inhuman tyrants that immediately succeeded Augustus, several of the
more virtuous emperors sought by various expedients to bring about the
moral regeneration of the people and empire of Rome. Trajan, who
possessed much of the rectitude and old martial virtues that belonged
to the elder and better period of Rome, sought to introduce these
again; and, though the effects of his policy were transient, they
were still beneficial. Hadrian endeavoured to reanimate paganism, and
to make it once more the basis of the empire and of public life; for
this purpose, he had recourse especially to the more profound and
austere Theology of Egypt; and that new Egyptian style, which
characterizes the later monuments of Roman art, was connected with the
emperor's predilection for the old religion of Egypt. But the healthy
vigour, the moral regeneration, of public life, and of the empire
itself, could not now be obtained by the maintenance, or firmer
consolidation, of the pagan religion; on the contrary, it is in the
erroneous nature of the primitive paganism of Rome that we must seek
for the principal cause why, even in that elder period now so highly
extolled, and which certainly was at least better, a true, pure, and
stable system of morals and politics could never take root and
flourish. Under the two Antonines, the severe morality of Stoicism was
regarded as the vital principle of moral regeneration, and political
reform, and a practical application of its principles was sought for
on all sides. And certainly if the stoical philosophy, with its mere
dead letter of rigid justice, and correct morality, unsupported by the
divine maxims of right faith, and that spirit of exalted love which
true faith alone can impart, could have accomplished this high
design;--if it had possessed within itself this mighty source, this
creative energy of moral and social life; the serious determination and
personal virtues of those imperial stoics might indeed have promised
to the declining age of Rome the fulfilment of the last hope to which
Paganism yet clung. But that which doth not rest on the basis of truth
can receive no life from any external cause; and it can impart no life
to any thing without, because it is decayed within, and when the
illusive bloom of first youth has fled, it sinks inevitably into its
native corruption. "When the Lord doth not build the house," saith the
Psalmist, "those who would build it labour in vain." To the better
times that had witnessed the rule of the three or four great monarchs
we have mentioned, the reign of a Commodus succeeded; and thus the
Empire, down to the time of Diocletian, beheld a constant mutation of
rulers, sometimes benevolent, or at least comparatively good, whose
reigns however were often but of short duration, sometimes weak and
spiritless, and sometimes again tyrants of the most abject and
atrocious cast. Among these latter Sovereigns, however, who in cruelty
and arbitrary caprice, resembled the first successors of Augustus,
there were no characters possessed of that strong Roman sense which
distinguished Tiberius; and the empire in their hands assumed daily
more and more a thoroughly effeminate and oriental complexion.
Nothing was more subject to chance than the right of succession in the
Roman empire, where the arbitrary application of the Roman principle
of adoption opened a wide field to the contention of parties; without
including the frequent recurrence of conspiraces in a military empire,
which, as it was formed by a military conspiracy, ever retained the
stamp of its origin. Augustus had employed his whole life, not without
apparent success, for a time at least, in endeavouring to give to
authority, acquired by force of arms, the colour and forms of
legitimacy. But how could it be ever forgotten that he, as well as
Cæsar, had been raised to the Imperial throne by the army, and amid
the struggles of factions, conspiracies, and civil wars. The soldiers
knew this, and recollected but too well the source whence the supreme
power in the state had emanated. The influence of the Prætorians,
especially, was, from their origin, very considerable, as they
surrounded the Emperor, and formed his body-guard. By virtue of his
office the leader of the Prætorians had a sort of negative and
controlling power, like that of the Censor and popular Tribune in the
ancient republic, except that this functionary wielded the sword,--a
power in some degree acknowledged by the Emperor himself, as it was
accounted one of the highest merits of Trajan, that to the chief of
that troop which defended the person, and often decided the fate, of
the Emperor, he delivered the sword with these words: "For me, if I
govern well--against me, if I should become a tyrant."
