelty of the
Cæsars. The continual thought of a good man was how to inure himself
to suffering, and prepare himself for death. Lucian, in bad taste, and
Persius with superior talent, but gave utterance to the loftiest
sentiments of a great soul. Seneca the philosopher, Pliny the Elder,
and Papirius Fabianus kept up a high standard of science and
philosophy. Every one did not yield; there were a few wise men left.
Too often, however, they had no resource but death. The ignoble
portions of humanity at times got the upper hand. Then madness and
cruelty ruled the hour, and made of Rome a veritable hell.
The government, altho so fearfully unstable at Rome, was much better
in the provinces. At a distance the shocks which agitated the capital
were hardly felt. In spite of its defects, the Roman administration
was far superior to the kingdoms and commonwealths it had supplanted.
The time for sovereign municipalities had long gone by. Those little
states had destroyed themselves by their egotism, their jealousies,
and their ignorance or neglect of individual freedom. The ancient life
of Greece, all struggle, all external, no longer satisfied any one. It
had been glorious in its day, but that brilliant democratic Olympus of
demigods had lost its freshness, and become dry, cold, unmeaning,
vain, superficial, and lacking in both head and heart. Hence the
success of the Macedonian rule, and afterward of the Roman. The empire
had not yet fallen into the error of excessive centralization. Until
the time of Diocletian, the provinces and cities enjoyed much liberty.
Kingdoms almost independent existed in Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor,
Lesser Armenia, and Thrace, under the protection of Rome. These
kingdoms became factions after Caligula only because the profound
policy of Augustus concerning them was diverged from in succeeding
reigns.
The numerous free cities were governed according to their own laws,
and had the legislative power and magistracy of autonomic states.
Until the third century their municipal decree commenced with the
formula, "The Senate and People of--". The theaters were not simply
placed for scenic amusement, but were foci of opinion and discussion.
Most of the towns were, in different ways, little commonwealths. The
municipal spirit was very strong. They had lost only the power to
declare war, a fatal power which made the world a field of carnage.
"The benefits conferred by Rome upon mankind" were the theme of
adulatory addresses everywhere, to which, however, it would be unjust
to deny some sincerity. The doctrine of "the Peace of Rome," the idea
of a vast democracy organized under Roman protection, lay at the
bottom of all political speculations. A Greek rhetorician displays
vast erudition in proving that Roman glory should be claimed by all
the branches of the Hellenic race as a common patrimony. In regard to
Syria, Asia Minor, and Egypt, we may say that the Roman conquest did
not destroy any of their liberties. Those nations had either been
already long dead to political life, or had never enjoyed it.
Finally, in spite of the extortions of governors and of the violence
which is inseparable from despotic sway, the world had in many
respects never been so well off. An administration coming from a
remote center was so great an advantage, that even the rapacious
prætors of the latter days of the republic had failed to render it
unpopular. The Julian law had also narrowed down the scope of abuses
and peculations. The follies or cruelties of the emperor, except under
Nero, reached only the Roman aristocracy and the immediate followers
of the prince. Never had men who did not care to busy themselves about
politics been able to live more at ease. The ancient republics, in
which every one was compelled to take part in the factions, were very
uncomfortable places of residence. There was continually going on some
disorganization or proscription. But under the empire the time seemed
made expressly for great proselytism which should overrule both the
quarrels of neighborhoods and the rivalry of dynasties. Attacks on
liberty were much more frequently owing to the remnants of the
provincial or communal authority than to the Roman administration. Of
this truth we have had and shall have many occasions to take note.
For those of the conquered countries where political privileges had
been unknown for ages, and which lost nothing but the right of
destroying themselves by continual wars, the empire was such an era of
prosperity and well-being as they had never before experienced; and we
may add, without being paradoxical, that it was also for them an era
of liberty. On the one hand, a freedom of commerce and industry, of
which the Grecian state had no conception, became possible. On the
other hand, the new régime could not but be favorable to freedom of
thought. This freedom is always greater under a monarchy than under
the rule of jealous and narrow-minded citizens, and it was unknown in
the ancient republics. The Greeks accomplished great things without
it, thanks to the incomparable force of their genius; but we must not
forget that Athens had a complete inquisition....
There was, indeed, under the empire more than one arbitrary decree
against the philosophers, but it was always called forth by their
entering into political schemes. We may search in vain the Roman law
before Constantine for a single passage against freedom of thought;
and the history of the imperial government furnishes no instance of a
prosecution for entertaining an abstract doctrine. No scientific man
was molested. Men like Galen, Lucan, and Plotinus, who would have gone
to the stake in the Middle Age, lived tranquilly under the protection
of the law. The empire inaugurated liberty in this respect; it
extinguished the despotic sovereignty of the family, the town, and the
tribe, and replaced or tempered it by that of the state. But despotic
power is the more vexatious the narrower its sphere of action. The old
republics and the feudal system opprest individuals much more than did
the state. The empire at times persecuted Christianity most severely,
but at least it did not arrest its progress. Republics, however, would
have overcome the new faith. Even Judaism would have smothered it but
for the pressure of Roman authority. The Roman magistrates were all
that hindered the Pharisees from destroying Christianity at the
outset.