Thus the empire was entirely abandoned to chance and caprice, and as
its origin was military, it remained unto the end essentially a
military despotism. The more powerful legions that were quartered in
the most important provinces, especially in those of the frontiers,
soon began to feel that they were far superior in numbers and strength
to the effeminate Prætorians of the capital. Several emperors were
elected and proclaimed by these legions; and in the number, such even
as were not Romans, and were of barbarian extraction; for it happened
that, in the provincial legions, many foreigners, especially Germans,
were engaged in the Roman service in the provinces on the
North-western frontier. Several of the emperors thus chosen by the
legions, continued to reside where the centre of their power
existed--in the station, or in some provincial capital conveniently
situated. The Senate had long been but a mere shadow of its former
greatness; even the capital began to lose much of its importance.
At the same time the repeated incursions of the Northern nations ever
rendered a general invasion more imminent, and the disaster, which men
had foreseen from afar, appeared ever nearer its accomplishment.
Already the first irruption of the Cimbri and Teutones, when not
merely an army for the sake of booty, or to plant a military colony,
but a whole tribe with wives and children had migrated into the Roman
territory, threw Rome into consternation during the civil wars, when
she was at the very height of her military prowess. Cæsar had spared
no exertion to reduce Gaul to complete subjection, and this country
had ever since adopted more and more the language and customs of Rome.
He experienced from no people such vigorous resistance, as from the
Germanic tribes; and to protect against these nations the safety of
the empire, by strongly fortifying the banks of the Rhine and Danube,
constituted afterwards the first concern of the Roman Emperors. What a
shock Augustus received from the defeat of Varus, by the German
Arminius in his native woods! Even under the martial Trajan, who was
almost the last conqueror in the line of Roman Emperors, men began to
entertain serious apprehensions of the invasion of the Germanic
tribes. The first great irruption was that of the Alemanni, who, under
Marcus Aurelius burst into the Rhætian provinces, while similar
movements occurred in Noricum and eastward towards Pannonia. However,
Marcus Aurelius, by an energetic and successful resistance, repelled
this first attempt, and thus was the means of deterring the barbarians
for a long time from similar enterprises; and a hundred years elapsed
before Aurelian drove them again from Italy, over the Alps as far as
the Lech. Among the German nations, the Goths, who from the
Scandinavian Isles had penetrated far into the interior of Germany,
particularly towards the eastern, as afterwards towards the western,
parts of that country, were pre-eminent in power. They could not be
prevented from obtaining a firm footing in the North-eastern
provinces, by the Black Sea. The Emperor Decius perished in the war
against this people; and the Romans were obliged to surrender to them
by a formal treaty, the further Dacia. Constantine, indeed, was
victorious in the war he waged against them; but he preferred to
conclude an advantageous peace, to gain their friendship, and enlist
their youth in the service of the Roman armies. Of the later reigns
that of Diocletian displayed the greatest energy; but his cruel
persecution of the Christians was, even to judge from the mere
external state of society, as little adapted to the spirit of the age
as it was reprehensible in itself, and hence his design remained
unaccomplished. Although, after his abdication, Diocletian showed
himself a thorough Roman in private life, yet, while he swayed the
sceptre, he deemed it expedient to surround the throne with all the
pomp and forms of Asiatic homage. The division of the empire among
several sovereigns appeared then, as afterwards, under Constantine and
his successors, an unavoidable and necessary evil; or, in other words,
the several parts and members of the vast body of the Roman Empire,
which approached nearer and nearer to its dissolution, began to fall
to pieces, and that division itself accelerated again the destruction
of the state, as it became the occasion of internal discord, and
universal convulsion in the Roman world. The revolution accomplished
by Constantine, indeed, might have become a real, and by far the most
comprehensive, regeneration of the Roman state, as it substituted for
its originally defective, and now completely rotten, foundation of
Paganism, a new principle of life, a higher and more potent energy of
divine truth and eternal justice. But Christianity had not yet near
become the universal religion of the people, and Empire of
Rome--otherwise the great re-action, which took place under Julian,
had not been possible. The peasantry, in particular, continued for a
long time yet attached to the old idolatry; and hence the name of
Pagans was derived.[3] Even Constantine, though he publicly declared
himself a convert to Christianity, still did not dare to receive
baptism immediately, and thus enter fully into the great community of
Christians. The administration of the Roman state was so completely
interwoven with Pagan rites and Pagan doctrines, that, from an act of
this public nature, dangerous collisions might have at first easily
ensued. On the whole, the old Roman maxims and principles of
state-policy continued to prevail, even for a long time after the
reign of Constantine; and the period had not yet arrived when
Christianity was to work a fundamental reform throughout the whole
political world,--and a Christian government, if I may so speak, was
to be established and organized on that eternal basis, and to strike
deep root and grow into the faith and life of the people, and into
their habits and their feelings; but this great revolution was
reserved for another and a later period.
[1] In confirmation of this pithy sentence of
Schlegel's, I may cite a remarkable passage from the
celebrated Lessing, which, as coming from an Infidel,
may perhaps have more weight with the Unitarian. "If
Christ," he says, "is not truly God, then Mohammedanism
was an undoubted improvement on the Christian religion:
Mahomet, on such a supposition, would indisputably have
been a greater man than Christ, as he would have been
far more veracious, more circumspect, and more zealous
for the honour of God, since Christ, by his
expressions, would have given dangerous occasion for
idolatry; while, on the other hand, not a single
expression of the kind can be laid to the charge of
Mahomet."--_Lessing's Beiträge zur Geschichte und
Litteratur._ Vol. II. p. 410.--_Trans._
[2] By this expression, Schlegel does not mean to
question the supernatural agency that produced those
obstacles.--_Trans_
[3] From the Latin word _Pagus_, a rural district.
END OF LECTURE X.
LECTURE XI.
Of the ancient Germans, and of the invasion of the Northern
tribes.--The march of Nature in the historical development of
Nations.--Further diffusion and internal consolidation of
Christianity.--Great corruption of the world.--Rise of
Mahometanism.
The idolatry of the ancient Germans, like the less poetical, less
artificial, and less elaborate Paganism of all primitive nations,
consisted in a simple adoration of Nature, such as existed among the
Persians, with whom they had a very close affinity in race and in
language. Thus the objects of their worship were the stars, the sun
and the moon, the celestial spirits, the various powers and elements
of Nature, and in particular the mother earth, under the name of the
goddess Hertha. In the German and English names for the days of the
week, the names of the gods, Thun, Wodan, Thor, and Freya, are still
preserved; and these in the Germanic mythology correspond to the
planets, most clearly visible from our globe--Mars, Mercury, Jupiter,
and Venus; as it is also from these the Romanic languages have taken
the names of the weekdays. It does not appear, indeed, that there
existed in Germany quite so powerful, influential, and well-organized
a body of priests, as the Druids composed in Gaul; and we can only
discover the existence of certain secret rites and mysteries of a very
primitive simplicity; as, for instance, the human sacrifice which was
offered to the lake Hertha, in the Isle of Rugen, when a young man and
maiden were thrown into its solitary waters. It was in the obscurity
of woods, under the sacred oak, or by the Linden, the tree of Northern
enchantment, and on the mountaintops, they celebrated their rites,
festivals, and entertainments, or arranged the Runic sticks to search
into futurity; and as, among the Greeks, the Delphic oracle in moments
of general danger was consulted, and gave its advice on the most
important concerns of the nation; so the prophetesses and sybils of
the North, like the Velleda mentioned by the Romans, exerted a very
decisive influence on the public councils. Old poetical traditions of
gods, heroes, giants, and spirits (in many respects like those of
Persia), formed the keystone of the sacred recollections and national
existence of the Germanic nations.
Their original descent from Asia remained ever strong and lively in
their remembrance, and allusions to it were interwoven into the whole
body of their traditionary poetry; and as in the Persian traditions,
the Arii are celebrated as the most generous and heroic nation of the
primitive ages, so the Asae occupy the most distinguished place in the
Northern mythology. In the Scandinavian North, which remained Pagan
for many centuries after Germany had become Christian, there are still
extant many monuments and songs of a similar purport and strain; and
of these, indeed, abundant vestiges are to be found every-where. These
old historical traditions and this hereditary poetry had often a very
powerful influence on real life, and on the martial enterprises and
achievements of the tribes; and as in the heroic ages of the Greeks,
according to the Homeric description, so in those times the bard,
proclaiming the history of gods and heroes, and attending on the
person of the prince or general of the army, was by no means an
unimportant personage.
A monarchy of such wide extent, as the ancient kingdom of Persia, did
not exist in Germany. The constitution, if we can apply such a term to
the wild freedom of those early ages, was more like that of Greece in
the heroic times, when she was governed by her noble families, and her
territory was divided into a number of petty kingdoms, which only
rarely united in a great league for a common enterprise. This
primitive Germanic constitution was a very simple and free aristocracy
of Nature. The tribe that composed the nation was an union or
confederacy of freemen and nobles under an hereditary tribe-prince,
or chosen leader; and it was only at a later period that among some of
the Germanic nations, this confederacy gave way to a regular regal
government. Every freeman, and every man having a right to bear arms,
was a member of the Hermannia, which was afterwards called the
arriere-ban; and it was this ancient Hermannia that gave rise to the
Roman name for Germany. The land was cultivated by bondsmen and
slaves, who had been either purchased, or taken prisoners in war, or
were the conquered remnant of the ancient inhabitants of the country,
or even men who for some crime had forfeited their freedom and
nobility. When the Romans became better acquainted with the Germanic
nations, the latter had partly become an agricultural people; and they
observed that very primitive custom of letting their fields lie
alternately in fallow--a custom which has been so long retained in the
North of Germany, under the name of _dreyfelder-wirthschaft_.
Private property in land itself was not yet marked out nor enclosed
within any exact limits--there was still much common land, and this
was naturally an inducement for the different tribes, whenever they
had a favourable opportunity, to change their abode and migrate. But
this infant agriculture was still held subordinate to the occupations
of the chace and of the pastoral life, which furnished the principal
means of subsistence. The different forests that still exist in
Germany are merely the remaining fragments of the one, vast,
boundless Hercynian forest, that once extended through the whole
interior of the country. From the quantity of wood that yet remained,
the soil of Germany was much more marshy, and its atmosphere
incomparably colder, than at the present day. The buffalo and the elk,
which at present are so very rarely to be met with in Germany, were
then animals indigenous to our country.
That this condition of the soil, and this unsettled mode of life, in a
growing population are circumstances quite sufficient to account for a
partial, though (without other co-operating causes) not perhaps for
the general, emigration of a whole tribe, must be evident to every
person. Internal factions and wars are quite adequate causes for the
emigration of a whole tribe, or, at least, of a considerable portion.
In the early ages it was customary, when the population became too
numerous, for the younger brothers, or a certain number of youths
chosen by lot, to quit their country under the guidance of a leader of
their choice, or of one marked out by Fame, and, proceeding on an
expedition of adventure, conquer other homes for themselves, and seek
out their fortunes towards the east, or towards the west, or beneath
the fairer sky of a southern region. Even in a more advanced, nay in
the most advanced, stage of civilization, every state and nation is
necessitated by nature, if I may so speak, to disburthen itself of a
redundant population, and to extend itself in new settlements--in one
word, to found colonies, and to possess colonies. This is the standing
law,--the fundamental rule of health in the progressive development of
nations; and where this necessity does not exist in an equal degree,
we must consider it only a case of exception, and we shall be sure to
find that some special cause precludes the operation of this principle
for a time: for, sooner or later, nature will force us to this
expedient. The commercial colonies of the Phoenicians and Greeks
were in part founded, and certainly at least defended, extended and
consolidated by force of arms; and it is only by similar means, that
in modern times, Mexico and Peru have become colonies of Spain.
But in those early ages, and among those northern, warlike children of
nature, this natural necessity of emigration could take no other
course, nor have any other object but a military settlement. Such was
the result of the first irruption of the northern nations, mentioned
in history--the expedition of the Gauls into Thrace, which was soon
succeeded by a second of a similar kind under Brennus; when that
Gallic general marched at the head of his troops into Macedon and
Greece, and became master of the rich temple of Apollo at Delphi, and
of all its accumulated treasures. A remnant of these troops finally
fixed their abode in Asia Minor, and established a Gallic settlement
in a province which from them received the name of _Galatia_. In
this first great expedition, or irruption of the northern nations, the
names of almost all the tribes and their leaders are Celtic; still
some few German names are found amongst them; and this may be easily
accounted for, when we recollect that the Gauls, who were then widely
spread, and inhabited even the North of Italy, were undoubtedly in
possession of most of the Alpine countries, and thus may easily have
engaged in their service some German tribes. Who knows but what some
marvellous tradition, and fabulous account of the lovely climate and
delicious fruits of the Southern regions, together with recollections
of their original descent from the Southern nations of Asia, may have
contributed to bring the Cimbri and Teutones from the islands of
Scandinavia to the plains of Italy? Had the Romans not dreaded the
dangerous precedent, and had they but allotted lands to these nations,
they might easily have kept terms of peace with them, and enlisted
their most valiant youth in the service of their legions; as, indeed,
under the later emperors, the flower of their troops was selected from
the Gothic tribes.
But the case was widely different when the relations of peace and war,
the proximity of frontiers, and the occupation of the German
territory, brought the Romans in closer contact with the Germanic
nations; as, for instance, in the campaigns which Cæsar conducted
against the chief of the Suevi, Ariovistus; Tiberius against
Maroboduus, king of the Marcomanni; and the general of Augustus
against the Saxon prince, Hermann. Here both parties diligently
studied and observed each other's excellencies and defects, and mixed
in the most various intercourse. Thus Hermann's father lived among the
Romans; his brother bore a Roman name; and his nephew was educated at
Rome. Maroboduus himself repaired thither, desirous like a prudent
foe, to examine with his own eyes the capital of Roman greatness and
power. Among the German tribes and their leaders, factions were
sometimes formed even against Hermann and Maroboduus; and at a later
period, these divisions had no inconsiderable influence on the
relations of the Germanic nations with the Romans, and on their
foreign enterprizes. The Roman frontier on the banks of the Rhine and
the Danube, fortified by a long line of castles, fortresses, and
cities, lay for the most part within the German territory, and was
inhabited by some German tribes, or German settlers that had been
attracted thither. Here the nations of Germany saw their brethren of a
kindred race, living indeed under the controul of Roman laws, which
those, who still retained their freedom, sought to repel by force of
arms; but on the other hand, they observed the high cultivation of a
country, blest with all the advantages of civilization, and adorned
with so many of the arts of life, with the culture of the vine, and a
variety of the most exquisite fruits. And when, in the course of the
almost incessant wars waged on the frontier, they either encountered a
feeble resistance, or observed some defect in the mode of Roman
defence, the desire to prosecute their fortune, and penetrate into
those beautiful countries, must have considerably augmented. As, three
centuries ago, the fabulous accounts of treasures of gold, and rich
ores of silver, to be found in America, drew hosts of Spanish and
other European adventurers over the Atlantic to the shores of the
newly-discovered continent; so the charms of a southern sky, the rich
fruits, the vineyards, the blooming gardens of a warm, lovely and
highly cultivated region, wrought powerfully on the imaginations of
the Northerns, and were often the motive of their expeditions and
armed migrations.
The first irruptions of the Alemanni in the reign of Marcus Aurelius,
and subsequent to it, appear to have arisen immediately and naturally,
(as I have said,) out of the perpetual wars waged on the frontier, on
the first advantage which those barbarians obtained over the Romans,
and on the first defect or weakness which they espied in the defensive
operations of their enemies. That the warfare on the frontier was
perpetuated almost without intermission, it is the more natural to
suppose, since the Germanic nations by two armed confederacies of
their tribes, had on their side opposed to the fortifications of the
Roman boundaries a living frontier-wall. The name of the Marcomanni
served to designate not a particular tribe, but an armed confederation
for the defence of the whole nation; and the same remark holds good of
the Alemanni. In the descriptions which the Romans have given of
Germany, they were occasionally led, by their ignorance of the
language, to mistake a league for a people, and to apply to a tribe
the denomination intended to denote a district or a custom. But in
these accounts it is very easy to trace the three or four leading
nations of Germany, that figure afterwards in its history, and which,
on the dissolution of the Roman empire, possessed themselves of its
provinces, spread through the different Romanic countries, and in the
course of time became the founders of the modern European states.